Return to Kharak

Returning the news of the Khar-Selim's demise to Kharak you find Kharak itself in flames.

Mission Objectives
1. Defend cryo trays
You must defend the cryo trays at point B that are being attacked by unknown enemies. Point B is 20 KM from the MS at 190 degrees on the compass.
2. Capture enemy ship using 2 salvage corvettes
You must capture at least one of the enemy ships at point A to reverse engineer for capital ship drive technology and to find out what happened to Kharak. Point A is 23 KM from the MS at 190 degrees on the compass
3. Salvage cryo trays
You must salvage all of the surviving cryo trays at point b once all the enemy ships have been eliminated.
New Research
  1. Capital Ship drive *
  2. Capital Ship chassis
*You receive this from the reverse engineering of the captured ship.

New Ships

  1. Resource Controller (controller)
  2. Support Frigate (SF)
  3. Assault Frigate (AF)

What I do

If you have heeded the note at the end of mission 2 you will have no problems capturing all of the enemy assault frigates and all 6 cryo trays. A word of warning though, save the game just before you retire the first assault frigate (AF) if you plan on salvaging all 6 cryo trays, a bug in the scripting can cause the mission to not end if at least one of the trays does not get destroyed. Seems the developers did not think people would be able to save all six trays, a small oversight but one that still haunts us today.

On to how I complete this mission.

Upon entry into the system I launch all ships. I set the heavy vettes I have (nine usually) on evasive and send them to harass the AFs, I send the repair vettes to repair the cryo tray being attacked (two are being hit but the one most damaged is the top one closest to your MS). I send the salvage corvettes after 2 of the AFs and if the AFs start to attack the salvettes I'll tell 2 of the repair vettes to repair the attacked salvettes. Once I have at least 2 of the AFs salvaging I'll send the heavy corvettes back to the mother ship for docking to repair.

As the salvettes drop off the AFs I'll reassign them to capture the other AFs still attacking my cryo trays. I usually allow at least one tray to die so I have no issues with the mission not completing. Once I have all the AFs captured and the cryo trays repaired, I'll start salvaging the trays. As I have the trays salvaged I'll retire the left over AFs that I captured for the resources. You don't get a lot of resources in the early game so any extra you get can help.

I'll also queue up 3 more heavy vettes for a total of 12 and if I have only 4 repair vettes I'll build 2 more for a total of 6. I'll also build 2 extra salvettes and a resource controller for the next mission, this way I do not have to wait for it to build in the next mission. I put a priority on the controller over the 2 extra salvettes though, in the 4th mission I can gather enough RUs to build the extra 2 salvettes if I do not have the resources for it in mission 3.