Failure to Communicate is an adventure that involves hunting down Spacers and mending relationships between some settled families in the Tau Ceti star system.
How to Unlock Failure to Communicate
The starting trigger for this mission is randomized and differs from playthroughs. So keep jumping to new systems until you receive a distress call from Alban Lopez. Once you respond to it, the quest will start, and you'll get a quest marker to speak with him.
Failure to Communicate Walkthrough
Talk To Alban Lopez on Cassiopeia II
The distress call takes you to Cassiopeia II, where you need to land your ship near Lopez’s Farm.
Talk with him, and he will explain that a group called L.I.S.T. sent families to colonize the system, but their communication systems have been cut, and they're all under the threat of Spacers.
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The families each have a L.I.S.T. satellite, but the spacers found them and are now using the satellites as bait to attack the family ships. You can offer to help him, and he'll task you with repairing all four L.I.S.T. satellites.
Repair The Communication Satellites
Four satellites must be repaired; all four are in the Tau Ceti star system.
- Repair the Lopez Communication Satellite
- Repair the Wen Communication Satellite
- Repair the Banda Communication Satellite
- Repair the Lemaire Communication Satellite
You need to fast travel to each satellite and interact with it to repair it. Besides the Wen Communication Satellite, all other satellites will have Spacer ships you must deal with.
Report Back to Alban Lopez on Lemaire's Ship
Once you’ve repaired the satellites, Alban will invite you to the family meeting on Jacquelyn’s ship. Approach and dock the ship.
Wait for Family Meeting to End
The settler families will talk among themselves, and you have to wait for them to decide. After they're done, you have to speak to Alban Lopez, and he will ask you to convince Banda and Lemaire to join the Defence Pact. He will also give you a payment of 2500 Credits here.
Get Banda To Join The Defence Pact
After you are done repairing the satellites, board the Lemaire’s ship. Alban wants to protect the families from spacers; hence, he requests you convince Banda to form a defense pact. Approach Banda, who can be found on the ship’s ladder, and talk with him about the Defence Pact. He will continue to accept happily.
Get Lemaire To Join The Defence Pact(Optional)
For Lemaire, you have to persuade her by talking to her and succeeding at a difficult 7-bar Persuasion check, or you can directly pay her 2000 Credits to get her to join the Defence Pact. Doing so will help you with the big space battle up ahead.
Talk to Alban Lopez About the Defense Pact
Once you have the other two on board, you can speak to Alban Lopez, and he'll be impressed if you convince Lemaire.
He'll tell you about two groups of Spacer ships he has tracked down and wants you to deal with them. You can ask him to assist with his own ships here to make the upcoming space battle easier. However, if your ally ships die, the final fight will be harder.
Eliminate the Spacer Ships Orbitting Tau Ceit VIII-c
After completing the formation of the defense pact, you can head to the location sent by Alban and fight off both groups of Spacer ships in any order. There are a total of four ships at each location. They'll be around level 4, and one ship will be level 12.
Report Back to Alban Lopez
Once you destroy the Spacer ships, return to Lopez’s Farm and talk to the family. You have to land at the farm, not at some ship in orbit.
Alban will tell everyone that he has pinpointed the Spacers’ base of operations to a Retrofitted Spacestation nearby. It’s time for the final assault against the Spacers.
Clear Out Spacer Ships
First, we have another massive space battle between the Settlers and the Spacers. Three waves of Spacer ships will Grav Jump one by one to the orbit of the Retrofitted Spacestation.
At this point, a weak Ship won't be able to handle the onslaught of Spacers. You should upgrade to something like the Mantis Ship and kit it with Particle Beam weapons. Otherwise, consider building your own ship.
- RELATED - Advanced Shipbuilding Guide
Clear Out The Retrofitted Spacestation
Your final objective is to board the Retrofitted Spacestation and clear out all the Spacers inside it. There are a lot of enemies and tightly packed spaces.
The Spacer boss, in particular, is quite challenging, so bring your best gear and take out these Spacers with extreme prejudice.
Before leaving the Spacestation, go to the command room and read the logs on the computer. You learn about the location of a safe in the Old Storage Room one floor below. You can find the key in the room with the computer. Take the Key, head to the floor below, and find the safes.
Speak to Alban Lopez
After defeating the Spacers and opening the safe, meet Alban at the Starstation, claim your reward from him, and complete the mission.
Quest Rewards
- XP - 100
- Credits - 2500 from Alban earlier in the quest
- Loot from Spacetation
That concludes our guide for the Failure to Communicate quest in Starfield. If you're looking for an even grander space battle, we suggest playing through the Crimson Fleet questline.
- READ MORE - Join the Crimson Fleet!
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