To anyone that can help (I wonder if a certain dev for Defiance is reading this - he may be "to blame" for this hard mission :P )
I'm completely stuck on Swticheroo. I think this is the 7tha mission in Defiance (anyone who hasn't played yet - don't worry, no big spoilers here).
Details:
I need to "switch" some cargo pods. I tried several times (over 30) and I can't even get 1 of the four swapped without being detected. I tried everything I could think off - moving them really slowly (problem due to the "time limit"), going along the inert cargo pods that you can't remote control, undocking the Navy pods first (that usually gets me detected instantly), moving the 4 pods in turn so they are never too far from each other, moving just one close to the freighter with varying levels of failure. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, I invariably get detected by the STC.
Note my problem isn't even manually docking them, but just getting them near the freighter or undocking the ones that I want to switch.
Having completed all of the original missions I would think that I'm not just being incompetent. What am I missing here?
(the one I had most trouble was where I had to go inside the carrier to escape as I also kept blowing up without figuring out what to do - eventually I just did it and it worked).
Ivo.

Hi, I scripted that mission, so I'm to blame. :)
It's a long time since I last played it so I took a look at the original mission script file. The script checks that cargo is either, A) remlinked, B) docked to the Freighter or C) near to the cargo area. So if your cargo pod is undocked, not remlinked and far from the cargo area the alarm will go off.
So If I remember it right you must remlink a pod on the freighter, undock and fly it over to the cargo area, making sure it's near the cargo area waypoint before you disconnect the link. If you're successful then the cargo pod you've dropped off will disappear off the contact list.
Then remlink one of the substitute pods and fly it over and dock it with the freighter. Repeat with the remaining pods.

That certainly explains why I have been failing. I haven't tried that. I looked at the briefing more times and tried to emulate it, but in my mind to do that I was pulling a blue one out and trying to get a green one in right after. As soon as I turn off the remlink of the blue one (as it was near the freighter) there goes the alarm. Conceptually I see that I should reinterpret the briefing as taking the blue one out *all the way* and only then putting a green one back.
I guess I was being too smart for my own good and wanting to "replace" the missing pod as soon as I took one out. That was my undoing with the check working like that (I'm not saying you scripted it wrongly - apparently everyone else was managing fine and only having trouble manually docking).
I guess I'll be able to do it now :) Thanks a lot.
Ivo.