deManglers Thread of Confusion

deMangler · Post by **deMangler** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 5:04 pm

Hi all,
Tried out various games by SW over the years, always ended up giving up after a few hours, although I am no stranger to the genre and normally have no problems 'getting' new games, from Elite to Vega-strike to BC3000 to X3 to Privateer and X-wing to Oolite to Orbiter-sim... well everything. Loved them all but defeated by the Evochron games for some reason. I finally bought EM because, well I have had a lot of enjoyment from failing to get past the demos and now I am determined to get past my block with these Evochron games.
This will be my thread of newbie questions. If I ask a question here then I have already tried lots of experimentation in game, searched the forum, googled, and read the docs I can find.

My first question is:

I am doing a 'Locate lost item' and the contract says it is in the area and the waypoint will guide me to the general area.
What waypoint?
The information I have found so far seems to say that there will be a yellow waypoint. I cannot see one, apart from my normal nav destination one, which is where I put it while looking around the map. I found a forum post suggesting that in this case there would be a green waypoint. I can't for the life of me see a green waypoint - either in the HUD or the map. Other information I found seemed to indicate there would be a purple blip. The only purple blip I can find is a gate.

Clearly there is something simple I am missing. Somebody please put me out of my misery on this one so I can advance to my next seizure of confusion.
Thanks in advance. Also, thanks for all the great information the community has already put together, without which I would probably not even have the determination to get to grips with this game.
Hope to see you in multiplayer some time soon.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 5:17 pm

Hi Demangler, welcome to the game and forum!.....Hope to see you out there some time!....

Did you try to get help in Multiplay?

Also when accepting a locate lost item contract, a waypoint Nav Marker will be set close to the area automatically. Do not click on anything on your Nav Map after accepting a contract because then you lose your contract Nav Point. Zoom completely in to the sector you are in and you should see a Nav Marker on your Nav Map in the sector you are in unless you are zooming in to the wrong sector!

Set your pitch and compass heading to 0 degrees engage a normal jump (F2) do not use Alt and as you come out of the jump keep flying straight till you see the purple blip on your radar and fly towards the purple blip. The container will be sometimes hard to see! But once you get close enough to it the contract will complete if it said to fly close enough to locate it!......

deMangler · Post by **deMangler** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 10:10 pm

Hi,
Thanks for the response.
I was possibly not entirely clear in my post, probably because I tried to include a greeting, question and explanation all in one.
I have managed to complete these missions, indeed, as you say, as long as you just come out of the station and press F2 then it pretty much happens by itself.
My specific issue was that I didn't consider that there was no way of finding the waypoint location once you have used the nav map for anything else. What if I (for example) want to do something sand-boxy and free-form in between accepting a contract and completing it? I might (in fact I did) see something interesting on the nav map and click to check it out. Is there really no way to later refer back to the location given when the contract was accepted?
In that case perhaps I should take a note of the co-ordinates manually when I accept a contract, I will try to do this in future and see how it works out.

As it happens I failed this particular mission. I don't know why. I didn't give up and there was no time limit given in the contract.

Of course it is possible that I am conceptualising the whole mission thing incorrectly. It is possible that the intention is that you do the sandbox free-form thing in general, but when you accept a contract then you do just that and nothing else until it is completed. That would be borne out by the fact that you can't save while on a contract. Hmmmmm....
Thanks for the welcome and reply. I will not doubt have more confusion to display in this thread as I continue to explore this game.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 10:33 pm

You are correct about the contract. Once you accept that contract you can not leave the sector of that contract. If you do leave the sector with an active contract that contract will fail. You can however do other things in that same sector after accepting a contract and the waypoint is marked by a light blue rectangle if it is a destroy enemy kind of mission. If it is a find and locate mission then the waypoint will not be marked with this blue rectangle. This is so that when you are in a multiple waypoint battle mission you can refuel and load up on counter measures and missiles and repair if needed so you can find the location of the battle after this!.....

deMangler · Post by **deMangler** » Tue Feb 07, 2012 11:33 pm

From post: 129550, Topic: tid=8846, author=Maarschalk wrote:...Once you accept that contract you can not leave the sector of that contract. If you do leave the sector with an active contract that contract will fail....

Ahaa! That clarifies my mission failure.
It would be nice if that were mentioned in the mission text or something, maybe one of those little announcements, 'Contracts void if leaving sector' type thing. Then it would be part of the immersion. As it is it just seems like a game mechanic.
Anyway, good information. Thanks, that explains it.

Post by **Marvin** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 3:12 am

From post: 129563, Topic: tid=8846, author=deMangler wrote:It would be nice if that were mentioned in the mission text or something, maybe one of those little announcements, 'Contracts void if leaving sector' type thing. Then it would be part of the immersion.

Actually, I think you can change to text file to have it say that. Or something similar.

Maarschalk · Post by **Maarschalk** » Wed Feb 08, 2012 5:32 pm

Also I did some testing with the waypoints Nav Marker. As long as the contract is active and you stay in the sector of the contract the Waypoint of any contract will be marked by a Yellow/Greenbox and a light blue colored rectangle. The Marker is Yellow and Green if you did not set another jump point and Green if you set a different jump point on your Nav Map after accepting a contract!.....If you leave the sector then contract will fail and the Nav Marker will be gone! In multiplay this applies as well if any player in the same sector where a contract is active leaves the sector!