Part 3: Mission 3 – Operation White Out, October 10th, 2004
The Northern EyeMission 3: Operation White Out – October 10th, 2004
Overview: Mobius 1 is dispatched to destroy an Erusean-controlled long-range radar facility atop Mt. Shezna. Destroying the Eruseans’ radar coverage over the Saint Ark panhandle will allow ISAF to safely evacuate its remaining ground forces off the mainland from Saint Ark to North Point in preparation for an invasion mission to retake southern Usea.
Guest Commentators: We have a newcomer to the commentary rotation and our first STUPID NEWBIE avatar up there. NobleSixFour joins me for this mission… because he said no to doing “Safe Return” and I’d already recorded “Stonehenge Offensive” with CJacobs
Anyways, Noble, as we’ll call him, actually joined Something Awful because of the Ace Combat LPs, so I am incredibly humbled and honored to have him on as a guest for this mission. He hasn’t done any LPs of his own yet, but he is possibly maybe gearing up to one day LP Jane’s Advanced Strike Fighters aka JASF for the PC—a game that has nothing to do with either the Jane’s Information Group, or Electronic Arts, who made the majority of the other Jane’s games before dumping the license in 2000, despite banking on the reputation of both to sell the metal. So that’ll be interesting.
I’m also trying to talk him into LPing Ace Combat: Joint Assault (also known as Ace Combat X2, depending on the market) for the PSP as a side LP to Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, just to show off its balls-out banana-ass crazy plot. Just because when he recounted it to me over Skype, it sounded like the dumbest goddamn thing I have ever heard, and for an Ace Comabt game, that’s saying a fucking lot.
MOUNT SHEZNA
Located in a mountainous stretch on the northmost peninsula on Usea, the dormant volcano Mt. Shezna is the highest point on the entire Usean continent, and the location of one of ISAF’s long-range radar installations. Due to its location outside of Stonehenge’s coverage radius, the area around Mt. Shezna itself suffered a direct impact from one of the larger fragments of the Ulysses 1994XF04 asteroid on July 3rd, 1999.
The fragment struck with such force that, at the impact site, later named Krasinsky Crater, several thermal vents were unearthed and continue to billow steam out from beneath the Shezna magma reservoir to this day.
THE RETURN LINE
We’ve glimpsed this feature twice before now in Ace Combat Zero, but this mission in Ace Combat 04 introduces us formally to the concept of the Return Line. This is the first time in an Ace Combat game that the Return Line appears. The majority of the mission in Ace Combat 04 feature a Return Line in them. The Return Line in almost every mission is somewhat indicative of some of the structural flaws in 04, which features a slate of longer missions than previous and future Ace Combats do, which basically force you to use the it lest you run out of ammo.
Ace Combat 5 varied its mission structure a lot more effectively, and Zero followed suit rather well, as you’ll remember the only missions it appears in in Zero were Bastion and Lying In Deceit.
Generally speaking, you can cross the Return Line at any point in any mission it appears in, and you can do this as many times as you want or need to. Crossing the Return Line loads you into a skippable landing and take-off segment at either an airstrip or carrier. Upon landing, your ammo is refilled, your plane is repaired back to full health, and you are given the option of changing your special weapon loadout for your plane if you have any additional weapons unlocked for it. However, on Hard or Ace difficulty, your plane isn’t repaired.
It’s easy to see the Return Line as a crutch for players, and god knows I certainly use it as such an unsmall amount of times over the course of this LP, but there is a serious trade off at play here. For those of you who remember the Zero LP, the Return Line is often placed a large distance away from the main action of the mission at the bottom of the map. That means you have to waste a considerable chunk of your mission time traveling great distances back and forth to refill your ammo. This means you probably won’t have enough time to destroy all the targets you need to in order to earn an S-rank for the mission.
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Tempel
- Plane: F-16C Fighting Falcon
- Mission 3
- Spawn conditions: Appears south west of Shenza Radar 2 on the western part of the map.
Kadorhal posted:
Ace Number Three is Tempel. Named for Ernst Wilhelm Leberect Tempel, born December 4th, 1821. German astronomer who worked first at Marseille, France, then after the Franco-Prussian War moved to Italy. So far the most active namesake of the Aces here (by virtue of more than one discovery), discovering five asteroids on his own in a seven-year period from 1861-68, and co-discovering about 16 more. His discoveries include 64 Angelina and 65 Cybele in March 1861, 74 Galatea in August 1862, 81 Terpsichore in September 1864, and 97 Klotho in February 1868. Won the Prix Valz for 1880, later had the asteroid 3808 Tempel and the lunar crater Tempel named in his honor. Died March 16th, 1889, at 67 years old. (Told you I'd eventually have something worthwhile.)
His paint scheme for the F-16C is one I like, upon closer inspection. The top looks a little like the F-15C's standard livery here and in Zero, and the bottom vaguely reminds me of the USAF's Thunderbirds.
Tracks featured in Mission 3:
DISC 1
Some behind the scenes screenshots and storyboards depicting Krasinsky Crater and Mt. Shezna.
ACES AT WAR page:
