Ship Rescue Mission

Shipping Lane Mission Briefing

This mission is a bug hunt, eliminate all Alien units on the ship, and preserve the lives of any civilians onboard. The Aliens are dispersed above and below decks, secure the upper decks before entering the lower ones.

Source: Terror From the Deep Mission Briefing Screen

Ship Rescue Mission

Though the opening slide show or cinematic portrays the aliens to be aggressive against ships, they do not scuttle them. Instead, like common pirates, they board and take the ship and its crew hostage and don't start executing them until X-COM arrives. Worse, if X-COM ignores the site, they will be executed anyway. All this is an attempt to blacken X-COM's credibility.

The shipping lane terror mission is one of the most common of the 2-parter missions in TFTD, with the missions split between the upper and lower decks.

Shipping lane missions have a tendency to be very long. The maps are claustrophobic with many narrow hallways with lots of stairwells and grav-lifts scattered throughout the ship that will keep you on your toes. There are many rooms where any number of aliens can hide in ambush. When not fighting in narrow hallways, you will find yourself fighting in wide open areas with inadequate cover.

Mission Structure

From the ship's heli-pad, your team must secure the deck of the ship by defeating or knocking out all alien forces, and attempt to keep civilian losses to a minimum. After that, the team must head below and secure the lower deck.

There are two distinct flavors of maps: Pleasure Liner and Cargo Ship.

The pleasure liner is your typical Love Boat - it has a casino, a well stocked kitchen, a theatre and pleasant accommodation with all the accoutrements.

The cargo ship is a typical boat that transports cargo containers and other bulk goods. Strangely enough, all of the containers that you can get into are empty. It also has sufficient accommodation for the crew. The inside of the ship is primarily a container storage area.

In both below deck maps, you will find the engine room towards the rear (North) end of the ship.

Tips

Always thoroughly check the rooms. Because of the tight spaces, you can easily overlook aliens that might just be standing behind a door or partition.

Like the top-side portion of an alien colony, the above deck and below deck maps for shipping lane missions will always have the same layout so you can use this to your advantage to identify the most common spots where you encounter any aliens.

Due to the close proximity of the combat in general, drills and the Thermal Tazer are in their element against tough enemies. Auto-fire weapons like the Gauss Pistol and Gauss Rifle can be used effectively in close proximity against weak aliens.

Be especially vigilant of the terror units that will appear in battle. The alien's general purpose terror unit for use on land, the Bio-Drone, is easy to spot if you notice any burn trails in the deck. The Xarquid, a terror unit usually employed for underwater sorties, can also appear on the below-deck map on occasion.