A question RE: the Ralatha/Snakeir raid:

N

nickmitsialis

Rear Admiral
Guys:

First time around I screwed it up royally but I accepted it & moved ahead; However I AM flying on rookie level so I have a couple of questions:

1) Is it winnable? IF it is, anyone care to cook up some ideas for me?

2) I have noticed that if you mess up a mission there isn't a 'refly' option at the debrief;

3) Finally who does the voice action for player character---dang me if he doesn't sound a little like James Callis ('Baltar' from BSG)

thanks ahead of time

NM
 
1.) Yes, be the best you can be, it's possible but can be a pain. You actually might want to up the difficultly because your wingmen's AI is controlled by the difficultly (ie higher difficultly smarter wingmen)

2.) Correct SO doesn't have a retry option.
 
1) I think this and the protect the minelayer missions were the only ones I played where I had to take the difficulty level down from nightmare to get a winning ending. I survived the mission on nightmare, but failed to blow up the carrier. I'm better now that I'm more use to the game engine and would try the same stategy on nightmare that I beat it with on an easier level. I'll try to go by my memory here: I think you can take the Gladius, so I would take that.

First Nav: I would let my wingmen blow up the Destroyer at the first navpoint and save my missiles. In the meantime, I would protect my wingmen by looking at the Navmap and see which enemies are targeting other fighters or bombers and I would attack those enemies.

Second Nav: I would hit the carrier with my capship missiles and direct any leftover bombers on my wing to attack a different subsystem than the one I'm targeting. I might look at the nav map and pick off any fighters attacking my gladius wingman(men) as they approach their target, THEN re-direct them to another subsystem as I attacked a separate one. I would likely do this by taking missile potshots at enemies (focusing on Salthi's) until my ordinance was expended. Again this is potshots: fire and forget: switch to the next target using the navmap. I think this is how I beat that mission. Again, I took the difficulty level down, but I might be able to beat it now and would use the same strategy.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The Snakier Nav isn't far from the DD nav, so you can actually fly there without autopilot. DON'T do that. It will be a slaughter. When I did this, the carrier had time to launch all their waves of fighters as we approached. They stayed in a clump around the Snakier and refused to venture out and attack our strike group. Our strike group didn't stay together as they approached: the Epees went in by themselves and got slaughtered. Then the Rapiers got slaughtered followed by Gladii and finally Broadswords. It wasn't even close and I had to limp out of the engagement with dozens of Kilrathi fighters on my tail and I don't think any other survivors.
 
Thanks for the info but...

Mjr Woopass:

I have a question RE: what you're telling me; HOW do I direct my flight mates to attack individual ships AND specific sub systems of the Snakeir? I guess I've been spoiled by 'Freespace';): I had a specific key to indicate who is attacking me, WHO is attacking the ship I'm protecting AND the commo buttons are complex enough to tell my team-mates to attack specific sub systems...How do I do THAT in THIS game?

Also...RE: setting the AI higher doesn't that also make the enemies 'deadlier'?

TIA

NM
 
nickmitsialis said:
Mjr Woopass:
I have a question RE: what you're telling me; HOW do I direct my flight mates to attack individual ships AND specific sub systems of the Snakeir?
Click to expand...
Basically you have to target a specific subsystem and say "attack my target". Once you hear one of your wingmen acknowledge, they target the same subsystem you're targeting. Then you switch to another subsystem or to enemy fighters (wingmen stay on the subsystem they were told to hit AFTER you hear one of them acknowledge. Sometimes if you switch before they acknowledge they will target what you switched to). You can check to make sure they're targeting what you ordered them to by pulling up the nav map and seeing if there are red attack lines going towards the target from your wingmen's fighters (it won't show which subsystem, but if you heard them acknowledge, you'll already know which subsystem). Sometimes it takes awhile for them to target what you tell them, especially at the beginning of a fight when there are a lot of non essential comms and taunts going on. It can be frustrating, but it's usually worth it.

This nav map is also where you see who your enemies are targeting. If you just attack closest enemies, you are probably just attacking the ones that are attacking you. This still helps a little though because other allies are attacking them and you will free them up to pursue other targets. Don't worry as much about the enemies attacking you because you're not flying in straight lines and know how to use decoys. Your buddies aren't as skilled as you: they often just fly in straight lines and get hammered. Some people think this is cheating and not realistic to use the nav map for this, but I think it is. This is hundreds of years in the future, so your AI computer could know which targets to pick and would've already been programmed to pick the ideal target given the data... that's my way of justifying that. I agree with the complaints though that it's not as immersive or fun to be always checking your navmap, so I often fly missions with all kinds of flaws in my target choices. It just depends on if you're trying to perfect your performance or just flyin' around for fun.

The reason why I suggested primarily targeting Sartha's while firing and forgetting missiles is because you don't want to waste too much time tailing an enemy while they're shooting your friends. I've found that Sartha's aren't very good at evading missiles. When I fire a missile (especially IMRECs) at a Sartha even from far away, I can target something else and a few seconds later I can hear the Sartha go boom.. your missiles might even drop a couple Sarthas even as you're targeting and making a run at a subsystem. Another reason to target Sarthas is because they're nimble and have deadly firepower. Their guns are weak, but they're deadeye crackshots with a dumbfire. I make it a point to take them out first in the simulator gauntlets so they don't nail me with those dumbfires.



nickmitsialis said:
Also...RE: setting the AI higher doesn't that also make the enemies 'deadlier'?

TIA

NM
Click to expand...
I've heard that setting the difficulty higher is a good way to save more of your allied ships, but I can't say if that's true or not. All I know is it was a heck of a lot easier to blow up the Snakier and also to save more minelayers when I had the difficulty level set lower. Maybe one day I'll go back to those and see if I can beat them on nightmare, but I got fed up with losing those enough that I just wanted to see the winning ending.
 
nickmitsialis said:
I have a question RE: what you're telling me; HOW do I direct my flight mates to attack individual ships AND specific sub systems of the Snakeir?
Click to expand...

Comm Menu hit C
3 - Attack my Target

Make sure you are targeting the Snakier obviously.

I guess I've been spoiled by 'Freespace';): I had a specific key to indicate who is attacking me, WHO is attacking the ship I'm protecting AND the commo buttons are complex enough to tell my team-mates to attack specific sub systems...How do I do THAT in THIS game?
Click to expand...

It's called the Nav Map. Ctrl N
Click on yourself to see who is attacking you.
Click on another target to see who is attacking it.
Right click on a target to target it.

You should print out this keymap. Standoff is a mod of Secret Ops so the keys are the same in almost every situation. When they aren't the game tells you exactly what to do.

Also...RE: setting the AI higher doesn't that also make the enemies 'deadlier'?
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's a difficultly setting. It's just that it also affects the AI of your wingmen as well.
 
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nickmitsialis said:
Also...RE: setting the AI higher doesn't that also make the enemies 'deadlier'?
Click to expand...

What Dundradal said. Try the Confed gauntlet until you go up against Rapiers, and you'll see why. The AI improvements apply to all pilots, friendly and enemy. But a Rapier II is easily more than a match for just about anything the cats have. Since your wingmen fly better ships than the enemy, on balance it's to your advantage. Sure, the cats get harder to shoot down, but they can't swarm you as easily if more of your wingmen are still around to fight them.

Just watch out for all that friendly fire ;)
 
nickmitsialis said:
3) Finally who does the voice action for player character---dang me if he doesn't sound a little like James Callis ('Baltar' from BSG)
Click to expand...
Alex "Pedro" Barnfield, the same guy who coded our openGL renderer, as well as some missions in Ep 1.... and also voiced the Dauntless's comm officer in Unknown Enemy. :p
 
Eder said:
Alex "Pedro" Barnfield, the same guy who coded our openGL renderer, as well as some missions in Ep 1.... and also voiced the Dauntless's comm officer in Unknown Enemy. :p
Click to expand...

Wow, that's a very talented guy. I assumed it was a very talented actor that one of the Standoff guys knew.. maybe a well known local theatre actor. Didn't imagine such a fine performance from a guy who also did some of the computer coding.
 
I personally find most if not all the voice actors to be very talented (which made Spoons' death even more sad :( ).

I absolutely love Hans Reismann and Freyers.
 
Thanks for the info but...

Guys:

For whatever reason I can't get the Nav Map to show the right resolution to help me RE: who is doing what to whom---must either be my colorblindness or my poor eyes; Oh well...I'll just have to find ANOTHER way to 'skin that Snakeir'!


NM
 
Hmm, what do you mean? You can zoom in on the nav map by using the [ and ] keys, and you can rotate it with the numpad arrow keys, if I'm not mistaken. Ship names are shown below each icon so color shouldn't be too much of a problem, either. :)
 
nickmitsialis said:
Guys:

AH...fuggedaboudit...how about some 'cheats'?

NM
Click to expand...

Wait what?

To see how is targeting how on the nav map you have to select one of the ships first. It doesn't just draw lines between all of them, it only shows you when you have one of them selected.

The only "cheat" available in Standoff is invulnerability. It can be turned on from the options menu (Hit Esc) under the Gameplay tab.
 
Actually, we have the finger-of-death cheat which is the same as in Prophecy and Secret Ops. A quick and reliable way to ruin the game. :p
 
I'm still wondering how I managed to kill that Snakeir flying a Rapier on first try during my first playthrough. o_O

Anyhow, after various tries in my favourite fighter I finally resignated and switched to the Gladius. I let the Broadswords do all the work on the destroyer, just trying to keep as many allies (and especially my Gladius-wingmen while preventing them from using their torps on the Ralatha alive as possible. Then I sent my wingmen after the bridge of the Snakeir, afterburned in and used my own torps to kill the engines. In the meantime most of the Broadswords got killed and actually the mission got called off before the carrier blew, but it still got counted as a success. Even though everyone else heads home with the mission abort message, cleaning up the remaining fighters afterwards was fairly easy, since they seem to lose most of their fighting spirit with their mothership gone.

Mind you, this was on Ace, so I sincerely bow in respect to everyone beating this one on the higher difficulty levels. Trying it on nightmare really gives me...well, nightmares.^^
 
the cheat commmands

ok guys the cheats for this game are the same for Secret Ops
type this durring flight

shoehorn=enables cheats

goodtarget=turret style targeting for ur main HUD display

moretunes=enables to change songs at will(page up and down keys changes the track;home and end keys switches between cobalt60 and orcastra tunes)

NOTE: recommend in the above commands to holding the shift key to prevent the game key commands taking effect i.e. countermeasures launching

use the following during flight

ctrl-I=invincible (same as ingame cheat)

ctrl-c=no collision (all weapons fire pass through ur ship guns, missles, AND mines)

ctrl-k=self-destruct DO NOT PRESS unless no options left

ctrl-f12=destroys targeted ship or subsystem(very useful for clearing turrets and shield emitters in a hurry)

i know these work because ive used them myself for Standoff AND Unknown Enemy

questions? email at g_schempp@hotmail.com
 
backoff

hey i only used that cheat when i absolutely had to clear out the turrets quick so the bombers could do their job otherwise i used the guns and missles i had at my disposal
 
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