So, i’m on the second mission, ive been on this mission 10 times now, and i cant win, i cant even get the enemy down to 50%…
I love using missiles in most games, so i equipped a bunch of cruisers and frigates with high armor piercing missiles (considering the 50% drop in shield effectiveness on that mission).
Every single missile, no wait, 95% of all missiles (to be fair lol) miss the enemies… I mean they just pass right under every single ship, be it a frigate or cruiser. Then they swoop around and MABY 2 or 3 out of 20 gets a hit. Tried with target painters on fighters, didnt help. Tried with tracking computers on the cruisers, didnt help.
Bug?
So i said, k whatever ill play the game the way the mission designer intended, or something… So i just went for lots and lots of lasers, some disruptors and emp. The disruptors and emp worked fine.
Enemy shields were down almost all the time, and they were disrupted quite alot, but NONE of the cruisers ever died, or even were close to it… I mean i literally watched my armor packed ships (tried with shields too) being ripped to shreds while my ships did virtually NO damage what so ever to the enemy.
Not with missiles, not with torpedoes, not with megaton missiles, not with beam lasers, not with small fast lasers, not with high armor penetrating weapons, not with anti-shield weapons (disruptors worked though). Its pretty not-funny when you spend 15min each time designing and deploying several different fleets and combinations when none of them have any effect what so ever, nor any feedback on exactly what is going on.
NOTHING works… lol
The second mission certainly was beatable in 1.00. And I beat the 5th/6th on 1.03 last night, so unless it’s a specific problem with the mission then it’s a tactical problem and needs a change in tactics.
When you took down the enemy shields, did you find that your weapon effects were hitting the enemies in a pink bloom? That would indicate that your weapons aren’t penetrating the armour, it’s sometimes an idea to give cruisers a mix of shield-killing weaponry and armour-killing weaponry as indicated by the difference in penetration rates.
Also, maybe you weren’t doing damage fast enough? The feedback mechanism with the enemies is currently quite limited at the moment (intentionally so I believe); so if the enemy ships had repair mechanisms maybe they could soak up the damage effectively or even you might have been this close to finishing them off, but didn’t know. Try using the cooperative and maybe vulture orders, they should focus your ships firepower a bit.
I’m not sure how to fix the missile problem, I’ve had OK(ish) rates with the plasma torpedos. Did you try target painters on the cruisers and frigates? I’m not sure at the moment if target painters from ships other than the missile-firer aid in the to-hit rates, can someone clarify this?. Target painters on fighters is a bit of a waste, it just takes up a weapon slot.
Lastly, look at the position of your forces, you’d be surprised how much this can help things. I think that in the 2nd mission the bad guys have a weak flank? Hit them hard on this flank and work your way down, that way you only ever fight the enemy piecemeal. This is become a bit mammoth, but I hope this all helps.
in this case, the stats are your friend - you can at least get hit %age and penetration %age from it
for what it’s worth, I found the 2nd mission easier than the first, and I tend to go with tough beam/plasma cruisers fixing the enemy in place while ecm/torpedo missile frigates do the work
Since I unlocked the Imperials on 1.03 I can safely say the second mission isn’t impossible :P. Plasma is your friend as are heavy and fast regenerating shields even at 50% strength, especially the plasma part for just getting through missions, though you may want to throw in some beam heavy ships to help with frigates and cruisers that have their shields down.
They beat everything in the game, basically. They’ll get worn down by fighters on some missions, so you might want to make a variant with some anti-fighter dohicks or other ship types. I’m sure this can be improved upon, but it seemed to work fine for me.
