Getting Sacked

Falcon988

Commodore
So I've finally survived the attack on the Hakaga only to be fired by Reismann and lose the game? Bah. How do I avoid taking horrific casualties in this battle for Sirius? I wasn't able to destroy the Hakaga but we did a lot of damage to it and destroyed many of its escorts and sure we got wiped out practically but I read Fleet Action and I'm pretty sure that's how it's supposed to happen heh.

So how can I limit casualties? I flew a Sabre in because I thought destroying the Hakaga was priority #1, am I supposed to take in a Rapier to protect all of our fighters and bombers?
 
You've probably taken too many casualties in the first mission of Ep 4 as well... I don't think it's possible to take enough casualties in the Hakaga mission to automatically lose the game unless you had already lost many ships before.

For the Hakaga mission, all possible approaches are known to work. You can take a Rapier and kill everything fast enough for your bomber pilots to get their job done, or you can take a Crossbow and just survive until no more fighters are launched, and then take down the Hakaga practically by yourself (Stingray's wing does a good job of Macing out a few components). So you're not "supposed" to fly any fighter in particular - when we give you a choice, you really do have a choice. :p
 
Well I -did- take many many losses in the first mission of ep 4 also. But I don't see how that could be helped, I barely survived that fiasco myself :cool:. I basically destroyed two frigates and a destroyer myself and then spent the rest of the fight flying around the wreckage of a Ralatha while hiding from Sartha. But we destroyed -lots- of frigates/destroyers/corvettes so I figured it was "mission successful" considering the odds Confed's up against.

Well, I'll try taking a Rapier in and escorting the bombers more. Hopefully we won't get quite as slaughtered...
 
That's still a choice, though - you can pick one ship if you are having trouble surviving, and another if you are having trouble getting the mission done. We never give people ship choices only to force them to find out that they should have taken the other ship, regardless of their flying style.

Me, I find the Hakaga mission much, much easier in a Crossbow. I probably am better at staying alive than at taking down fighters fast.
 
One way I've managed to prevent a few (2) casualties is to tell my wingmen to form on my wing and stay there during the first strike ("Torpedo Delivery" against the escorts). That usually means I come home with at least my wing of 3 Sabres intact, although that also usually means I don't meet with complete success. I'm guessing that if my wingmen aren't in there joining the torpedo strikes, there are more defending fighters and flak that the remaining Sabres have to deal with and that means they usually get knocked down before they can take out enough capships.

I don't know, it might help. If you fly a Sabre for the Hakaga strike, the Firekka doesn't seem to launch any Crossbows. That means that if you lost a lot of Sabres last time, you might be in trouble later in Ep. 4 (win), because if you need to fly Sabres in any later Ep.4 (win)missions, it looks like you need at least 3 Sabres on the carrier to go on.

Forgive me if my memory fails me - but I think the Firekka starts with 12 Sabres at the beginning of Ep. 4 and launches 6 Sabres in the initial strike against the escorts. Suppose you lose 5 of them, and come home yourself (in your own Sabre). That leaves Firekka with 7. If you fly Sabres out against the Hakaga, I think Firekka launches 6 again. If you lose all the Sabres but your own and return home, that leaves just 2 Sabres on the Firekka, which is probably not enough for the rest of the episode since there are other missions where you launch as the lead in a wing of 3 Sabres. Afaik, Firekka doesn't receive any replacement Sabres or Crossbows for the rest of Ep. 4 (win).

The Hakaga strike is the only time in the Ep. 4 winpath that I've seen the Firekka deploy Crossbows, so if you find yourself running short on Sabres after mission 1, try to beat the Hakaga strike with a Crossbow. It may bore you to death, but you should be able to continue.

I think they've hinted that your fighter count coming out of Ep. 4 may affect what you start with in Ep.5. If so, I've got a problem - on my watch, only 2 of the Crossbows came back from the Hakaga strike :(
 
I think they've hinted that your fighter count coming out of Ep. 4 may affect what you start with in Ep.5. If so, I've got a problem - on my watch, only 2 of the Crossbows came back from the Hakaga strike :(

Bah, you're still with the fleet though and retiring to Sol. I'm sure more fighters will be arranged. Although wouldn't it be funny if they were older models because everything else had been stripped out to bolster the fleet? Yeah sure, you want to do a strike mission, try it in a Hornet :D
 
That actually would be pretty cool heh. Like if the player's wing takes SUCH heavy casualties in Sirius, by the time they get to Sol the replacements consist of Rapier Is, Hornets, and... *gasp* Scimitars.


UPDATE: Completed the mission and actually destroyed the Hakaga that time. I flew a Crossbow. Was -damn- tough, I actually expended all of my torpedoes long before it was taken down by the wingmen. Pretty much all of the supporting capships in its vicinity were also destroyed. The Kilrathi are sure paying dearly in this lil' offensive of theirs...


UPDATE2: Was reading Fleet Action earlier and noted that a Hakaga was actually "crippled" at Sirius and another was pretty badly damaged. When the book says crippled, exactly what does that mean? It's not the same as in my game, or is it? I'm just not sure if I technically "destroyed" that Hakaga or if I just "crippled" it. I'm curious as to how close I'm following the Fleet Action continuity I guess :). And is it known how many "older" carriers the Kilrathi lost at Sirius or in this campaign in general?
 
That actually would be pretty cool heh. Like if the player's wing takes SUCH heavy casualties in Sirius, by the time they get to Sol the replacements consist of Rapier Is, Hornets, and... *gasp* Scimitars.
Hey, we've been working on this thing for years, but that doesn't mean we've run out of surprises just yet. We may or may not still have a bunch of aces up our sleeves. ;)

UPDATE2: Was reading Fleet Action earlier and noted that a Hakaga was actually "crippled" at Sirius and another was pretty badly damaged. When the book says crippled, exactly what does that mean? It's not the same as in my game, or is it? I'm just not sure if I technically "destroyed" that Hakaga or if I just "crippled" it. I'm curious as to how close I'm following the Fleet Action continuity I guess :). And is it known how many "older" carriers the Kilrathi lost at Sirius or in this campaign in general?
You did kill the carrier that was merely crippled in FA. By crippled FA means damaged, which is what you get if you "fail" the Hakaga mission... an email from someone saying that the Kilrathi have retreated their damaged Hakaga, along with older carriers as escorts, back to Kilrathi space.

That's the reason the Hakaga mission was supposed to be extremely hard - it's a situation in which we allow players to do better than FA. We knew everyone would want to win that mission, but we built Ep 4 so that it wasn't necessary to win it... think of it as a bonus.
 
I see. I think it's great how you guys set stuff like that up... i.e. the possibility to do better, the same, or worse than the canonical pilots. And it was a mighty challenging mission, for some reason the other pilots just did a great job when I flew the Crossbow. The first few times I tried it, as you know since that's the reason I started this thread, the Confed wings just got chewed to pieces. This last attempt though the Confed fighters seemed to wear down the Kat fighters while I was doing my bombing runs.

Though I do have a theory on this... did you guys model the amount of Kilrathi reinforcements as fighters "launching" from the Hakaga or other carriers? Because on the last attempt I immediately set to targetting the Hakaga's hangar bays, and my wingmen also were targetting them in the opening moments of the battle, so I think that would be a reasonable explanation as to why we had more success on that attempt. But I'm not sure if that's how you guys modeled the Kilrathi reinforcements. Could've just been pure coincidence I guess heh.
 
Hey, we've been working on this thing for years, but that doesn't mean we've run out of surprises just yet. We may or may not still have a bunch of aces up our sleeves. ;)

That's my queue to stop reading all the Standoff mailing list messages that don't involve sim missions :D

Falcon988 said:
Though I do have a theory on this... did you guys model the amount of Kilrathi reinforcements as fighters "launching" from the Hakaga or other carriers? Because on the last attempt I immediately set to targetting the Hakaga's hangar bays, and my wingmen also were targetting them in the opening moments of the battle, so I think that would be a reasonable explanation as to why we had more success on that attempt. But I'm not sure if that's how you guys modeled the Kilrathi reinforcements. Could've just been pure coincidence I guess heh.

You are correct. Destroying the hangars weakens the waves that launch as fighters are destroyed. Whenever I take the Crossbow or Sabre I make sure those torps are heading into a hangar bay so that I don't have to deal with as many fighters.
 
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