Blind covies at the relay outpost
Posted November 20th 2011
More fun for you, courtesy of Jun's Falcon. Here's some mischief at the relay outpost involving covies who can't see you or any of your buddies!
Setting up
After stealing Jun's Falcon, escape from normal bounds and get the relay outpost loaded, all as I described for combat at the relay outpost in another article (and as before, preferably use the wandering dropship escape method).
Now get the outpost unloaded while staying outside normal bounds. One way to do that is to head north (or slightly east of that) past the right of the tall hill behind the outpost, at an altitude of 400 to 440 feet. The bulk of the valley should reload and the outpost vanishes. Another way - if you used the wandering dropship escape method - is to get the farm area prior to rally point alpha reloaded as follows. At the top of the valley you'll see that the crude surfacing over the farm area cuts off sharply. Sink down over the nearest side of that cut, and the area should load when you drop to around 280 feet. Both ways are quick, but use the second if you want Kat to be present at the outpost, otherwise you'll only get Emile.
Once you've got the outpost unloaded, fly back and reload it.
Let the mischief begin
Here's where the fun starts. Get down on the ground and mingle. The covies at the outpost won't be aware of you or any UNSC personnel, and the same goes for those who arrive later. Even when you fire they won't fire back. You can brush up against them to spook them, but again they won't fire. Elites do sometimes melee if you brush them (or maybe if you melee or fire up close), but that's no great trouble. What all this means is that you can have a ball of a time going around being nasty to the covies, and in particular you can do stealth kills until your heart's content. Nice way of enjoying the animations over and over.
There's danger from the air though. Dropships do see you and will fire on you. So if you're on foot, you may want to take cover until they depart. Mind you, a cannon can be blown off with grenades pretty easily.
There's some danger from suicide Grunts, but not much. These guys are interesting and fun. When a suicide Grunt does his crazed run, he seems to go to some place where a dropship recently sensed you - which could be well away from where you are now. If he gets there, he then stands around with grenades fizzing. Don't walk into him else you'll regret it! But it's possible to melee him, including a stealth melee from behind - and then step away quick before the fallen plasmas go off. Alternatively you could just stand around and take a close look as he babbles. You can watch as long as you like; he's not going anywhere and those plasmas will just keep on fizzing.
You can still use the Falcon if you wish, but it's possible to get ejected by an Elite if you brush it against him - though he won't fire the cannon if he subsequently boards. Also, a Grunt may throw a plasma at you if provoked. The main fun is to be had on foot.
Note: When you get the outpost reloaded, you'll initially see the covies backing off from the door where they were pestering Emile. They no longer see him.
Allied support
You can get allies in on the fun by bringing them along as passengers and getting the Falcon toppled over so they pop out. I mentioned one way of getting them out in the aforementioned material on combat at the relay outpost (namely, letting the Falcon topple down a bit of steep hill), but here's a more precise way which could've been too dangerous in the earlier situation due to enemy fire. You can use the beam structure near the door. Bring the Falcon's nose down onto a beam, with the wings not far back from the bar. Dismount, and the Falcon should fall down and over if you got the positioning right. Sometimes it freezes when it should fall - a glitch in the physics I think - but you can fix that by firing at it.
Note: You'll probably want the Falcon to stay overturned, otherwise your ex-passengers will board it again; and Carter or a trooper may take the pilot's seat.
If you want Emile mixing in with allies you brought along, let him board before you get the Falcon overturned. He's pretty keen to run out and hop aboard. However, it looks to me like you need to get the 'ADVANCE INTO RELAY OUTPOST' prompt prior to him noticing you, otherwise he won't fire on covies. He won't even see them - in which case you can amusingly see him standing peacefully among covies if you want. The prompt is triggered when you dismount (anywhere). One time I even saw Kat outside for a while, though she soon went back to her fixing.
Allies won't move about much, so they're not as effective as they could be, but if you want to shift them to a place where they might open fire, you could always push them. It can be fun to just watch while they blast nearby covies.
Missing doors and more
In the unload-reload procedure which led to this novel situation, not all of the outpost area got reloaded. For starters you'll see that the two trucks in the forecourt are gone. There was part of a trailer supporting two sets of four blue barrels, but that's gone too, leaving the barrels suspended in mid-air. Shoot them or whack them and they'll fall to the ground. There was a forklift with a couple of UNSC crates in the adjacent building, but that's all gone now. Some other crating has vanished too.
The outer and inner doors of the main building are missing. From outside, if you look through the gap where the inner door should've been you can see bits of valley scenery. When you go inside however, those vanish, though if you go right to the doorway you can see some earlier scenery off to the left; but there's an invisible wall stopping you from walking through.
Kill-zone with the fallback prompt
Here's something you need to be aware of. When the game gives you the fallback prompt - 'FALLBACK INTO OUTPOST' - you'd better not be standing around in the forecourt or you'll be killed by the game. A kill-zone comes into force and zaps the covies there - which you might enjoy watching from within the safety of the outpost - or from a handy place outside which I'll mention in a moment. Troopers will get zapped too if you've got any around. Also, any hovering dropship will fall through the ground if you're outside - else it just vanishes. The fallback prompt comes just after the third dropship arrives (triggered when the covies are sufficiently depleted) and Kat says "Just about… there! We're in" if she's present.
The kill-zone covers almost all the area outside the main door (within normal bounds), but there are a few places it misses, very close to the building. In terms of usage, the best of these is the small raised area past the end of the walkway which runs along the side of the forecourt. That odd little recess is an excellent vantage point from which to see the covies die and the dropship fall through the ground. There are also some safe places over in the far right corner of the forecourt as you look at the outpost, but you have to be pretty much hugging the wall.
Not long after the kill-zone comes into force, if you're inside there's a sound-effect for a closing door, but visually nothing changes. In terms of your movement possibilities, you're instantly blocked off from passing through the doorway except for a small gap on the left; so you can still go through and get yourself zapped if you want. Shots aren't blocked at all; they pass through the doorway as if nothing is there.
The outside lacks a proper sky, so it's a reasonable guess that everything outside the relay outpost area has been unloaded. That seems confirmed by subsequent investigation I did, as detailed in an article I'm releasing at the same time, Isolated relay outpost.
Checkpoint issues
When you dismount after the unload-reload procedure, you'll trigger the 'dismount checkpoint' with the 'ADVANCE INTO RELAY OUTPOST' prompt. You might want to save that to be sure you can get back to it, bearing in mind that there are some subsequent checkpoints you might get. One is triggered with dropship 1 after wiping out the initial covies, but you could cancel it by jumping for a while. There's likewise one associated with dropship 2, but typically you'd be mingling with enemies at this point so it would probably get cancelled without you needing to do anything. The same goes for dropship 3.
Delayed glitching
The way I described the setting up, you did the unload-reload procedure right after loading the outpost. However, you could instead do it after killing covies (potentially including some covies from the dropships), as long as you remain out of normal bounds. It would still have the same effect: covies lose awareness of UNSC personnel, items go missing, Kat potentially goes AWOL, and you later get the kill-zone.