Most aggravating WC mission

Mjr. Whoopass said:
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!!!

The mission is set up so that you must make the final, planet-side run alone, as an issue of gameplay; one wingman will die on every individual mission of the Kilrah series. You can order the wingmen to return to base to save them, but in doing so you'll not have them available for whatever remains of the Kilrah run.
 
Escort missions are always difficult, as are torpedo missions in WC2.
Starlancer has some difficult missions because they play like puzzles, you MUST be at the right place when the (heavy) scripted stuff happens. It's kind restrictive. And confusing.
 
Non of the skipper missions ever bothered me. They never skipped enough or changed course enough for it to really throw me off, and there were never more than 1 or 2 missiles to shoot down. The missiles seemed like a nifty idea, but they weren't particularly fearsome in practice.
 
and can we really count the missions you weren't allowed to win? or should we count those as double? I absolutely hated the sol missions (which I only ever got to on purpose for the record). I could totally kill the dreadnaught if I was allowed to!
 
Wow! I'm amazed at the # of people who can shoot the skipper missiles with no problem. Of course the easier settings would probably be easy, but have you guys beaten them on nightmare level!? MAYBE I could if I played it over and over again, but at least for me it would be VERY tough and not fun IMHO... and I can even beat the Kilrah nightmare missions with little trouble.. My deepest respect to anyone who can shoot skippers on nightmare with little problems... especially later missions when the briefing doesn't warn you about them... sometimes your capship just blows up all the sudden and you realize... "must've been a skipper missile"
 
Thanks Death for your reply: "The mission is set up so that you must make the final, planet-side run alone, as an issue of gameplay; one wingman will die on every individual mission of the Kilrah series. You can order the wingmen to return to base to save them, but in doing so you'll not have them available for whatever remains of the Kilrah run."
I didn't realize that one wingman died on every mission of the Kilrah series... I thought I remembered saving some by having them "form on my wing" then attacking capships only when we're both in position, but it has been awhile... interesting.. Of course I knew the planet run is done alone, due to the cloaking Excalibur that only you have... I resorted to sending them home on the final mission, but I was just amazed at how much your wingmen sucked at shooting the Kilrathi cloak fighters.
 
Fruitcake's coment: "Skippers really aren't that difficult if you know how to target the yellow dots on your radar."
That's sounds like good advice Fruitcake, never tried that, and didn't realize they stayed yellow dots even as they cloak.. or do they? Maybe I'll break out the old game and try that..
 
If i remember correctly, the dots disappear when the Skipper cloaks. So you have to wait for it to reappear and then lock onto it.
 
Even on nightmare you have a point of origin "the yellow dot" moving towards a target. Once you spot it, you just fly towards it. It doesn't stay cloaked long enough, nor does it engage in evasive enough action to cause a problem, generally. I think that an overwhelming number of the things would cause serious problems, but they never got out of control.

Did anybody else hate the Excals autotracking in WC3? It's been a while, but I remember having far less trouble leading myself. The guns had a tendency to undershoot fighters. Rather, when a fighter started banking, it took the lead-indicator a few seconds to catch up, seconds that a pilot could manually save through anticipation, but the system didn't allow for that.
 
I loved the autotracking, never flew without it. Sure, there are some instances where your brain can see where the target is going and the autotarget can't predict, but there's a major reason why the autotarget is preferable. Since there are no timed missions (other than missile shooting) the only reason you would want to kill the enemy faster is if you are outnumbered and other enemies are shooting at you while you're shooting at the enemy. If this is the case it's better to have autotarget on so you can concentrate on changing your geometric plane so the other guy can't shoot you and let the autotarget get some pot shots in. If you have to aim your ship at a certain spot in order to shoot, you're going to be flying in a relatively stable direction and make yourself an easier target for the other enemies (this is one reason why I hate shooting down missiles).

Autotarget is especially great at beating an enemy in a head-on course. As he flies toward you, move up down side to side whatever and the autotarget will nail him while he can't hit you. If you aim head on you're going to take some laser shots and you'll have to pull away at the last minute. With Autotracking, you'll shoot him even at the last tenths of a second when you pass each other- as you all know that often makes the difference between a Cat whose front is Yellow or Red and a Cat who's dead! Sorry, couldn't resist rhyming.

Coincidentally, this also allows you to get more shots in when flying head to head. The shortest dist. between 2 points is a straight line which is what you'd fly w/out autotracking. With autotracking you then get more time and more shots toward the front where the armor is weaker. This is esp. valuable on Nightmare setting where the enemy uses afterburners and you need to conserve yours: the relatively fast flying enemies often travel far out ahead of you and turn back around for a face-off.
 
he very last mission of Special Operations 1, where you have to kill the two Fralatha in the wow-that's-a-lot-of-torpedoes-on-my-fighter Sabre is pretty tough, at least for me. They're really good at aiming those Anti-Matter guns, and the Sabre's shields don't withstand too many hits; if you can manage to kill off all the Gothri beforehand with little damage, it helps a whole lot


This mission that has had several mentuions is the bane of my existance its by far one of the hardest i have ever flown
 
That one did tend to get nasty. I agree wholeheartedly. And I do agree that in certain situations Auto-Tracking provided a definate advantage, but once I got to turning and burning in a furball, my kill rate always seemed to improve once I turned it off, both in terms of speed and numbers.
 
To me it seems that going against autotracking is like the folk tale of John Henry who challenged a machine in a competition to see which could drive stakes into a railroad faster. John Henry beat the machine, but the effort killed him- "he drove so hard he broke his heart". It seems it just makes it harder on yourself to manually aim. It is very romantic though, I'll give you that.
 
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