Author Topic: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency  (Read 289649 times)

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Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
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The thing is, I think a lot of it has to do with timing.  On one or two occasions, I've had an enemy wing stupidly chasing a support ship for a minute or two during the Khepren defense segment, which means that the Khepren wound up much further along in its waypoints than normal, which meant that the Enceladus seemed to be able to bring two or three more beams to bear.  I just couldn't get to all of them in time, and that's without the flak and enemy fighters bearing down on me.

That's possible. In my testing, I always approached that easy middle part looking for maximum kill count and trying to steal as many kills from the wingmen as I could, so the enemy ships dropped like flies and it was over pretty quickly. I assumed most other people would do something similar. :p

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And yes, before you say anything, I know that they're only bonus points, but I also know that they're do-able, so I want to do them.  I'm really in the wrong line of entertainment...anger issues + perfectionism + challenging game = perfect storm of hatred.

You should definitely play online at some point. You have exactly the right mentality it takes to succeed there. :D

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(Oh, and one more thing?  The Sekhmet's energy reserves are about the worst thing I've ever seen.  Dear lord, you'd think the Vasudans would have managed to include a decent powerplant in this thing.  Kaysers drain its primary energy in all of about twenty shots.  I'd take a brick of an Ursa any day of the week over this thing, speed advantage or not.)

I tend to have my power split 50-50 between weapons and engines most of the time (on any ship), and only divert power to shields when I get damaged.

The Sekhmet's energy isn't great, but it's not the worst either. Check out the Tauret with a quad Kayser, on insane difficulty. It literally shoots about four shots before the energy runs out. :p

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Also, I should mention this given all the effort in your posts here: back up your pilot (both the pl2 and cs2) every few missions. If you have read the last few pages, a few people have reported random pilot file corruption even on recent builds, which will mess up your progress. It's quite rare and very hard to reproduce, but this is the best way to safeguard against it for now.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
That's possible. In my testing, I always approached that easy middle part looking for maximum kill count and trying to steal as many kills from the wingmen as I could, so the enemy ships dropped like flies and it was over pretty quickly. I assumed most other people would do something similar. :p
I've actually been doing the exact opposite.  I'm so relieved to have made it through the first portion and so much in dread of what's to come, all I want to do is sit back and preserve any hull strength I have over 60%. :p In any case, they usually do go down almost instantly.  It's just the rare occasion that a wing decides to gang up on the support ship that throws everything off; since I have everyone set to protect the Khepren, my wingmen don't bother with them.

And if singleplayer does this to me, I'm afraid that multiplayer would drive me to drink...

Edit:  Thanks for the warning.  Even if these points don't display properly in the end, I'd still like to think they meant something. :p
« Last Edit: October 11, 2008, 12:26:53 am by Mongoose »

 

Offline blowfish

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Well, I know for a fact that it is possible to get a 100% bonus score.  Why, because I just did. :P  Though I:
Spoiler:
cheated a bit :nervous: by restoring the Trebuchet and Kayser to their original table values and reduced the FOV of the Vulcan.  Not that the campaign wasn't still pretty hard :P

The walkthrough really helped though :)

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Impressive. Did it actually show 100% for you at the end though?

That would suggest that the whole 72% thing was a code or pilot issue that was fixed at some point.

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Edit:  Thanks for the warning.  Even if these points don't display properly in the end, I'd still like to think they meant something.

It's not just the points. You may have to restart the campaign completely if the pilot gets messed up.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Okay...now this is just unfair.  I decided to try going after the Enceladus's beam turrets first, while letting whatever wingmen I could command handle the nav subsystem.  It took some doing, but I had the four or five worst-offending beam turrets taken out.  I headed back to the nav system to find it at 25% or so, which my few remaining Cyclops bombs would be largely able to take care of.  I managed to take it out just as Command issued a warning about the ship jumping out.  Ten seconds later, destroyed nav subsystem and all...it jumps out.  I really don't want to come across as whining at every single difficulty, but this is just ballbreaking. :p

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Sounds like a bug. The mission shouldn't let you destroy the nav in that situation. I generally turn on the guardian flag for subsystems in such cases, but I think that sexp didn't exist when I originally made this mission. It will be easy to add in the patch though.

 

Offline blowfish

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Did it actually show 100% for you at the end though?

Yes.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Sounds like a bug. The mission shouldn't let you destroy the nav in that situation. I generally turn on the guardian flag for subsystems in such cases, but I think that sexp didn't exist when I originally made this mission. It will be easy to add in the patch though.
I was kind of hoping you'd say that you'd fix it by having the destruction count even after that message was sent, but you're the boss. :p  I finally managed to get through it just now; you can tell you've replayed a mission too many times when you can practically sleep-walk your way through the first portion of it.  I decided to split the difference between my two earlier strategies, taking out the three most powerful beams and then hightailing it back to take out the weapons system.  I also determined that sitting within range of a powerful blob turret probably wasn't the best place to wait for rearm.  The real challenge in the whole affair was being able to essentially perform two critical tasks at the same time; once the Khepren was mostly out of danger and the nav system was down, the rest was almost a cake-walk.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
And the beat goes on...

Until I figured out a nice little trick for getting through mission 11, I think it was just about the worst experience I've ever had in this game.  I tried playing it by the walkthrough, but I was getting absolutely nowhere.  I decided to go with a Sekhmet outfitted with Kaysers, since a Vulcan and one bank of Cyclops just weren't cutting it.  Taking out the AWACS ships was easy enough, but even then, my wingmen always let at least one or two members of Sagittarius wing through to pester the hell out of me; I soon figured out that telling them to take out the Lyaeus right from the start accomplished next to nothing and meant a whole world of pain for me.  And when those AWACS were down...that's when hell began.  Every single time I tried taking on the Lyaeus myself, both it and all of the surrounding sentries/random ships/fighter wings tore me half to shreds.  Besides that, I couldn't get nearly enough damage in on it before the two minutes were up, which usually meant that I soon met my maker at the hands of five or six enemy ships.  On one playthrough, I decided to try to take on all of those enemy wings by myself...which merely led to just about my highest level of frustration yet.  Not only was I stricken with the intermittent asteroid-slowdown issue, but I was also being afflicted by this off-and-on graphical corruption bug I've been experiencing (and that I really wish someone would comment on in Mantis, so I could find out if it's just me), which just lagged things all the more.  Flying around for six or seven minutes at about 3 FPS dogged by four or five enemy fighters and making absolutely no headway will raise your blood pressure really fast.  And those EMPs...dear lord, I'd love to work over whoever at :v: developed that vile weapon.

...and then, the next day, after I had given up in total frustration and barely stopped myself from making a scathing rant in here, I came up with an interesting thought:  what if one were to try taking out the Lyaeus before destroying both of the AWACS?  Since the time limit only came into play after both of them were destroyed, I'd be able to engage the Lyaeus at my leisure, and I'd have more than enough time to safely take out the cargo depot afterwards.  I gave it a shot...and it worked like an absolute charm.  I took out a few of the Lyaeus's AAA turrets with Trebuchets, then helped my wingmen lay into Sagittarius wing for a little while.  After taking a detour to take out one of the AWACS, I came back to find that my wingmen had dealt significant damage to the Lyaeus on their own.  I was able to easily knock it down the rest of the way, and from there on out, everything was gravy.

CP, you just might get me to start thinking properly yet. :p

 

Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Great idea, I should update the walkthrough with that. I hit the nearby sentries with Thunders (which can be done very quickly) and then sit directly in front of the cruiser to avoid its beams, which I find leaves just enough time to get the bonus objective done, but I like your strategy better. :D

Not sure what's going on with the graphics or framerate though. I never ran into such issues in that mission, but I haven't played it on recent builds.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
The asteroid field issue is a known one that I think will be fixed as soon as the final set of 3.6.10 MediaVPs comes out, but I have no idea what's going on for me with this weird animated textures corruption/slowdown that's been plaguing me.  Like I said, I'd love to have someone on Mantis remark on it, so I can figure out exactly where the problem is stemming from.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
So mission 12 went comparatively smoothly, thanks in part to the walkthrough letting me know that the Serket would be going hostile. :p It didn't seem like it'd be that hard to fly back to it in plenty of time in any case.  The first time through, I screwed up on taking out its front beams, meaning that the Admetes was left with 8% hull once the enemy wings started jumping in; needless to say, it went down soon after.  The second time through, I nailed one of the beams with Trebuchets immediately, but I wasn't able to get the other before it fired...thankfully, it managed to miss both transports, and I had it down soon after (with a dumbfire Trebuchet volley as it was about to fire again, no less).  The incoming fighter wings did some pretty severe damage to both transports, but thankfully, my wingmen managed to hold them off for long enough.  As a side note, wingmen do a far better job of defending a ship from fighters if they're ordered to simply engage the enemy instead of protect it.

As for 13...13 was by far the easiest experience I've had over the entire campaign.  That escort bug seems to have been long fixed, since that aspect worked like a charm, but I feel like just targeting the nearest hostile would have worked just fine for me too.  I just took my time, watched how the fighters were moving, flew down and to the side to what looked like a rather sparse entry point, and flew almost straight in; getting back out was just as simple.  As for what you did with the plot there, wow.  I realize that I was doing nothing but listening to a conversation for ten minutes, but it felt a lot more immersive than it was.  I love your style of dialogue writing, too. :)

And next comes the big bad voodoo daddy that is 14.  I'm looking forward to it in a masochistic sense. :D

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
(Goody, another post chain!)

At least the first part of 14 was a breeze, though I restarted it once to make sure I got through it without taking any damage.  The second part...not so much.  Or rather, not so much if you're trying to scan that damned cargo.  The walkthrough isn't doing much for me in this one.  I've tried flying forward, left, and then forward, like you suggested, but that always puts me smack-dab in the middle of Capricorn wing's flight path, which requires me flying around aimlessly for a minute or two until I can manage to evade them.  I'm never less than 3000 meters away from the Poseidons when they jump in, and whenever I try to close in on them (usually from behind/underneath), Taurus 1 always seems to get exactly between myself and where I need to go.  Whenever I attempt to close in and get the scan, about two or three members of Taurus wing close in and see me almost immediately.  I'd be happy to try going in from the left, but I can't see how one is supposed to get close enough to where the freighters jump in beforehand to make that possible.

 

Offline Snail

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
TBH I didn't even try to get the cargo scans.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Well, I just managed to do it somehow.  I went a lot further left than I had before, which seemed to be enough to avoid Capricorn wing, and I wound up a lot closer to the freighters.  I don't now how I got in there for the actual scan; I was within 50 meters of being detected at one point, and I held my breath and ran in more than actually planning to avoid Taurus.  And after all of that...I managed to get detected by Cancer wing after scanning the station.  Joy...

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Um, Mongoose, you could just fly back to the Serket the moment your wingmen note explosions. There should be enough time for you to get there before it turns hostile.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
I'm already two missions past there, and like I said, getting back to the Serket wasn't what gave me trouble with that one. :p

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
So, you're doing the stealth missions now?
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Yes.  Part 2 of 14 went much more smoothly the third (or fourth, or fifth...) time around.  I managed to get myself into better position next to the freighters, so I was able to dart in and out from the side before Cancer wing picked up on me.  As for part 3, it's easily the most oppressive, ominous feeling I've ever seen pulled off in this game, and the big reveal is all sorts of crazy.  Unfortunately, I'm still tweaking this one; I managed to get smacked down by the Agni the first time through by blundering too close to its fighters, and the second time through, as Goober mentioned a long time ago, all of the Ancient fighters were taken out before I had a chance to get close to them.  I'll have to get in there faster next time through.

Edit:  There we go.  I didn't find it quite as hard as some people touted it to be, but it was definitely a challenge...and more importantly, it was long.  It took me another two tries to get through, and the first one was a real ballbreaker.  I had scanned all three types of Ancient ships, and I was heading back to the Agni to scan the unknown artifact it was carrying.  The instant I finished scanning it and got the bonus point...I get utterly vaporized by a stray LRed.  I was not what you would call happy. :p But I decided to fire it up for one last shot tonight, and I made it all the way through (though I managed to scan that artifact before the battle and stayed well clear of the Agni during it, just in case).  My wingmen were about as useless as everyone reported during the initial battle, but that was no major issue, since the six enemy fighters were essentially sitting ducks; the only damage I ever took from them was from those damned Serapises colliding with me.  After Goober's experience, I was incredibly tense during the final firefight against those two Shivan wings, but it wound up being a complete non-issue, as Alpha 1 and I were easily able to pick them off one by one.  As for the final segment, I got burned my first time through when a Morningstar borked my jump-out sequence, but the second attempt worked just fine.

Above all else, that nebula mission had atmosphere, and I'm not just talking about the nebular gas.  There have been few moments in these games that have made me feel genuinely afraid, but 14c was one of them.  After the Agni's actions were completed, when I was trying to rendezvous with Alpha 1, he mentioned something about getting lost forever if I didn't catch up...and it felt like an utterly terrifying possibility.  Very well done. :)

(Now part of me is almost looking forward to 15, as insane as it's touted to be.  At least it'll be a much more straightforward task than having to lurk around a nebula, peering over my shoulder in fear every 30 seconds. :p)
« Last Edit: October 16, 2008, 02:38:45 am by Mongoose »