Towing another ship

[Burning Bridges]

Yesterday I attempted a rescue operation of my stranded ship which was in orbit around Broken Marble.

big, big mistake .. in the event I lost both ships and much more hoarded equipment than I like.

My progress until the grappling was actually flawless so I am at a loss why the game wanted me to fail. I ask myself of there is something wrong with idea of grappling a ship and FTLing?

I initiated FTL about 10 times and it always failed. Sometimes it entered FTL and 5 minutes later I was still where I started.

The game told me I am in debris field during FTL ..

In the end I had used up 2 full welding tools and fought for 2 hours and lost both ships.

It also makes me question wether it's worth collecting a lot of stuff in this game at all, because there is no safe way to store it anyway .. I could have carried ca 100 items from the ships cargo bay to my outpost and dropped them, but I don't even know if they are still there when I come back. This game needs an inventory of some kind ..

[Alan Ford]

There’s a bug currently that doesn’t warn you that you don’t have enough fuel in cells to make the maneuver. Check and select all available cells you have.

[CheeseJedi]

Hi Burning Bridges

Debris fields will cause damage to your ship at FTL - this is probably going to be changed in a future build.

Other gotchas to be aware of:

Towing ships requries a specific docking order - this is how I tow ships at warp (did this yesterday, so this works);

1. Fly to target ship.
   
2. Gain entry to the target ship and hack the security panel if necessary.
   
3. Pilot the target ship and dock the target ship's airlock to the towing ship's grapple.
   
4. Return to the towing ship and warp wherever.

Warp Cell usage sometimes reported incorrectly when towing multiple modules (as Alan Ford described) - this usually results in the 'thunk' noise of the FTL cancelling immediately after hitting initialise.

In case you're not already aware (unlikely if you've been on the Hellion forums or discord, there are a number of client-side bugs that relogging helps to fix, although it's generally pretty well known at this pont. If in doubt, relog! Worth checking!

[Burning Bridges]

Thanks a lot for the replies.

Originally posted by Alan Ford:

There’s a bug currently that doesn’t warn you that you don’t have enough fuel in cells to make the maneuver. Check and select all available cells you have.

Good good, don't tell me I lost two good ships just because of this ..

[Burning Bridges]

@CheeseJedi

1. it was my own ship, I had 2 because I had salvaged a previous one (for some reason they keep floating around for days)

Yes I think it could have been the warp cell issue. I had one 60% cell and a couple of really depleted ones.

I also always try to minimize Warp Cell usage by changing the arrival time .. I guess that's where I should look for the problem.

It was probably a dumb idea anyway to fly to Broken Marble anyway with a perfectly healthy ship to tow a badly damaged one. I should have just written it off or just fetched the warp cells and be done with it. As it turned out it was a case of losing 3 good items to save 1, because the rescue ship was stocked up with salvage :(

The good news is that it would have happened anyway sopner or later as I learn new bugs every day, and items are constantly lost for example by simply leaving them on the ground.

[Zorz]

Originally posted by Burning Bridges:

@CheeseJedi

1. it was my own ship, I had 2 because I had salvaged a previous one (for some reason they keep floating around for days)

Yes I think it could have been the warp cell issue. I had one 60% cell and a couple of really depleted ones.

I also always try to minimize Warp Cell usage by changing the arrival time .. I guess that's where I should look for the problem.

It was probably a dumb idea anyway to fly to Broken Marble anyway with a perfectly healthy ship to tow a badly damaged one. I should have just written it off or just fetched the warp cells and be done with it. As it turned out it was a case of losing 3 good items to save 1, because the rescue ship was stocked up with salvage :(

The good news is that it would have happened anyway sopner or later as I learn new bugs every day, and items are constantly lost for example by simply leaving them on the ground.

u have to read the steps which cheese posted correct.

Originally posted by CheeseJedi:

1. Fly to target ship.
   
2. Gain entry to the target ship and hack the security panel if necessary.
   
3. Pilot the target ship and dock the target ship's airlock to the towing ship's grapple.
   
4. Return to the towing ship and warp wherever.

the point is, that u have to dock the 2.ship on the grapple of the 1. ship, than u go back to the first ship to initiate the warp..

but if u dock the 1. ship to the 2. ship and try to warp with the 1. ship, than it doesn't work correct actually or u have to warp with the 2. ship in this case.

the quote way is the way it works in older hellion version to tow a 2. ship ;)

[Burning Bridges]

ah, ok thanks I get it now .. but that's really confusing.

I also noticed that the game breaks down when you grapple to a module that is already grappled by another ship. In that case all kind of bad things happen like doors/containers not saving and the module being replicated at two different places i.e when you undock the module it can suddenly re-appear at the grapple of the other ship.

[RetracElyk]

Originally posted by Burning Bridges:

It also makes me question wether it's worth collecting a lot of stuff in this game at all, because there is no safe way to store it anyway .. I could have carried ca 100 items from the ships cargo bay to my outpost and dropped them, but I don't even know if they are still there when I come back. This game needs an inventory of some kind ..

You can store inventory in extra suits. Keep yourself 5 or 6 extra suits in your cargo bay. Fill a suit with items, take it off, put it on a rack, put on a new suit and repeat.

[Burning Bridges]

How do you take off a suit???

[Burning Bridges]

I found it it's a button in the right corner :) well hidden

[Nox]

OMG thank you for that hint. Is there a way to take a suit off of a corpse?

[Zorz]

Originally posted by Nox:

OMG thank you for that hint. Is there a way to take a suit off of a corpse?

in my opinion its a glitch that u can store items in the suit without visible indicators and i hope that it will change.

and no, actually there is no way to take a suit off of a corps, but it never ever works. hopefully that will change in the future too ;)

Originally posted by Burning Bridges:

ah, ok thanks I get it now .. but that's really confusing.

warp with a 2. ship is still a little bugged and the mentioned steps to make it work are only workarounds, hopefully that will change too ;)

PS: bei weiteren fragen einfach raus damit ;)

[Zaphod]

Wow. Did NOT know about the suit trick. Must be pretty organized, then. But it could be nice place to store extra warp cells or depleted/trash that is to be deconstructed at the base.

[Burning Bridges]

Afaik you can have as many ships as you want.

When you go on salvage operations you often find unclaimed vessels by other people. Many have not even attempted to dock or enter the ships and just started over and over.

I sometimes claim them and drain their resources and have 4 ships right now, of which two are just abandoned hulks around Bethyr.

[Zorkind]

The rule about the docking is this: the ship/module you are DOCKING go into PASSIVE and the DOCKED ship/module, get's to be the piloting ship/module.

Same goes to what name appears in the nav, always the name of the DOCKED will apear, because it is the LEADING "object"

I had a lot of those issues too, where i can't FTL and everything gets weird.

Just follow Jedi's sequence and you will be fine, some times the docking ship can pilot the docked object, but that's not garanteed.

[Burning Bridges]

Ok thx, I also noticed that it enabled the distress call on the first ship by clicking in the docked ship, which seems to be indicative of the issue you describe.