Terran Defender Plot

Terran Defender Plot

Requirements:
Start at Uranus

Mission 1:
You will be taking part in a partroll with Plinter at this point all you have to do is follow the golden arrow into the Asteroid Belt, north again into Jupiter, then west into Saturn and west again into Uranus.

If you started as Terran, then your already there.

Find Plinter’s ship, talk to him, by selecting his ship and com(25km).

An emergency call comes in. Some AGI will turn up. Do your best to kill them, if you can't then let the local police do it but you will not gain money and rank points.

Now, find the AGI jump beacon, fly close to it and your ship will scan it automatically. Once complete, destroy the beacon.

Mop up any remaining AGI.

A message then comes in saying several message drones got away, and you get detailed to intercept.

Fly to Oort Cloud (follow the arrow), and then wait for the message drone to turn up. A cutscene will happen when it does, so you cant miss it.

Follow the message drone to its destination. Its pretty fast, in the 300ms range, so if you chose a slower ship, you will get left behind, just keep after it, even if it gets out of scanner range.
Note: triplex scanners are best.
You will come accross a Nova and a jump beacon. Watch the Nova blow up the beacon. Then head east back into Pluto where you will join up with Plinter again.

Next is 3 patrols of sectors, Pluto, Neptune and Uranus. Kill any AGI that turn up, wait for the orders to move sectors before you do.

Once you get ordered to, dock with the Saturn Research Station and its mission complete

Mission 2:
You get ordered to dock at the Orbital Patrol Base in Asteroid Belt. Its on your nav map. Fly to Mars (follow the arrows) and dock at the shipyard. Here you take possesion of an M5. Doesnt matter if you sell it or keep it.
Note: It has no weapons so dont bring it to battle with you.

Back to Asteroid Belt, and then orders to talk to Mark Jackson in Heretics end.
Talk to Jackson.
Chat, wait a bit, more chat. Finally you get ordered to Scale Plate Green where Xenon are attacking a convoy. Follow the arrows. A fast ship makes this less tedious.

Now, Jackson needs a course in how to effectively communicate orders.The order is to identify and follow the non-Xenon ship working with the Xenon to its base, and scan it. Unfortunately if your not listening very carefully, you miss the station bit and assume he meant scan the ship. To scan the ship, you have to get very close, and that makes the pilot jittery and he will jump away. So don’t. You need to scan the station, which means following the ship a good way behind so as not to frighten him, where ever he goes. If you screw up, the mission restarts after a wait, in another sector. Ignore the Xenon, just find and follow the Nova.

Eventually, you follow the Nova into the Unknown Sector next to PTNI HQ. Make sure its not in range of your turrents if you have any at anytime, you do not want to fire on him. Let him dock at the station before you approach it. When you get close, it will go red on you, and may or may not attack you.

Fly up to the station (500 meters) and your ship will automatically scan the station. When complete, the station launched an Elite after me. If your slower, kill the pirate, otherwise ignore it. Your choice anyway.

Jump back to Heretics End, and talk to Jackson again. Mission end.

Mission 3:
Find the Sabre in Heretics End and talk to the pilot. You are given 3 M5's as wingmen and suggested to form them into a wing. It sounds like a choice, but the mission wont start until you do. Target each ship and give it the instruction to join a wing, and select the same wing designation each time.

Having done that, one has to wonder why you need wingmen and if my current ship is adequate for what lies ahead.

I also docked the 3 M5's. In any sort of serious furball, 3 M5's as wingmen are just cannon fodder, so why waste them ? Your choice.

Patrol Circle of Labour. Kill Xenon, both waves. Omicron Lyrae.

Then fly to Treasure Chest, where you get something different. Theres a flight of reds in there called ‘#Decas’. Easy to kill, so do that.

After, return to Heretics End and talk to Jackson again.

Mission 4.

Plinter has an escort for you, so find him and talk to him. Theres a Scabbard going to Venus and you have the duty. Follow it to Asteroid Belt and then Mars.

In Mars, you get a report of a Xenon ship. The next choice is yours, if you complete the escort, or go get the Xenon. If you continue the escort, the Xenon will be there when you get back, and you do need to join that fight. However, by the time you get back, the situation may not be advantageous for you in terms of what the Terrans still have around to fight with. If you go in straight off, you have the benefit of their help at maximum strength.

As it happens, the scabbard gets home ok without you, so I went off and took on the Xenon.

There is a jump beacon here somewhere, if you find it, kill it. I never found it so I assume someone else did.


If you don’t have the firepower to take on a J, keep well out of its way. Its guns have a 6km odd range, and if your in an M3 or M4, 1 shot can kill you. So engage the fighters, and stay clear of the J. Eventually, a Terran M2 will turn up and make kitty litter out of the J. Enjoy the show.

Once all Xenon are accounted for, head to Venus, and catch up with the scabbard. It may already have docked with the Orbital Defense Station, if not, wait for it to do so. Then talk to Benthami on the station. End mission.

Now you wait.

Terran Mission 5.

Talk to Jackson, who sends you to the Free Argon Trading Station in Nathans Voyage. Jump, don’t walk.

As you approach the station, you get commed by Heywood, who tells you about how the guy your supposed to meet got arrested by the Argon. Shes asks you to follow her to Grand Exchange, in snail mode. At the Dream Farm Alpha, you have a chat with a Teladi. He’s not happy, but he wants you to do some dirty work for you before he will help.

Fly to tears of Greed (follow the yellow) and in there you will find 4 freighters in the special ships section of the nav map. One of them is the target and he should be highlighted in yellow.

Target and kill. For good measure, kill his escorts as well.

Now, the 3 remaining freighters need to be scanned one by one. As you do, they should turn red, so kill them.

Back to the Dream Farm for more Teladi talk. He has set you up a freight mission in order to get through Argon security.

You need to go to the shipyard and buy a Vulture. Now for some strange reason, this shipyard doesnt outfit ships, so this is where the spare sheilds come in handy.

Use the best buy key to find Teladianium, then go there and buy 200.

Now guess what, we are going back to Argon M148 !

Jump there and then you will get inspected as you come through the gate and given clearance to the Military Outpost that was red last time you were here but is now blue.

At this point its worth mentioning that this is a multi-racial sector, and if any of the races don’t like you, someone will quickly show up to kick your arse. And your flying a garbage scow, not your fighter. Hence the work on the race rankings before starting all this.

Its also worth mentioning that if you havent done the first Final Fury missions yet, then the whole sector will be red to you, as its actually a restricted space.

Dock with the station to deliver the goods.

Now, wait for Heywood to show up and bellow at you.

She and Pearle (the arrested one) will come flying out of an airlock in spacesuits. You need to pick them up.

You need to use the ships command to pick up the suits. Now this of course brings up a program bug that hasnt been fixed in TC, because if the suit is too close to the station, the auto-pilot will keep avoiding the station and never ever be able to pick up the suit. *sigh*. If that happens, all you can do is go back to the auto-save when you docked at the station and try again. (What ? You don’t have auto-save on ? What did I say about saving ????).

Once you have both on board, Heywood will scream at you to get the hell out of there, so jump to Heretics End and dock with the Station that Jackson’s at. Mission ends.

Terran Mission 6.

Back to docking at the Orbital Base in the Asteroid Belt. Big discussion and then Pearle comes aboard.

You need cargo life support for this one. You need to visit a Pirate base to get one. You also need 3 satelites and there are none here.

Jump or fly to Family Zyarth. If your lucky, there are satelites there. If so, get 3. Drop one anywhere you like. (acording to the plot)
Jump or fly to Family Ryk and drop another one. Then to Zyarth’s Dominion and drop the 3rd.

Now wait for Pearle to call you.

After a bit, he does, and its back to Family Zyarth. In the special section of the nav, you will get 4 freighters to scan. Do each one. One of them turns red, so ever so gently attack it since we want to capture it. If your lucky, he will bail as soon as the hull gets touched, but if your unlucky he will bail when there is orange peel left and the last bullet you fire will kill the ship. Guess what I did. Theres a laugh over the intercom and an assurance that another ship will come along. I scanned the next one on the list, and get an illegal scan message, repeated again the next time. Huh ?

I reloaded a save from immediately before scanning the freighters and redid it on the basis that the mission was buggered when I destroyed the ship, the laugh be damned. This time her jumps in the high 80's. Big relief, save game.

So next step is to claim the ship. YOU HAVE TO GET OUT AND SPACE WALK!

Now transfer over your jumpdrive, ecells, those spare 25mj shields your carrying and Mr. Pearle. And then transfer yourself.

Send you ship into the next sector and have it stand by inside the gate.

Now, your looking for an Elephant. (No, not the elephant you feel like your flying.). With luck its in scanner range, if not, check SE ‘wards.

When you find, fly casual ! You want to come up next to it so you can inspect the paintwork, while Pearle plants a tracking bug. Once thats on, 5 #decas come after you. Run like hell and jump to the next sector as fast as you can. Then float accross to you ship and retransfer everything back.

Note: I recommend barrel rolling.

The freighter is now yours to keep, so stash it somewhere safe.

Next destination is Ocean of Fantasy, and an Odin you find there. Chat starts when you get close. You get given a Cutless. If this is better than what your flying, transfer across to it, otherwise, another ship to stash somewhere safe.
Theres a party been organised in an Unknown Sector, so jump or fly there. Its already started when you get there. So in I wade. Split ships and Terrans and the Split are not enjoying it.


The Terrans knock off the Split without any help, and now the real action happens. 4 Freighters sneak past the last of the Split ships and marines board the tagged Elephant. A lone astronaut flees the captured TL, and your ordered to pick it up.


So run him over! “Cargo bay contains, passenger”.

Ok, so objective achieved, but what does that leave us with ? This mission has collecting containers and astronauts any way than running them down disabled.
Ok, where next ? Moon Military base. Jump......err, no, wont allow it. Jump to Asteroid Belt, and then fly the rest of the way. Dock and mission over, they’ll let you know when the next one is ready.

Terran Plot, Mission 7.
Jump into Asteroid Belt and fly into Mars. Dock at the shipyard this time, just for a change.

In preparation for the coming showdown, you get to play “board the ship”. We get a Scabbard to command, with 10 marines. At least they called these bozo’s marines. By the look of them they couldnt have boarded a barn with the door open !

Parked a little way away is a Vidar. Now theres a nice little ship. Object of the exercise is board and capture it.

Now, approach steadily in your ship, select guns to take down the shields only, and open fire. Once the shields are down, order the Scabbard to board the Vidar. Board command is on the piracy menu (of course) by the way.

Sit within gun range while the Scabbard does the business. When the marines launch, you need to keep the Vidar’s shields from regenerating past 10% or else the shields will fry the marines.

Hint : turn your turrents off if you don’t want unnecessary damage to the hull.

Heres the lowdown on marines. They have 4 skill types, and 5 levels for each. The types are Fighting (which this lot were all 2 or 3 stars at), Hacking, Mechanical and Engineering.

Fighting skills are gained by action. The rest can be trained at stations that train them.
Hacking is the skill that gives you control of the ship your trying to take over. Mechanical is the skill that cuts into the hull and gives the team access. Engineering skills help to prevent damage to the ship as its taken. So you really need one of each with a high rating in each team. Mechanical gets you in, Hacking gets you control as fast as possible, and Engineering makes sure that the ship survives and as much of its loot is still intact. The rest are mustle to take down the crew with and shoot the automated defenses if the ship has any.

In each team, the marine with the highest skill level in each type is used for the boarding action to determine what happens.

In the team given for this exercise, only 1 marine has 2 stars for each type, although as I said, they are all good at fighting. So when 2 stars consistently fails to break into a ship that is dead in space and not shooting back, that says a lot about the level of training you need in the teams to make it work.

I had a look at the squad, they were all X denizens, and probably captured by the Terrans and forced into the marine corp. That would explain their total incompetence. Nothing else does.

After the third attempt, the Terrans give you the ship anyway, and you get orders to talk to Jackson in the Moon sector. More snail travel. *sigh*

A note about the Vidar. Its apparently the only one you can capture in the game, so treat it like god ship. If you sell it, its gone for good. Kick arse and take prisoners type. Anyway, stash it somewhere safe. Or even better, use it.

A note about the Scabbard. Its yours, also stash it somewhere safe.

A note about notes. Take note of them.

Jackson mobilises the fleet and everyone jumps to Aldrin.

Finding Aldrin. Its not on the gate network, so you have to jump there. The easiest way to find it on the nav map, is press the A key until the sector is highlighted, going through the A named sectors in alpha order.

Aldrin is a strange system. You jump in by a beacon in the middle of a ringed asteroid belt around a moonsized asteroid. So instead of the middle of the sector being empty, the center is solid and everything happens around it.

The sector is HUGE. You don’t realise how huge until you zoom in enough to see ships on the nav map.

First task is checking out a station. As you approach, Jackson starts talking, and then a ship detaches from the station and heads to the Tyr (M2) flagship. I followed it along until it got near the Tyr. At which point there is a lot of talk going on.

The next thing that happens is some Xenon attack. 1 LX and the rest smaller, so I targetted the LX and took that out first, and then just went after what was left.

This sector is so huge, I had a substantial lag issue in here, especially since I’m on a borderline computer, but there is so much in here, that many will have lag issue even when normally they don’t.

There are so many Terran ships here that you don’t really need to do anything if the lag is bad that you cant anyway. Just sit it out and let them create some more space dust.

Now the task is escorting the Tyr (as if it really needs an escort), and so follow it along. Its target becomes apparent long before its actually on the scanners. I stopped about 10km away, and let the task force attack it.

At this point you are again given control of a Scabbard with marines.

As soon as the shields come down on the target, send in the marines. Again, if this is the pride of the Terran special forces, then a handful of grannies can keep them outside of a straw house, indefinely !

Once again, 3 failed attempts to gain entrance to the target. The second time, only half of them came back, the other 5 buggered off somewhere. So the third time, only 5 went in. They announced that they were approaching the target, and then nothing.

A while later, the other Scabbard finally moves in, seems to drop off a single marine and shortly after, the target turns blue and the battle is over.

What a let down. After a mission lasting well over 2 hours, most of it total boredom waiting for something to happen, its suddenly over and nothing you did made any real difference. Reality in the universe.

However, we are not finished yet. Now we get to drive some locals to Earth for talks. The ultimate snail journey. Oh joy !

We now have another Scabbard, and I set it to picking up the marines. Now of course, the commands for containers and astronuts work again, so I also slurped all the containers. When the Scabbard is finished, you need to jump it somewhere safe. By this time, you should be accumulating a little fleet somewhere where its safe. North east of the north gate in Heretics End is where my little fleet is growing. Hasn’t been a red dot in there since we started. .

Then its a long haul round to Earth.

At the Moon sector, take the time to look at both the Moon behind you, and the Earth ahead. Nice sight. Worth a picture for the snap book.

On the other side, theres a sight for sore eyes. The station is so huge, it covers the horrizon.

WARNING : Do not turn on the auto-pillot ! If you do, the damn thing goes crasy, since it cant figure out an approach to the dock. So it tries to go around it, and the moment you cross a line of lasertowers, your arse is new mown grass ! Don’t do it.

Crank up the speed and go straight ahead. After a bit, you start passing station on both sides. On the left you will see a nice sign saying “Dock >>>>>”. Keep going straight. When it looks like you going to start hitting something, slow right down. Now you can try the docking computer. If the auto-pillok starts up, cancel it before you hit anything, and keep going closer. Then try the docking computer again. It should by now, auto-dock you.

Theres a nice little pep talk to end with and its Terran Plot Over !

Note: Auto pilots are banned in this sector, using them will activate the lazer towers.


Oh...theres a nice little surprise waiting for you. Theres a Claymore sitting in the next docking bay with your name on it. Tell it to go wherever your stashing your little fleet.

Terran Plot summary :

A nice little plot, not too hard, not too easy, but boring in parts, but moves you along. Not much in monetary returns, the Terrans don’t actually pay well.

But you end up with 5 M5's, a Cutlass, 2 Scabbards (with 20 marines between them), 1 Vidar and a Claymore. The Vidar needs some hull work, and they all are short on necessary fittings and upgrades.

As a fleet beginning, thats a good start. The sale value is probably pretty good if you want the credits instead.
You also get complete access to the Earth section of the gate network, and I didnt spot anything in the way of pirate activity in there, so if you want a safe place to base your trading empire, this could be the place. I cant say I’ve tried dropping a station yet, but in theory, this is about as safe as it gets.

End of Plot.