Part 26: Rearguard Action, Warsaw System, Vega Sector (Gameplay)

24th December 2668, Warsaw System, Vega Sector
Episode 3, Mission 3 - Rearguard Action

A flight of fighters from the Firekka escorts some Clydesdale minelayers in order to delay the Kilrathi advance and allow Tolwyn's fleet to disengage.

Mission Briefing:


Briefing Video (Youtube)



Mission Video (Youtube)


Kills this mission: 25

Ugh. One of Standoff's three actual escort missions, as distinct from intercept missions in that you're required to guard something else while it does something and as distinct from faux-escort missions in that the thing you're guarding is actually quite vulnerable. This one sucks an awful lot more than the others do, because the others are much more awesome for a variety of reasons which WILL NOT BE DISCUSSED AT THIS TIME. Fortunately keeping all of the minelayers alive is distinctly optional. Actually I'd say keeping enough of them alive to hit the secondary objective is deprecated, because if you do that you skip the next mission I'm going to play, and Destroyer Rescue is awesome. It's like Kurasawa-2 in an engine where capital ships aren't made of explodium, and once you've figured out how to be smart about winning, it is a great challenge.

The best thing to come out of this mission is what Spoons does offscreen. A shipment of replacement fighters intended for a fleet carrier. The next flight deck update is cause for celebration. I'm sure the fact that the TCS Moskva will be a bit understrength for a while won't hurt.

Tactics Corner
No enemy at Nav 1 where you meet the minelayers, just a conversation wherein you lose your other Rapier wing.

Nav 2
Friendly forces:
6x Clydesdale-class minelayers (mission objective, must be protectged) TCS Cachalot, Rorqual, Grampus, Porpoise, Narwhal, and Seal.
3x Rapier II medium fighters
3x Stiletto light fighters (reinforcements, arrive after 1 minute 20 seconds and then join)

Enemy forces:
2x Kamekh-class corvettes
6x Krant medium fighters
4x Drakhri medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive after 45 seconds)
3x Gratha fighter-bombers (reinforcements, arrive after 45 seconds)
5x Drakhri medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive agter 1 minute 20 seconds)

Standoff is beginning to over-use the mechanic of non-overwhelming forces arriving at regular intervals. Especially when they add to this the requirement to protect some very vulnerable minelayers (no phase shields on a Clydesdale). That said, they do do something a bit clever with the escort mechanic - the more of those minelayers you keep alive, the less time they need to lay the minefield and so the fewer enemies you face. Here we're down to three fighters against potentially ten or so hostiles and that gets pretty ugly, though fortunately one of our wingmen is Sparrow who can at least be relied upon to keep the enemy occupied for a good while. Anyway, this is the mission's big fight.

The initial deployment looks like this:

But none of the fighters here go after the Clydesdales, and the Kamekhs won't be a threat for some time, so now's probably the time to kill as many Krants as you can (something which should be second nature by now) to clear a path to the Gratha when they arrive. They come in on the same vector as the previous set, but that's not as useful as it might be since your fighters are likely to have been chasing Krants all over the place. Like so:


The final wave of Drakhri also come in on the same vector, and are just a little fuck you from the mission designer, since they arrive just after your reinforcements show up so that nobody is targeting them and they have a free shot at your allies, which they will proceed to take and your wingmen drop like flies. It's a toss-up as to whether you switch to these Drakhri when they arrive or try and finish off the Gratha. Neither strategy seems to work particularly well so I think mostly it comes down to whoever's closest. I think this is probably the time to trigger most of your missiles.

Nav 3
Enemy forces:
3x Sartha light fighters
3x Drakhri medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive after Sarthas are destroyed)
3x Krant medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive after Sarthas are destroyed)
3x Jalkehi heavy fighters (reinforcements, arrive after previous wave)
3x Krant medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive with Jalkehi)

Nav 4
Enemy forces:
3x Sartha light fighters
3x Jalkehi heavy fighters (reinforcements, arrive after Sarthas are destroyed)
3x Gratha fighter-bombers (reinforcements, arrive after Sarthas are destroyed)
5x Jalkehi heavy fighters (reinforcements, arrive after previous wave)
6x Krant medium fighters (reinforcements, arrive with Jalkehi)

These two engagements are there to punish you for bad performance in the first fight. If you saved enough of the minelayers (three or more) then the minelaying at each navpoint is completed before the third wave of enemy fighters can arrive. Likewise, if you kept enough friendlies alive from the first furball (again, the magic number is three, and if one of them is Sparrow that helps) the first and second waves should be easy enough to deal with, though you'll have to nurse your probably-crippled fighter through them a bit. Look out for dumbfires!

If you don't, this happens, with your burner fuel low and your missiles probably exhausted:

Good luck. The way to win this fight is not to play. Keep three minelayers alive and this doesn't happen.

New Characters

1st Lieutenant James Walker ("Trigger")


Trigger's rather brief first TCSF career ended when he punched his commanding officer during a mission debrief. Such reactions have occasionally been forgiven after high-stress or traumatic missions, but Trigger's wing had not encountered any enemy forces. After kicking around the Gemini sector for a few years he eventually ended up flying a Talon for the Nexus militia squadrons, where he was sent to give Bradshaw's TCS Lionheart a hand with the Guadacanal pirates, and then he got swept up when Reismann was looking for every pilot available to take with the Firekka.

Proud posessor of the worst best most distinctive voice acting in the game, Trigger doesn't show up much in cutscenes on the Firekka. Maniac said that he thought Iceman was "in it for the killing" - well, Trigger actually is. He's a recreation of that sort of hyper-aggressive persona, something which WC3 and WC4 both do rather better and less over the top. I'm mostly convinced that Trigger is intended as comic relief due to how ridiculous he is. As a pilot, he's...OK, nothing special, obeys orders should you feel like giving many, doesn't eject more than average. Nothing special, other than having "I'm Trigger, you're dead" as a taunt which is one of the better human ones in the game.

Ship of the day:
Kamekh-class Corvette

Class: Corvette (Kilrathi)
Length: 135.10 m
Mass: 1300 tonnes
Max Velocity: 200 kps
Cruise Velocity: 100 kps
Maximum Yaw: 3 degrees/second
Maximum Pitch: 3 degrees/second
Maximum Roll: 3 degrees/second
Weapons: Flak Cannon (3x), Laser turrets (2x), Torpedoes (4x), Image Recognition Missile (6x)
Shields: Front: 980 Back: 980
Armour: Front: 200 Left: 180 Right: 180 Back: 200

Game says: Replacing the old Spikeri-class corvettes in the 2650s, the Kamekh is a highly effective adversary for the Confed Venture, with superior armour and weaponry. When it comes to shields and speed, however, the Venture is the better of the two.

I say: Kilrathi corvette, rather shockingly actually used in wolfpack tactics in Standoff unlike every other space game I've seen (OK, in Freespace 2 they tend to show up in pairs which is an improvement on individually I guess, but Freespace corvettes bear, like most Freespace ships, little resemblance to the class of ship they allegedly are). Have a lot of turrets and good coverage but they don't track brilliantly well so you can kill them without taking too much damage providing you keep weaving. If you've got to kill them in a hurry you have to use up precious dumbfires and will still end up half-dead at the best.

Total kills (Standoff): 13 missions / 153 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 126 missions / 1075 kills

Next time on Standoff:
Destroyer? But I hardly know 'er!
(OK, that doesn't work as well as some of those lines do).