Proxima 2

Please post any problems or comments specific to this mission here.

First nav with the convoy meet up worked well. No complaints. No waypoint bugs.

Dropped out with our first enemy encounter. It was challenging but not too challenging with the incoming missiles. All down, no losses but a close call with one missile getting within a short distance of the transport. The biggest problem is that I can get into range with the missiles before the spawn invulnerability count has run down so they are impossible to shoot down for several seconds.

Second encounter with the second round of missiles inbound works similar to the first. Good building of tension. Similar missile spawn invulnerability "problem" as the first way point. Lost a transport here to one of the missiles.

Third encounter. Did I just see the AI using the glide feature? Very cool. No complaints here.

Fourth encounter. Some of the Dralthi wings in my play through were slow to engage. Seemed to be concerned with the transports. Here's where I failed. The Corvette got off a final parting shot and killed another transport. With two down it told me I was unable to complete the mission...

But the mission was still going. Is this by design?

Anyways the Kilrathi destroyer and frigate showed up. The first part of this works well as there are lots of fighters to engage and the transports need defending. The Confed Frigate did a little broadside run along the bottom side of the Kilrathi destroyer but that didn't seem to do much. Once the fighters are down the pace of the mission slows considerably as the Arrows slowly whittle down the Kilrathi capships. It takes quite a bit of time it seems. The Confed Frigate ultimately did get both of them but it took time.

Complex mission... needs multiple run throughs on testing to suss out everything.

Ice wrote:Once the fighters are down the pace of the mission slows considerably as the Arrows slowly whittle down the Kilrathi capships. It takes quite a bit of time it seems. The Confed Frigate ultimately did get both of them but it took time.

I tend to agree, the mission can be tedious at this point. Would it help to replace the kilrathi destroyer with a smaller vessel, for example a corvette?

That won't help. The Terran frigate needs to be more effective. I'll see what I can do.

Not sure how the mission is scripted but perhaps once the enemy fighters are all down script a weapons free on the frigates missile batteries so it'll start to put the Kilrathi ships down? The player would then have the role of disabling enough laser turrets to permit the missiles to get through.

Just a thought.

The capship missile launchers ARE free.

The mission played fine. I had to be on my toes intercepting all those capship missiles. Members of my flight tend to stick with the convoy while I was afterburning my ass off to take down the capship missiles as soon as they arrived on the scene. This could be tweaked. Lost one transport. No further comments for now.

I was shot down on my first try. (I think it was a Dumbfire which killed me because I was dead right away and I was playing on easy, as usual) I'll have to try this one again soon.

he AI will attack the missiles, but only at very close range. That is unfortunately an AI limitation.

KeldorKatarn wrote:The capship missile launchers ARE free.

Gave this mission a lot of run throughs. First of all : I love it. There is a lot of roles to fit. Intercepting missiles, killing fighters, destroy turrets & missile launchers on cap ships. I've got to admit that I got myself killed by friendly fire the first two times I tried to beat this mission. I think that I got hit by cap ship missiles from the simons while I tried to destroy the turrets on the cats caps.

I can confirm that the frigate lacks the firepower to finish the two cap ships unless you manage to destroy every single turret and wait some time for missiles to be launched. Perhaps it would be good to have a "relieve bomber squad" arrive as soon as you manage to get rid of the fighters at the cap ship battle. I don't think increasing the simons' battle strenght or replacing it with a heavier cap would be necessary

I am afraid that won't work.

1. Bomber support is not available (as stated in a message from Hermes command) 2. there are several references to a frigate during the mission.

What we are going to do is either modify the frigate waypoints so that it can shoot missiles at point blank range or replace the light destroyer with a smaller vessel, for example a corvette.

Latter won't work. A corvette has even more rear-firepower. I'll make sure the frigate kills the ships, one way or the other.

In my opinion this is one of the most fun escort mission that I have ever flown. The fact that you come under attack so many times and in a number of different ways is what makes this mission so interesting.

The Capship Missile intercept reminded my somewhat of Starlancer with the exception that in Saga the turrets actually do there job. Then the Kamrani Class corvettes with fighter cover and missile support that show up which ramps things up a bit. Then once they are all gone is is one lass Cap ship missile salvo and then the direct attack by the frigate and light destroyer. It seems like the mission has that perfect balance of rising tension and expectations that makes it quite dramatic.

As for the last engagement, I thought it worked quite well. It made it feel like taking down the frigate and destroyer was a team effort for the whole convoy. The combing turret fire of all four transports and attacking Arrows took out the frigate and the Confed frigate looked to me like it maneuvered onto the tail of the destroyer and put a Anti-Ship missile up its tail pipe.

However give what has been said on the forum I take it that is not what was intended. You might want to look at the course the TCS Simmons takes when it turns around to engage. If its bow is not close enough to ether of the Kilrathi ships it may not launch anything.

I did notice one issue you might want to have a look at. The autopilot sequence between the last corvette engagement and the last Capship missile salvo does not include the convoy, only the Arrow flight appears.

Give the Frigate the VLS missiles i do in Last Line of Defence ^^ http://img694.imageshack.us/img694/6065/screen0046.jpg xD

Forgot to put this in my previous post. The sound in the first half of the mission briefing stutters.

@Thor: I think I know what hit you in your video of this mission. A wingman fired a missile at the corvette your were engaging and being so close to it, you were caught in the blast.

Edit: Ok.. having watched the entire video now it seems you've been caught in the blast... twice 😉

This mission was also revised in Beta 6, please test again in detail. The 2nd Corvette should now be attacked alright and the Simons should be much more effective now against the capital ships.

Hey guys, has anybody given this mission another try?

I haven't yet but I will put it on my list 😊

In the rush of analyzing the new mission looking at this one slipped my mind until now. I have just retried the mission and the frigate TCS Simmons is much more effective that the last time I played it. The destroyer and frigate are are both killed before they can penetrate the convoy's formation.

I am not sure what you changed however I was aware of a few things. First I was much more aware of the missiles from the Simmons than I have been in the past. Secondly I noticed that the Simmons seemed to be perfectly positioned when it destroyed the Kilrathi ships. It was perfectly level aft of and between the two of them so that all four of its laser turrets could engage the destroyer and when the destroyer died all four turrets just traversed to port and went right on engaging the frigate with no let up. I also noticed that the shields of both Kilrathi ships Capships were strained with at least one whole quadrant down before the missiles hit them.

It looks like instead of dropping back out of turret range behind the Kilrathi and try and take pot shots at them with its missiles as when I first played the mission the Simmons now stays in close where all of its weapon are most effective and the Kilrathi have minimum missile defense time and placed herself in a position which limited its exposure to the Kilrathi turret arcs while it was doing it.

All the other engagements before that one seem like they are working at least as wall as before. Twice while escorting the convoy during the last two times we had linked auto pilots with the convoy the auto pilot sequence did not show the convoy, only the Arrow flight. I am not sure if this is an issue or if the position of the Arrows was high enough above the Convoy for the Convoy to be out of the camera's field of view.

I think you have the main issues on this mission solved.

I do have one question. Have you run the Capship missile defense engagements without any fighters to see if the convoy is actually in danger from them? Sometimes it feels like the convoy's missile defenses are good enough to kill all the inbound missile by themselves as I have never lost a ship to missile attack on this mission.

The autopilot sequence camera angles are not final, but rest assured, the convoy is there, it is just out of frame.

About the capship missiles, yes we balanced it so usually 1-2 missiles will hit a transport, so if you just sit back you will most likely lose 2 transports to capship missiles alone. (And with each transport gone there's less turrets to intercept the next wave.)

I played through this mission today and I have encountered few issues. First one is when the Kilrathi capital ships appeared the Simons was pretty useless. When the Kilrathi Frigate was destroyed Simons started to employ his CSM on the remaining Kilrathi capship. Unfortunately all his attacks failed due to CSM not hitting it's target. The missiles flew past the capship exploding further away. See attached image:

📎 [Attachment: beta6-proxima2-1.JPG]

Simons wasted at least 6 missiles that way before I finshed the Kilrathi capship myself.

After that I got "well done" message and instruction to go to next waypoint, so I hit ALT-A. The fly-by sequence was just my Arrow (no wingman nearby) and it lasted until I hit ALT-A again and this time fly-by sequence played correctly sending me and my fellow pilots in the proximity of Hermes battle group.

The following screenshot was taken during the everlasting fly-by sequence after my Arrow flew away so it's not visible in the shot anymore. Becouse it was near the jump point I was able to see the transports jumping out. After I got bored I pressed ALT-A again as I mentioned earlier, and the correct fly-by sequence played.

📎 [Attachment: beta6-proxima2-2.JPG]

Maybe I will be able to reproduce this again by not engaging the Kilrathi capships, and delaying their destruction - maybe the couse of this bizzare fly-by sequence was that autopilot was engaged while being too close to Nav2 (The battle with 2 Kilrathi capships lasted long enough for the convoy to get close to Nav2)?

I need to check the Autopilot out again but I think you're right with the Simons. I've played this mission a few days ago and, even if my head was deep in the battle with those capships, I've noticed that the Simons doesn't seem to attack them.

As for the capship missile misses... I increased the capship missile turn rate, so it can actually hit something within the 90° view angle of the launcher. Doesn't make much sense if it can launch something but not hit it....

Please test again in the next beta whether the Simons is getting too effective now.

As for that strange autopilot thing... to be honest I have no idea what could have caused this. But I implemented a few safeguards to make sure no two nav points can ever be available at the same time here and moved Nav 2 further away from the last battle area. (The downside is that you can no longer fly to the navs manually now, you have to use autopilot in order for the mission to continue. I'm not sure whether I like that part.

beta8 playthrough:

I went through this mission without any problems. No casualities.

The simmons is very effective now. After I finished the last fighter I started to distract the cats turret fire and the simmons immediately got a hit on the destroyer. I watched the launch and impact and it all seemed rather realistic to me (she had a direct firing line). A fast paced mission with a little bit of ship vs ship combat. I like it the way it is.

I didn't encounter any auto pilot issues.

EDIT:

Almost forgot about it:

I was awarded a bronze star and the century award

-The Briefing had some lagging. -I've noticed a contradiction: Gerhardt says that you're supposed to escort the convoy to the Sirius jump point but you end up at the Sol jump point.

Bronze Star.

Please open a Mantis ticket about the jump point misnamer (it is the sirius jump point so the briefing is correct)

KeldorKatarn wrote:Please open a Mantis ticket about the jump point misnamer (it is the sirius jump point so the briefing is correct)

While playing this mission again I noticed that when I intercepted the Predator missiles I didn't get the credit for destroying them. I have 8 kills on Predator missiles from Vega 4 but none from this mission although I killed several of them :? .

The difference is - in Vega 4 missiles are just ships queued to fly to a single waypoint. In every other mission, torpedos are weapons. You do not get credits for destroying a projectile. It is as simple as that.

I though there was something fishy about those missiles in Vega4 😂 . Thanks for clearing that out Tolwyn.

Sometimes we have to improvise 😉

"Sometimes"? 😂

Don't know if you can do anything about it but I noticed that if you intercept the second wave of missiles very quickly there is a delay of ~30 seconds after the destruction of the last missile until the next message is played. May not be an issue but the pause was so long that I first thought that the mission script was broken as there isn't any indication that the script continues (no directives update, no message etc.)

There is no way for us to know whether the missiles are destroyed, so we have to wait a fixed amount of time.

Ok, I guessed as much. Just wanted to inform you about my observation. I don't think that anyone who plays through the game the first or second time will finish the missiles as quick as needed to actually notice this 😉

Some impressions on the current mission state:

Stinger wrote: Mission paths GREEN Same as before, the convoy survives almost everytime even by doing nothing, but you rated it as a non-issue since there are no alternative paths except for the Bronze Star - Left that one green ------------------------------------------------------------- Wingmen behavior GREEN working, but the arrows engage the missles very late - is that by design?

I wrote the comments in the greenlighting thread so that I don't forget to retest them in case you decide to alter some aspects of that mission - hope that's ok.