Ancient Space - Mission Walkthroughs - Mission 7 - Psychonaut

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Mission 7 - Psychonaut

Part 1 - Rescue Katarina

• This is the only time-sensitive part of the mission (although on Explorer Scientist difficulty, compared to the enemy forces you have to overcome you have quite a bit of time).
• The Olympus will appear in Sector 3 and you will be told of a Scythe Temple in Sector 3 that you can scan but "not take too long" about it, however there is really no time limit on that. You can probably just park the Olympus there and worry about moving it about later.
• We tried to do the rescue without Commissioner Renner's building-disabling ability because unless you have foresight into the Mission you can't know to choose him.
• This is one of the issues with this game: An in-game hint tells you to choose officers best suited for a Mission, but you don't know what the Mission will entail until you are in it.
• You cannot hit the Katarina with an EMP pulse ("target unacceptable") to stop her.
• If you really want to rush, advance with Scouts and have them disable annoying stations like Interdiction and Artillery before moving in with the rest of your fleet. Stations are really only annoying when they are in the fog of war because larger ships can typically shoot at Stations from well outside a Station's attack range.
• In Sector 2, the Katarina will park there for a while before entering the Wormhole. If you bring a Corsair close to it (you don't even have to Board it), the rescue cutscene will play.
• While the cutscene plays battle will continue so you may lose units. You can try using [ESC] to skip the cutscene.
• Despite what Colonel Edwards says, you do not need "a couple" of Corsairs, just one.
• The cutscene will show what is supposedly your Corsair moved to the Katarina, but whatever it was doing (e.g., Boarding a Station) will not be changed.

Part 2 - Scan Wormhole

• The wormhole you have to scan to finish the mission randomly appears in a random sector.
• After rescuing the Katarina, time limits are lifted so abandon all Stations. Instead of constantly trying to hold ground in multiple Sectors, clear one Sector at a time. Just remember not to scan the randomly appearing wormhole until you have finished scanning all Discoveries and completed all optional objectives.
• There is a Wreck that you can pick up as an optional objective. It is not clear if there is a time limit to this because an enemy Scythe Trilobite CAN pick it up and wander off with it. I didn't check if it had a specific destination that would cause the objective to fail.

In the video below you can see how a disorganized playthrough can take you less than 30 minutes. If you play thoroughly, clear out all Sectors, and get all Discoveries, this Mission can take a lot longer.