Satellite coverage mission explained.

[Mittens]

The huge mess on the topic about sat coverage missions makes the few people who have answered it, drowned in comments so heres an OP about how to complete the mission.

When given a mission to cover an area with satellites, it assigns an area with a large radius you must "cover".

"Covering" this territory requires zooming into the map and checking the hexes on the map, assuring that you receive a live feed from the hex instead of fog-of-war. Use the dispersal of satellites to get a live feed of from as many hexes as the mission states, vertical placement is irrelevant as the sat and advanced sat have infinite vertical range.

In short.
Disperse satellites laterally across the defined mission space and assure a live feed from however many map hexes the mission requires.

[peel]

After two hours of trying to finish this stupid mission, I think the mission area must be either 3d or extend way outside of the marked area. I ended up using 60 satellites, must have been 2-3 per hex, and only got up to 82 out of 100 coverage. Gotta go now, but I'll buy another 100 satellites tomorrow and start covering the entire sector I guess.

[OZZO]

Solution: you need 7 advanced satellites to cover almost any mission. Place 1 at the centre of the sphere that you see on the map, 4 satellites at each corner of that sphere (imagine west, east, north and south edge), then fly up to place in the "North Pole" of that sphere, then fly down to place at the "South Pole" of that sphere.

[peel]

Spent my entire bank roll on ~150 satellites unfortunately, I'll have to do several more missions to afford *7* advanced satellites. I did manage to get up to 83/100 after deploying another 20 satellites. Enjoying this game, but what a dumb mission.

[peel]

Hahahahaha I was just flying back to safe sector for repairs and to buy more satellites and the entire mission just randomly completed and gave me the reward. W. T. F.

[OZZO]

Originally posted by peel:

Hahahahaha I was just flying back to safe sector for repairs and to buy more satellites and the entire mission just randomly completed and gave me the reward. W. T. F.

It's a bug. Happens sometimes to me too.

[DrSuperEvil]

It only counts satellites in the 3D region of the mission. Also to complete you just need enough satellites to cover the needed % of hexes in the region.

[Cunk]

What a frustrating experience. I came back to this game after abandoning it shortly after release hoping it would get some polish but it's still a mess.

However I figured out what the problem is (or was in my case). The sphere they draw isn't the correct size. It doesn't represent the full 90km coverage area. I noticed this when I left the system to get some advanced satellites and came back to give it another try. When I looked at the mission area I noticed the sphere was covering a much larger area than before. It included stations that definitely were not before. And sure enough as soon as I dropped a satellite there sphere shrunk to its previous incorrect size.

So the way I completed the mission was to drop a nav beacon at the center of the sphere, then placed advanced satellites 25km from that in each of the cardinal directions (no need to worry about above or below). So 4 total. That's it.

Get your **** together, Egosoft.

[Bolka]

Unfortunately the above explanation does not help very much. This mission is clearly either bugged or very poorly designed, or both, and provides a maximum of frustration.....

[Fel]

If you feel lazy for these missions, take 3 advanced satellites and set them in a triangle somewhat close to the edge of the area, this covers the whole thing and quite a bit extra outside of it.

Of course the ones that ask to cover a smaller area are fine with a single advanced satellite in the middle but for those that ask for a larger area than what an advanced satellite can cover this is what I end up doing since it's way easier than dropping an advanced satellite in the center and 4-5 normal ones on the edges.

(this is some serious necro though, a new thread with a link to this one might have been better but whatever)

[Pathogenic]

The 7.0 beta will include a satellite range preview for when you order a ship to deploy a satellite, so that will help with this type of mission in order to get the needed coverage.

Using 3 advanced satellites may mean you are losing money on this type of mission.

[MasterShake]

But 2 adv.sat is enough tho.

Also at some point (and rather fast) it's not about money anymore, you hunt for additional rewards (upgrades, seminars, etc, even +rep, heck I did a chain of missions another day just to get a bunch of paintjobs to design a special fleet).
So it comes to how many missions per timechunk you are able to do before enough bother is enough. So you just spam 2 adv.satellites instead of dancing with regular satellites for 5 mins.