Asteroid Base explosion!

Hi everyone,

I am absolutely loving the the game so far, but had to rant about one thing. I'm playing the mission where you're first introduced to the asteroid fighters, and then need to destroy a huge carrier and asteroid base. I probably tried this mission about six times, each run taking a good 15 minutes.

I then finally got to the end of the mission after a 30 min run, and my fellow Longbows unleashed their final salvo on the base. I was so excited to finish it, and was ready to watch the fireworks, when all of a sudden it played the death cinematic saying that the blast of the base had killed me. Are you kidding me!?!? After two hours of climbing this mountain, the game just had to punch me in the mouth. Why is it even necessary to have blast damage on the large ships / bases at these reward moments anyway? Sigh, now I have to start the mission over from scratch...

Okay rant over The game been awesome and I can't wait to keep playing. Just need to keep my distance next time!

Jimtern

Yeah that mission is the first hard one (mind you, i play with the keyb :/) that i found.

My problem was this : everytime i went to shoot down the turrets of the moving carrier, i got killed by "asteroid" after a while inside their shields. Same with engines. Almost like i got a collision with the carrier itself.

I solved the problem, by taking down the weap system of the carrier, while still being unpowered, but i'm curious if this has happened to anyone else

Oh and, no, there were no fighters left.

If you're having problems with this mission, just fly inside the carrier's flight deck, match speed, set your engine and shield energy to zero and fire at the cap ship from inside. You don't have to worry about any turrets this way, and your wingmen should be able to deal with the spawning ships themselves (they did for me at least, on medium difficulty).
Actually you can get a few shots at the spawning ships as well as they leave the flight deck.

Just remember to use your afterburner to leave the flight deck before the carrier explodes, or you'll be toast again.


Cheesy tactic, but working since the original Wing Commander games.

I also found taking out the engines of the carrier to be quite effective, it can't run and you can then pick off weapons systems flying under the shields at the pace you choose and enemy fighters shooting at you have their shots deflected by the carrier's shields.

Actually getting blown up by the base's destruction isn't that novel. How many times have you been damaged by a cap ship blowing up because you were too close. That's why it's a great idea whenever your target reaches 0 hull integrity to run on full afterburners away from the destructing target.

So remember, the bigger the target, the bigger the boom; make sure you are a safe distance away so you don't go boom as well.