Ship Rescue Mission

Ship Rescue Mission

Though the opening slideshow 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.

The shipping lane terror mission can be one of the most common 2-parter missions in TFTD, although it is equally possible to play through to the final assault - the T'Leth mission - without having to deal with any ship attacks.

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 theater and pleasant accommodation with all the accoutrements.

The cargo ship is a typical boat that transports goods 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.

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 Text

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.

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. Auto-fire weapons like the Gauss Pistol and Gauss Rifle can be used effectively in close proximity.

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.

Recovering Items

Items and bodies littering the above-deck portion of the battle are not recovered. If you wish to recover anything, you must carry everything you want to save before heading to the next section. Items left inside the Triton are lost.

Live aliens cannot be carried into the next map this way. If you find a research critical alien on the first level, you can only recover it by bringing it to the Triton and dusting off from the site. In this case, items left in the Triton are safely recovered.