Part 17: Mastif Patrol, Mastif System, Sol Sector (Gameplay)

22nd December 2668, Mastif System, Sol Sector
Episode 2, Mission 2 - Mastif Patrol

A chance encounter between a ferry flight of Rapiers to the Firekka and a long-range Kilrathi bomber patrol sets up a meeting engagement between Bradshaw's Stiletto squadron and a Gothri wolfpack. With her finely-honed instinct for getting into trouble, Marie "Sparrow" Leblanc is naturally in one of the Rapiers...

(Which is a good thing, because Sparrow's actually pretty useful when she's on your side. I don't think there are any better AI Rapier pilots.)

Apologies in advance here for ninja editing; I'd forgotten to close my e-mail client so I got a "you have a new e-mail" alert while landing in the recording for the video you actually see the fight of. I've replaced it with the landing sequence for the other time I did this mission with 1 casualty; however, that was a Stiletto whereas in the mission it was a Rapier, so Sparrow's line after Bradshaw is gleeful about bringing back Foxtrot wing is a bit different. She would have said

: Huh, or what's left of it. What a fight!

Mission Briefing:

Briefing Video (Youtube)


Mission Video (Youtube)

Kills this mission: 5

This is the wingman competence version, so naturally they have a greater proportion of the kills, and there's only 14 to go around; I get slightly more than a third which isn't all that bad given there's 10 friendlies around for the closing parts of the mission. In the clusterfuck version I get 10 kills (and the screenshot I used for the mission video) and I think Sparrow gets 3, leaving 1 for the remaining 9 fighters that showed up at some point (and, in Dragon's case, flew straight into an asteroid in the opening head-to-head pass, because I was skirting it and she hadn't broken formation yet).

Tactics Corner
Nav 1
Friendly forces:
3x Stiletto light fighter

Enemy forces:
1x Gothri heavy fighter

Just kill it. Save your missiles though, because:

Foxtrot Nav:
Friendly forces:
3x Stiletto light fighter
2x Rapier medium fighter (though it feels a bit insulting to put the Standoff Rapier and the Talon in the same class)
3x Stiletto light fighter (Reinforcements, arrive ~1m 40s after start of engagement)
3x Stiletto light fighter (Reinforcements, arrive ~2m 10s after start of engagement)

Enemy forces:
6x Gothri heavy fighter
2x Gothri heavy fighter (Reinforcements, arrive ~40s after start of engagement)
5x Gothri heavy fighter (Reinforcements, arrive ~50s after start of engagement)

I'd post a map here, but I don't really see the point, there's no real reference points in this battle and reinforcements all arrive pretty close, so it wouldn't really tell you anything, it's just a straight dogfight. Normally 13 vs. 11 isn't that bad a scrap, even if the Kilrathi are in substantially heavier fighters than you are. The problem, of course, is that their reinforcements arrive before yours do, and for thirty seconds or so it's 13 vs. 5 and that's what you've got to get through, preferably without losing too many of your own fighters. The other problem is that Gothri haven't got any easier to kill than they were last mission, so unlike in Episode 1 where you could even the numbers fairly easy against Talons, the Kilrathi have much more staying power.

Provided you know what you're doing and use your missiles at the start to try and kill Gothri as quickly as possible, you should be able to win this mission at least half the time and probably slightly more, regardless of how well your wingmen fly.

New characters:

Lieutenant Robert Collins ("Saxman")
(OK, he showed up last mission, but I'm spreading these out a bit)


A year behind Bradshaw at the Academy, Saxman was assigned to the Defiance's bomber wing following his graduation and struck up a friendship with Bradshaw over the years they served together on that ship. They often worked together in operations, with Bradshaw's Rapier flight responsible for escorting the bombers. After the loss of the Defiance Saxman was assigned to Perry Naval Base, where his career stagnated for a while, but he was hopeful his posting to the Firekka around the start of the game may restart it.

Not really sure what to say about Saxman. He's kind of an extra character who never really does all that much. Has a good line in taunts, though, so you can see where the callsign "Saxman" comes from. It's easy to say "they could have done more with him" of course; that's pretty much true of every character ever. But you do feel that Saxman ought to be doing some of the peacemaking that Cougar often ends up doing, as another ex-Defiance pilot who knows Bradshaw, Spoons, Squealer and Sparrow.

Ship of the day:
Hermes-class shuttle

Class: Assault Shuttle
Length: 31.51m
Mass: 35 tonnes
Max Velocity: 350 kps
Afterburner Velocity: No afterburners
Maximum Yaw: 40
Maximum Pitch: 40
Maximum Roll: 30
Weapons: 2 turrets; I think they're standard fighter neutron turrets.
Shields: Fore: 140 Aft: 140
Armour: Fore: 100 Left: 100 Right: 100 Aft: 100

Game says: These lightly-armored shuttles carry a contingent of marines for deep space assault operations. Although fast and well-armed for a shuttle, they still require very close fighter protection during combat.

I say: Something to escort, basically, should marines be involved in a mission (as in Storming the Rock in episode 1, I'm getting caught up before new Kilrathi ships start coming thick and fast) they'll get to wherever they are going on one of these.

Total kills (Standoff): 8 missions / 65 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 121 missions / 987 kills

And finally:

And Sparrow? I tend to think she's the best VA'd of the characters. Unless you just want to laugh at the whole thing in which case it's Trigger.

Rapier: I misremembered this episode, I thought this mission was in one. I played ahead while this video was uploading, and you don't get a Rapier this Episode. Pretty certain that you fly one in the first mission of episode 3 though, so the answer is "in three missions time". For the next two missions the game taunts me by making me fly a Gladius with Rapiers on escort duty.

edit: Looked up the mission guide that's posted on the Standoff forums. On the winning mission path, you have to fly the Stiletto six times, the Gladius four times, the Rapier five times, the Sabre five times, and you have a choice (sometimes including a ship we've not seen, feel free to speculate) seven times. On the Episode 5 losing path missions which I'm also intending to play, you fly the Rapier four times, the Sabre twice, and two ships we've not yet seen once each, one for the only time in the game in what's probably my favourite mission.

So far, we've flown the Stiletto five times, the Gladius twice and had one choice. So it's pretty much once you switch to the better ships you don't have to go back.

Next time on Standoff:
Enemy capital ships...well, almost.