Part 59: Too Much Company, Cygnus System, Sol Sector (Gameplay only, no story)

1st Janurary 2669, Cygnus System, Sol Sector
Episode 5, Mission 3 - Too Much Company

The Kilrathi send a destroyer group after the TCS Firekka, which encounters unexpected reinforcements as it tries to make its way to Sol.

Mission Briefing:
There is no briefing. This mission is a scramble.


Mission Video (Youtube)
Kills this mission: 23, while taking no damage. This is probably my best sustained flying in the entire LP.

This mission is quite hard, and extremely violent - less than eight minutes long and despite that I still rack up more than 20 kills and run low on burner fuel. It's one of my favourite missions in Standoff, and at times it feels reminiscent of the carrier duels in Starlancer (which were, I thought, that game's brightest moments), even if this is CVEs on one side and DD/FFs on the other. There's clashes of escort fighters, bomber and torpedo interceptions (see above), and random arrival of wings of reinforcements during the battle - fortunately, at least half of the reinforcements in question are on our side.

Tactics Corner

At launch:
Friendly forces:
1x Wake-class escort carrier TCS Firekka
3x Stiletto light fighter
3x Rapier medium fighter

Enemy forces:
2x Kamekh corvette
6x Krant medium fighter
4x Krant medium fighter (reinforcements, arrive after 30 seconds)

Deployment:


There's not a huge amount in this first fight, it's just a matter of preserving your fighters. Only the corvettes are any real threat to the Firekka, but there's no particular rush to hit them since they don't launch torpedoes immediately. The easiest approach is probably to kill the two fighters that start between you and the corvettes, leaving the others to your already-launched wingmen (who are, in any case, already engaged with them). Then hit the corvettes, since they're probably the most likely ships to bring one of the friendlies down, before finishing off the remaining Krants - but the simpler approach of just cycling through the "target nearest" button will also serve pretty well.

Enroute to Talos Jump Point:
Friendly forces:
Confederation:
Survivors from previous nav
3x Crossbow torpedo bomber (reinforcments, one launches after 30 seconds and then another every 20 seconds)
Landreich:
6x Hornet light fighter, Tango Wing (reinforcements, arrive after 2 minutes 25 seconds)
6x Sabre heavy fighter, Sierra Wing and Captain Etienne "Doomsday" Montclair (reinforcements, arrive after 2 minutes 25 seconds)

Entertainingly, there are two fighters labelled Sierra 4, and no fewer than three labelled Tango 4. I'm guessing there was a certain amount of cut and pasting that went in to creating this mission's fighters.

Enemy forces:
1x Ralatha-class destroyer
2x Targu II-class frigate
9x Krant medium fighter
6x Gothri heavy bomber
6x Jalkehi heavy fighter (reinforcements, arrive 10 seconds after Landreich forces)
3x Gothri heavy bomber (reinforcements, arrive 10 seconds after Landreich forces)

Initial deployment:


The escorting Krants are spread out in two groups, both some distance from the bombers, meaning that you should probably be left alone for long enough to dumbfire two of them in relative quiet. After that the escorts will begin to make themselves felt, but eliminating at least one and hopefully two more bombers should be the next step, though while doing so it is important not to stray too far from the Firekka because we're about to have our first Starlancer moment. Freyers will say "Pilots, get over here and do your job" which is rather obliquely (the devs actually apologised for not making this more obvious) referring to the fact that the destroyer has just launched four torpedoes at your home carrier. It's two at each engine, so the carrier won't go down if they hit, but it's much easier to stop these to than the one that will go into the bridge later, so find the teal dots on your radar, intercept at full burners and shoot them down (something which is annoyingly hard; you have to aim off a bit because the Rapier doesn't have a centreline gun and torpedoes are small).

Shortly after that, first the Landreich fighters and then the Kilrathi reinforcements will arrive, from behind each side's respective capital ships (in this particular picture Cougar's Crossbow wing has been unusually competent and the frigates are already down):


Following that another salvo of torpedoes will be launched, this one at the Firekka's bridge. The capships are closer in this time so there's much less time to intercept these; but if you've prevented at least one engine from getting hit then the Firekka won't go down to this salvo, and the cats won't get a chance to launch another now Doomsday's wing has arrived; therefore, I generally ignore this one (as far as I'm aware damage here doesn't carry over to future missions). There's also another three bombers which you have to kill, and by the time that's happened the Crossbows and the Landreich Sabres will probably have made a mess of the enemy capships, so it'll just be mopping up the Krants and Jalkehi, neither of which pose that much of a threat.

Ship of the day:
Gratha

Class: Heavy Fighter (according to Standoff. I'd say it was a light bomber, myself)
Length: 36.10 m
Mass: 18 tonnes
Max Velocity: 320 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 1050 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 60/60/140 degrees/second
Weapons (2654, i.e. WC1): 2x laser cannon, 2x mass driver cannon, 1x image recognition missile, 3x heat-seeking missile, 2x mine
Weapons (2668, i.e. Standoff): 2x laser cannon, 2x mass driver cannon, 2x image recognition missile, 2x heat-seeking missile, 4x torpedo
Shields: Front: 110 Rear: 110
Armour: Front: 150 Left: 100 Right: 100 Rear: 140

Game says: The Gratha was brought into service in 2654. An extremely powerful capship killer for that period, the Gratha is responsible for the loss of countless Confed ships. Aside from anti-capship capabilities, it is also capable in dogfights.

I say: You don't see a lot of Gratha in Standoff, and when you do they show the same flaw they had in WC1 - weak rear armour which, when combined with the fact that they have to fly more or less straight and level to attack capital ships (and that they don't have any turrets) makes them pretty easy to dispose of in short order (at least if you're in a Rapier, they're slightly more challenging in a Sabre, but not much due to the low afterburner speed).

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 kills in them in the kill tally.)

Next time on Standoff:
We hit the jump to Talos, I'll do a bit of a story update along with the next video, since that's a rather strange mission.

Still in the market for a WC3 thread title (might ask for a tag switch to "Movies" as well, especially if we go with "Isn't that the guy from Star Wars?" or similar which I am kind of leaning towards right now), though oddly enough I have a WC4 title already. I love the idea behind the second of Farwalker's spoiler titles, but I'm trying to keep spoiler-free.