Part 46: Wild Weasel, Sol System, Sol Sector (Gameplay)

30th December 2668, Sol System, Sol Sector
Episode 5, Mission 2 - Wild Weasel

25 Confederation fighters attempt to destroy a Kilrathi carrier group. Somewhere in them is me in a Crossbow trying not to die.

Mission Briefing:
See previous mission. In short, the Kilrathi vanguard, lead by a Snakeir-class carrier, needs to be destroyed, so that our insane strategy for the main battle has a better chance of working. We'll be flying a Crossbow with the intent of torpedoing as many heavies as possible.


Mission Video (Youtube)
(Kilrathi frigate not actually on fire. But it's a cool picture).

Kills this mission: 10 (six fighters, two Targu-II class frigates, one Fralthra-class cruiser, one Snakeir-class carrier)

Yeah, this is hard - you need to get lucky with AI wingmen using their torpedoes correctly, which mine did here, doing a lot of damage to a Fralthra so that I could finish that and the carrier off, giving the cats very few replacement waves - and you need to fly well, in order to get a clean sweep. Not just being accurate with torpedoes (though obviously you can't afford to miss) but just staying alive in a Crossbow is hard (it's much easier in a Sabre to stay alive, though not really any easier to get a clean sweep, though much easier to get through the mission). So you've got to be alert for fighters lining up on you, but if you jump every time you take a hit you'll never launch a torpedo (and in any case a lot of the time they're from capital ship turrets, which are densely packed in this region of space). The heuristic I used was breaking off if something knocked my shields down from three to two bars on the schematic, or at a missile lock. This answers for everything except dumbfires, though a lot of the time a Drakhri, at least, will start firing lasers first, so if you turn the DF may miss. But really it's mostly instinct and partly retrying the mission so many times you know where all the turrets are.

Tactics Corner
Hoo boy. There are entirely too many ships in this engagement.

Friendly forces:
5x Epee light fighter
6x Rapier medium fighter
3x Sabre heavy fighter
5x Morningstar heavy fighter
3x Crossbow torpedo bomber
Then there's additionally the player's wing, which in this case is another 3x Crossbow torpedo bombers.

Enemy forces:
1x Snakeir-class carrier
2x Fralthra-class cruiser
3x Ralatha-class destroyer
5x Targu-II class frigate
(that's 22 torpedo hits worth of capships there. Our Crossbow carries six, so we need sixteen hits from the rest of the strike force)
6x Sartha light fighter
10x Hhriss heavy fighter
2x Drakhai Hhriss heavy fighter
9x Drakhri medium fighter (reinforcements, launch after 1 minute)
3x Jalkehi medium fighter (reinforcements, launch after 1 minute)
After that, near as I can tell, every minute the survivors amongst the Fralthras and the Snakeir will launch three fighters each, and they can be any of Krants, Drakhri or Sarthas.

Deployment:


Holy crap. We actually have numbers at the start, before the Kilrathi launch any of their several reinforcement waves, so the theoretical goal would be to take advantage of this and torpedo the carrier before it can get its fighters off the deck. This is the conventionally accepted strategy for playing this mission in a Sabre, which is the fighter I would have chosen. The problem with doing this in a Crossbow is that it takes so fucking long to get into torpedo range that the first batch of reinforcements will launch and kill you while you're partway through your torpedoing. The other important targets to get down early are the Targu-II class frigates, which eat AI torpedoes because of their great turret coverage.

So in a Crossbow that's what you go for. Pick one of the three closest Targu-IIs, get in the blind spot directly in front of it, launch a torpedo. Hit the map, target another nearby one, kill it (you'll probably have to get close in on this one since it'll be difficult to maneuver to right in front. Hopefully Concordia's Morningstars or your wingmen will knock out two or (preferably) three of them while you're doing this. If not, you can probably forget about a clean sweep. By this stage the first wave of reinforcements has probably launched:


At this point you need to finish up the frigates as quickly as possible (and if you don't get at least two, preferably three hits from people not you, forget about a clean sweep) and then move on to the carrier (or one of the cruisers if its been hit hard, like it was in the video), all the while checking for enemy fighters trying to kill you (an FF missile can one-hit kill a Sartha but not anything heavier, so try and use your missiles on them). Order your wingmen after any of the ships you aren't going for. If you can take down two of the three fighter-carrying ships, then your fighters will stay on top and all you have left to worry about is whether you have enough torpedoes left - though if you've killed more than about 5 or 6 ships you'll probably get mission accomplished if you retreat when Bradshaw says to, which is when the strike force is out of torps.

Ship of the day:
Fralthra-class cruiser

Class: Heavy Cruiser (Kilrathi)
Length: 612.30 m
Mass: Unknown 20,500 tonnes
Max Velocity: 150 kps
Cruise Velocity: 100 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 10 degrees/second
Weapons: 3x Flak Turret, 6x Laser Turret, 3x Anti-Matter Guns
Shields: Phase Shields
Armour: Front: 700 Left: 600 Right: 600 Rear: 700
Fighter Complement: 40

Game says: Bigger and heavier than the Fralthi, this new cruiser is a remarkable design. The ship carries 40 fighters, is armed well enough to engage any Confed destroyer or cruiser, and outclasses even the Confederation-class dreadnought in terms of armor.

I say: I don't like the Fralthra model; looks somewhere between Nephilim and Mon Calamari. It looks like the original, yes, but that doesn't stop me disliking it. I also don't like it because the fins around the aft end of the ship make angles for hitting the engines annoyingly difficult, which is the last thing you need in this mission. In terms of roles played in the game, the Fralthra is essentially a torpedo sponge. Takes four to kill, has a lot of turrets, is very annoying.

Total kills (Standoff): 22 missions / 260 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 134 missions / 1182 kills

Next time on Standoff:
All pilots to your ships, this is not a drill. Repeat, all pilots to your ships...