The Second Assistant

[JonathanVQP]

I am trying to find the other assistant in the Void for this mission. The problem is that The Void makes radar almost useless and the radiation gets pretty high. The message at the bottom left of the screen states to Find the Nav Beacons around the Hazardous Region. I have found most of them but the last one I cannot find. I did find a ship, however, called the Geometric Owl but I cannot contact it and if I try to get out with my space suit, I instantly die. This mission is very frustrating!

[Prosik]

I was able to get close to the ship in a rattlesnake and space suit over. The two ships were very very close. May have to use the repair laser first.

[hannihanagarth]

Yeah, this mission annoyed me as well. Here is what worked for me :

After I scanned at least three Nav beacons, it showed me where to find the ship. Be careful with the Nav beacons, the first laser towers I encountered there fired on me. It seems you have to approach them slowly, below 100m/s, at least this way the next two batches of towers did not attack me. Could be a coincidence though, maybe the first always attack and the others don't ?

Got a fast ship, darted over to the "Geometric Owl" came to a stop as near as I could. (This is what needs to be done fast and precisely.)

Then you have to get into the spacesuit and repair the ship to 100%, preferably near the docking area.

As soon the Hull hits 100% you can dock and the mission proceeds.


I believe you did not instantly die in the spacesuit, but your ship did and the explosion killed you, as this happened to me a few times as well.
My spacesuit actually lasted longer than the ship I flew over with, it started loosing hull as soon as I left it and I had to be pretty fast to command it to fly to safety.

[OOZ662]

I believe you did not instantly die in the spacesuit, but your ship did and the explosion killed you, as this happened to me a few times as well.
My spacesuit actually lasted longer than the ship I flew over with, it started loosing hull as soon as I left it and I had to be pretty fast to command it to fly to safety.

I just left in my spacesuit from my Syn which is practically impervious to the hazard and immediately exploded. I hope the trick isn't that it's sitting in a small "bubble" of safe zone because I've been doing my best to ram the little bastard out of the hazardous area, and with it randomly farting around after you hit it, that's become quite the task.

[JonathanVQP]

I don't know how anyone could have passed this mission. Every time I go out, I get killed. Even when my ship stops right before the radiation, I would get into my space suit and fly toward the radiation and instantly get killed. I could not find all the nav beacons but found the ship anyways. I can't push the stranded ship nor can I communicate with it. There has to something more to this mission that I am missing or this mission has a bug.

[OOZ662]

Just noting that after about half an hour of shoving it then going back around after it clipped through me, I did manage to push it out of the hazard with my Syn. I really doubt that was the intended method (even though they "taught" you it with the nav beacon shove) but it does work eventually.

[JonathanVQP]

What is the "Syn"?

[OOZ662]

A moderately beefed up destroyer given to you during the Terran-Yaki plot. Not sure if they give you access to build it later, but the shipyard starts out denying it claiming they "no longer sell these to the public."

[TheDeliveryMan]

After I scanned at least three Nav beacons, it showed me where to find the ship. Be careful with the Nav beacons, the first laser towers I encountered there fired on me. It seems you have to approach them slowly, below 100m/s, at least this way the next two batches of towers did not attack me. Could be a coincidence though, maybe the first always attack and the others don't ?

No luck for me. I managed to scan one nav beacon. At the second beacon the laser towers fired and was game over... I even approached the beacons way below 100m/s.

[ChrisF0001]

Perhaps something happens to make it safer after finding all the nav beacons? For me they were all pretty close together, in a sort of triangle formation - with mines and lasertowers sure, but my own ship was tough enough to tank a bit of that (I was in a Katana IIRC, small enough to manoever with, tough enough to largely ignore the hazards). I just did Long Range Scans in various directions looking for little clusters of '?', approached each until they resolved into nav beacons. Then got pointed to the ship, got out, floated over - the mission said 'Board' but it wouldn't let me in until I fixed it up with the repair laser. I don't remember being particularly close to death, but I wasn't hanging around to find out. (I don't know where the spacesuit hatch is on a Syn, but I wouldn't want to try starting from one myself - the few times I've EVAed around destroyers it seems to take ages. You shouldn't need to be out for more than, oh, twenty seconds or so?)

The next bit I had a lot more trouble with, but one thing at a time...

[OOZ662]

Pretty sure it's scripted that the second beacon's lasertowers and mines turn hostile to you; I don't think there's a way to avoid it. After you've scanned three beacons, you get the objective to shove a nav beacon into the hazard area. Once you succeed it "warps" away and shortly after the objective ship is revealed. Going by others' accounts it does sound like the ship is sitting inside a small bubble of safe area so it's probably easier to just rush right up next to it than it is to use a large ship to shove it out of the belt.

The spacesuit hatch is just aft of the conning tower on the Syn.

[hannihanagarth]

Pretty sure it's scripted that the second beacon's lasertowers and mines turn hostile to you; I don't think there's a way to avoid it.

Interesting, for me it was only the first batch of laser towers which attacked me. It is most likely something else, then.

[OOZ662]

Was it the set furthest west? It may be a specific group of them, then.

[JonathanVQP]

I replayed the mission. I guess it helps to listen to what the scientist are saying. Apparently, nothing happens until all the nav beacons are found before the stranded ship can do anything. I am unable to locate the nav beacons at all. I found the Friend/Foe mines and the laser towers MK1 at the south of the gold sphere (coming from Frontier's Edge). The friend/foe mines are at the top north east, north west, and almost middle of the gold sphere outline. Also containers at the south west and north. I have the extended scan mod which allows me to scan farther and identify all objects within a sector. So far, it has identified no nav beacons?!

[JonathanVQP]

Ok...never mind...I finally found them after spending more than a hour searching. Apparently they do not show up on the map until after you find them!

[OOZ662]

Without mods, they show up as purple pings on the long range burst scan and don't show up on "regular sensors" until you approach them within a few kilometers, yes.

[JonathanVQP]

I forgot to mention that even with mods, they do show up as purple echoes. However, before detection, they don't show up. This is the part that threw me off because I could see everything in that sector except them.

[Lander1979]

This was the easy part for me. I used a Long Range Scan to locate the clusters of objects then destroyed the Laser towers and Mines around the Beacons. I then flew from the top beacon towards the bottom beacon in Travel Drive and hit "Pause" once I was in the hazardous region and Deployed my Nav Beacon, then Un-paused and Turned Travel Drive back on.

From there the Geometric Owl appeared Just out of the Radiation Zone and was easy to Board. Took all of about 2 Minutes.

[dunklezhan]

Turn off your weapons before you trigger anything.

On the way in the NPC does tell you when you first pick up a beacon to do nothing that might be perceived as a threat.... so I deactivated my weapons. The benefit of being a roleplayer I guess, I found myself thinking "no-one wants want a mimbari incident here, better close my dang weapon ports'. Glad I always have a weapon grouping with everything off - I have slightly twitchy fingers, I need a weapons cold setting otherwise I find I keep blasting stations whilst docking.

ANYWAY The mines will still explode if you get too close (I got to 1-2km without issue, had to get to 2km to know what they were) but I didn't get any hassle from the lasertowers, and nothing showed as hostile at all on the map.

Also navigation:
Trying to getting to the first beacon to traverse the dangerous region from the 'south' (straight from NPC to job) resulted in terrifingly fast shield drain and a near death experience.

However, my long range scans showed up clusters of unknown objects on the far side of the region so I thought hell with *that* and rather than trying to traverse using beacons I flew aalll the way up and over and then started tracking the beacons from there. Knowing what I know now I'd have flown aaalll the way down and under instead. Three beacons on that side starting low and going high.

Then when I'd done All The Things and it wanted me to put a nav beacon in there I first tried dropping one and ramming it - the mission NPC said to "throw" one in there but my shiny sleek new boron ship kept sending them off in odd directions not into the cloud. So I hit travel mode, dumped a nav beacon as soon as it said 'danger!' and hit travel mode again and was out the other side with most of my photons intact.

Now... the question is what I do next.

I have this funky ship with a great name (Bubo would be proud), and apparently I need to go to Sol somewhere but I haven't discovered that, I've no idea where it is or what's on the way and in any case the Terran's smell (all the Boron say so) and I wasn't planning to go visit for ages.

So can I just... keep the ship?