Your best performance in Armada gauntlet?

Whiplash

Rear Admiral
Hi folks!

I can remember first playing Armada's gauntlet mode back in the mid-nineties. My brother and I used to play split screen on a CRT monitor using the dual keyboard controls. How times have changed. :)

These days of course, thanks to the GOG release, we play over the network with flight sticks, and it's more fun than ever. As recently as yesterday (April 4th 2015) we made it past the Gladius missions for the first time, but then I unfortunately got blown up by a Shok'Lar flying Arrow escort for a Banshee bomber. This was wave 11.

So has anyone here ever finished gauntlet mode, playing solo or otherwise? If not, what is the highest level you've reached?
 
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I got up to the first Wraith mission once. This was in the original version of the game (i.e. if there was a password, I sure didn't know about it). Getting through that Phantom mission with all the Shoklars was pretty hard on my piloting hand...
 
I never got past the Shok'lars in the Phantom. On the Kilrathi side, I don't think I got through the first Jrathek mission, so I guess I got up to mission 5 flying Confed, and 4 with the Kilrathi. All in all, I can't say I ever really enjoyed the gauntlets in Armada, in spite of many repeated attempts to complete it. It's not the difficulty that got to me, but the sheer frustration of Armada dogfights. The speed was just too much, relative to the agility. Normally in a WC game, I fly very aggressively, getting right up to the enemy's tail. It works in most WC games, but in Armada it seemed almost impossible (also because the controls were terrible, unless you used a joystick - and I was always a mouse player). I distinctly recall that there was a particularly tough Arrow (an ace of some sorts?) either at the end of the first Jrathek mission or the last Dralthi mission. Ultimately, the only way I was able to shoot the bugger down was to wait for him to run out of AB fuel, which was not challenging, nor exhausting, but... boring.
 
I've never gotten very far, but I will say that it's a completely new game in coop. You can actually work with your wingman to overcome the jousting common with Armada dogfights and effectively hunt the opposing fighters. I don't think many people take advantage of it, but online Armada coop is one of the most awesome things we have available to us today.
 
I never got past the Shok'lars in the Phantom. On the Kilrathi side, I don't think I got through the first Jrathek mission, so I guess I got up to mission 5 flying Confed, and 4 with the Kilrathi. All in all, I can't say I ever really enjoyed the gauntlets in Armada, in spite of many repeated attempts to complete it. It's not the difficulty that got to me, but the sheer frustration of Armada dogfights. The speed was just too much, relative to the agility. Normally in a WC game, I fly very aggressively, getting right up to the enemy's tail. It works in most WC games, but in Armada it seemed almost impossible (also because the controls were terrible, unless you used a joystick - and I was always a mouse player). I distinctly recall that there was a particularly tough Arrow (an ace of some sorts?) either at the end of the first Jrathek mission or the last Dralthi mission. Ultimately, the only way I was able to shoot the bugger down was to wait for him to run out of AB fuel, which was not challenging, nor exhausting, but... boring.

I've experienced this as well; there are a few dogfights in later missions where you simply cannot take an enemy ship in anything like a straight fight. Their accuracy is unerring and they simply chew you apart before you can land a shot. In co-op, my brother and I take turns keeping them busy while the other tries to get his shields recharged. Once the kitties run out of fuel, they just circle you in a slow pattern and become easy meat. This does get rather tedious.
 
I've never gotten very far, but I will say that it's a completely new game in coop. You can actually work with your wingman to overcome the jousting common with Armada dogfights and effectively hunt the opposing fighters. I don't think many people take advantage of it, but online Armada coop is one of the most awesome things we have available to us today.

Will have to see how to do this better. What we've found is that it is extremely tricky to both target the same ship; the risk of collision increases tremendously, and this is nearly always fatal. Hence, we split up and each has his own little joust.
 
I never beat Mission 5 for Confed (Phantom vs Shok'lar) - I absolutely hate the Phantom! For the Kilrathi I never got past mission 7, the first Kor-larh mission. While I sometimes managed to beat the first Gladius at the first navpoint, I always died at the second nav point, with 2 Gladius and one Wraith. I always ran out of AB fuel.

In Armada, I found it extremely important to have long range weapons and the Kor-larh only had short range guns and was so much slower than the Gladius. Really frustrating...

(I also find the Dralthi missions to be rather hard or better: tedious: the Kilrathi Laser cannon is so agonizingly weak, the Arrow so small yet sports a comparatively heavy shield with fast recharge.)
 
I've never gotten very far, but I will say that it's a completely new game in coop. You can actually work with your wingman to overcome the jousting common with Armada dogfights and effectively hunt the opposing fighters. I don't think many people take advantage of it, but online Armada coop is one of the most awesome things we have available to us today.
This^

Need more co-op. I have to be REALLY in the mood for versus (which is typically nil) but I'm always in the mood for co-op games. Anyone, if I'm ever in #wingnut feel free to setup a game with me.

That goes for Arena Commander as well...normally. Currently I seem to have picked up the launcher bug where it won't go past saying, "Signing In." Reinstalls have not fixed the problem.

Some Armada co-op would be a nice distraction.
 
I'd be up for giving co-op a try one of these days; just need to know when and how to set it up (and if my schedule will allow it - for example, this evening would not be all that great for me).
 
I'd be willing to give it a whirl again. Just have to review the setup instructions and get things lined up on my new machine.

ChrisReid and I played a few games several years ago and had a great time. We never did the gauntlet though.
 
I'd be willing to give it a whirl again. Just have to review the setup instructions and get things lined up on my new machine.

ChrisReid and I played a few games several years ago and had a great time. We never did the gauntlet though.

The GOG release makes it super easy to get things going. You literally just pick whether you want to play as client or server, enter the server IP address, and off you go. From there you can play regular Armada or Proving Grounds.

The trickiest part may be getting a network correction up between players if you aren't in the same location. Unless you have a static public IP from your ISP, you'll probably have to resort to an internet VPN solution. We use Evolve, which is easy to set up and has some nifty features including integrated voice comms.
 
I never beat Mission 5 for Confed (Phantom vs Shok'lar) - I absolutely hate the Phantom! For the Kilrathi I never got past mission 7, the first Kor-larh mission. While I sometimes managed to beat the first Gladius at the first navpoint, I always died at the second nav point, with 2 Gladius and one Wraith. I always ran out of AB fuel.
In Armada, I found it extremely important to have long range weapons and the Kor-larh only had short range guns and was so much slower than the Gladius. Really frustrating...

This. The Kor-larh is probably the worst Kilrathi ship due to the short range of its weapons. Cannot get to win with it in the usual Armada 'jousting' style of fight.
On the human side I don't remember where I failed. I think somewhere in the late Wraith or early Gladius missions. Probably killed by Gorlans or the lack of a save function. (yes I know there were codes with the patch, but that screwed up my joystick, so I usual
 
This. The Kor-larh is probably the worst Kilrathi ship due to the short range of its weapons. Cannot get to win with it in the usual Armada 'jousting' style of fight.
On the human side I don't remember where I failed. I think somewhere in the late Wraith or early Gladius missions. Probably killed by Gorlans or the lack of a save function. (yes I know there were codes with the patch, but that screwed up my joystick, so I usual

Well, now that I've managed to get ARMEDIT running, you can rebalance the ships and weapons as you please. I know of a few tweaks I'd dearly love to make.

https://www.wcnews.com/chatzone/threads/armedit-in-64bit-windows.27825/
 
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Speed -30% across the board? ;-)

Maybe. I normally fly most engagements at less than top speed anyway.

As I posted in my ARMEDIT thread, the really interesting bit is that the Y/P/R values for all ships are set to 2. First thing I'm going to try is to modify these and see what happens.
 
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