I've been doing these mission off and on since I started, and I got to the one where you need to destroy the ship with the mind controling guy, without damaging the other ships that are under his control. I've attempted this several times and each time the bots end up damaging themselves. All I do is get them all to follow me out to around 3000m then and start scanning them. At this point the have either run into an asteroid before getting out of the field or they run into each other as I'm scanning. Is this a bug or is the mind control guy getting them to do this before I find him. In either case, I'm now stuck on that mission and can not progress and has become quite frustrating as it's only like the 4th mission. Any info would be nice.

Heh, that mission is broken. It was meant to be really hard and it's way too hard. The behavior of the mind controlled ships are not very good. The only thing I can think of that would help is to try to find the mind-controller right away after entering the sector because they are not all grouped together until you enter the sector.

I'll give it another go, is there any way to bypass that mission though?

Nope. Also, that's the last mission in the set. There are 4 missions in the set.

The waste handling bot mission is just as bad. Hit it once and it nukes the sector.

hu? That one wasn't as bad as the mind control for me. I was able to swoop in and find that guy much quicker. Guess I just need to get this mission in an empty sector, or as close to one as I can get.

When I did the waste handling last time, the bot ran into another one (as in physical collision) and nuked the sector. The time before that, it flew in front of my fire. Mind you, it had been behind me when I started shooting at its cohort, but it flew into my line of fire. EVIL.

Usually, I blow a bot next to it and the splash damage makes it nuke the sector :(