What's your least favorite craft to dogfight with?

[Ilanin]

Having just started playing through WC3 on Nightmare, I would like to note:

GODSDAMN IT DRALTHI!

Now, even on Nightmare, the flying pancake isn't actually a threat, but endless ImRec missile spam is really annoying. AI doesn't need a missile lock to fire on Nightmare and every Dralthi pilot in the game will fire missiles at you. I can dodge them, but I prefer not spending two minutes at the start of each engagement flying in squiggles.

 

[LeHah]

I remember being really frustrated with the Paktahn because of their high armor ratings and the Ekapshi because they'd always swoop down really close to the planet's surface which means you had to risk a collision to get in a tight shot.

 

[Kaunisto]

WC1: Salthi cause it kamikazes into your face now and then
WC2: Grikath for nasty firepower, SO2: those Sabre/Morningstar things (is that a bug of some sort or are those supposed to be Sabres modified To Morningstar?)
WC3: Sorthak
WCP: Devil Ray
P1: confed ships
P2: Skull
Academy: Wraith

 

[Chaosbringer]

WC1: the rapiers.
WC2: Grikath.
WC3: Paktahn, they took forever to die...
WC4: mmm, i'd say dragons.
P1: none
WCP: Mantas, really annoying

 

[Highball]

Krants ... you know why I hate Krants? They are such a piece of crap fighter. 2 laser cannons, some shields, and a little bit of armor. They only can beat you in massive groups. On top of that, it seems to take more hits than a firk-ding-blasted Hhriss or Gratha to take out. I don't know how it can take so many danged full gun blasts and still keep going.

 

[Ilanin]

This seems as good a place as any to comment on how I'm discovering WC3 to be an entirely different game on Nightmare. When the AI is allowed to use its burners it gets a lot more competent at flying the lighter ships. The Vaktoth, meanwhile, suffers greatly without the superior AI it benefits from on Ace - and the sluggish turn rate and broad profile are exposed, making it easy prey by comparison.

WC3 ship annoyingness factor (Ace): Strakha > K'Ha'Haf > Darket > Dralthi > Sorthak > Ekapshi > Paktahn > Vaktoth

WC3 ship annoyingness factor (Nightmare): Strakha > Vaktoth > Paktahn >>> Dralthi = Draket
(I'll be meeting the K'Ha'Haf tomorrow I guess, but not expecting much trouble).

 

[frostytheplebe]

I'm sorry, I still say the Sorthak takes it for me. You see the armor shed right off of it and IT IS STILL UNDAMAGED! I get it's shields down, hit it where it hurts and it still keeps on coming!

 

[ChrisReid]

I thought the Sorthak made a fairly big target, and you tend to face it with a beefier ship. It's not extremely well armed, so you can tend to pound it for a while. Meanwhile, the game puts you up against Corvettes fairly often, and dogfighting around its big tail gun is a pain.

 

[Oggy]

It all depends what ship I am flying to be honest,
WC1 - Salthi vs Scimitar, hunt in packs, they are too quick and I can't put enough damage out in a single headone pass to take more than one out.
And the rapier in the secret missions, just outclasses the raptor I was in, I ran circles around the gwenhyvar to get them to crash into it, I had no chance in a standup fight.

WC2 - Grikath, rear turret is a pain

WCIII -

I thought the Sorthak made a fairly big target, and you tend to face it with a beefier ship. It's not extremely well armed, so you can tend to pound it for a while. Meanwhile, the game puts you up against Corvettes fairly often, and dogfighting around its big tail gun is a pain.

I am going to have to disagree with you there Chris and go with the sorthak too, the quad meson blaster turret on the rear is a pain, frontal attack was difficult because of the amount of fire power it can salvo onto you, and on a craft that can shelton slide (Arrow) you will be there for ages plinking away as you can't deal out enough damage. To be fair though the Thud was good for cracking it, but I always seemed to take damage from the damn rear turret.
I can't remember if you fight it once you've got the excalibur?
Oh, and the Kilrathi rock fighter, on high difficulties it drops mines in your face when you are tailing it, I had a few nasty suprises there.

WCIV - Cloaking Arrows, or the Bearcat, because it was so fast, and possibly the excalibur when you are in the confed jamming field that lowers your shields.

WC: P - I'll go with the Skate clusters, blow it up and it splits into 3 ships.

 

[Ilanin]

I thought the Sorthak made a fairly big target, and you tend to face it with a beefier ship. It's not extremely well armed, so you can tend to pound it for a while. Meanwhile, the game puts you up against Corvettes fairly often, and dogfighting around its big tail gun is a pain.

Yeah, this is my opinion. The (nightmare) Sorthak is a bit more dangerous than the Vaktoth due to more firepower, that's about it. A T-bolt can outmaneuvre it and the rear turret is nowhere near as accurate as that on the Paktahn, so tailing is less of a problem. An Arrow can just fly rings around it, and it doesn't bother me that it'll take ages to kill - plinking away while Shelton sliding is fun. Also you never encounter Sorthaks in great numbers, and being heavily outnumbered is normally the worst problem.

Oh, and the Kilrathi rock fighter, on high difficulties it drops mines in your face when you are tailing it, I had a few nasty suprises there.

I recall it doing this on Ace too. You really don't need to get that close, it's not as if the thing is particularly fast or maneuverable.

 

[Oggy]

I recall it doing this on Ace too. You really don't need to get that close, it's not as if the thing is particularly fast or maneuverable.

Perhaps its more of a lesson in why I shouldn't tailgate It was a nice touch though, the first time it happened all I had time to do was think "what the hell was that?" *BOOM*
actually, now I have thought about it I would take that one off my list, it did something out of the norm compared to other fighters in the game

I would place the WCIII corvette up there to, but its not really a fighter, although I agree, its dangerous as hell until you blow that rear tachyon turret off!

Perhaps its my poor/lazy flying but i can vivdly remember getting shredded by the quad meson turret on the sorthak more than once. never really struggled against the paktahn, unless there was more than one in a formation and the turrets were all blasting at me,

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

I'd still go with the WC4 cloaking Arrows, but I thought I'd post to second Ilanin's post. Without the missile threat, the WC3 Dralthi is likely the same clay pigeon type target drone that it's appearance suggests. On Nightmare however, they swarm you with missiles that are rarely effected by decoys. I played on the Mac version, so I'm not sure if that was a glitch or was the same as the PC version. They'd cause me to waste nearly all my afterburners and decoys. They seemed to like coming at you from all directions on certain Navs. If the mission allowed it, I'd generally afterburn and slide my way out of their ambush and towards the next navpoint. Sometimes they'd roll in to the next Nav out of afterburners after I finished fighters from the next Nav, and I'd mop them up relatively easily.

Rock ships were annoying too since my tactic of choice is to fly close, but they required me to keep my distance. Paktahns were hard by yourself, but with group tactics they were easy. When you order your wingman to attack your target, there's two of you behind it and it's rear gun can only attack one of you at a time. The other advantage of this group tactic is that it allows you to fire faster than the enemy shields recharge rate, which is handy on the heavily shielded big guys. This group tactic also made Sorthak's and Rock Ships much easier. A danger is that your wingman isn't as smart as you and might fly into a Rock Ship mine.

 

[Szegedin]

I'm playing through Wc3 for the first time in years, and Hard is so easy so I bumped it up to crazy ....

All of a sudden if I'm in a thunderbolt

I...CAN'T....KILL....DRALTHI

Vaktoths are cake, but I just can't keep my guns on an afterburnering Dralthi long enough to destroy it, and they never seem to die from IM-REC hits, Leeches are usually evaded as are FF's...

Man I'm trying to do the first mission in Laconda, I want a Thunderbolt so I have a torp for the optional destroyer - but the first group of 4 Dralthi that attack after the 2 vaktoths annihilate my armor and use up my decoys with their constant stream of missiles. I like how they love shooting missiles as soon as I turn to face them, tricky devils....

It might be ok if there wasn't another group of 4 later in the mission!

def my least fav ship.....

 

[Ilanin]

The Dralthi is a pain, but in most cases it can be dealt with. There are a few tricks involved:

Don't try and chase the Dralthi at afterburner. You're unlikely to hit it and it waste burner fuel you need for evading missiles. The best times to hit a Dralthi are at the beginning and end of it's attack runs, as it turns towards you to start firing and away from you to set up for another one. You can try head-to-head runs in a T-bolt given it's a heavier craft, but not if you're very outnumbered.

Remember you can hit E for an IFF scramble when you've used all your decoys up. They only have a very poor chance of throwing a missile off but you have unlimited usage so you can just hammer the E key while flipping burners on and off and flying evasive.

Flipping between targets is an excellent idea on harder levels - basically the AI switches between aggressive and evasive modes and you always want to be attacking the ones going aggressive - they're easier to kill and they'll do you more damage.

None of this has got me past Alcor 1 on Nightmare yet but then I haven't really tried very hard yet (I'd probably do better if my joystick's fire button worked more than 50% of the time).

 

[Mjr. Whoopass]

The Dralthi is a pain, but in most cases it can be dealt with. There are a few tricks involved:

Don't try and chase the Dralthi at afterburner. You're unlikely to hit it and it waste burner fuel you need for evading missiles. The best times to hit a Dralthi are at the beginning and end of it's attack runs, as it turns towards you to start firing and away from you to set up for another one. You can try head-to-head runs in a T-bolt given it's a heavier craft, but not if you're very outnumbered.

Remember you can hit E for an IFF scramble when you've used all your decoys up. They only have a very poor chance of throwing a missile off but you have unlimited usage so you can just hammer the E key while flipping burners on and off and flying evasive.

Flipping between targets is an excellent idea on harder levels - basically the AI switches between aggressive and evasive modes and you always want to be attacking the ones going aggressive - they're easier to kill and they'll do you more damage.

None of this has got me past Alcor 1 on Nightmare yet but then I haven't really tried very hard yet (I'd probably do better if my joystick's fire button worked more than 50% of the time).

This is great advice for the Thunderbolt. You can't chase the faster fighters on Nightmare. I also noticed continuing to press "E" even after decoys were gone, but I thought this was some sort of glitch. I like the IFF scramble explanation better than the glitchy programming one.

The only key I've found to beating Nightmare is to fly the Arrow as much as possible, turn on your burners to start your fake retreat, and use the shelton slide. Kilrathi are aggressive and will afterburn towards you and often fire missiles. After the Kilrathi afterburners are gone: turn off your slide, head back towards them, and mop 'em up. Be careful because they may still have some of those pesky IMRECs left. Later in the game you can use the same technique with the Excalibur. This doesn't work on every mission, but at least it limits the amount of missions you have to play over and over again.

On some recon missions, you don't even have to engage fighters, just shelton from Nav to Nav until you've visited all of them, then head back to the Victory. Sometimes the enemies even follow you back home and it can be fun to watch the big ships take out those fighters.

 

[Szegedin]

This is great advice for the Thunderbolt. You can't chase the faster fighters on Nightmare. I also noticed continuing to press "E" even after decoys were gone, but I thought this was some sort of glitch. I like the IFF scramble explanation better than the glitchy programming one.

Yeah I'd noticed pressing the 'E' key once out of decoys caused the radar to flicker, but didn't think anything of it, - now I hammer away with the scrambles, thanks for pointing that out llanin....

I've gotten the swing of things on crazy, - against a group of 4 dralthi in a T-Bolt I do alright if I manage to kill one quickly, usually by firing a burst head to head then immediately launching a missile so it hits before they break, after that I can usually juggle targets and find enemies making their runs and wear them down. If my luck is bad and I have to deal with four simultaneously it does still get a little rough, as evading missiles takes so much time...

I wish all ships could shelton sometimes....