This is the vs. Rebels mission that does not allow you to use cruisers. My open question here is:
What strategies have people used to beat this godawful thing?
So far I have found a single Tribe deployment that can beat it, once each on Normal and Hard. Nothing else works. And God knows I have wasted enough time trying to find something that will at least come close.
I’ve tried all 5 races at one point or another with essentially zero luck.
Any suggestions, or should I write this one off as poorly balanced and move on?
spamming frigates always works. this battle isn’t harder than the previous ones.
simply don’t bother with the rebel fighters, use 2 fighter squadrons to distract them and concentrate on their frigates, they are quite fragile.
although i’m not a friend of posting designs, because i think people should try on their own, i show you the frigate i used:
hull: federation fox
2x shield generator II
3x engine III
2x ion cannon
1x generator I
1x generator II
1x crew module II
1x micro crew module
deploy as many as the budget allows and 2 fighter sqadrons in one corner.
beats normal with 2 ships lost and hard with 72% remaining. no special orders given except “keep moving” and “attack fighters” deleted.
I used a similar design but with only one shield and 3 ion cannons per frigate. I can’t remember which race but one of them I managed to cram 4 ion cannons into the design. With sufficient engine speed it is possible to pretty much sweep the field with ion-cannon based frigates.
It’s also possible to beat it (on normal) with a missile spam + close defense fleet where the defender frigate is extra tough and carries anti-fighter missiles with a line of missile spammers behind. I haven’t gotten that strategy to work on expert, but speeding ion cannon frigates are more fun to watch so I haven’t tried it as much.
Okay, not that I don’t appreciate all the suggestions, in fact I do and I may have to try some of these tactics.
Here’s the thing, though - personal preference: I don’t like to “spam”. I wasn’t thrilled with the fact that I had one capital ship design that was effective in the first place. I really don’t design ships with only plasma or only missiles or whatever.
So are there more than a few strategies for this mission that don’t involve spamming the field?
I generally try to use generalist designs myself. Sometimes it’s about setting rules for your fleet.
In this case, it’s a match where you’re subject to bombardment from a lot of low-frequency, high-penetration weaponry. Beams, rockets, missiles. That is why I mention recharge rates - you need to mitigate that incoming damage somehow. Armor isn’t particularly advisable against that type of weaponry, although it can be done. There will be aircraft, so you need to be prepared for that as well.
Going with that, I’d say to have a fleet of no less than .2-.3 speed, two shields (of any size!) on each frigate whenever possible, have one AA missile on each frigate.
From there you can devise a coherent strategy based on what you can squeeze out of the frigates. The extra required modules will usually leave you power or crew starved if you go for a single weapon type anyway.
Fighters of any type can be made useful, but rockets definitely have an application.
i don’t like spamming everything either, because i always feel that there’s something broken with the game when this is the only solution.
but with only frigates and fighters allowed, there’s hardly much variability in tactics. you can’t rely on frigates soaking up damage like a cruiser can, at least not one for one.
however, “spamming” was meant relative, you should be able to win the battle with even numbers, maybe even less frigates if you use some more rocket fighters.
sadly, i can’t think of any more tactics. maybe because there isn’t much more different you can do.
Frigate Beam spam works pretty much always against frigate spam. Contrary to the cruiser counterparts, they can beat shields and armor equally well (frigate grade).
4 squadrons of rocket fighters with a couple fast armored frigates at 2000 range to act as decoys.
On expert IIRC there is a cruiser or two that’s so armored that your rocket fighters will never kill it, a few fast armored torpedo frigates properly placed and set to long range help.
I just did on all three dificultieys with 4 laser tribe laser fighters and then as many beam laser frigates as i could get the ones with fpur hard points and three beam lasers one engine and 2 tribe frigaste repair systems chewed up the enimey with few losses
I managed to beat normal with about 9000 honor with a basic federation frigate setup and a bunch of fighters, got some decent honor on the higher difficulties too.
I used fighter spam - Rebel or Tribes - and had no problem on any of the three levels. I also used frigates with ion cannons and EMP missiles - just don’t make them cooperative or the EMPs will all hit the same targets.
I agree with most of the people here, fighters (no bombers) and frigate spams will do the trick on defeating the rebels.
fighters are always fast moving, but I use the Puma frigate for the heavier artillery.
My loadout is this for the weapon slots.
1 anti-fighter missiles (front slot)
1 Disruptor bomb (mid slot)
2 Frigate torpedoes (rear wings)
The rest of the loadout is up to you based on what you want to use for cost.
Group everything either at the top or the bottom of the map so that you are not facing the entire enemy fleet at once, this will also keep your frigates in a group increasing DPS on the enemy cruisers. I tend to keep the fighters in the front so the enemy fighters will target them first. If any fighters get though, the missile launchers on the frigates will finish them off.
If you use Co-op as an added command, then you’ll see the Disruptor bomb hit the cruiser first before all the torps finish it off after the first volley. It’s like a turkey shoot and all the Rebels just line up due to their spread across the map.
I beat it with a rebel fleet consisting mainly of this basic ship design:
Asgard Torpedo Frigates - 6 Frigate Torpedos, Crew Module II, Frigate Engine
Then throw in a handful of Frigates with anti-fighter missiles to shoot down the enemy fighters, and a handful of fast fighter squadrons to distract the enemy fighters so your frigates don’t get ripped to shreds by the fighters.
Simple combination:
4 squads of fighters with rocket launchers and 2 ablative armours and 1 squad only with painters and 1 ablative armour.
Cooperative, vulture and stick together. 90% attack frigates and 40% attack fighters.
Alliance ships were used just for fun, some other race fighters could be even more effective. I think that double ablative armor helped the survivability.
I’ve managed to win this one at all three levels with some solid frigate designs, but I had to try out your approach as well, Faca5. I mean, 14,000 honour??? C’mon, now. But yup, it worked devastatingly well at all three levels. It seemed to do best against the Expert level, in fact where I still had 79% of my fleet intact at the end. I guess there really is more than 1 way to skin a frigate fleet.
Watching this approach play out was fun. I guess I’ve never really watched the rockets when they hit the targets, but enemy frigates were blowing up when the fighters had already looped around for another run. When I first started watching, I was watching the fighters and didn’t focus on the rockets. It seemed like the enemy was just spontaneously exploding at random spots all over the map. Awesome stuff!
