Ionics mission - final one?

[Commander Tricky]

I'm doing what I think is the final Ionics mission taking on the Ramazan military (the one where they start out with 190+ ships).

It started out as quite good fun but currently I have killed c. 30 ships but now there don't appear to be any more forthcoming. I'm sat near the space station waiting for some more to show up and nothing. This is really boring.

Have I missed a trick? Is there something I need to do to get more ships to appear?

[Commander McLane]

Is there something I need to do to get more ships to appear?

Yes, you need to kill each wave of five before the next wave appears. If you've accidentally let one ship of your last wave escape, the mission is stalled until you find and kill it.

And yes, this part of the mission is getting tedious rather quickly.

[Commander Tricky]

Thank you

This mission has encouraged me to invest in Port and Starboard Military lasers to deal with the Weapons platforms so I can't really complain - I had never seen a use for anything above and beyond fore and aft before.

Oh well, back to it - only about 1608 or so ships to go

[Commander Tricky]

OK I am terminally bored of this mission now.

Is there any way I can amend the save game file or anything else to reduce the number of Ramazan ships needing to be killed down to something more manageable (like only another 5 say)?

Otherwise I'm offski from Ramaza and won't be returning.

[Smivs]

OK I am terminally bored of this mission now.

Ha, I've been there, seen it, got the 'I'm Bored!' tee-shirt (although with a different mission to this one) and sometimes it's best just to move on. Hopefully somebody can advise you regarding editing your way out of this gracefully, but if not, just walk away. Life's too short and the game (generally) is too good to waste time getting frustrasted.

[Commander Tricky]

It's alright - found it. Thank God!!

Smivs - just saw your post. Oh yes - I love this game. This is what Elite should have been 29 years ago (if the computing power had existed, of course!).

The expansion packs just make the whole thing awesome.

I desperately want to get to Deadly before 5th August (only another 800 kills to go )

[Commander Tricky]

That was deeply unsatisfying. I am so glad I didn't try and blindly persevere with killing all those ships for a rubbish "Congratulations" message.

On to bigger and better things now.

[Commander McLane]

If I remember correctly, though, the mission is not quite at its end yet.

You should also keep in mind that it's one of the earliest mission OXPs that exist, and the earliest "big" mission. It was scripted entirely using the incredibly cumbersome and inflexible (at least compared to where we've come now) plist scripting engine, and it felt amazing at the time.

But yes, it's clearly showing its age and its limitations (or rather the limitations of the old scripting engine) these days.

[Eric Walch]

(or rather the limitations of the old scripting engine).

The mission is updated with new possibilities JS offers. No really new things were introduced, but small things are added, like all the waves now launching from the station, instead of being just spawned around the station.

I think Galileo had originally in mind to add a part two to the oxp, but never found time to do it. In the old scriping system it was also much more work to write complex missions.