See also: story lines summary page.

[Editor’s note: This is one of the more interesting story lines, so if you’re new to it I encourage you not to read ahead. I’ll warn you when there are advance preparations “for what’s coming” that you should be aware of to prepare.]

Fly to Windfall III The Hoard. When you enter, you’ll overhear a conversation between a trader carrying illegal agriproducts and three VIG enforcer ships. You get invited to help, but can ignore this. This even is just a hood to get you to enter/find the Avarice sector next door. Go ahead and help if you like, there’s no penalty to VIG reputation for doing so. Follow the ship into Avarice.

Here you’ll get a distress call from a damaged Teladi ship. You need to go help him. Just approach and follow the directions, and you’ll eventually lead him to figure out the ship is doomed and abandon it. Stop somewhere near the front of the ship and wait for the Teladi to dock (it’s impossible move to him, as his position is fixed relative to your ship.

Be certain you don’t have other ships in the sector. You’re about to trigger an unplanned scripted tide event the other ships don’t know about!

Take him to the dock at the nearby station, which will trigger a scripted Tide effect from the sun. Have some conversations, and agree to help the Teladi get a new ship. You are taken out to Windfall III and forced to get out and claim a real heap of junk, the J.P. Morgan’s Knife. Fly it (slowly) back to the station in Avarice.

Wait a bit and the Teladi will contact you again, offering to teach you something about trading. (He won’t actually teach you anything, but it does force you to learn/use how to get cargo in a trade ship and sell it.)

Join the teladi at the station, help with the negotiations. There’s a steam achievement involved here if you care about that.

Protectyon Shortage

The Teladi will eventually contact you again. This is where the real mission begins, having dispensed with the make-work preliminaries and dubious “lessons.”

Join the Teladi at sales office on the designated station, listen to the conversations.

Talk to the Teladi, and learn about the Northriver Company, headed by Brantlee Northriver. Start working on getting a loan, by contacting the VIG (by hacking a satellite? vs just going to talk to them… ok).

Return to the station after that brilliant plan fails. Dagobas Lahubasis Yorilos III is not exactly a business genius, if that wasn’t already clear.

Now the goal becomes clear: breaking the Northriver monopoly on the Protectyon that allows stations to protect themselves from the tide. Or at least getting in on the action of this clearly lucrative market.

Research and Espionage Dept.

You need to get a sample, so you need to find The Man to get it. Head to the area, use your ship’s long range scanners to search.

Head to the Astrid once you find it, and comm them. Maybe pause to get a close-up look at the Astrid while you’re there. Nice ride… Collect your sample, and fly or teleport back to give it to Boso Ta in your HQ.

The research needs some extra materials (of course) so it gets added as a new research item you can select in the Research menu/screen.

Once the research finishes, visit Boso to learn that it failed. Brantlee Northriver contacts you, and you end up in a deal to stage a race, in which you intend to cheat.

Brantleee Northriver’s Competition

[Editor’s note: I’ve personally experienced a situation where Protectyon stopped being available in my game sometime around this point. I can’t say for certain it was related to this mission chain, but for safety you may want to consider not proceeding further until you’re ready to push all the way to the end (at which point you can secure your own supplies to deliver to stations in Avarice).]

Here, you’ll need three things:

1. research completed to install an Engine mod of Advanced quality
2. the parts to build such a mod
3. a ship to install it on

In fact, you’ll need two ships, one to start the race, one to finish. The ships need to be the same model (though don’t need to have the same equipment).

Your mission briefing will give you the exact details of how fast the ship needs to be (minimum travel speed rating).

Install the mod, and you’ll be told you need a second “identical looking” ship (so the same model). Get this second Race End ship, fly it to the end point indicated in the mission guidance. This is handled as a “ship delivery” mission, so you can’t be on the ship when it reaches the designated mission destination.

Don’t get too attached to that second ship. You’re not going to have it long.

Also note that you’re going to be needing a speedy ship soon, so staging a scout with a 10 Nav Beacons at the Wharf in Avarice is a good idea at this point.

You’ll need to spend some time in Avarice now, so saving now isn’t a bad idea in case you have problems with the timing of the Tide.

Now teleport back your Race Start ship. You’ll be directed to the start point, where you’ll find the Astrid.

Start the race, and wait for the prompt to teleport to your Race End ship. Finish the race by flying through the ring at the end.

And discover that you lost. You’re ejected from the pilot chair and lose your ship.

Boso discusses the impossibility of this, and barring some unknown all he can come up with is the possibility that Brantlee used a controlled transit through an anomaly to shorten the course.

Enigmatic Avarice

Because of the Tide, you may want to take this opportunity to get any ships you have to safe dock in Avarice somewhere, then save now.

Boso has marked 5 places in the sector to search for anomalies. A fast scout is useful here.

You need to fly to each, then use your ship’s Long Range Scan mode to search for an anomaly (purple indicator), and it may be above or below the mission marker point. This can best be described as “incredibly annoying” as a mission task.

Anomalies show up on long range scan, but not on your map, and they “pulse” to continuously fade in and out of visibility. Finally, if you fly to close to it, you’ll end up flying through it and end up in some random distant sector and have to fly back. [You may want to quick-save after dealing with each, to avoid having to repeat any of this.]

You can use repeated scans to judge the distance to an anomaly (when scan pulse takes ~1 second to reach it, you’re getting close).

Once you find each anomaly, fly to about 5km away and drop a Navigation Beacon. Don’t get any closer than 1 km, or risk being pulled through.

Once you’ve completed 3-4 tasks, Boso will interrupt to tell you this has all been pointless (oh, thanks). You’ll learn that there’s a research station someone should have told you about (thanks, again) that you should investigate instead.

When you reach the station and try to approach, several VIG enforcer fighters will show up and demand payment. You can pay, agree to leave, or engage them. If you refuse, you can escape pretty easily. The VIG will destroy the station, but leave a black box in a lockbox you can collect.

The most interesting/significant information is about to be revealed, when you collect the box. You may want to deal with the hostile VIG first, so you can listen to the black box contents in peace.

Listen carefully to the recording, and learn about the Tide, the Anomalies, and an unknown sector.

Answers in a Faraway System

Note: If you have important resources in VIG sectors, you may want to cheat and read ahead here rather than proceeding immediately. If you don’t care about VIG getting briefly mad at you, it’s more fun to be surprised.

The Transit

Now you need to wait for the next tide. When the mission is active, you’ll see a countdown timer in your ship HUD to the next tide warning. Once the tide warning comes, you have wait another 14 minutes for the shock front to actually generate and reach your position. [You can teleport out and do other things while the counters are running.]

Note: trying to capture an Astrid is a very popular in what follows. You may therefore want to be in a ship capable of capturing a decently-armed M-size ship from here out.

While you’re waiting, you may want to stock your ship with a few advanced satellites, nav beacons, and some resource probes. Not necessary, but you may want to do some exploring and have satellite coverage coming up.

You may want to save here, since you need to respond to things in real time and won’t be able to put the events on hold to go deal with an emergency somewhere in your empire.

Once the shock front approaches, be in your ship about 1-2 km away from the anomaly. You’ll need to get up some speed to get through, so you don’t want to be too close. Note: visuals of the shock front may fire in your view before you need to fly into the anomaly. That’s ok.

You have 2 minutes to fly into the anomaly, so there’s no rush. You end up in Leap of Faith sector.

Immediately stop and drop a Nav beacon if you have one, to mark the anomaly on this side. That’s your exit.

Head for the box structure in the orange glow ahead. Stop about 10-20 km away, listen to Boso describe things. The Sohnen, eh? Hm. And what’s this? There are two of them?

Note the Protectyon surrounding the structure. You can’t pick any of it up, since it requires a Condensate cargo ship (adding a fourth type of cargo: Solid, Liquid, Container, Condensate). You can buy condensate ships from Rakers or VIG shipyards, but they only come in S-size.

The way through the anomaly is now open to you permanently, but only at Tide events and only if you’re flying it directly. And only M size ships, as well. Getting here to collect Protectyon is therefore a real pain. [And a common complaint, as you can’t automate the process at all!]

The anomaly is “locked” for transit when the tide passes and you see a flashing lightning pattern moving rapidly over it. At other times, the anomaly will simply transport you to another random anomaly somewhere in the gate network.

The meeting

You can leave your ship here and teleport out, return later to do the meeting if you like. You can even bring in other ships at the next tide, if you’re willing to wait and willing to pilot the ship yourself.

The anomaly remains active for 2 minutes, so if you’re quick you can pre-position several S or M ships and transit them through via teleport. By ignoring the meeting and doing this, you can pick up several ships worth of Condensate and take it back into normal space (there’s no time limit on exiting Leap of Faith, the anomaly is always “connected” from this side).

Suggestion: make a note of the Ship ID values for the two Astrids. You can use this in the Search bar of the map view to find them again later if needed.

When you’re ready, dock or spacesuit over to the Astrid and take a look around. Nice ship. The twins are on the very top deck, in an office opposite the bridge.

Talk to the twins, ask whatever questions interest you.

Now you have to decide what to do.

1. Align with the twins
2. Steal the protectyon module blueprint and cross the twins

Note that either way you can end up with an Astrid, either by buying one or by capturing one. The Astrid is an M size Condensate transport, holding a great deal more Protectyon than the S-size transports. [It’s technically possible to get both Astrids, but difficult and not what the game intends to have happen. An internet search will turn up some suggestions.]

You might want to save here, so you can listen to the resulting dialog once through, then reload and set about dealing with things without the distraction.

Align with the Twins

If you align with the twins, you’ll need to kill your Teladi “friend” and the leader of the VIG. Loose ends, a change in leadership.

The Teladi will be fleeing your HQ in the transport you obtained from him.

The VIG leader you’ll find on a station in VIG space, usually Aurora’s Dream, and you’ll need to destroy the entire station. The local VIG will still be under his control, so you’ll need to be both well armed and wary (though it’s often a simple production station so it’s not a fortress assault or anything). Fortunately, they aren’t expecting an attack so you can get close, scope out the defense modules, then open fire.

You’ll obviously suffer a pretty heavy VIG reputation loss for destroying all those station modules and any defenders you engage along the way. The faster you destroy the station, the less collateral damage you’ll have to do. Once the station’s gone, disable turrets on any ships you have in the area to avoid starting more hostilities with the remaining VIG.

Once the station is destroyed, the VIG “surrender” and you become new security force in VIG space.

You’ll gain ownership of all VIG defense stations (and thereby possibly control of VIG sectors if there’s no competing Admin Center stations), and a number of fighter wings. You’ll also get a reputation boost to restore some of your VIG reputation, but they’ll still be quite unhappy with you. You can work on repairing reputation as normal.

Finally, you get an invitation to talk to the twins about purchasing a ship. There’s no mission guidance for this, but you need to find one of the two Astrids. You can usually find one by the Condensate structure, and can simply comm them and transfer 50 million credits. The ship will appear in Avarice I, added to your fleet.

Note that you’ll now find the Astrids essentially invulnerable, and you can’t drop their hull below 80%. This makes it impossible to capture them.

Steal the blueprint

Astrid

First things first: get yourself an Astrid, or two!

Teleport out to your ship, and get ready to inflict pain on an Astrid. One will stay, one will flee. They’re un-crewed (can’t let anyone see the sector!) so getting the twins out leaves them abandoned.

You can try for two by attacking both of them immediately, turning them hostile. They’ll stick around to kill you. Problem is they may succeed.

Alternatively, attack the non-meeting ship and get it to surrender fast (the meeting ship has the “person of interest” icon). The meeting ship will hang around, so you can go after it second.

Do enough damage and the Astrid’s security system will force-eject the pilot, so the normal ship-capturing rules don’t apply. Just be careful not to destroy the ship, as you need to get it down to ~15-20% hull. You may need to wait of the announcement from Boso for this to work on the second ship, so you may need enough shielding/speed to hold out for that after attacking.

Note: if you get both twins to evacuate, they’ll be in escape pods. Which you can destroy, though there’s no reward. Still…

Consequences

You now own the Protectyon storage module blueprint, and can build that at any station, and you know where to get the Condensate to fill it so you can sell it at whatever price you like.

Things are about to get… ugly. Make sure you don’t have vulnerable ships/station in VIG space, as the VIG are essentially acting as a mercenary navy in the employ of the Twins. And you’re about to screw them big-time.

The twins put a bounty on your head, and VIG are looking to collect. If you have a high enough reputation, the -25 drop may be enough to keep them from attacking your assets, but you personally are still a target.

Check your mission briefing.

To “fix” things, you need to kill the VIG leadership, and pay off some goons.

Get a fast ship and try the payoff first, as you can do that without leaving Avarice. It’ll cost you 15 million credits, and there’s no way around it, and it still won’t help your reputation. But at least it’ll keep the VIG from trying to hunt you down.

Killing the VIG leader is not terribly difficult in itself, if you can do it fast. They’ll be on a station somewhere in VIG space, hopefully in Aurora’s dream at a simple production station with limited defenses. You’ll need to destroy the entire station. If your rep is high enough to survive the initial mission hit, you may be able to get to the station without being attacked. If not, you’re going to have to fight your way through a significant force as the gates are generally guarded and they’ll call in reinforcements. VIG fighter swarms are nasty.

Once you kill all the station modules, the “conflict” is resolved (as long as you’ve paid off the VIG first). You’ll get a restoration of your reputation. You may still have to deal with fighters already attacking you, but others should go non-hostile so flee the area if you can.

That’s it. You win.