Fractal Softworks Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

Author Topic: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?  (Read 1384 times)

tomkiel

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 1
    • View Profile
Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« on: November 09, 2022, 12:11:24 PM »

So I absolutely hate stealth missions, half the time, they're pretty much impossible, if a system is stable and well protected. (Why do I need to come in undetected for smuggling contracts of 300 units of stuff when I don't need to while selling a thousand units of illegal lobsters on the black market, again?)

But I've been going through the academy questline, and I have arrived at the point where I need to put a device on the Relay in the Aztlan system, undetected. But the thing is that the damn thing is guarded by two fleets orbitting it 24/7, and 2 more patrolling around. It's practically impossible to come to it undetected. They go to intercept me as soon as I come anywhere near it, even with a darked out fleet that consists of a single phase ship. I'm at my wit's end, so is there any way to use cheats, and/or cheese this mission?
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3784
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2022, 12:37:26 PM »

Easiest option there is to use console commands - there's a 'kill' command that will let you click on fleets and make them disappear. (Remember to hit escape to cancel kill mode once you're done clearing out the patrols.)
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

SteelHeart

  • Lieutenant
  • **
  • Posts: 76
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #2 on: November 09, 2022, 12:49:16 PM »

For what its worth you can make your fleet really hard to detect if you make it out of mostly phase ships. A smaller phase fleet going dark is almost impossible to detect.

You can also hack a sensor array if they have one in the system and introduce false readings to distract patrols for a time.
Logged

Wyvern

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 3784
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2022, 01:06:50 PM »

(It is worth noting that how stealthy a phase fleet actually is, is going to vary heavily with character skills; a player who took Navigation over Sensors is going to have a much harder time with stealth missions. The phase-ship-specific skill later on in tech helps too, of course, but Sensors is where most of the boost is at.)
Logged
Wyvern is 100% correct about the math.

Shogouki

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 307
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2022, 02:46:52 PM »

So I absolutely hate stealth missions, half the time, they're pretty much impossible, if a system is stable and well protected. (Why do I need to come in undetected for smuggling contracts of 300 units of stuff when I don't need to while selling a thousand units of illegal lobsters on the black market, again?)

But I've been going through the academy questline, and I have arrived at the point where I need to put a device on the Relay in the Aztlan system, undetected. But the thing is that the damn thing is guarded by two fleets orbitting it 24/7, and 2 more patrolling around. It's practically impossible to come to it undetected. They go to intercept me as soon as I come anywhere near it, even with a darked out fleet that consists of a single phase ship. I'm at my wit's end, so is there any way to use cheats, and/or cheese this mission?

Do you have the Sensors skill that reduces your signature too?  I didn't have trouble with this using a phase ship with this skill. Also if you're in a place with nearby nebula clouds, planetary rings, magnetic fields or asteroid belts those also drastically reduce your signature.  Another thing you could try is hacking the system sensor relay to introduce phantom signals to the owners.  When that happens sometimes they will divert patrols to check on those.
Logged

Candypowers

  • Ensign
  • *
  • Posts: 32
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2022, 01:03:49 AM »

stash away all your ships and only use a phase type ship to cheese it.
Logged

Serenitis

  • Admiral
  • *****
  • Posts: 1458
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2022, 02:05:02 AM »

The 'forced' stealth mission where you have to mess with the relay in Aztlan, took me 6 attempts.

From doing this I learned:
  • Regardless of the game, I still don't like sneaking/stealth mechanics all that much
  • A single phase ship is less stealthy than a fleet of them
  • System geometry can, and will make this kind of gameplay utterly tedious
  • Re-loading a game multiple times because of one dumb thing is not very interesting
The final, successful attempt I had involved going and doing something else for a few in-game months so the relay, the jump point, and Coatl were not all on the same screen anymore.
It was literally impossible to complete this mission for a while just because the system was in a particular arrangment that put 2 heavy traffic generators right on top of the thing you have to sneak to.

Logged

BCS

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 279
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2022, 08:51:26 AM »

You can use phase ships, you can simply kill the patrols with transponder off, you can hack the sensor array in the system which will periodically generate false signals and drag enemy fleets away, you can drag enemy fleets away yourself by either deliberately being seen or using a sensor burst nearby...
Logged

robepriority

  • Captain
  • ****
  • Posts: 409
  • robepriority#2626
    • View Profile
Re: Are there cheats or any ways to cheese stealth missions?
« Reply #8 on: November 10, 2022, 12:53:10 PM »

Yeah, especially for the Aztlan mission bugging the sensor array is essential