Part 58: Rescue Run, Cygnus System, Sol Sector (Gameplay only, no story)
Yes, I am terrible at updating. I was graduating this weekend (yes, this is a funny time to graduate, blame my PhD examiners for being slow. Yes, I am now Dr. Ilanin).30th December 2669, Cygnus System, Sol Sector
Episode 5, Mission 2 - Rescue Run
Cygnus?
Indeed. We jumped there after I landed last mission, see:
Cutscene Video (Youtube)
Captain Bradshaw takes a Crossbow back through the jump point to pick up Jumpy, a Rapier pilot who ejected last mission, and torpedo that frigate while he's at it.
Escort fighters are for pussies (and, more relevantly, don't have jump drives).
Mission Briefing:
Briefing Video (Youtube)
Mission Video (Youtube)
Kills this mission: 5, including an ace and a frigate.
Tactics Corner
Well, this mission is short but violent, since facing Sarthas in a Crossbow has never been an occasion which calls for much in the way of subtlely.
In Cygnus:
Friendly forces:
1x Crossbow torpedo bomber
Enemy forces:
1x Targu II class frigate
3x Sartha light fighter
1x Sartha ace "Najja Fireclaw"
Deployment:
Four Sarthas; that's three kills with your FF missiles and then one with the guns - if you can keep the Crossbow pointed at them they will eventually charge you and blasting them with the Crossbow's full guns is not hard. FF missiles should in general hit, but avoid firing more than one at once or else they will go for the same target. Equally, it's important to either keep weaving or keep your guns on enemy fighters to prevent them setting up to attack you without getting shot back. The Sarthas can kill you, but only if they get to gang up on you; one or two at a time they don't have enough firepower to get through the Crossbow's shields. Once they're down, the frigate isn't difficult - torpedo the blind spot in its turret coverage, directly forward of it.
Ship of the day:
Broadsword
Class:
Length: 36.15 m
Mass: 100 tonnes
Max Velocity: 320 kps
Afterburner Velocity: That'd be nice.
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 40/40/40 degrees/second
Weapons: 3x Mass Driver Cannon, 3x neutron turrets, 4x Friend or Foe missile, 6x Torpedo
Shields: Front: 500 Rear: 500
Armour: Front: 400 Left: 350 Right: 350 Rear: 400
Game says: The most powerful bombers in the Confederation's arsenal. With no afterburners, the Broadsword is in some ways closer to a corvette than a fighter. It carries an extraordinary weapons loadout including eight torpedoes and three neutron gun turrets
I say: According to the ship's IFF file it actually only carries six torpedoes, and that's certainly the case in Standoff's simulator. In any case, it's still a Broadsword, big, slow, lumbering, and substantially more vulnerable to dumbfire missiles than it was in WC2. Per fighter, the Concordia's Broadswords seem like the least effective of the bomber chassis we end up escorting except probably the Gladius - Sabres, Morningstars and Crossbows all seem to get more torpedo hits.
Total kills (Standoff): 27 missions / 367 kills
Total kills (including previous thread): 138 missions / 1293 kills
(since these missions didn't happen - the Firekka was "actually" on the winning path - I don't get to count the 21 kills so far in them in the kill tally.)
Next time on Standoff:
Having politely waited for us to pick up our pilot, the Kilrathi resume chasing after the Firekka, which, with the help of another WC2 guest star, attempts to deal with them more permanently.
Also (possibly in an attempt to give people something to talk about), it's probably about time to start making plans for WC3, since we're only four or so updates away from that. I've got a reasonable idea of what I'm doing technically (though expect to see a couple of WC3 videos popping up at some point), but there's two things I don't know about yet.
The first one is what I'm going to change the thread title to. I have a few terrible ideas ("Who Blairs Wins! Let's Play Wing Commander III") but no good ones.
A bigger issue is how to do reader interaction in WCIII. There are lots of choices to make. I figure for dialogue I probably make a post before each mission with the conversations up to the choice, let the thread vote, then do videos of the options the thread selected.
In addition to that there's ship and missile loadout choices for basically every mission. I'm worried that if I have voting on those the thread will contain very little other than voting posts which isn't ideal, but I'd like to give you some control over what I fly (if only to stop me doing every mission in an Arrow). Any ideas?