[Aristo]

I can't get past Derelict's Descent mission, as the Auriga destroys the Cypher, but I get no orders to jump out back to base. It sits there firing flak cannons at fighters, and all I can do is mill around, maybe strip its hull down to 10%, but I can't actually complete the mission. If I do jump out,  I get reprimanded for doing so without orders. How do I bypass this glitch?

[Mebber]

The Cypher is supposed to to survive that mission, it should jump out immediately after taking a heavy beating from the Auriga's main cannons. After that you have to wait for the Swiftsure to depart, after that you are allowed to return to base.

Maybe the Cypher received too much damage prior to the arrival of the Auriga, so it was destroyed by the Aurigas beams instead of beeing driven off. The Aurigas salvo causes very much damage.

You could try to ensure that the Cypher sustains a good hull (70+ i'd say) until the Auriga arrives. Another option would be to destroy the Aurigas main beam cannons with trebutchets, a few hits will take care of them, but that might be still too slow.

Or you simply use cheats and make the Cypher invulnerabe, but it could be that she's only jumping out if her hull drops below a certain point - in mycase, she jumped out with 37% hull. Guess you've got to try that out. You can still try to time the cheating right and make her invulnerable shortly before she would die, though.

You can find the cheats here: http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Cheats

[Aristo]

Hm. I recall a salvo from the Auriga's beams dropping the entire ship at 100% in one go, while the crew is in mid-transmission. Always hits 0% before the thing can jump. I do a fine enough job of killing off the fighter craft, but the minute the Orion-class rolls in, it's goodbye, Cypher. You'd think they'd design the mission so it doesn't make you fly around for infinity if it blows.

[Mebber]

Derelict has quite some mission breaking glitches, that's right. Replayed the campaign a few weeks ago and noticed a good deal of them, especially because i used some alternative approaches to the missions, and it turned out you can break some missions simply by beeing too successful  .

Anyway, i didn't encountered this problem with the Cypher. I've zipped again through that mission a few minutes ago to see if i can replicate this glitch you've encountered, but it again worked well for me. Is the Auriga concentrating all their beams on the Cypher? In my playthrough, the ship distributed its beam firepower evenly on the Cypher, the station and the cargo ship that was still alive, so the Cypher wasn't hit by all of the Aurigas' beams. Maybe it's a question of mission timing and the Cypher was on different positions in our respective playthroughs, and if the Cypher is too near to the Auriga if the latter jumps in, the Destroyer concentrates all firepower on the Cypher, thus killing it in one shot. Dunno.

Try out if it works with the cheats. Even with glitches Derelict is a truly great campaign, and coincidentally the very next mission after "Descent" is completely awesome .

If it really doesn't work, i could even send you my pilot file from Derelict so you can continue after this mission from the simulator.

Edit1: If the Cypher won't jump out if you make her invulnerable, and it isn't possible to time the cheat accurately enough, you could make her invulnerable, destroy all but one or two of the Aurigas main beams (easy with trebutchets and support ship) and than make the Cypher vulnerable again (using the same cheat again) - this way, the Auriga will probably hurt, but not kill the Cypher, and she'll jump out as soon as she has received enough damage - as she is supposed to.

Edit2: Totally forgot it, but you can skip missions if you die five times in a row. Just commit suicide a few times.

[Aristo]

I got past it; just set it on Very Easy and the beams actually spit between targets, instead of all going for the Cypher. 

[General Battuta]

Lower difficulty levels put a cap on the number of weapons that can simultaneously target a ship, iirc.

[Mebber]

Didn't knew the difficulty levels have such a deciding impact on capship combat. Have you played on very hard before? The gap to even one level below must be quite large considering our different experiences with that mission.

Anyway, hf with the rest of the campaign !