Aggggh! How to keep TCS Armageddon alive?

[spoiler:2gtztlri]OK... Three times trying to keep the TCS Armageddon alive has just about driven me mad! What should I go after first, the Pakthan or the cap ship missiles? TheAktahn are closer, so I go for them first, and then the missiles get through! AggggH! Suggestions?[/spoiler:2gtztlri]

This mission is very difficult imo...

Tried it 3 times on easy where i did not loose a ship to the last battle where i lost all of them

Then i tried it on very easy but in the second attackwave the armageddon and one capship have been destroyed.

My Problem is: The Bombers seem to come from all sides and i cannot tell ma wingmen what to do.
E.g. Each fighter attacks one incoming bomberwing.
The capships intercept most of the missles themselves while i kill the bombers but some always get through. This is because if i fight on one side of the battlegroup all other sides seem to be completly uncovered.

Can you tell me what the difficulty levels really do to the mission?
More / less attackers?, less capship missle dmg ...
I think this mission will be a tough one even on very easy..

Could you explain what you mean by "use glide" ? You can just glide at one side of the battlegroup so the problem of dying capships on the others sides should be still valid.
Did anyone of the betatesters / gamedevs EVER beat the game with all missions on the highest difficulty level?
Maybe I'm just a hard noob but i really think the difficulty levels are tough at least.

The difficulty does several things. The most important is that lowering the difficulty increases the damage you do to enemies, and decreases the damage they do to you. It will also make your wingmen more effective (at least at dogfighting; the AI just seems to suck at hitting capship missiles). I don't think the number of enemies is changed, though one of the devs can correct me if I'm wrong. It also changes enemy behavior; things like how likely they are to fire missiles.

And yes, this game is hard; it was designed to be hard. One of the design goals was to capture the "feel" of the old-school Wing Commander games, which were very hard and very unforgiving (and the early ones didn't even have a difficulty setting, so you couldn't make it easier).

Anyway, check some of the other threads around here; there's some good advice on tactics in several of them.

Yeah arisian i understood what the dev goal was and I think that is the fact i like the game so much It's not a quicktime event "Press-X-to-not-die" console game

I got this mission now after couple of tries and i think in addition to what you wrote, that the difficulty setting does not help in "capship" missions very much.

I just don't know if making the game this hard is what you want for a good game.
I think a lot of people may not play or quit a game this hard and that is sad because they miss all the good things beside the hardcore action e.g. the story, the wingmen and their chat, the music, the leveldesgin and so on...
Don't get me wrong i like difficult games but if "very easy" is "normal" (at least i was under the impression) then you will scare some possible fans off, who otherwise might have liked it

Thanks for the hints for the mission though

Sometimes, the line between "cheating" and "fighting smarter" is purely academic.

I'm beating this mission for only one reason:
When they said "The Galahads will fly ahead to clear a path" or somesuch, I decided that rather than hit the Autopilot function, I'd actually do that. I kicked afterburner, toggled autoglide, and flew to navpoint 1 ON MY OWN because those STUPID effing spacebarns have ZERO capacity to defend themselves from the goddamn torpedos.

So I get there, and lo and behold, the cats were waiting for the ambush JUST as we all expected--and yet, who would have GUESSED that I was the only effing pilot who reacted appropriately by ruining their surprise premature!! WELL THEN! Once I aggroed those worthless furballs, the other pilots finally get the lead out and afterburn their way over while I single-handedly BATHE THE STARS IN CAT BLOOD.

Not a single bomber got through. Now I'm on to navpoint two. Do you think I'm gonna autopilot my way there?

Fat Chance, pussycat, I'm taking you to the vet for the LAST TIME.

---

Edit Update:

As a matter of fact,

doing it this way seems to be more like how the Terran Confederation operates.

"Oh hey, we have these awesome new fighters that are especially good at automatically targeting slippery prey and dishing out massive amounts of damage while evading equally massive amounts of damage... and we KNOW that the path ahead of us is absolutely JAM-PACKED with bombers (our capships' Achilles Heels...) so why don't we send the Excalibur fighters ahead to sanitize the area of our biggest weakness first?"

Because that's kind of what I did, and I must tell you, it WAS fun racing the kitties back to the convoy, trying to blow them out of the sky before they arrive. In fact, it's so fun, I could swear it feels exactly like that's how you guys intended the mission to run, except somebody botched up the script somehow.

One way or another, you have my sincerest thanks for making this 'alternative interpretation of orders' possible, even if it wasn't your intention. Now all I have to ask of you is this:

Do not, for the love of GOD, ruin this mission by trying to 'fix' it >_<;

my simple advice is except for finding cap ship missiles and groups of bombers don't rely on the auto targeting. just kill what ever bomber wanders in to your sights and keep an eye on the Armageddon and kill all the bombers that get near it

Besides, we discussed the difficulty during Beta-testing, and we actually wanted it to be harder to defend the Armageddon since she sustained almost no damage in earlier releases, thus making the mission too easy... Keep it up, you'll make it with enough gliding

arisian wrote: And yes, this game is hard; it was designed to be hard.

I'm sorry, but I call shenanigans on this right here.

While it's fairly doable to keep the TCS Armageddon alive on Easy, keeping the rest of the fleet alive is impossible in any situation. Even from using glide, the wingmen focus only on fighters, the ships anti-spear missiles do NOT work (they don't even fire half the time), and the bombers are spread on at least 4 corners of the combat zone. In no other game was a player expected to do this, even in the original Wing Commander. This is a straight up case of false difficulty, which is right up there with hitting below the belt. If this is REALLY a mod about following orders/being a wingman, why am I the only competent pilot in the fleet?

I have done nothing but play this mission over and over again, trying to find some plausible way to kill all the bombers and keep the fleet alive, but given the number of bombers, plus the low energy level of the Excalibur, plus the fact that the AI bombers know about getting danger close, plus the fact that the player is LITERALLY and COMPLETELY by themselves makes defending the fleet an impossibility.

This is NOT "classic difficulty," this is downright taking advantage of horrible AI and even worse targetting (the key for targetting the closest bomber ACTUALLY targets the bomber nearest the reticle, meaning I end up missing the first bomber wave)

[spoiler:28gz02qi]

CycloneDusk wrote: Sometimes, the line between "cheating" and "fighting smarter" is purely academic.

I&#39;m beating this mission for only one reason:
When they said "The Galahads will fly ahead to clear a path" or somesuch, I decided that rather than hit the Autopilot function, I&#39;d actually do that. I kicked afterburner, toggled autoglide, and flew to navpoint 1 ON MY OWN because those STUPID effing spacebarns have ZERO capacity to defend themselves from the goddamn torpedos.

So I get there, and lo and behold, the cats were waiting for the ambush JUST as we all expected--and yet, who would have GUESSED that I was the only effing pilot who reacted appropriately by ruining their surprise premature!! WELL THEN! Once I aggroed those worthless furballs, the other pilots finally get the lead out and afterburn their way over while I single-handedly BATHE THE STARS IN CAT BLOOD.

Not a single bomber got through. Now I&#39;m on to navpoint two. Do you think I&#39;m gonna autopilot my way there?

Fat Chance, pussycat, I&#39;m taking you to the vet for the LAST TIME.

---

Edit Update:

As a matter of fact,

doing it this way seems to be more like how the Terran Confederation operates.

"Oh hey, we have these awesome new fighters that are especially good at automatically targeting slippery prey and dishing out massive amounts of damage while evading equally massive amounts of damage... and we KNOW that the path ahead of us is absolutely JAM-PACKED with bombers (our capships&#39; Achilles Heels...) so why don&#39;t we send the Excalibur fighters ahead to sanitize the area of our biggest weakness first?"

Because that&#39;s kind of what I did, and I must tell you, it WAS fun racing the kitties back to the convoy, trying to blow them out of the sky before they arrive. In fact, it&#39;s so fun, I could swear it feels exactly like that&#39;s how you guys intended the mission to run, except somebody botched up the script somehow.

One way or another, you have my sincerest thanks for making this &#39;alternative interpretation of orders&#39; possible, even if it wasn&#39;t your intention. Now all I have to ask of you is this:

Do not, for the love of GOD, ruin this mission by trying to &#39;fix&#39; it >_<;

[/spoiler:28gz02qi]

This is a MAJOR complaint I have. On previous missions we would constantly be told to "stay in formation" and would even be penalized with being forced to start over if we didn't. Now we suddenly can fly ahead and nobody said anything. I also don't want to go into detail about how lucky you were to pull this off, given that from the start, rushing out like that causes about 8+ missiles my way, instant kill.

This mod might have had a lot of heart poured into it, but every time I see something this ridiculous, I question exactly how much thought was put into it. Before someone tries flaming me with the "it was beta tested" excuse, let me remind them that not all players are elite aces, and designing a game to be hard on easy is stupid, that's what HARD mode is for. I really don't want to hear M.D.'s voice any more than I have to. Having to start over at the beginning in older games was fine for the simple reason that it was straight back into the action.