[QuakeIV]

The Plunder is extremely difficult to complete, at least at 'insane' difficulty, which I am told this was tested for.  (its similarly unpleasant on lower difficulties generally, but tends to not be as bad due to the limits on how many turrets can lock on to you and the relative incompetence of the enemy AI)  I almost did it once but have yet to get through it after dozens of tries every day for the past week or so.

The wingmen around 20% of the time dont manage to take out even one beam on the siren, followed promptly by my own failure to do so, due to the fact that paveways are getting shot down by enemy fighters in their terminal attack phase.

Frequently (its been about 50/50 so far) it isn't possible to make the Siren disarm happen before the Yangtze has taken too much damage to survive the ensuing secondary fight.  Even when the Siren's beams are taken care of frequently it isn't possible to get rid of the ECM assets to make that fight winnable.  And the way you have to get rid of the auroras quickly is by sending your invulnerable wingmen into the cruiser fire pocket where the auroras are hiding to start taking them out early on.  It is a bit immersion breaking for me to have to rely on that sort of thing.

Finally, the re-arm ship tends to wander off when it isn't getting shot down, frequently causing me to get shot down waiting for it to start trying to dock.  (I have in the past had to chase it down, get in front of it, stop, then I get taken apart by a balor  before I can burn up to a high enough speed to start evading with any effect)

Sorry if I seem a little flustered, its because I am, but I did try to make this somewhat coherent.

e: slowly picking away at the angry bits via consecutive edits

[General Battuta]

The Plunder is probably slightly overtuned. It's very hard to prevent it from becoming self-playing, but it may need some nerfs.

[Snarks]

I played through Darkest Hour the other day on normal. The mission plays pretty well until the Diomedes shows up. I had managed to save most of wingmen, but it seems most of the UEF fighters just drop like flies when engaging the Diomedes. I had to load a checkpoint a few times and even with every single fighter alive, the Diomedes would end up butchering everyone. It feels like the players and friendly fighters are grossly ill-prepared to take on the Diomedes. Maybe if the Indus deploys a couple of bombers or gunships, it would make it less of a wall slam for all the surviving fighters.

[QuakeIV]

For what its worth that added to the moment for me somewhat.  It seemed like some kind of frantic suicide assault to try to weaken it enough to allow the Indus to do its thing.

I die there a LOT though, since I tend to view myself as expendable compared to a frigate.  Would be nice if you had a brief chance to eject or something.  Frequently I do enough damage to totally screw over the Valerie and then my ship disintegrates.

[Doko]

If you have most of your wingmen alive when the valerie arrives all you need to do is c-3-7 all fighters, position yourself at a good angle to attack, split the wings to attack each beam emiter while you take out the ridiculously armored port AAA, after that you can do whatever.
If not a lot of fighters are left alive forget the AAA and focus on the beams.I personally find the idea of AAA beams ****ing stupid outside of TAG as a game mechanic and always kill them when possible.

The AI is completely useless when it comes to targeting subsystems or turrets because it first has to fly to the end of the turret normal path and only then will it start doing its thing, asuming the path is valid and not obstructed by something in the model. Playing this mission a while back by some miracle every single allied ship, including the vatican, was still alive when the valerie arrived. By the time the indus started shooting, the valerie was almost dead from fighters just shooting it.

The diomedes is an amazing warship, but in the BP missions the turrets get some insane armor values and what makes them ridiculous in my eyes is the fact that they have a fighter bay capable of launching so many fighters as it can in aristeia.

[Mars]

. . . it only ever launches 24 fighters iirc.

[General Battuta]

Huh, I thought it capped out at 12.

[QuakeIV]

Wait, isn't 24 practically a whole wing?

[Mars]

I believe Battuta is right, it was twelve, and twelve is one whole squadron.

[Meatball]

Some missions ARE too hard.
I don't see how the majority voted "generally balanced", maybe you didn't play on 'Reality' difficulty, the hardest.

I haven't completed my re-run of the completed Blue Planet, right now I'm playing War in Heaven Act 1. The mission I've encountered that I still have not beaten on 'Reality' difficulty is 'The Plunder'.
This mission, is absolutely ridiculously hard difficulty, and I'm not a fan of lowering the difficulty level just because one mission was to hard.
If some missions are to hard, that should be a pointer to that some ships, mechanics are unbalanced or the mission itself unbalanced. All missions should be a winnable scenario even if it seems impossible at first, otherwise it would seem weird the story would even progress.

Regarding the mission 'The Plunder', I've had over 50 retries and still not beaten it. There are several factors I've noticed that makes this mission incredible hard.

On 'Reality' difficulty, the cruisers and corvettes are packed with AAA beams, lasers and all kinds of **** to rain hell down on figher squadrons. Your chances of survival are near zero if you try to get close, which you have to in this mission, to 2 cruisers and 1 corvette. I think the corvettes and cruisers have to many guns fitted on their hull, and their aim way to good.
You need to disarm the beam cannons, and shoot down the Aurora fighters (all close to the cruisers) and disable the communcations on the cruisers and corvette, while the game also has events where several fighters will chase you down, instead of randomly targeting different ships.
Or maybe that's just how if feels, but I'm consistently killed by Scorpio wing when trying to disarm the beam cannons on the Siren ship.
I mean there is much more to it than this that makes this mission ridiculously hard.

Come on, can someone just record playing this mission on reality? I bet you won't be able to beat in one go, and if you do I wanna see what tricks you used.

[Meatball]

Well I saved myself the trouble waiting for someone to complete this mission for me to see.
I finally beat The Plunder on 'Reality' (Insane) difficulty.
Still needs to be balanced tho.

[FrikgFeek]

You didn't really need to. I've already recorded all the missions on insane way back in November.
Here's the playlist for WiH part 1 if you're interested
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC89WYnIXtfVb-8Avd7LAgX21tTRMKmz2

Have others for AoA and Tenebra. The plan was for tutta to use them for dev commentary but he's been kinda busy I guess.

The Plunder has apparently been made a lot easier since the beta though, you should've played that monster if you think the current one is hard

[General Battuta]

Yeah The Plunder got nerfed a lot. Might need more. It's hard to make it easier without making it self-playing.

[QuakeIV]

I watched the plunder and I'm not sure we played the same version of the mission, you managed to get rid of the Siren beams by just firing a couple of paveways at each beam and then the rest got taken care of by your wingmates.  That is extremely rare, usually you have to wait for them to complete their run or some beams will be left over.

e:  I also didn't see tev fighters shooting the paveways down with pinpoint accuracy during their terminal phase.

[FrikgFeek]

Because I fired them exactly head-on so the Siren's turrets can't shoot them down and only after beta wing went to distract the tev fighters. I also waited for my wingmates to be in range before firing so we all fire a huge swarm of paveways at once. If you fire them alone they're almost guaranteed to get shot down.

And yes, this was the live version of the mission, the same one the rest of you played.

[QuakeIV]

only after beta wing went to distract the tev fighters.

Hadn't thought of that, it looked like they were engaging other fighters, so I had (incorrectly) assumed I would just get trouble from them instead.  Thinking back, the other fighters were much further away, so that makes sense.

I also waited for my wingmates to be in range before firing so we all fire a huge swarm of paveways at once.

I thought of that, but I didn't think it was doable since I saw the wingmen launching at what looked like some arbitrary number that was closer than maximum range.  How did you figure which range the wingmen launch at?  I'm pretty sure they got a lot closer than maximum.  I'm also pretty sure you'd need to launch at the same range since paveways are so slow in non-terminal phase (then just hang around the general viscinity of that range with a lock and wait for them to fire).

The best I managed salvo wise was to fly alongside my already launched missiles while firing and have them all land simultaneously, but that wasn't really adequate.


e: Alright now I'm done editing...

[Macielos]

Age of Aquarius became far too easy in my opinion. Forced Entry, a great challenging mission of the old AoA, having almost Shadow Genesis style, is now short, poses no challenge at all and... is simply boring. Generally missions in AoA are too short, as you guys play a bit too much with manipulating armour classes. Sathanas beaten by Orestes fleet in 2-3 minutes was not epic at all. Mission where we defend against 3 Shivan destroyers and Vishnan come help us is almost self-playable after you destroy first Ravana's beams. The only missions in AoA I found challenging were breaking a two-Ravana blockade in a Vishnan craft and battling Sathanas (I kept being about 15 seconds too slow to destroy the last cannon before it destroys Orestes).

War in Heaven I, on the other hand, is very well-balanced. It's already been before. Challenging but not frustrating. Dogfights, sniper strikes, GTVA warships unleashing AAAf hell on you... it was great.

I can't say much about Tenebra though, as I'm now on second mission, but the training part before a mission (I assume there is one before most of them) is a brilliant idea. It fixed the most irritating issue in first Tenebra - that in most missions there is a complex mini-game you need to learn to win. You try, you fail, you get angry, but you keep playing, you learn by your mistakes, you finally make it to the next mission... and there you have another mini-game. That was bad and it's great you did sth with it. Anyway, I think Tenebra would be much better if there were only two or three minigames reflecting Fedayeen's unconventional warfare, but they repeat throughout the missions. Just like system cracking (going through labirynth) in Mass Effect 1.

[General Battuta]

You mean we don't play with armor classes enough?

The AoA missions mostly haven't changed since 2010.

[FrikgFeek]

I thought of that, but I didn't think it was doable since I saw the wingmen launching at what looked like some arbitrary number that was closer than maximum range.  How did you figure which range the wingmen launch at?  I'm pretty sure they got a lot closer than maximum.

I just eyeballed it. The first time I played it I followed Simms to see when she launches, it's usually around the 'Watch the flak pocket' line.

And yeah, AoA barely changed since the DC release in 2010. And really, they weren't very challenging back then either. Forced Entry was only slightly tweaked so the Ravana dies somewhat faster since before it used to take so long to go down with nothing for the player to do, it would also sometimes catch up to the Temeraire as it reached its final waypoint and just stopped.

Only the Vishan missions were really changed

[General Battuta]

Yeah, the Vishnan missions got some cool weapon **** and some interesting Shivan behavior on higher difficulties.