Author Topic: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency  (Read 289629 times)

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Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
...okay, I'm calling shenanigans on mission 15.  There's not remotely enough time to get anything close to 25 turrets taken care of.  Hell, I was lucky just to manage the required 15 once or twice.  These enemy wings are utterly destroying me; on my last play-through, I had about five enemy ships on me at once.  I was torn to shreds before I could even blink.  And even in lesser numbers, you have to spend so much time defending yourself and killing them, you're left with nowhere near enough to actually complete the mission objectives...not to mention the fact that engaging an enemy fighter utterly screws up your positioning with relation to the Saturn.  I have no idea what the hell my wingmen should be doing, but I'm going to need them to do something, anything to keep those fighters off my back.  And forget the AWACS and gas miner...how in the hell does one get remotely close enough to kill them, other than a takes-way-too-long Trebuchet barrage?

 

Offline Snail

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Well, you're not supposed to get all 25. If you do I suppose it makes the last mission a piece of cake.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
...the entire point of all of my struggles with this campaign is that I'm attempting to complete 100% of the bonus points.  I thought that my ever-increasing number of massive posts pleading for help would have been an indicator of that. :p

 

Offline blowfish

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Here's what I do:

Spoiler:
I mostly follow the walkthrough, with a few things a bit more specific.  The first thing I do is order all of my wingmen to protect me, since they aren't great at getting turrets themselves.  Then I fly directly down, so that I am in-line with the bridge (this should be pretty exact, since there are deadly turrets both above and below it).  Then, I unload trebuchets on one of the broadside laser turrets, rearm, and do the other.  Then I fly towards the Saturn's bridge, until I am ~1700-1900 meters from its side turrets.  From there, I just shoot the Akheton at any turret that I can shoot.  If any of the enemy fighters attacks me, I try to stay put as much as possible (doable since I play on easy :P), and just kill them with Thunders and Vulcans.  I've found it is doable to get 20 turrets by the 6 minute mark, then shoot at the Argo and the Zephyrus from range (Vulcans + Trebuchets are good for this), then finish off the turrets.  Running out of missiles at any point could mean serious trouble, so rearm often.

 

Offline Mobius

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
You can also:

Spoiler:
Press C-3-9 when enemy fighters get close and then call back your wingmen. Enemy fighters can be boring when when targeting you repedeatly. Sometimes they force you to engage them...IMO it's better to focus on the Saturn.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
That does seem like it might work somewhat better.  I've been kind of hanging out in the middle of one side, where I'm able to reach a lot of the turrets, but that damned laser turret on the other side still seems able to reach me over a significant range.  I really should just leave my wingmen on protecting me, as semi-competent as they are, since ordering them to engage the enemy means they wind up who-knows-where.  I managed to take care of twenty turrets and the other two ships (though my wingmen somehow took out the gas miner) on one of my last play-throughs, but the attempt after that, I got mobbed by fighters and killed with a little over fifteen done.  I feel like it'd be a bit easier if it wasn't so incredibly inconsistent.

My main problem with the walkthrough for this one is that I'm not exactly sure where a few of the turrets it mentions are.  For instance, I haven't been able to track down the Pirahna launchers, and I don't really know where the five turrets at the rear of the ship it references are.  I'm assuming the beam turrets on each of the Saturn's engines are anti-capital-ship level, since I don't think I was able to so much as dent one the one time I tried to.

 

Offline blowfish

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
My main problem with the walkthrough for this one is that I'm not exactly sure where a few of the turrets it mentions are.  For instance, I haven't been able to track down the Pirahna launchers, and I don't really know where the five turrets at the rear of the ship it references are.  I'm assuming the beam turrets on each of the Saturn's engines are anti-capital-ship level, since I don't think I was able to so much as dent one the one time I tried to.

Don't worry about getting specific turrets.  Just try to get all of the ones on it's side and top (the three on top of the head don't really matter though), since those are the ones that will give you trouble in the final mission.  If you finish with all of those and still don't have 25 turrets, just shoot at any turret you can.  There are a few more you should still be able to reach.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Damn it...I don't think your strategy is working much better for me.  I felt like I was able to take out turrets more quickly, but I was still getting swamped by fighters, and eventually I wound up drifting too close to the Saturn and getting raped by beams.  When you say to fly towards the bridge, you mean that you wind up to the side/on top of the very front of the ship, right?  I was directly above the nose of the ship during my last attempt, and it seemed to give me a decent number of targets, so I wanted to make sure that that's where you were.

(Seriously...how the **** is the AI in this game so abysmal?  You'd think a simple order like "Cover me" would translate to "Stay near me and take pot shots at anyone who's shooting at me."  But apparently, it means something like, "Target whichever hostiles are near me, defend me for a minute or so, and then fly off God knows where.")

 

Offline blowfish

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
What I mean is you should be to the side of the bridge.  But not really close.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Okay, I see what you're getting that.  I was a ways down from there and at somewhat of an angle to the main length of the ship on my first few attempts.  Maybe I'll give that a spin.

Edit:  This is just stupid.  Those enemy wings do not stay off my back for nearly long enough at a time.  I just managed to get 22 or so, plus the two other ships, but that was pushing my survival to the absolute limit.  How did any of you who made it through this hellhole deal with those enemy wings?
« Last Edit: October 16, 2008, 07:08:15 pm by Mongoose »

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't know much...but I pulled it off somehow.  It was the weirdest thing too.  I took blowfish's advice and took out both side laser turrets from long-range at the outset, and then I moved almost straight in from the mission starting point.  Just for the hell of it, I decided to order my wingmen to engage the enemy (yet ignore the Saturn) instead of putting up with them protecting me.  I followed the general guideline that CP gave for which turrets to take out in order, all the while expecting to get swamped by enemy fighters and driven away.  And yet...they never came near me.  My wingmen were miraculously providing enough of a distraction that the enemy wings didn't even touch me.  I just kept cruising along, never taking my finger off the trigger, until I had over 20 taken out within 6 minutes.  I had a rough scrape after taking out the gas miner, when I found myself in range of the beam cannons, but I managed to get out of it somehow with around 30% hull.  With about a minute or two left, I finally found those rearward missile/flak turrets...and that was it.  CP, I dislike you substantially less right now than I did just an hour ago. :p

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
CP made PI. He knows some of the best ways of tackling the mission.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
...I realize he made it...which is why I like him a lot more after completing that devil of a mission. :p Besides, I already came up with one strategy earlier on he didn't have listed that made snagging one bonus point substantially easier.

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Heh...

Cheats will never work well on stealth missions, I give you that, so even on that one occasion where I cheated through the whole thing, I was more or less relying on my skills and targeting system to stay hidden.

Spoiler:
You can actually blow your cover and use your afterburners when the Shivans, Agni and Ancients are attacking each other, but once the Agni clears the battleground, resume being stealthy.

OH HAI STEALTH
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Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Quote
I don't know how, I don't know why, I don't know much...but I pulled it off somehow.

Nice work. It looks like you're only the second or third person here to have gotten all the objectives in that. At one point, I was planning to make a video playthrough of this mission just to show that it was doable. :p (although at the time I couldn't find a recording program that gave a good quality/size compromise)

I don't tell the wingmen to cover me in that mission and just let them do their thing. They are quite ineffective with that order in general, and it's only useful to get them to stay near you.

 

Offline Mongoose

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Well...it's done. :D

In the end, I only received credit for 85% of the bonus points...which is odd, since I remember going after every single one over the course of the campaign.  Maybe somewhere during my infinite restarts on a few of the more difficult missions, I forgot to accomplish something, or maybe so many restarts managed to tweak a variable somewhere. (Come to think of it, I don't think I saw a HUD point indicator appear when I killed all of the escape pods in 16.) Oh well.  I know that I managed it, and that's really all that matters to me. :)

(Besides, the message I saw was a lot more uplifting than the one for 100% completion that I looked up afterwards. :p)

Mission 16 was fairly easy, except for the several restarts I entailed by failing to get all four of the escape pods coming out of the Phoron.  Making one or two of them fly out of the opposite fighterbay each time was just mean; you can barely move fast enough to cover the ground. :p Speaking of which, I love the Amun Mark II.  It flies like a cruiser, but it can take about as much punishment as one, and those turrets are awesome.  Taking out a Poseidon in two shots with a quintuple Phalanx is a thing of beauty. :D I ran into some trouble when taking on the Xanthus when I nearly got overrun by a few fighters, but I managed to make it out alive.

17 was just...epic.  Taking out the chin-mounted laser turret with Stilettos first made the whole affair much easier...though I wish I had thought to take out whichever missile launchers were constantly pummeling me as I went for the reactor.  At least I figured out that putting my shields to maximum completely negated them before dying; it also had the added bonus of keeping my max speed the same as the Hades'.  The ending cutscene of that was brilliantly choreographed...at least until the incoming juggernaut managed to clip entirely through the Sekham and didn't seem to fire any beams at it. :p The second part was a welcome cakewalk; I just parked myself way behind the engines, picked off the one turret that was giving me intermittent troubles with Stilettos, and hurled Helioses into the engine for ten minutes or so.  Got the kill, too, but not the promotion, since I think I picked that up the mission before.

All in all, this campaign was a fantastic piece of work.  There were moments of almost agonizing (though admittedly optional) difficulty, and I managed to lose my temper an innumerable number of times while playing through it, but the storyline and writing were second to none, and you pulled off some mission events I've never seen before.  Thanks for sinking all of that time and effort into crafting such an enjoyable campaign. :)

...but don't blame me if I don't feel like replaying it any time in the near future. :p

(Now, to have a look-see at that story document and hunt down some eggs...)

 

Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Hey, 85% is quite high already. I only got 60% on my cheat run.
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Offline CP5670

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Quote
All in all, this campaign was a fantastic piece of work.  There were moments of almost agonizing (though admittedly optional) difficulty, and I managed to lose my temper an innumerable number of times while playing through it, but the storyline and writing were second to none, and you pulled off some mission events I've never seen before.  Thanks for sinking all of that time and effort into crafting such an enjoyable campaign.

Thanks, good to know that you liked it. I have to say that you were pretty persistent with some of those extra objectives. :D

Quote
The ending cutscene of that was brilliantly choreographed...at least until the incoming juggernaut managed to clip entirely through the Sekham and didn't seem to fire any beams at it.

This is sort of a known problem, but it is exceptionally rare and I couldn't find any way to fix it (actually, you're the first person to have brought it up here). I probably tested that cutscene 50 times but only saw it once or twice and was never able to reproduce it reliably or track down the cause. I guess it's impossible to completely rule out freak glitches with these cutscenes. Chances are that it will work properly if you ever happen to play that mission again.

 

Offline Rick James

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Finished the campaign.

I can haz sequel?

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Offline Androgeos Exeunt

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Re: RELEASE - The Procyon Insurgency
Probably not. This entire campaign is a closed circuit. The Knossos out of Procyon was destroyed after it erased the node that it was projecting, remember? The GTVA can re-open collapsed nodes or stabilise unstable jump nodes, but they do not have the technology to create new nodes, nor do they know how to erase one.
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Quote: Tuesday, 3 October 2023 0133 UTC +8, #general
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