Tuesday, March 22, 2011

‘Hostage Negotiation’

Fight!
The preceding story mission was: ‘Give Chase’

The following story mission is: ‘Back To Mizar’

I had a slight problem getting started on this mission. I ignored my own advice that I gave in ‘Give Chase’ and had to travel back to Vega for this story mission after going to Mizar for a while. Once back in Vega I’d forgotten which planet I had to get to, so clicked on each planet until the ‘New story mission available’ message appeared at Kalabesh. I went there, but found that that story mission was ‘Tutorial – Install Afterburner’. This is an optional tutorial from the updated Vega storyline which I haven’t completed as it didn’t exist when I was in Vega.

I checked with the wiki and saw that I should be at Aurora, even though there was no ‘New story...’ message showing there. Just a little bug, but it did cause me to go on a wasted journey because I didn’t start where Pirate Galaxy expected me to. Splitscreen modified the Vega storyline so that buying the AnIn-1450 is no longer compulsory. They’ve done this by designating the relevant missions as Tutorials but they still show up as Story Missions. They need to do a little engineering to tidy this up. Give tutorials their own colour code and stop them being recognised for the ‘New story…’ message.

Never mind, on with the story. Vicius the Mutilator has captured Rosebud and you have to go to Lyris to meet up and negotiate. Why? I can’t stand Rosebud, he’s a drip. Okay, okay. I don’t really mind having him in the game. The whole storyline is pretty camp and he fits in with the tone. I’d prefer a darker and grittier feel to the game, more Battlestar Galactica reboot than original series. Having said that dark and gritty has been the thing for years. Maybe it’s getting old now and Splitscreen have got it right.

You are accompanied by Admiral Hornblower and Tobias Planck to the meeting point on Lyris. Vicius promises to trade Rosebud for the Mizar Astrogation chip. Ethan obliges but The Mutilator does the dirty and takes off with the chip and Rosebud. You are then attacked by successive waves of Mantis. There are a lot of them but they’re only level 15s so easy meat really. I was in my Gemini Storm but I think any decent ship could manage.

After you’ve killed all of the attackers you get the message to chase Vicius to the Mizar system. According to this mission's wiki entry you will fail this mission if you fire upon Vicius, or if the Admiral or Tobias’s escape pod is destroyed. I found it quite easy but things can always go wrong.

After completing this I decided to check my achievements and found that one was to become a Lyris Sentinel Slayer. So before I took the following story mission I killed 50 Sentinels and moved up to 1,317 in the Pirate galaxy Hall Of Fame. While you’re there you may as well do the same, it’s very therapeutic.

8 comments:

  1. How can you travel back to Mizar if you have given up the Astrogation Chip? Where's the logic in that... unless there are more of those chips that the NPC has?

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  2. Good question Galaxus. The Mizar Astrogation chip was dropped by Ethan Copernicus. I'd be blowed if I'd give up my chip for Rosebud.

    Your question makes me wonder about these chips though. I'd imagined that they were slotted into your ship when you piloted them. However if that were right then when Vicius kicks Ethan out of his ship in 'Explosive Information' then he'd get the chip too.

    I can only imagine that pilots keep them on their person, probably attached to their belt by a little retractable cord. Bet Vicius wishes he'd checked Ethan's pockets before he threw him in the pod.

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  3. So, if there are more of those chips as Ethan also had one, couldn't Vicius just taken one of his subordiantes chip, instead of going into a fuss?

    I had imagined that the chip is like a CD. You download it to your harddrive and you're good to go. You either have to insert the CD once to download, or you'll have to insert the chip everytime you use it. If you understand xD

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  4. Hello again Galaxus.

    Perhaps the Mantis ships aren't able to use the gates so Vicius has to get the chip from a human. How the Mantis get to all of the other systems I don't know. Maybe they have their own gates or jump capable mother ships.

    Any other ideas people?

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  5. Back when I played did this a coupla months ago, the mantis had way too much power... hundreds spawned and tore at my mizar ship. lolz, i barely escaped, being chased by level 14 superpowered avengers...

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  6. Hello there. That's intersting, maybe this mission was rebalanced. I think they could toughen it up a bit now, as I was comfortable in my Gemini Storm. Thanks for the info.

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  7. "Do not shoot at someone who you want to negotiate with."

    Hehe, I got that message on my first try. What sense of humour!

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