Freya 2 is becoming unfun really quickly.

A question, do the rest of the missions stick to the format of having you defend fleets against endless waves of bombers? This is starting to really wind me up the wrong way. The middle missions in the games were great, a nice variety but the last few misions I've played are just frustrating me.

Defending capships against wave after wave of bombers just isn't fun after a while, especially when the game's AI is programmed not to intercept the bombers. They have no problem stealing taking down fighters. Why would anyone think that this is fun? I'm about to chew my keyboard.

kill the bombers is going to be a common objective in the Excalibur since it will wipe the floor with all kilrathy fighters they have to do something to make it challenging but don't lose hope there are still a many memorable missions left where they say "survive, kill all the fighters, and be back before supper" the game is worth finishing and there are fun times ahead. you made it this far (heck you made it past Nifelheim 2)so don't give up

I really need help on this one. I tried for the last 3 hours to beat this mission, but always fail at the same spot.

1. Nav 1 - easy, some stealth-fighters
2. Nav 2 - easy, some light fighters
3. Nav 3 - hard, many bombers coming in, but I managed to keep all 4 cap ships alive
4. Nav 4 (jumppoint defense) - impossible.

I keep focusing on bombers and capship missiles, constantly pressing b, gliding towards the bombers and ignoring the 3, 4 heavy fightes shooting missiles at me. I have engines tuned down to have a more constant fire and stronger shields. That works. But than the capships come in. And more and more bombers. And it's impossible to take out the heavy destroyers or cruisers in your excalibur, there are just too many bombers coming in all the time. I order the support strike as soon as I can, having a heavy cruiser as target when I do. But nothing happens. The longbows never arrive? At one point the Pakthans are just too widely spread out to take them all out before they get close to the capital ship, now it all becomes a dice-roll wether your allied cap ships are capable of shooting down the predatormissiles before they get hit. But even if you somehow manage to keep all capships alive this long, the heavy destroyers and cruisers come in range and their heavy turrets take out your allies. There is no way to destroy the heavy turrets before, because you have to fly around like stupid to get from one bomber-squadron to another. The amount of bombers in this mission is just bullshit, sorry, but I'm really frustrated. There are 6 bombers going after each capship, you shoot them down, they just respawn. How the hell should I take out 20+ bombers across the battlefield at the same time AND destroy the heavy destroyers and cruisers? Soon after I get the message about all jumppoints being overrun the last capital ship goes down and the primary mission failed.

I know that these defend capship missions are meant to challenge the player in the excalibur, which is simply superior to normal fighters. But this isn't a challenge. This is purely unfair and frustraiting. My allies are too stupid, my wingmen don't go after the bombers, the capships don't focus fire on the heavy cruisers and the damn longbows never arrive.
How am I supposed to do this? I'm playing on easy, I had no big trouble so far, had to do some of the harder missions 2, or 3 times to get them including secondary objectives. But this is just too much. I`ve played all wing commander games, freespace 1+2, starlancer, freelancer, x2, x3:r, xbtf, x3:tc and never had much problems, so yes, I consider myself to be good at games like this. I just don't see a way to beat this besides repeating it until the luck is on my side and the capships actually do defend themselfs succesfully against missiles.
I don't want to skip the mission. I want a fair chance of success. So, is there any key-strategy to this? Am I doing something wrong?

The game overall was really fun so far. But as soon as you go to the Galahad-squad the balance becomes somehow blasted. There are more bombers than average fighters, it's not a tactical challenge but pure luck if you can shoot them down before their targets gets blown to pieces. I would really recommend to lower the amount of bombers in these missions or to spawn not all at once but one bombersquad after another. The player can't be at 4 places in the same time to take out 4 bombersquads at once.

I'm sorry if this sounds offensive to anyone, but after 3 hours of continued failure I'm really frustrated and would really appreciate some help with this mission.

I just replayed freya 2 protecting the cabot is not mission critical the worst that will happen from letting it go down is that venom yells at you in debriefing. there is also no way to repel the kilrathy incursion its basically a cutscene where you can get shot down so cut loose and have fun racking up your kill count.

misc. tips
1. bump up your weapon power and use both the tachyons and the rapiers to shoot down enemies quickly
2. "b" doesn't actually tell you the closest bomber (but its still good for finding cap ship missiles) also the cabot bomber wave is almost all bombers so you are better off just hitting "h"
3. if you feel you must attack the capships then match speed and aim for the cap ships engines that way they never get close enough to use the turrets
4. some users (not me) use dumbfire rockets to shoot down bombers with one shot this takes practice
5. there is no shame in reducing the difficulty

Well, thanks.
Protecting the Cabot was, as I wrote, not the issue. The problem was the last nav-point, the jumpgate where a whole kilrathi-fleet jumps in. I read somewhere else that this mission can`t be won, so I didn't bother to keep trying...

The thing is, usually it`s a really bad thing that happens when "primary objective failed" shows up. I restart instantly when this happens, because I want a total victory. While in the other misssions which are doomed to fail it was pretty obvious that it's scripted (destruction of your carrier in the prologue and the destruction of the kenny where you are at least 20.000 km away in gliding when it happens). But this time there is no indication that this is a scripted event. It plays as many other missions you have right before, where you have to kill a ridiculous amount of bombers to protect one or several capital ships.

To your tipps:

1. I find it much better to only use the reaper guns. That way you can lower the energyamount for your guns and still have rapid sustained firing until doomsday and take out fighters much faster. Even with engine-energy tuned down one step the tachyons fire 2 shots before the energy is drained, it also lowers your rate of fire with the reaperguns. The reapers are much more accurate. I tried the last mission with both setups. Using the Reapers only I got 157 kills (shields tuned up one step: less weaponenergy). Using Tachyon and Reapers (engine tuned down one step) against fighters I only got 126 kills, it actually took longer to kill an enemy. Either way, in said mission, as written in my post, I had engine-energy lowered to have more energy for my guns and used full guns... didn't help much.

2. H doesn't show you the closest enemy either (at least not measured in distance in km). In most defense-missions there are several bombersquads. I really recommend to use b, while your at distance just swap through all bombers once and pick the closest group to take out. It also helps hammering it when no bombers are around to get them as soon as possible, or find capitalship-torpedos to intercept.

3. Attacking the capships won't work in this mission. As I said: you can't take them out without letting the bombers slip through. That's because the mission is by default not beatable, you will always fail at this point. The only question is how long it takes till all 4 allied cap ships are down. I'm not even sure if you actually can take out the capships or their engines/turrets. At least in the scout-mission with the longbow, where you have to jump to another system, the 3 corvettes can't be shot below 43% and neither can their turrets until they followed you through the jumpgate. Maybe I try it someday to see if it is possible. But taking out even just the engines of a heavy destroyer with an Excalibur won't be fun...

4. I rarely used missiles against Bombers as they are pretty much dead when you shoot at them within 10 seconds, as they can't avoid incoming fire. But that might speed things up, getting close enough for dumbfire missiles won't be hard...
But: In the later missions where bombers are a real menace I took out 28 packtahns in each mission. Might still be helpfull to take one squad out quickly, but the most work must be done with the guns anyways.

5. If you are already playing on easy, and had no problem with other missions so far, including Nifelheim 2, then reducing the difficulty isn't a real appropriate option. Plus: in this particular mission it doesn't help at all, as your failing is part of the story and can not be avoided.

Anyway, thanks for your suggestions. I will try the dumbfires when I'm replaying in higher difficulties.

>> I'm about to chew my keyboard.
Bite marks on the keyboard are the trademark sign of WC.
I read one confession that someone once smashed his Amiga 500 in frustration.

Just be a good soldier and follow the instructions. If it tells you to retreat, retreat.
And, "unfun" is just the right word.

I just played this mission.

I also have the same question: where were the Longbows? After calling for reinforcements (C-4), there was just no further comment about this action....

Were the comms being jammed or this call for reinforcement couldn't get through? Or the Longbows were just getting shot down? It was never being mentioned and I found it curious....

Oh wow. I just spent 2 days trying to beat this mission. Noticed all the same things. Like the original poster I'm pretty decent so I never had all my cap ships go down. I just fought and fought and fought until I died personally but never once saw what happened if all my capships died.

Love this game guys, truly amazing, but this mission NEEDS a little more cue that the situation is impossible.

And as mentioned above the longbows never arrive and the missile strike doesn't happen when you call them in. All of this together made this one impossible to figure out.