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Even when I have shipping that has such armaments, it still seems super resillient. Vaguely curious if the Heavy lasers secretly fib about their effectiveness or something.
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Jun 30, 2017 09:01
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Man, remembering this game just got more difficult. I feel like this was about where I gave up, due to annoyance with the RP system and not having saved for a couple of missions when I was completely screwed by it, but at the same time I can also remember some later bits. And it was way too long ago for there to have been an LP of it... maybe I just had a fever dream and hallucinated the rest of it.
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Jun 30, 2017 14:46
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PurpleXVI posted:Man, remembering this game just got more difficult. I feel like this was about where I gave up, due to annoyance with the RP system and not having saved for a couple of missions when I was completely screwed by it, but at the same time I can also remember some later bits. And it was way too long ago for there to have been an LP of it... maybe I just had a fever dream and hallucinated the rest of it. No, "fever dream" is actually a pretty good summation of the later plot. We're only just starting to fall down that wormhole! Edit: Just beat the next mission on Professional for my play-along. The lack of armor on ships really makes it hard; secondary objective is just this side of completely impossible on that setting. I'm sure Herp will have many kind words for it. 
OAquinas fucked around with this message at 16:08 on Jun 30, 2017 |
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Jun 30, 2017 16:03
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 Raptor Raid - Part 6  Approx 4500 Years Ago - Thanks to the wormhole-network spanning the galaxy, the Vardrag Confederation is established and starts expanding. Approx 3900 Years Ago - The Gorgs discover the space-net as well and start using it. They conquer lesser developed races one after another. The Gorg Empire is formed. Approx 600 Years Ago - The Cardrag Confederation and the Gorg Empire meet. Although the Gorgs are technologically lesser developed, they still attack the Vardrags. After a few lost battles, the unified fleet of the Vardrag Confederation stops the Gorg advancement. A fragile peace treaty is signed; the Gorgs give up on their conquest of the Confederation. 07/10/2079 - First contact is formed between the Noah colonists and the Vardrag Empire. 23/02/2082 - The Gorgs once again declare war on the Vardrags; they deal them a serious blow at the Battle of Scoratus. 01/05/2083 - The first Human-Gorg battle takes place, wherein Captain Norbank delivers a serious blow on the Gorgs, who were expecting a Vardrag fleet.
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Jun 30, 2017 23:57
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OAquinas posted:Edit: Just beat the next mission on Professional for my play-along. The lack of armor on ships really makes it hard; secondary objective is just this side of completely impossible on that setting. I'm sure Herp will have many kind words for it. I don't mind failing secondary objectives, especially in a mission like this one where your performance is actually more tied to the performance of the allied unit, since the effect you can have on a battle is limited as one ship no matter its loadout. Perhaps I should have taken torpedoes, but in my experience they do more damage to the convoy than to the enemies. OAquinas posted:To get the full benefit of lasers you need a ship that can keep its guns in the firing path of the bad guys' devices. This is not the Stiletto or the Angelwing. I disagree with that, it entirely depends on where you're mounting the laser. If you put them all on the same side, you can get some serious alpha strikes going. If not, the AI does its best to roll the ship about and please nobody.
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Jul 1, 2017 00:02
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I don't think I've ever managed to get the secondary objective on this mission. You could see it in the video, one of the buggers go after you and the rest gang up on a cargo ship. I'm honestly not sure if it's possible to complete, considering you have to lose one of the cargo ships for the next mission to play out. And this is where we are introduced to Rear/Vice/Butt Admiral Norbank. Let's just say we ain't seen the last of him.
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Jul 1, 2017 00:24
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The key to that mission is if you kill the 3 small ships (poison, fist, misery) the other 3 stop attacking the freighters and focus on you. Nothing else deals hull damage, so if you can kill fast enough, you can save them. On easier difficulties the freighters seem to have a bit of armor so that gives you badly needed time. On pro they just die too fast--between their maneuverability and shield strength those small ships take too long to take down. My personal secondary objective was to save the Chrome. That's both trickier and easier--if you can kill the misery and the little gunboat fighters then its doable. You need the second L2 Fusion generator to keep your aux power charged. The Chrome is basically an inferior copy of the Raptor ships--fast, decent shields, fragile hull. It'll hold up for a bit, but once its aux energy depletes its shields will drop quick and then it'll probably die. Additionally, the raptor gunboats will go after it once they do a pass on the freighters--so it's critical you stay right next to it and provide flak and/or fighters. Through a bunch of playthroughs, it's always the Misery that seems to have a hate-on for Chrome, so initially focus on the ship the Chrome shoots first, then take the Misery out. If Chrome shoots les Mis first, then it has a good chance. Otherwise it's a race--not as bad as with the freighters, but still a tight one. After a few attempts with a 3 energy shell/2 GG setup I managed to kill all 6 ships and save the chrome (manatus was toast though). Netted me a crew promotion to "regular" right off the bat. That was decidedly not fun--just did it to see if I could. Oh, and as an aside: you can't kill the mothership in that mission. If you manage to take out its fighters (9 gunboats!) then attacking it just makes it spawn 9 more. Edit: I don't know if there's a difference between the Firecloud generator and the Weapon Generator you start with. They both have the same rating, so maybe not. OAquinas fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Jul 1, 2017 |
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Jul 1, 2017 00:53
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VKing posted:I don't think I've ever managed to get the secondary objective on this mission. You could see it in the video, one of the buggers go after you and the rest gang up on a cargo ship. I'm honestly not sure if it's possible to complete, considering you have to lose one of the cargo ships for the next mission to play out. A group of invincible raptor marines go after one of the freighters, but it doesn't count against the secondary objective. The most success I've had was to go with an all torpedo build, as that's able to quickly punch through the raptor shields and take out their otherwise fragile ships.
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Jul 1, 2017 01:04
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Can you save the Chrome?
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Jul 1, 2017 01:05
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cokerpilot posted:Can you save the Chrome? Lower difficulties: Yes, but with difficulty. Higher difficulties: Completely forget it. As the game progresses, shut gets hard and just keeping the important stuff from disabling/exploding is real fukken hard.
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Jul 1, 2017 02:45
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cokerpilot posted:Can you save the Chrome? In my experience it's only possible to save the whole convoy if the Chrome lasts at least 7 minutes. One way to overspecialise for this mission is to take as many energy shell guns as possible and knock out shields so the Chrome can kill.
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Jul 1, 2017 02:52
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:In my experience it's only possible to save the whole convoy if the Chrome lasts at least 7 minutes. One way to overspecialise for this mission is to take as many energy shell guns as possible and knock out shields so the Chrome can kill. Oh yeah, it might be good to show that off next video--the Angelwing can't run out of equipment (fighters aside). For example, last mission you had 2 energy shell launchers available. For most ships, that's it--fit them and you can't get any more. Angelwing? Fit them (so it says "0 energy shell" in the list), then leave the screen (either by committing or by clicking the squadron tab) and when you return there'll be 1 new energy shell available to fit. Not a bug. It's the "equipment assimilation/growth" capability of the ship. Once you fit something, you can always make a single copy of it. So by this way you could ditch the datascanner and totally rock out with 6 energy shells and annihilate enemy shields (and your aux power) in record time.
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Jul 1, 2017 02:59
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:In my experience it's only possible to save the whole convoy if the Chrome lasts at least 7 minutes. One way to overspecialise for this mission is to take as many energy shell guns as possible and knock out shields so the Chrome can kill. I just bought this game and played this mission (thanks herp and steam summer sale!), I lost nothing but the fat lady, and it makes an absolute difference that you tell your ship to take down shields, then target hull. Edit: The resource point system during ship refitting is how much you can change at that time, taking equipment off that was equipped previously does not free up more points, but replacing old equipment with new better equipment does take up points. As for the military, science, and engineering points, as I understand it, Military: weapon accuracy and fire rate Science: data mining (scanning), sensors, recon (figuring out what enemy ships are equipped with, often since weapons like flak sometimes aren't seen until they are used.) Engineering: How much you can change on your ship between missions and how fast your ship repairs it's subsystems. SugarAddict fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Jul 1, 2017 |
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Jul 1, 2017 06:52
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:I don't This is really useful information. I didn't think about the ship rolling and how that would effect time on target.
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Jul 1, 2017 17:37
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After a couple of attempts at the convoy mission today, I managed to get a run where the Chrome actually survived the entire mission, which let me kill all the enemy ships except the carrier. I still couldn't save the first cargo ship, though. I have no idea how you'd be able to do so on unless the Chrome somehow targets the Hunters. Maybe on easy? In a couple of runs the Chrome wouldn't fire at anything at all. Not sure if that's a bug or some kind of punishment for foreknowledge, as I'd started those runs by moving towards the enemy before they spawned in. Fun fact: If the Chrome survives, Captain Ironsight will be the one to order the convoy to jump at the end of the mission. Admiral Norbank is still a dick in the debriefing, though.
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Jul 2, 2017 00:41
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VKing posted:Admiral Norbank Mild spoiler that comes to the surprise of no one, really....
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Jul 2, 2017 10:37
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The Chase - Part 7  Personal Log of Marcus Cromwell - 24/06/2112 posted:I remember clearly that when my father left with the Noah, and I decided that I was going to be an astronaut and establish the first joint human-alien space city, I never thought about our initial contact. I had detailed plans about how I would set it up... none of which included firefights! I suppose it's a measure of how little I've changed that the reality surprises me so much. I can't let my childhood dreams go...
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Jul 2, 2017 19:14
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OAquinas posted:Mild spoiler that comes to the surprise of no one, really.... What could you possibly mean? The "majesty" of Admiral Norbank (majestic blunders that is) is regular practice of Marcus Cromwell's crisis managment skills. The best part is that certain persons factions in the Noah system alliance know this and have the highest interest in Cromwell's quick and just ascension in the Noah military.
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Jul 2, 2017 19:31
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You did so much better on this first two Noah missions than I did. I had to restart each several times before I could complete them. I'm guessing it was my loadout choice? I mostly went full lasers with a single gatling gun. The theory was that I could destroy weapons gens then the shield on ships to render them helpless while the single gatling plinked away to finally kill them. It worked quite well, but it was slow. On missions with a time limit like those two, I would just run out of time.
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Jul 2, 2017 19:48
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Slaan posted:You did so much better on this first two Noah missions than I did. I had to restart each several times before I could complete them. I'm guessing it was my loadout choice? I mostly went full lasers with a single gatling gun. The theory was that I could destroy weapons gens then the shield on ships to render them helpless while the single gatling plinked away to finally kill them. Yeah... the tactic of overwhelming laser firepower can be fairly effective in disabling everything you come across, but with only a single ship it's not very likely you can cross the critical mass of laser fire that can just push through their shields and repairs. Especially against the Raptors, with their flimsy hull, brute forcing their shields down with 3-4 energy shells and gunning them down is much faster. Actually I do not recall the game not mentioning whenever you need something disabled rather than shot to pieces, so I think it was pretty safe to just bring along a full on brute force setup, and maybe swap a weapon or two to lasers when needed. Been a while since then so can't recall my exact loadouts, other than I went pretty heavily for straight up guns. As an aside, I found fighters in general not terribly useful until you've taken out all the flak, since even one or two flaks is enough to wreak havoc to your numbers, and you can't rely too much on getting replacements... and as you need lasers to take care of flak, and take care of shields to bring down the flak (unless going full laser boat), you might see how that can be a bit of a problem. They are very nice to have for those times when you need to defend against fighters yourself, though, but often times they need a bunch of babying over so they don't all just explode when looking elsewhere for a second.
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Jul 2, 2017 20:53
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Fighters are like lasers, but better, but you need to use lasers to use them. They're also a great means of projecting force outside of the range of your ship, and the use of flak does cause a small spike in weapons energy usage which will in turn reduce the fire rate against important craft. Slaan posted:You did so much better on this first two Noah missions than I did. I had to restart each several times before I could complete them. I'm guessing it was my loadout choice? I mostly went full lasers with a single gatling gun. The theory was that I could destroy weapons gens then the shield on ships to render them helpless while the single gatling plinked away to finally kill them. Yeah, the game really ought to have emphasised the importance of the energy shell weapons. If a shielded craft came out on Shukenja Beta and Angel turned on a few Energy Shell guns after you'd plinked away ineffectively at it with lasers and mass drivers it would've made a much stronger statement as to the necessity of mounting them.
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Jul 2, 2017 21:14
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Yea, lasers are ... eh. Back when I first played this game, I'd usually equip most of my ships with at least one laser, but spreading them out wasn't terribly effective. By the way, I love the design of those destroyers. There's just something about their form that I find incredibly attractive. Do please show them off in more detail later.
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Jul 2, 2017 21:21
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VKing posted:Yea, lasers are ... eh. Back when I first played this game, I'd usually equip most of my ships with at least one laser, but spreading them out wasn't terribly effective. I think I know what you mean. They look just as utilitarian as the craft we saw in Sol, but with some of the sleekness and smoothness of the Angelwing rather than using harsh edges. It's a clever way to display the technological gulf between the Noah colonists and the Sol Corporations.
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Jul 2, 2017 21:26
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As far as not going back immediately, when you came through the wormhole you were being attacked by a crazy advanced alien death machine. So they were a tad reluctant to jump back through without seeing WTF first. Hence the two probes and the scout ship. Interesting note for that last mission: any ships that weren't destroyed in "Raptor Raid" show up there. So if you barely eked by that mission you'll see a a massive wave of raptor ships just before the Rome pops in. If you cleaned house, it's actually a pretty manageable number.
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Jul 3, 2017 00:54
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Soooo, since I've bought the game, I've been confused about ALOT of things, so I had to look up an FAQ, which explains some things (that the game never tells you), but not everything. Apparently you can unlock new weapons and equipment by scanning things and how well you did in missions, there are alot of secret stuff you have to scan, and a bunch of odd things that the game doesn't tell you but expects you to know and if you don't know you die and lose the mission. I don't want to have to look up an FAQ to know how to NOT die during a mission.
SugarAddict fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Jul 3, 2017 |
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Jul 3, 2017 01:41
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What counts as destroyed anyway? I'm going heavy lasers and so leaving ships as engine and generator devoid husks is the name of the game, but some missions want me to destroy all ships. Is there a specific set of modules to take out to fulfill this or do I just need to bring some hull destroying weapons.
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Jul 3, 2017 02:35
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From what I remember from playing this many moons ago in order to force a ship to evacuate, or just explode, you need to do about 75-80% hull damage. Taking out subsystems can permanently cripple a ship but I've never taken the time to go through the one-by-one to find out what happens. I'm pretty sure it's just the condition of the hull that matters. Taking out various subsystems can buy you time to deal with other problems, or allow you to take out a threat without needing to take the time to destroy the ship out right but there's never any reason in the game I can think of that would have you disable everything instead of just destroying whatever your target is. I can't remember if going on a killing spree and making sure no one makes it to the lifepods has any effect on the game or not.
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Jul 3, 2017 03:30
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Shame the game doesn't model damage from engine exhaust. Also thanks for LPing this, I got it on Steam ages ago but could never get it to run properly.
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Jul 3, 2017 04:08
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Destroyed means "hull damaged to point of evac" aka 'When the icon goes dark.' Taking out subsystems will make that easier but it won't count. Need one hull busting weapon. Edit: some lasers will do minute amounts of hull damage, but goddamn that'll take forever.
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Jul 3, 2017 05:40
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Lasers are horrible in 90% of cases, if you want to take out subsystems you need gunships, if the target is unshielded then commandos and regular fighters can do it.
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Jul 3, 2017 06:49
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I'm fairly certain its possible to knock a ship out with just lasers if you take out enough critical systems that is effectively dead. Weapon gen, primary power, engine, etc.
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Jul 4, 2017 02:04
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If you take out the support gen, it forces them to abandon ship I think? since it's life support. If all the engines are disabled, only support gens can do stuff, but if the engines are destroyed then it forces an abandon ship since the engines are the primary power source. Fun facts: In the first mission you actually use the angelwing, you have time to scan the mechtoid as it's shooting you. And in your last mission, you have time to scan the wormhole and all the ships, if you just shot out all but a single bubble shell weapon on the last surviving ship.
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Jul 4, 2017 03:36
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SugarAddict posted:If you take out the support gen, it forces them to abandon ship I think? since it's life support. If all the engines are disabled, only support gens can do stuff, but if the engines are destroyed then it forces an abandon ship since the engines are the primary power source. Not sure if "disabled" counts as "destroyed" though. Probably worth checking. On Professional, you have enough time to scan the mechanoid....barely. It murders you amazingly fast. The datascanner juices it up, so it fires faster the more you scan. You need to take out the platforms in advance, then scan it, break off the scan to try and get your shield up to take the next shot, then scan some more. If you time it exactly right, you'll be able to wormhole out immediately after filling the secret bar with your hull likely half gone. The only good news is that it can effortlessly pace you, so while you're scanning it you can mosey on over to the wormhole so you only have to survive a few seconds after the scan completes to GTFO. If there's a common theme to be seen here, it's that the game was balanced around "normal" difficulty. Pro is basically an exercise in survival.
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Jul 4, 2017 04:05
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OAquinas posted:Not sure if "disabled" counts as "destroyed" though. Probably worth checking. Disabled systems/equipment have a red bar under them and don't work until they are repaired enough to work. Destroyed systems/equipment are darkened and can't be repaired. Ships that have disabled engines just float around, ships that have destroyed engines are abandoned.
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Jul 4, 2017 08:28
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Back to Earth - Part 8 Personal Log of Marcus Cromwell - 16/07/2112 posted:Now this is what I call wine...I don't have a clue where this 'Tokajhegyalja' is, but it boasts some pretty good vineyards. I must visit the stasis storage areas of Noah Colony more frequently! Especially if bad news keeps coming in like this... Reminder! Talk to Rob about supplies!
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Jul 4, 2017 20:57
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A bit that always amused me was that the Fearless is a unique OSEC Longsword configuration with four heavy weapon slots, letting it mount 4 missiles. Not too dangerous against an Angelwing with Tier 2 tech, but in scenario editors that modders made it would wreck other Sol system ships.Psychotic Weasel posted:From what I remember from playing this many moons ago in order to force a ship to evacuate, or just explode, you need to do about 75-80% hull damage. Taking out subsystems can permanently cripple a ship but I've never taken the time to go through the one-by-one to find out what happens. I'm pretty sure it's just the condition of the hull that matters. It's been a long, long time, but I remember that after destroying every single subsystem with lasers a ship blew up.
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Jul 4, 2017 23:57
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Fun fact, you can scan a mectoid during that time.
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Jul 5, 2017 03:02
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Raptor Genocide - Part 9 Personal Log of Marcus Cromwell - 04/08/2112 posted:Well, I learn something new each day... especially in a totally alien environment! The last time I had to face the fact that hunting for lizards can be fatal, even if you are sitting on a battleship and attack them. Well, it is good as far as I can learn from the failures of others... and it seems like I am going to have the chance as I was enrolled in the Noah's Starhawk fleet. I do not have anything else but to do but to watch the 'real' battleships do the fighting. God! Something tells me I am going to have a hard time getting along with my superior officer...
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Jul 8, 2017 21:54
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I'm pretty sure the "scan colony" objective is bugged: I also killed the mothership before scanning the colony, but unlike in the video I managed to complete the scan with a larger margin. However it still failed. I'm guessing that for it to work properly you need to scan the colony before dealing with the mothership.
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Jul 8, 2017 23:38
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radintorov posted:I'm pretty sure the "scan colony" objective is bugged: I also killed the mothership before scanning the colony, but unlike in the video I managed to complete the scan with a larger margin. However it still failed. You have a small amount of time to run over there with the angelwing and scan it.
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Jul 9, 2017 00:08
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