X3LU: OCV Wipe Guide

The run isn't long. Dock at the equipment dock on your right, sell off your weapons, buy boost extension (first of bottom section), buy trading extension (bottom of bottom section. Scroll down so you're quick) and upgrade your engines (maybe rudders.) Due to RNG, you may not get a notoriety boost here. Reset if it happens.

Head to the East gate (if you docked at first port heading to equipment dock, you'll have it in view promptly after undock.) Check the map for station protect missions. You have all stations discovered in this sector at the start. Only one mission spawns at the beginning here (or none) so you don't need to examine stations further.

Enter the wall. Head to north gate right away, and check out the two solar power plants for any station protect missions. If you got none so far, head to the right abit and check out the three other non-trading stations for them (free argon trading station does not have station protect mission spawns.)

You will need either 3 very easy, 2 easy or average, or 1 hard/very hard station protection missions to be able to get the right amount of notoriety at the end. If you didn't get that much or more, reset. There's no argon station protect missions you'll encounter after that.

After you touch gate entering The Hole, do a split. Go right and then enter Atreus' Clouds.

Then keep flying. Rolk's Fate. Menelaus' Frontier. Ceo's Buckzoid. Teladi Gain. Family Whi. Shareholder's Fortune. Mines of Fortune. Home of Opportunity. Family Tkr. Tkr's Deprivation. Ghinn's Escape (the sector is split and it's green.)

Hint: When approaching a gate, turn slightly. You'll somehow have better odds of not phasing through the gate due to buggy collision.

Hint2: Watch for traffic. Aim a bit for the side of gates in case a huge ship comes through outa nowhere.

Hint3: During long sectors, you can activate G19 or Rainmeter then.

Hint4: Use boost extension always when you need to accelerate.

Hila's Joy. Turn left and head toward the asteroids at a particular spot where a Barracuda lies abandoned. Go to it (stop engine at about 0.7 km away). Eject, claim, head towards Ocean of Fantasy (East Gate.) Tell your Barracuda to follow you for some saved time.

If the Barracuda didn't spawn, reset. This is the definite run-ender, and has about a 10% chance of happening.

Ocean of Fantasy. Aim for the North Gate. Talk to a NPC ship, and ask where the shipyard is. Preferably, talk to a non-boron one, as the boron aren't friends with you. This will reveal the shipyard to you without exploring it. Go to property menu, and tell your Barracuda to dock at the shipyard. Exit.

Bluish Snout. Here, the Cerberus Alpha gate is green, and hard to see. Just go a little low and a bit to the right.

Cerberus Alpha, Pike Beta, Cobra Gamma, Helios Delta, Kea Epsilon (you'll notice the bright, terran-like planet in front of you when you enter.) When you enter Magnetar Zeta, do a split.

Hint4: Traffic is a lot more linear in the Omicron Channel because all sectors follow a line. Keep that in mind. There's also 0% chance of a station protect mission to spawn.

Go to property. If your ship was slower than ~120 m/s, then it still won't be at the shipyard. If it is, sell it. Ask an NPC where the shipyard is so you have access to it. Head towards free Argon trading station, go through the back, and dock. Be careful, died to those moving parts once. Buy some salvage insurance, and do some quick trade back-and-forth to increase your notoriety one more time so you have level 2. You'll notice because the transporter extension is then available (was red, now white.) BUY IT.

Undock, head to station. If your Barracuda still hasn't arrived at shipyard, go and dock to shipyard and SETA outside docking area until it does, then sell. Buy a Discoverer Raider (if M or L versions are available, take it!) Make sure it has 3 1 MJ shields, max rudder, max engine, max cargo, SETA device, jumpdrive and cargo (at least 5) energy cells. Don't bother with weapons.

Tell the thing to follow you, so that it will exit station (or switch to it if you're already docked, then undock.) Race to it, and within 5km range, teleport yourself to it via transporter extension. You're now in a Discoverer Raider. Leave your ship behind. If it's within influence of shipyard, it'll cause massive lag. Exit north gate.

Kraken Eta. Tiger Theta. Ares Iota. Gannet Kappa. Tokyo Lambda (hype!)

When you touch the gate to Unknown Sector Omega, do a split.

Now for the fun.

Do a safety save once you start seeing hostile reticules if you want. Race towards the station in SETA, and JUST when you're about to hit, do a save. If you did it too late, you'll save when either bouncing or at the exact frame of doing a bounce, so that's no good, reset to safety. if you did it at the exact right time, you'll be either inside the station or in between station parts (which you'll then die, and on reload you'll then be inside. Loading gives a better "warp" than saving does.) I've never done it too early, but I imagine you'll just hit the station after loading.

There's a certain place I always go towards on the station so that I'm inside always when I save right beside it. Refer to my run for this. See 13:50 in my run. (Or about 13:40 in reference to the timer.)

Warning: You can easily be shot down during this time, or the reticules might just be in generally horrible spots to navigate around. The OCV ships rarely has obstructed me physically, but that can happen too. It's completely luck, so do a little curve so that you can dodge some.

Once you're inside, you're at luck's mercy for a random amount of time. Once the OCV station is done to about ~18-20 percent health, initiate jump out (but be the judge yourself at with the pattern the OCV is attacking and frequency.) 

To speed it up a bit, be a bit slower and be more in SETA mode, which will higher probability to hit you because you're slower and more projectiles/missiles get through station collision because of SETA.

 To slow it down, go fast around the outskirts of the station, SETA'ing on frequently. More shots will miss the station because of the way they target you (your current velocity.) Be mindful not to hit the station itself with your ship, that's instant death.

I like to do a safety save at the 0% shield and 30% health mark.

If you're lucky, you'll get a ship to crash into the station, resulting in big damage towards the station (we're talking like 60% of its health!) If it also kills the station though, your timing for jumping out can be completely screwed then, so you may try many times.

In general, to make it go fast as possible, go around 200-300 m/s in circles within the station while in SETA without hitting it. Use your mouse and click at a point in the screen where you'll do many flips/circles, and press the SETA key at the same time as you click and hold. If successful, you'll be in SETA while going in circles wildly.

I call these death wheels. They can cause you to crash into the station, and also get shot at the wrong angle. I like to follow the horizontal circlet of the station (I think it's a bit thicker there in collision) but most angles I think are find.

When you need more control, you're about to die or you're stalling for a jump, just go in triangles, escaping SETA mode at each point within. Do a curve with your flight to dodge more projectiles. This is pretty good at passing time within the station too.

If missiles get in, be mindful they update your position and velocity every about 3 seconds. If it's yellow, you can survive a few hits, and they're a bit easy to dodge. If it's orange, you'll likely die, do your best to dodge. If anything else, I don't know, but I think you're dead. If you got the L version of the ship, I guess you can try to shoot them down, but I'm not a good shot so I wouldn't know if this works or not. A bit of safety I guess.

If you have to repair yourself, make damn sure you're ready with the eject key (and right beside) while repairing in case your ship gets hit, which in that case it panics, goes off in a direction and crashes into the station. This will allow your a split second to board the craft when it tries to flee, so there's some chance of recovery. I've yet to do this successfully, though.

Now ---

If you jump too late, you'll be left to the OCV wolves. You'll die quickly. The best thing you can do is probably NOT enter SETA and try to flee in a straight line, but rather, just go in normal circles. You'll still likely die as you're jumping out because that sets your velocity to 0, but I wager you can get lucky eventually. You can also try to quickly load a save so you can skip going back to the menu for a retry.

If you jump too early, the station will be still alive after you jump. Take care to wait a second or two to check, though. Heavy projectiles might still be travelling to it. If not, do a reload.

So what's the best strategy? Try to control damage as mentioned before (making it slower and faster.) You don't actually have to SETA to make it die faster, because SETA also speeds your jump equally. No SETA means more shots will be fired in general, so avoid it, and just go a bit slower in the center of the station where you have the most enemies in range and most will hit the station.

Once the message of the OCV's destruction in this sector appears, it is then time. If you get a PB, it is sacred tradition to read out the finale message that comes after this one.