Part 50: Sacrifice, Sol System, Sol Sector (Gameplay)

1st January 2669, Sol System, Sol Sector
Episode 5, Mission 4 - Sacrifice

The Confederation, running low on ships and munitions, sends a small force to attack a Kilrathi carrier (see the story update for my complaint about this) bolstered by civilian volunteers running interference.

Mission Briefing:

Briefing Video (Youtube)


Mission Video (Youtube)
Kills this mission: 28

This is a hugely fun (and rather easy) mission. There's a large Kilrathi force and you've only got 3 bombers and 6 fighters - but most of the cat ships are wasting their time attacking civillians. It's a question of can you kill enough cats, quickly enough, while they're not shooting back, before your, ahem, organic ablative shielding, is burned away. I don't know why the Kilrathi pilots were so bad - maybe they wasted too many missiles on the civilians or something. I even checked the game was still set to Nightmare (it was).

Tactics Corner

Snakeir Nav:
Friendly forces:
Confederation Space Force:
3x Epee light fighter (including Jacob "Hawk" Manley, apparently)
3x Rapier II medium fighter
3x Broadsword heavy bomber
Civilian:
4x Talon medium fighter
9x Tarsus light deathtrap
4x Artemis light recon ship
5x Errant-class light freighter
3x Free Trader-class merchantman

I cannot ever remember the civvies doing much useful, other than being targets for the Kilrathi to shoot at. Sometimes they take down the corvettes if you damage them a bit. I think, that might have been the Epees or the Broadswords. I was kind of distracted.

Enemy forces:
1x Snakeir-class fleet carrier
3x Targu II-class frigate
2x Ralatha-class destroyer
3x Kamekh-class corvette
4x Sartha light fighter
12x Drakhri medium fighter
6x Krant medium fighter
3x Hhriss heavy fighter
3x Jalkehi heavy fighter (reinforcements, arrive after 2 minutes)
3x Drakhri medium fighter (reinforcements, arrive after 3 minutes 30 seconds)

Deployment:


With the corvettes much closer to you than any other Kilrathi ships, it's worth going in for a couple of passes against them at the start to see if you can inflict some damage before the Kilrathi interceptors catch up to you. Once the first Sartha arrive don't be afraid to switch targets though, the fighters are the threat to the bombers so they're what you need to kill. You can ignore all the captial ships - the Broadswords will kill the carrier if they survive while you blast the fighter screen, and everything else is basically harmless.

Concordia Nav:
Friendly forces:
1x Confederation-class dreadnought TCS Concordia
1x Gilgamesh-class destroyer TCS Orestes
Whatever's left from the Confed forces at the previous Nav
3x Stiletto light fighter (if the Firekka has that many left, otherwise, as many as it has)
5x Super Ferret patrol fighter
2x Arrow light fighter
3x Rapier medium fighter (including Dirk "Stingray" Wright)

Yup, the Concordia's got some prototype Arrows; this isn't quite the version we'll be seeing in Wing Commander 3, but one more optimised for patrol duties. I'll talk about it a bit more later, since it is flyable, though only in one mission on the losing path, so we won't see it for a while.

Enemy forces:
1x Fralthra heavy cruiser
6x Sartha light fighter
6x Drakhai Sartha light fighter
6x Drakhri medium fighter
4x Krant medium fighter

Deployment:


A nice shoutout to WC2 here inasmuch as nothing is capable of damaging the Concordia. Well, the Fralthra is, but that's basically battleship against cruiser and goes the way you'd expect it to. There's a reason the Confederation-class are listed as "Dreadnought" and not "Carrier". Again, since nothing's capable of damaging the Concordia here all you have to do is blast fighters; start with the Sartha group since they're more vulnerable, but since the Sartha are nearer than the Drakhri and Krants (also faster), just hitting target nearest will do that for you. There's not much tactics involved in this mission.

Ship of the day:
Snakeir-class Carrier

Class: Fleet Carrier (Kilrathi)
Length: 650.09 m
Mass: 30,000 tonnes
Max Velocity: 150 kps
Cruise Velocity: 100 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 8 degrees/second
Weapons: 11x Laser Turret
Shields: Phase Shields
Armour: Front: 2800 Left: 3600 Right: 3600 Rear: 2400
Fighter Complemet: 100

Game says: The primary carrier of the Kilrathi, the Snakeir fills a role similar to Confed's Concordia-class. It carries slightly heavier armament that its Confed counterpart, but remains vulnerable to capital ships and concentrated fighter attacks.

I say: Since the Snakeir only takes three torpedoes to kill whereas the Fralthra takes four, the Kilrathi fleet carrier is in many ways less difficult of an opponent than the heavier cruiser. This is made up for by the fact that Snakeirs almost always launch a better fighter mix than Fralthras, including the Hhriss which is very irritating to bombers (though less dangerous to Rapiers).

Total kills (Standoff): 24 missions / 304 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 136 missions / 1226 kills

Next time on Standoff:
Desperation tactics, part II - the thing so mad you'd have to be bloody insane to even think of it.