The new tech-delivery missions

[steelwing]

I hadn't played in a while, owing mostly to my having just upgraded my computer to a new OS and needing to reinstall things, and.....WOW the new spacefaring-tech-delivery missions!  Even on Easy, it's almost impossible to deliver spacefaring to more than 2 races without being caught by someone's probes, thanks to the new scanner patterns.  I only barely scraped through delivering to two!  I guess this goes along with the much greater payout for success.
Is there any chance of dialing back the negative influence hit for discovery?  -200 influence seems a bit harsh.
How successful have others been at dodging through the probes?

[x4000]

Cheers!

I did an LP back when there were still twice as many probes, so it was a lot harder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGXiEE6C6Y&list=UUbdV-c6DjS7hNJc6Ou27Cuw

The influence amounts depend on which races you run into, and who you are delivering to.  The first race from the game always gives double negative penalties, too.  So before you go into a mission, one thing you can do is look at who you lose the least influence with (it shows you), and/or who you care least about pissing off.  All the bullets are color-coded and follow patterns, so if there is no way to get in without alerting someone, then you can just be sure to go through where you alert those guys.

The Thoraxians are often a good bet, as are the Peltians.  You can do it losing just 10-15 influence with each of them after waking like 5 ships.  But with the Acutians, it can be like 2 ships and suddenly it's -200 if you were at the wrong race and you started with them.  Each race has a different amount of influence that you lose with them based on the race you are delivering to, by the way.

Hope that helps!

[steelwing]

The influence amounts depend on which races you run into, and who you are delivering to.  The first race from the game always gives double negative penalties, too.  So before you go into a mission, one thing you can do is look at who you lose the least influence with (it shows you), and/or who you care least about pissing off.  All the bullets are color-coded and follow patterns, so if there is no way to get in without alerting someone, then you can just be sure to go through where you alert those guys.

The Thoraxians are often a good bet, as are the Peltians.  You can do it losing just 10-15 influence with each of them after waking like 5 ships.  But with the Acutians, it can be like 2 ships and suddenly it's -200 if you were at the wrong race and you started with them.  Each race has a different amount of influence that you lose with them based on the race you are delivering to, by the way.

Ah.  I missed where it told me that.  I was delivering to the Andor and a Burlust probe tagged me.  Next thing I know, a race that was sort of liking me had become disgusted with me.    Worse yet, I can't just use a duel to get back in favor with them, because that requires a minimum of -75 influence.

[eastwind]

I nearly gave up on the game because the first mission I tried seemed impossible, and I was playing on easy/easy my first time out. I was encouraged some by the lets-play, without that I'm sure I would have written the game off as a loss and gone back to my MMO.

It doesn't seem to me that the difficulty of this mission is scaled by the difficulty settings at all. The range at which the probes detect you is so far out and the probes are so close together you basically have no chance of slipping through, your only chance is to get a mission where the goal is right on the edge of the wall of probes rather than behind a one or two-layer wall.

I've only played a couple games, but I feel I have to save before each smuggling run and repeatedly reload until I get a layout where I have a chance.

I think there are a lot of ways this could be changed to be more fun and less frustrating.

[steelwing]

I nearly gave up on the game because the first mission I tried seemed impossible, and I was playing on easy/easy my first time out. I was encouraged some by the lets-play, without that I'm sure I would have written the game off as a loss and gone back to my MMO.

It doesn't seem to me that the difficulty of this mission is scaled by the difficulty settings at all. The range at which the probes detect you is so far out and the probes are so close together you basically have no chance of slipping through, your only chance is to get a mission where the goal is right on the edge of the wall of probes rather than behind a one or two-layer wall.

I've only played a couple games, but I feel I have to save before each smuggling run and repeatedly reload until I get a layout where I have a chance.

I think there are a lot of ways this could be changed to be more fun and less frustrating.

The difficulty does make a difference, believe me.
On higher difficulties, there are more probes crowded closer together for each race.  You think it's tough to break past the probes with just one race spacefaring on easy?  Try two or three races on medium or hard.

[eastwind]

Go back and try playing the tut on easy and doing a couple of these missions right off, with acutians spacefaring from the start. Limit yourselves by not touching the engine power controls, always flying a full turn's max distance in any one direction (or along a curve), and treat any probe hits as failure requiring a reload.

Randomly choose which other races to give spacefaring to next, and see what your success percentage is by the time you're on 4-6 spacefaring races. See if you think it's still 'easy' difficulty by then.

[steelwing]

Go back and try playing the tut on easy and doing a couple of these missions right off, with acutians spacefaring from the start. Limit yourselves by not touching the engine power controls, always flying a full turn's max distance in any one direction (or along a curve), and treat any probe hits as failure requiring a reload.

Randomly choose which other races to give spacefaring to next, and see what your success percentage is by the time you're on 4-6 spacefaring races. See if you think it's still 'easy' difficulty by then.

"Easy" is in the eye of the beholder, and even on easy/easy difficulty, I probably wouldn't do a tech-delivery mission with 4 or more spacefaring races.  Even on easy, the probes are entirely too dense.
As it is, I already tend to save-scum on these missions, depending on who saw me and what the impact of that is.  If I got detected by someone who I didn't care if they saw me, or if the impact of being seen is negligible, no big deal.  Otherwise, I restart the mission as you described.

[Jabberwok]

I haven't played enough to know how much these vary, but I was just playing my first tech delivery mission that the tutorial recommended, and found it to be completely impossible to reach the goal without alerting anyone. Even though they supposedly can't see me, all of the satellites constantly rotate to face me; which means their detection shots are always in my path if I move within range. And there do not seem to be any holes in the distribution.

Is this by design? Am I just supposed to try and mitigate the negative effects, or am I just getting unlucky?

[Captain Jack]

It's supposed to be "possible with a lot of planning" the first time and ramp up to "maniacal mocking laughter" the more races are in space. It's really only worth doing once or twice, and if you can't manage it at all, don't worry about it. It's a nice chunk of change but nothing you can't get elsewhere.