Landship Quest

I'm on my third play through using the progressively harder difficulty options and I had a question about the landship quest. My first run I went in blind, started the quest and got kidnapped to get into the landship. I found this path to be very frustrating with the conveyer belts so I wasn't looking forward to running it again in the future. However, in my second run I went to the strategist in the university and got the different path where they stop the ship and the conveyer belts were off. This made the run a lot easier. Now I'm on my third run through and I'm starting the landship quest but when I talk to the strategist he does nothing and the only option I have is to be kidnapped. Does anyone know what is needed to trigger the strategist route?