Part 62: Flight of the Arrow, Sol System, Sol Sector (Gameplay and Story)
1st Janurary 2669, Sol System, Sol SectorEpisode 5, Mission 6 - Flight of the Arrow
The Firekka launches its four Arrows in order to intercept Kilrathi bombers headed to Earth
And how did the Kilrathi bombers get there?
Admiral Tolwyn (who, apparently, is a descendant of the Spencer-Churchill line) has the answer:
Fleet Action posted:
But what was worse, far worse, was the cruiser squadron that at the opening of the action had flanked far out to port by more than five million clicks and was now plunging straight in towards Earth, scoops closed and up to flank speed. Not even his fastest ships could close with them now. The light picket line of a cruiser section, Earth orbital defenses and moon ground based defenses and a handful of obsolete frigates would have to stop them. It had been assumed that at least one section of enemy ships or more would go for a straight breakthrough under the screen of the fleet-to-fleet action. Earth was on its own now. He thought for a moment of a distant ancestor of long ago, who, when contemplating the invasion and destruction of England, announced that even if England fell, the Empire, and with it the fleet, would still continue the fight.
But Tolwyn, with Concordia's long-range sensors and communications down due to a pair of torpedo strikes, can't see what we know - that Kruger's ships are racing in from the far side of the planet.
Fleet Action posted:
"Launch fighters now!"
Jason Bondarevsky leaned forward in his chair, wishing now more than ever to be back in a fighter.
The first fighter, piloted by Doomsday, cleared the bay. The blue-green home of his race filled the forward screen. The run in from jump point 12Y, the line leading back towards the Landreich, had been with scoops fully closed. Kruger had even committed the ultimate madness of doing the final jump at full speed. A third of the fleet had missed the jump point completely, forcing them to decelerate, turn around and come back in. They were now several hours behind. They were the lucky ones. Two frigates had only achieved partial jump, hitting the point as fast as they did. Part of the two frigates had come through, the other part had simply continued on back in the last system. The crews never knew what hit them, their molecules spread between Alpha Centauri and Earth.
The maneuver, however, had gained them precious time, and moving at a good fraction of the speed of light they had closed from the jump point
to Earth in under three hours. They were too late for the main battle, but the threat closing in on Earth was all too obvious and Kruger had ordered them in to head it off. He could only hope that they would be there in time.
Mission Briefing:
Briefing Video (Youtube)
And we, of course, are out in front, in the fastest fighters that Confed ever made.
Mission Video (Youtube)
Kills this mission: 25
Though to be fair a bunch of those were missiles (though the majority were bombers). I'm not sure if quite how much fun this level is really comes through in the video, but flying a rocket armed with popguns is just fantastic.
Tactics Corner
The term "running battle" applies fairly well to this engagement. Strictly it's all at a single nav point, but the forces are spread out over a great distance - it's only the Arrow's speed that allows you to intercept them all.
Friendly forces:
4x Arrow light fighter
Enemy forces:
3x Rigakh light cruiser
3x Kamekh corvette
12x Krant medium fighter
24x Grikath torpedo bomber
8x Antimatter missile (launch when two-thirds of the bombers are dead)
Deployment:
51 enemies (if you count the missiles), 4 friendlies. 12 to 1 odds aren't great, but fortunately this isn't really a dogfight mission. And even if it was, the Krants are far too slow to cause you any significant trouble. As we arrive, the Grikath bombers are making their somewhat ponderous way towards Earth, screened by the cruisers, corvettes and fighters:
We don't care about the screening forces. The fastest ships in them, the Krants, do 1200 kps at full afterburner, which is a full 900 kps slower than our Arrows, and we're not going to be far off maximum speed as we race to run down those Grikath before they escape. The Krants won't catch up for quite some time. So punch the burners (then tap them once you reach full speed, you'll stay at over 2000 kps but not use so much fuel) and fly straight through. Bring up the tactical map and target the bomber furthest away from you - it's the one closest to exiting the engagement so we need to kill it first. Make firing passes at other nearby Grikath on your way towards it but do not turn to engage, just do a fly-by-lasering. The Arrow takes forever to turn around so we don't have time for that right now. Order a wingman to finish that ship off instead. Earth is threatened with nuclear annihilation, this is no time to be worrying about your kill count! (Also, your wingmen are useless fucks who will dogfight the Krants if you don't order them not to).
Once you reach your target bomber, well, line up on its tail, cut your throttle a bit, blast away until either the turret gets through your front shields or the energy is depleted, then break off, come around and try again. It takes about one-and-a-bit passes to down a Grikath usually. After each pair of bombers is destroyed check the map to see who else is in danger of escaping, and go after them. Once you're down to 8 bombers left, the cruisers start launching their antimatter missiles at our shipyards orbiting the Moon. While you don't have to eliminate these for the mission to be a success, it's a secondary goal so you are vaguely supposed to do it (and those shipyards have a lot of mothballed capships in we're trying to bring back on-line. Because these aren't aimed at Earth they're flying at something of an angle to where you are, and their closest point of approach to where you are right now is something like 60,000 klicks:
Fortunately, the Arrow is really goddamned fast, and that's less than 30 seconds at full burners. Use your dumbfires and hopefully your wingmen to aid in finishing off the Grikaths, then lean on the afterburner key and hope you were fast enough to get into gun range. Once you do, start at the rear of the missile formation - the Arrows at afterburner are faster than the missiles, and if you're at the back you only have to worry about missiles in front of you (and you can see them). Do pay attention to the proximity warnings - those missiles have a blast radius and if you're inside about 2000 km when you shoot one up they will kill you. This is the only way you are likely to die in this mission. Unlike torpedoes, you can actually target antimatter missiles (and the Arrow has an ITTS, plus centrelined guns, so hitting small targets at range isn't impossible in it), which makes things somewhat easier. Once they're dead, if you're somehow not far enough away from everything else to be able to autopilot, run further away (the Arrow is much better at running than dogfighting) and head back to the Firekka for the final mission.
Ship of the day:
Arrow V
Class: Light Fighter
Length: 18.00 m
Mass: 8.76 tonnes
Max Velocity: 800 kps
Afterburner Velocity: 2100 kps
Maximum Yaw/Pitch/Roll: 60/60/70 degrees/second
Weapons: 2x laser cannon, 2x dumbfire missile
Shields: Front: 85 Rear: 85
Armour: Front: 40 Left: 40 Right: 40 Rear: 40
Game says: Although the Arrow design is even older than the Hornet, the "J" model [the Arrow's designation is the F-27; this particular ship is the F-27J] is brand-new, having just entered production. The new Arrow is a pure patrol craft - amazingly fast, but unmaneuverable and poorly armed.
I say: We'll be seeing a lot of this spaceframe in Wing Commander III, but the version we've got here isn't that one - it's the one that appears in Armada instead. This is the only mission we fly the Arrow in (though it does appear in the AI's hands a couple of times) and quite reasonably, because the Arrow's sheer speed makes it something of a gimmick fighter; provided you keep the throttle wide open the Kilrathi basically can't touch you (except turret gunners, anyway). The lack of a powerful cannon armament combined with the speed and ponderous turning circle does basically mean you spend a lot of time on strafing runs - fortunately the Arrow has enough gun energy to keep the lasers firing for quite some time. Also, I never quite realised how much it looked like a A-Wing until I put these photos together. I love flying it, but it's almost completely different from the rest of the game. A nice change, certainly. I'm not sure which of the Arrow and the Rapier is my favourite ship, they have so little in common it's very hard to compare.
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.)
Losing path kills: 85
Next time on Standoff:
The final final showdown.