Huh, I guess I made that typo yet again. I don’t even know why I keep saying No.2 but eh, it certainly is the excavation site of all time.
Microlocator/nanolocator confirmed to not work in step 24 either.
Yeah the main issue with the invisible quest targets is they spawn as neutral (grey) - so you only get a few ways to decloak them without aggroing them first.
or rather, if an ally show them and I can aggro the enemy, then they work properly… apparently
(also damn Snoop Locator drops a lot, 3 snoop loot out of 4 kills)
Another helpful method is takes Hercules with Aurora and activate the turret at each of the location. The spies circle the turrets so just aggro them and sit there with the turret. 3 shots from it and the spy is done. Just try to stay alive.
(step 26) Going by the NPC message, the turret socket positions were especially modified to allow us to kill precursor spies. Too bad they only say that after we kill the first spy.
However, I’d advise to only build one turret and staying next to it (since as you said, the spy will pass next to the turret often and it may take 2 passes to finish it), because if you monopolize all the sockets, angry players will come to murder you (ask me how I know :D)
The respawn time seems fairly long, so leaving after a kill and coming again 10/15 minutes later works well and is less frustrating than staying on the lookout. At the cost of 5 iridium for teleport but 
Note Step 27 : the Courier hits really hard once you aggro it, to the point a rank 11 Ze’Ta didn’t cut it to “cheese” the mission properly ; it requires a higher/beefier destroyer (or frigate) with defensive modules.
(if you can’t find the courier despite being roughly where the screenshot is, then you probably aren’t high up enough)
Yeah - when giving it a shot I found that too. So unfortunately it seems to be the “hard way” and that’s just kinda it for the step which is.
Just lovely.
It feels like the whoever designed the quest steps did all of this in a vacuum with little to no game knowledge and without actually trying each step for themselves.
The absurd collection of waypoints near the structure the water harvest transport spawns near makes it quite literally impossible to follow the ship if you have moderate to high latency. Can’t wait for the inevitable step with the pure invisible, naturally hostile courier that flies 800 with zig-zag waypoints requiring you to stay within 100m for 20 seconds that if you die you need to wait 30 hours to try again.
Like I’m sorry but the more and more exhaustive the list of requirements become, the more and more effort goes into bypassing them rather than trying to achieve them.
Step 27 is almost impossible. You need Aurora 2 or Dawn locator to see the courier but the ships that have those modules are too slow to catch up to him by default. How i did it, with a lot of luck, is take the Hercules and wait around the structure on the left from where you spawn. The courier passes by there and there is a speed boost over there as well. When you see the courier, grab the speed boost and follow him. You need to get lucky, as not only does the speed boost need to be there but the enemies hit hard and spawn really quickly.
Otherwise, I suggest teaming up with people, with 1 having the Hercules to provide vision, and the other having tacklers to slow the courier down.
Step 28 is meeting the agent again.
the Courrier use a plasma gun, so beefing defense of the destroyer/tank ship against the relevant element (EM) worked well enough to finish the step the cheese way… this time.
And, it’s been almost 3 months now. I suspect there are 30 steps, maybe 35 top, tho I don’t really have a basis for that, just a “they won’t keep that event open more than a few months” feeling.
The Precursor Conquistador is now damageable properly now (you could technically hurt it via clipping through terrain before the update) so the end S H O U L D be in sight some what but the absurd amount of waiting between steps just turns what should be like a 3-4 day grind into a month long slog.
Yeah, patch notes say that the final battle is near:
Thanks to the joint efforts of all pilots, the Precursor invasion has been slowed down and even almost stopped. The decisive moments of the battle for humanity are ahead!
The dreadnought “Defiant” will periodically attack the Precursor flagship with its main cannon.
Useful resources now drop from the destroyed turrets of the Precursor flagship.
Step 24 is in the “Wasteland” sector
• Also I updated step 26 to include what is likely the intended method - thanks to everyone who told me about this and provided information
step 29 : Well, can confirm that killing Fortune worked (or rather waiting for it to kill itself)
but, the next mission step is set after 24h instead of 3 days (even after restarting the game). Are they speeding things up ?
(edit : may be related to the maintenance that happened just after conquest this morning ?)
Maintenance did mess with timers. I was sitting on 1 day 12 hours and when maintenance ended I had the next step available.
Pourquoi tu m’écris en russe… ?
Step 30 spy position : next to the red gate under the empire battle station. May be the same one as your 4th image ?
Staying beyond ~3100 meters from the spy (while keeping him visible with spy drones) makes it so it doesn’t shoot back at us.
edit : like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONbYAIezDmg
edit 2 : the counter resetting if we leave the zone before killing all 5 means farming infinite dissonant ammo if we feel like it. (sadly, even “safe logout” resets the counter so can’t push respawns that way for the mission)
Step 32 is at Pilgrim-11, per this lore:
