Most aggravating WC mission

[Tempest]

Piece of cake if you've got the skills

Sure, killing the capships easy when you get to it. But have you tried that mission on the harder settings? Getting through the nav points leading up to the cap ship is the interesting bit.

 

[zorach]

I wonder if their AMG would damage each other, if you get an eclipse angle on them.

I've heard that suggestion. I don't dare try it. Here's how I just finished it:
Obviously take out the defenders ASAP; it helps to *not* fly at them but rather obliquely so that they come out from under the flak cover. Personally I find mass drivers work better than particle cannons for this; half the energy use and 25% faster refire rate makes up for the range. Hopefully once you waste them you'll have two wingmen left in decent shape; get *just* close enough to target one of the capships and "attack my target." They took it out amazingly fast; I was starting to get a torp lock when boom! Of course, that pretty well takes out your wingmen too, but you only have one target left.

Now's the fun part. Fly out of range of the remaining target. Approach at 100kps until it shows up on your target computer. Immediately hit backspace and L. While you wait for the torpedo to lock, watch the range--if it decreases quickly, you're at the front. Break off and come around from the side or rear.

If you do this right, you can get full torpedo lock before you're in range of the AMG. Then afterburn in, release. Took me three torpedoes (probably lost one to flak despite releasing at about 2500). It also seems to take them longer to aim the AMG at you if you're not approaching from the front.

I was amazed at how easy it was with this approach; I had given up on getting torpedo lock from out of range.

 

[Edfilho]

Gawd, Flak killing torps is REALLY annoying. you have to almost crash into the cap ship before releasing the torp.

 

[BenoitBrunet2]

WC 1 (or was it Secret Ops?) any mission you're forced to fly with Maniac after he goes "Crazy"

The missions themselves aren't particularly hard, but from a humanist perspective, keeping him alive proves quite challenging. He just kind of flies around and rams things, even by his standards, that's poor wingmanship.

 

[ZekeSulastin]

Most annoying mission?

I was playing through WCP Advance, when I got to the targeting disc mission. I launch in my Devastator, go to select the disc ... wtf no disc. I reset and try again: wtf no disc?!! Kinda makes it hard to win ...

I proceed to improvise - I blow up every damn alien in that mission. Victory? No - still in mission. Only ways to lose it? Die or turn traitor ...

I still haven't beaten the GBA version because of that ... kinda sucks too, as I've beaten the PC version several times ...

Am I missing something?

 

[BenoitBrunet2]

Am I missing something?

The disk... apparently.

 

[IPhoenixI]

I don't know if anybody had difficulty with this one, but in Righteous Fire there's an escort mission in oxford (Masterson Mission 4) that made me crazy for days.

Yeah I rememeber that mission. Though I usually don't have a hard time with it, the first time I played RF it took me some time to beat it also.

 

[BenoitBrunet2]

Why leeches? Just blow the bastards out of the skies

If you hit a guy with leeches, he doesn't "die" and any fighters which are supposed to appear after he "dies" do not. You don't trigger any of the multiple waves this way. I beat WC IV with something like 9 kills once, just for kicks, using this tactic.

 

[Fruitcake]

If you hit a guy with leeches, he doesn't "die" and any fighters which are supposed to appear after he "dies" do not. You don't trigger any of the multiple waves this way. I beat WC IV with something like 9 kills once, just for kicks, using this tactic.

Didn't know this was possible and am shocked now I know of this. That utterly sucks.

Kind of like exploiting a hole in the game engine. I guess it's your own choice if you want to beat the game like this, however.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Why would that suck? It's something that's wholly appropriate for Wing Commander IV -- given that the game involves trying to shoot down your former comrades.

 

[Delance]

It's sort of a game exploit. Not sure if it was designed this way. Considering that sometimes you are fighting pirates and the black lance, that angle shouldn't apply. Well, it's interesting anyway.

 

[Chernikov]

I wouldnt entirely call it an exploit... if the game counted incapacitations as kills the score would be much higher, and the missiles in WC4 are devestating enough that hit=kill quite often anyway. Ethically, it's not a bad idea either.

Gotta slag Seether though. No way around that.

 

[Quarto]

To a certain degree, it is an exploit, simply because the game wasn't designed to take it into account - I've tried to go through WC4 with as few kills as possible, and found that there was a few missions where I had to kill the people I just disabled, because the mission flow couldn't continue while they were still alive. Great for stopping additional waves, not so great for event-based missions.

 

[Fruitcake]

This sure as hell makes WC 4 a lot easier. But I feel uncomfortable whining about a error in the game engine of a eight year old game.

 

[Iceman16]

Don't fly that mission with Maniac . That mission's easy if you know how to do it. As you enter the Capship nav, immediately go in a tight afterburn to the uncloaking capship, press B to select all your Dumbfire slots acquire lock and give him dumbfire showers while you strafe right past it. BOOM! Kitty litter...

Piece of cake if you've got the skills

actually it only takes 1 dumbfire to kill the capship, at least it does when I try it

 

[BenoitBrunet2]

Why would that suck? It's something that's wholly appropriate for Wing Commander IV -- given that the game involves trying to shoot down your former comrades.

Exactly! That's kind of what triggered the attempt. I finished the game with the usual obscene kill count and though of how pissed off I would be if the day was suddenly saved by a man who just finished killing off 500+ relatively innocent pilots (minus the Black Lancers and random pirates of course).

"Hey, way to go Blair, good job saving us from Tolwyn. Oh by the way, we're going to have to court marshall you considering you blew up at least 2 carriers, multiple other capital ships, a superbase and hundreds of Confed Pilots. Sorry."

The one thing that did bother me was the failure to respawn. It would have been MUCH more challenging to try the Humanitarian route if you had to contend with multiple flights of fighters. I was honestly a little surprised that the game didn't try and encourage a more moral path to victory.

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

I've only played WC III and Starlancer... but I hate any mission where you just shoot missiles.... So the ones I hate the most is any mission that involves SKIPPER MISSILES!!! I would just let the transport in WC3 buy the farm since it wasn't critical to winning the game. It's too annoying looking for this invisible missile that pops up and by the time you line up to it.. it dissapears!! all the while you've got fighters swarming and shooting at you and the transport! I've completed the game on nightmare, but I've still never shot down a skipper missile!

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

Some people were talking albout wingmen dying.. The last mission of WC3 on nightmare level seems impossible to keep all your wingmen alive. If you go in with a full load of wingmen, they do great until you hit the Strakha cloak fighters then it seems like they don't know what the /*?!1oi they're doing! They get seriously chewed up!!! Also tough is the last mission of the Sega Dreamcast version of Starlancer on the difficult setting. It demands that one more rippers reach the base than in the PC versions of the game, I think you have to let the ion cannon target you while while you stop EVERY ememy fighter to save enough of them! Then saving Steiner is a whole other story.. it seems like you need luck to keep him alive... it seems all 4 or so cloak fighters are going straight for his ejection pod and can kill it with one hit! I stopped Ivan Petrov instantly and went straight to work on his buddies, but that still wasn't enough! Has anyone saved Steiner on the Dreamcast version on difficult setting?

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

Finally the hands down most difficult level ever played on any combat sim. is the Sol System defence on WC3. It doesn't matter what difficutly setting you put it on.. you won't win! I played through it a couple times killing fighter after fighter after capship after capship before realizing it never ends... it was designed to be impossible to win!! How aggrivating is that???!!!!! It's the final mission on the losing path.

 

[Fruitcake]

I've only played WC III and Starlancer... but I hate any mission where you just shoot missiles.... So the ones I hate the most is any mission that involves SKIPPER MISSILES!!! I would just let the transport in WC3 buy the farm since it wasn't critical to winning the game. It's too annoying looking for this invisible missile that pops up and by the time you line up to it.. it dissapears!! all the while you've got fighters swarming and shooting at you and the transport! I've completed the game on nightmare, but I've still never shot down a skipper missile!

I haven't completed the game on nightmare, but I easily managed to shoot down skipper missiles. Just target them and when they skip into cloak keep flying in the same direction.

Some people were talking albout wingmen dying.. The last mission of WC3 on nightmare level seems impossible to keep all your wingmen alive. If you go in with a full load of wingmen, they do great until you hit the Strakha cloak fighters then it seems like they don't know what the /*?!1oi they're doing! They get seriously chewed up!!! Also tough is the last mission of the Sega Dreamcast version of Starlancer on the difficult setting. It demands that one more rippers reach the base than in the PC versions of the game, I think you have to let the ion cannon target you while while you stop EVERY ememy fighter to save enough of them! Then saving Steiner is a whole other story.. it seems like you need luck to keep him alive... it seems all 4 or so cloak fighters are going straight for his ejection pod and can kill it with one hit! I stopped Ivan Petrov instantly and went straight to work on his buddies, but that still wasn't enough! Has anyone saved Steiner on the Dreamcast version on difficult setting?

I don't know anything about Starlancer, because I never played it. However, in the WC3 Kilrah missions, your wingmen die, one at a time until you do the Kilrah run. You can't even continue the game with any of your wingmen alive, so send them home if you want them to live.

About the Sol final mission on the losing path, you've lost the war. Game over.