Tracking down Luke Skywalker (for Empire Victory)

[Indignation211]

Ok, im on the last phase of an Empire game. I destroyed the Rebel HQ and (through sheer random luck) captured Mon Mothma. All I have left to do is capture Luke. Problem is, i cant seem to find him ANYWHERE (and i dont think its Dagobah, this is well past day 1000+). I sent Probe Droids to every system in the rim and brought Vader to every Rebel planet i discovered (taking a few in the process), and yet nothing.

 

...I honestly dont know what to do next. But i swear if he's on one of those random Corellian Gunships that've been buzzing around my Core sectors im gonna be POed.

[steel]

Check the character finder. Will usually give you a hint to his last known location.

[Slocket]

I had that once in a game with the AI. Every time Luke escapes he gains even more higher ratings for evading. He was bouncing back and forth between Rebel controlled planets traveling in hyperspace and was taking forever for him to pop-up for one turn then evade and bounce back infinitely.

 

Capture and control every planet as the Empire, and finally if that does not work, blow up each one until he has no where to go. His espionage rating is so high he is almost a ghost. You would think a force user such as Vader would cull him out. Maybe leave one rebel planet and have Vader wait for him. I do not know if Luke has to be on the planet, or just merely orbiting inside a ship, for Vader to detect him.

[budious]

Espionage missions... occasionally they return intelligence from other systems as a bonus, so leave a nearby enemy system unconquered and spam characters or special units on espionage missions. You will have accurate positioning on characters, units, fleets in a short time.

[DarthTex]

Espionage missions... occasionally they return intelligence from other systems as a bonus, so leave a nearby enemy system unconquered and spam characters or special units on espionage missions. You will have accurate positioning on characters, units, fleets in a short time.

The "bonus" Bud speaks of is: if you have a successful espionage mission on a "core" system, you also get additional information about another enemy system (usually another "core" system, but I'm not 100% sure on that); if you have a successful espionage mission on a mid or outer sector system, that's all you get.

[budious]

I'm fairly certain it works from time to time for outer rim planets as well. You will notice the planet icon change color to indicate the loyalty but have solid resource bars and no specific data, follow that up with a scout ship visit or espionage/recon mission to the planet.

[Indignation211]

Personnel locator is no help, just says Location Unknown. Haven't seen him since he got back from Dagobah. Come to think of it, i havent seen him AT ALL this game.

 

I conducted repeated Espionage on various enemy systems, and still Luke hasn't turned up.

 

I was kinda hoping I WOULDNT have to conquer every last system in the galaxy, but its looking like ive got no choice. Thankfully IMP-22 has been spamming Dark Trooper Regiments left and right, but still 6 regiments per system is pretty expensive, plus getting them from the core to the rim takes forever. -_-

 

Come to think of it, is it possible to conquer every system and NOT capture Luke?

[Slocket]

Hanging around Dagobah with all that Swamp weed made Luke transcendental.

[DarthTex]

Come to think of it, is it possible to conquer every system and NOT capture Luke?

Yes. If you capture every system while Luke is in hyperspace, he'll just "bounce around" between systems looking for a place, or until he finally runs into a system with Imperial ships and someone "good enough" to detect/capture him.

 

I'd suggestion capture EVERY system (even those unworthy => only 1 or 2 energy; including "Neutral" systems), EXCEPT for one! Send out "gobs" of espionage droids (even on your own systems as he maybe on a "mission"), with several to the lone rebel system. This may take awhile after you've captured practically everything (worst case: 100+ days to get to a system, +60 days for a mission, +100 days to get back). No guarantees though Good Luck.

[Indignation211]

Well I ended up capturing every last Rebel planet in the galaxy, and thankfully right when i captured the last one IMP-22 informs me that Luke Skywalker has been captured and the Empire has won the war. What still boggles my mind is the fact that I NEVER saw Luke ANYWHERE. Even right before i captured the last system i ran a successful Espionage mission there and there was no sign of him there, and yet when i assaulted the planet i got him.

 

Oh well, the war's over and peace and order have been restored to the galaxy. Now to take a nice, long vacation before i come back and play again on Intermediate... >.>

 

EDIT: Actually I reloaded to a previous save and did some more espionage on a few different Rebel planets, and I FINALLY found him. I took the opportunity to experiment with different ways of capturing him.

 

First i tried sending Vader to Abduct him... yeah, didnt work so well. Luke automatically foils the actual mission and even when injured he escaped all of their encounters, and eventually became a Jedi Knight -_-

 

Then I tried Abduction with non-force-sensitive characters. It took a few tries but eventually it worked.

 

Then I tried just Assaulting the planet. Luke escaped the assault itself but ran into Vader in the Fleet above and got captured. I repeated this several times, including some times where I DIDNT see Luke on the planet (I located him through Espionage, then reloaded without saving and went back to that same planet) and even when I didnt "know" Luke was there Vader still captured him every time. I also tried removing Vader from the fleet before assaulting, and Luke got away.

 

So from what I can tell, the best way to capture Luke (once you've tracked him down -_-) is to stick Vader's fleet over his planet and conduct Planetary Assault. All else fails, Vader should detect him as he tries to escape and capture him.

 

EDIT 2: I tried one more experiment, this time using the Emperor instead of Vader. After Assaulting the planet, Luke and the Emperor had their encounter, but not only did Luke manage to escape, the Emperor was injured. So Vader is definitely the way to go.

[Indignation211]

Just finished my second game, this time on Intermediate. Took literally half the time of my first game (won in 1500 days compared to 3000). This time i managed to locate Luke on a core world when one of my Jedi minor characters tried to sabotage a shield generator in preparation for planetary conquest. Naturally this made both the assault and capturing luke a challenge, since Luke foiled each attempt to sabotage something and two GenCore Level IIs seemingly prevented my overt options. Luckily my fleet was able to bombard through the shields and eventually open up the planet for assault. Luke tried to escape but got caught by Vader on his way out. A few days later The Final Battle took place with Vader and the Emperor defeating Luke (he was only a Jedi Student).

 

Like the first game Mon Mothma practically walked into my hands, so all that was left was to destroy the Rebel HQ. I managed to get my fleet on top of it on day 1548. After bombarding it to smithereens once i reloaded and allowed an extra 200 days to get a Death Star over there to blow it up again :3

 

One thing ive learned from all this: dont send force-sensitive characters to capture other force-sensitive characters. I tried sending my trained Jedi minor characters to capture Luke, and got pretty much the same results as when I tried it with Vader, except without Luke getting a power boost after each failure.

[Graptor]

The biggest tip to capturing a Force-using character is pretty simple: If you find them and pin them down somehow... do NOT send another Jedi after them! They'll get detected, have a jedi fight, and maybe someone gets hurt, but that's about all that happens. This goes for trying to grab Luke, the Emperor, or Vader.

 

My recollection, which is a bit fuzzy, I haven't really played much in years... is that this applies even to minor character jedi. I don't recall if they have a special message for minor character jedi detection and subsequent fighting(my first thought is 'no, it just shows up as foiled'), but I seem to recall it seeming like the result came out the same.

 

What you want to do in this case is send a number of your highest combat rating 'normals' in. You're going up against the Jedi's inflated combat rating, so it's almost certainly not going to work 1 on 1.

 

One trick to soften them up as the Empire: run an assassination mission first. Partially successful assassination missions wound the target, which lowers their combat rating. I THINK you can run assassination on majors, which is slightly misleading as they can NOT die, merely get wounded. (Can't verify atm 'cause my current game, I got Luke and Leia without hardly trying and Han is being...elusive). I do think I recall running assassination on Luke in the past though, specifically to lower his combat rating and make him an easier capture(it also keeps him from doing much of anything while you're trying to grab him, which is nice).

 

I can't verify the minor jedi parts either...'cause Vader is being stubborn and not finding any.