Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: IronBeer on January 29, 2011, 02:04:43 am
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Yeah, pretty much what it says up in that subject box. Normally play at Medium, but after hearing some forum/multi veterans going on about the merits of Insane, I decided to ease my way up, play the original FS2 campaign on Hard, then maybe step up again or move on to different campaigns. Noticed a few things along the way:
Mission-specific rants:
Slaying Ravana
-This mission sucks. Pure and simple. Even more above Medium; I must have died about 20 times before somehow passing it. No fighter cover, a cheaty Ravana that can shoot through itself, moronic wingmates, and a choice between the obsolete Medusa, the deathtrap Ursa, and even worse deathtrap Boanerges. Basically, I found that once any fighter, even a Basilisk, gets on your ass, you are dead. Have a nice day. Anybody looking to re-do the FS2 campaign, fix this mission, big time.
Love the Treason...
-Aaargh. I love being outnumbered 12-to-1. Yes, the enemies are damaged, but given the ship choices, this ain't an easy mission. I settled on flying a Loki, and having my wingmen (Snipes) do all the heavy lifting. And something important usually pops within the last minute of action, and my patience ran out fast. This is the only mission I didn't beat on Hard, had to drop to Medium. Still kinda torqued.
...But hate the Traitor
-Dumb. Win a 5-v-1 dogfight before even getting any help? What the ****? Won this one through the secondary weapon exploit- blew up about half of my wing with Tempests, then clawed the rest of them down. Any ideas for actually doing this legitimately?
A Flaming Sword
-Actually a pretty fun mission. My only gripe is that the Rennenet's gunners didn't really help me out, even after engaging the first wave of fighters. That kinda sucked.
Bearbaiting and friends
-Bearbating , I actually kinda enjoyed. Managed to tag all 4 main beams in one go, never pulled that off before. Oh, and second-gen Vasudan bombers are so much better than Terran bombers; it ain't even funny. I am aware that coding such a contingency would be a pain, but for real, any of the following missions involving the Collie make a hell of a lot less sense if the Sathanas never even scratched the paint.
Argonautica
-Ok, I'm just gonna come right out and say that I think repair missions can easily drift into being stupid. And Argonautica is extra-stupid; the Aquitaine's engines go from steaming masses of slag to operational within a 2-minute period? It would probably take 10 minutes for the repair crew to reach the damned engineering room! And fixing things is never that simple, either... I'll drop this one, for now. Also, how many people actually get to see the Tiamat die? Anybody? Anybody?
Exodus
-This mission showed me that my rig can't handle Nighteyes' high-res shockwaves. Bomb spam for the freaking loss. I've seen better, but this mission isn't too bad.
Their Finest Hour
-Again, when exactly did the Colossus get schmutzed up if the first Sath never even fired upon it? And how did the GTVA handle the second Sathanas?
Apocalypse
-Any figures for how many poor bastards got left behind?
General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
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Argonautica
.... Also, how many people actually get to see the Tiamat die? Anybody? Anybody?
Abaddon was in Argonautica. The Tiamat appeared in "Proving Grounds" (yet another mission where you had to cover the Aquitaine).
And how did the GTVA handle the second Sathanas?
I... don't think there's any canon information confirming that the GTVA handled any Saths apart from the first one.
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Yeah, pretty much what it says up in that subject box. Normally play at Medium, but after hearing some forum/multi veterans going on about the merits of Insane, I decided to ease my way up, play the original FS2 campaign on Hard, then maybe step up again or move on to different campaigns. Noticed a few things along the way:
A word of warning: some custom campaigns get pretty unplayable above Medium, since the authors never properly tested it.
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Slaying Ravana
-This mission sucks. Pure and simple. Even more above Medium; I must have died about 20 times before somehow passing it. No fighter cover, a cheaty Ravana that can shoot through itself, moronic wingmates, and a choice between the obsolete Medusa, the deathtrap Ursa, and even worse deathtrap Boanerges. Basically, I found that once any fighter, even a Basilisk, gets on your ass, you are dead. Have a nice day. Anybody looking to re-do the FS2 campaign, fix this mission, big time.
I beat this on Insane by switching to an Ursa, rushing directly towards the Ravana, and blowing it to hell.
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Slaying Ravana
-This mission sucks. Pure and simple. Even more above Medium; I must have died about 20 times before somehow passing it. No fighter cover, a cheaty Ravana that can shoot through itself, moronic wingmates, and a choice between the obsolete Medusa, the deathtrap Ursa, and even worse deathtrap Boanerges. Basically, I found that once any fighter, even a Basilisk, gets on your ass, you are dead. Have a nice day. Anybody looking to re-do the FS2 campaign, fix this mission, big time.
This mission is the perfect way to show how bad being a bomber pilot sucks. Bombers are flying targets in FS, especially FS2, and especially Terran bombers, and that's what that mission is supposed to show. Deal with it.
Love the Treason...
-Aaargh. I love being outnumbered 12-to-1. Yes, the enemies are damaged, but given the ship choices, this ain't an easy mission. I settled on flying a Loki, and having my wingmen (Snipes) do all the heavy lifting. And something important usually pops within the last minute of action, and my patience ran out fast. This is the only mission I didn't beat on Hard, had to drop to Medium. Still kinda torqued.
Take Uly. Hercs and Herc2s are no match for it.
Argonautica
[...] Also, how many people actually get to see the Tiamat die? Anybody? Anybody?
EMP missiles ftw.
Their Finest Hour
-Again, when exactly did the Colossus get schmutzed up if the first Sath never even fired upon it? And how did the GTVA handle the second Sathanas?
The damage the Colossus has in that mission is definitely not due to Sath fire, else the Colly would have been in a much worse shape. They probably deployed the Colly right and left in Capella to assist in the evacuation effort against big targets - Demons and Ravanas. I'm quite positive the GTVA didn't destroy any other Sath in FS2 than the first one.
General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
They're all at it! Does anyone have the number for the equality commission?
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
They're all at it! Does anyone have the number for the equality commission?
Yep. Don't mind that the area code is for the Vasuda system, though. Turns out the Vasudans do equality commissions better than Terrans too.
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Slaying Ravana
I managed it by flying at full speed to the Sobek and hiding for the rest of the mission. :P
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
Whaaat? What about Alpha 1? The Suicide Kings, the Blue Lions? Anyway, if the comment ticks you off, I think it's more like a way of affirming brother/sisterhood, 'You fight like one of us mate, I'm proud to serve with you.' rather than 'All you Tev suckers are better off as NFOs who scrub my dress shoes on parade, well done on elevating yourself above that mediocre species of yours.'
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
They're all at it! Does anyone have the number for the equality commission?
Yep. Don't mind that the area code is for the Vasuda system, though. Turns out the Vasudans do equality commissions better than Terrans too.
Why oh why must the honest terrans of the galaxy be constantly sidelined by unelected Vasudans sitting in Beta Aquilae with their straight bananas, my grandad didn't fight in the T-V War so they could come over here and tell us how to do things. It's irrelevant that their culture is so much more refined than ours and they care about the arts and politeness.
Disgusted, Tewkesbury-on-Aldebarran
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
They're all at it! Does anyone have the number for the equality commission?
Yep. Don't mind that the area code is for the Vasuda system, though. Turns out the Vasudans do equality commissions better than Terrans too.
Why oh why must the honest terrans of the galaxy be constantly sidelined by unelected Vasudans sitting in Beta Aquilae with their straight bananas, my grandad didn't fight in the T-V War so they could come over here and tell us how to do things. It's irrelevant that their culture is so much more refined than ours and they care about the arts and politeness.
Disgusted, Tewkesbury-on-Aldebarran
this was a good post
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General mini-gripe:
Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Nah, that's realistic. Terrans suck very, very bad.
They're all at it! Does anyone have the number for the equality commission?
Yep. Don't mind that the area code is for the Vasuda system, though. Turns out the Vasudans do equality commissions better than Terrans too.
Why oh why must the honest terrans of the galaxy be constantly sidelined by unelected Vasudans sitting in Beta Aquilae with their straight bananas, my grandad didn't fight in the T-V War so they could come over here and tell us how to do things. It's irrelevant that their culture is so much more refined than ours and they care about the arts and politeness.
Disgusted, Tewkesbury-on-Aldebarran
this was a good post
Oh, Lordy, this comment has started some trouble. For the record, I was being facetious; of course those comments are supposed to be compliments.
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I'm not sure what's going on right now, but In Love the Treason, you can blow up green hostiles early and suffer no repercussions.
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Oh, Lordy, this comment has started some trouble. For the record, I was being facetious; of course those comments are supposed to be compliments.
Sorry, I was just channeling the twisted tory inside. Back to what we're supposed to be here for, I think you need to be some sort of double-hard badman to play this game on anything above medium. I'd like to do it (for the hench points) but I get frustrated with the difficulty spikes - for example in Love the treason... it was too difficult on HARD and like SypheDMar I figured out that you can wax all of the NTF when they're still green. However, it knackers the narrative of the mission which in my opinion is one of the best set up in the whole game. It's a difficult compromise between enjoying the story and the suspension of your disbelief and actually progressing to the next mission or objective. A difficult philosophical dilemma indeed.
/adjusts glasses, pours another Sauvignon Blanc, touches up self-portait, leafs through divorce proceedings; filed on the grounds of excessive pretention/
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you are my new forum hero kisumu
I beat the game on Insane a while back and the big difficulty spikes were indeed around the aforementioned missions and, ironically, A Flaming Sword (when the hell did that get so hard.) I just pre-emptively wasted my allies on the NTF loop missions.
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I've always had trouble on The Roman's Blunder on Insane.
Not only do Lokis run circles around your wingmen, but I've yet to reliably take out the AAA turrets without getting my ass handed to me.
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Several Vasudan compliments, such as "You fight like a Vasudan", are actually somewhat implicitly racist. Think about it.
Totally off-topic: I always imagine myself responding "Aww, was I really that bad?"
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"We'll make a Vasudan of you yet!"
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"We'll make a Vasudan of you yet!"
Gene therapy and bone extraction are scheduled to begin a week from Tuesday.
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I've always had trouble on The Roman's Blunder on Insane.
Not only do Lokis run circles around your wingmen, but I've yet to reliably take out the AAA turrets without getting my ass handed to me.
In this mission, I beat this on Insane by going AWAY from the jump node in the beginnning and attacking the transports and Lokis from the back with a Support ship near me and all teh missiles on Insane. This mission was pretty ridiculous on Insane (but not as ridiculous as In the Place of Chariots with mediavps). Keep your wingmen alive in the beginning and the bad guys just get swatted like flies. Do the same to the Fenris's escorts and you're pretty much set 'til the Psamtik arrives.
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Interesting. I never found Place of Chariots hard at all on Insane, even without wingmen micromanagement. I guess I'm just a lot better at dealing with fighters than cap ships (or because you're more likely to be in tempest range when dogfighting than when shooting turrets)
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Slaying Ravana
-This mission sucks. Pure and simple. Even more above Medium; I must have died about 20 times before somehow passing it. No fighter cover, a cheaty Ravana that can shoot through itself, moronic wingmates, and a choice between the obsolete Medusa, the deathtrap Ursa, and even worse deathtrap Boanerges. Basically, I found that once any fighter, even a Basilisk, gets on your ass, you are dead. Have a nice day. Anybody looking to re-do the FS2 campaign, fix this mission, big time.
This mission is the perfect way to show how bad being a bomber pilot sucks. Bombers are flying targets in FS, especially FS2, and especially Terran bombers, and that's what that mission is supposed to show. Deal with it.
No, the mission just sucks. Badly.
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Yeah. There were a few crap missions in FreeSpace 2, that one was among the worst.
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I don't think it's such a bad mission, but seriously, lack of adjacent friendly support and fighter cover, anyone?
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I always thought it was an odd mission, Command commenting that they had already taken casualties from the Ravana. Yet the ship itself had suffered little, and deploying bombers without proper cover seemed to contridict the fact that bombers needed cover.
I still found it highly enjoyable though
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The mission sucks for several reasons reasons.
First - you're totally unescorted and given only heavy bombers to fly. Fighters can come by and hit your rear and the best you can do to stop it is turn painfully slowly in their direction, or perhaps expose a turret toward them.
Second - At best, the mission consists of pounding a ship, over and over, reloading, and doing the same thing again.
Third- The corvette is perfectly capable of winning the mission, in fact, if it dies, there are two more ships that will jump in.
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I always thought it was an odd mission, Command commenting that they had already taken casualties from the Ravana. Yet the ship itself had suffered little
Second - At best, the mission consists of pounding a ship, over and over, reloading, and doing the same thing again.
Third- The corvette is perfectly capable of winning the mission, in fact, if it dies, there are two more ships that will jump in.
That bothers me - the fact that the Ravana supposedly had already done some major damage ("We've lost the GTD Delacroix, and the surviving warships in the battlegroup are damaged") yet a single wing of bombers armed with Cyclops torpedoes can take it down in a matter of minutes*. I mean, the Delacroix may have wandered into the firing arc of the frontal LReds or the Ravana might have turned to face it; we don't know, but once we get into the mission, the Ravana is just sitting there letting the Yakiba beam it to death - it doesn't even deploy bombers! It just doesn't feel at all threatening after the initial encounter where it kills the Lysander. Although, that might have been intentional storywise, to serve to fuel the GTVA's belief that they were better than the Shivans.
The most difficult part of that mission, I think, is to not get splashed by the Ravana's fighters.
*Although, I admit I've never attempted it over Medium, so I don't know how long it takes to destroy the Ravana on higher difficulties whether factoring in the fighter escort or not.
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Well the Ravana definitely looks and seems like it's made for blitzkrieg tactics (what in BP is called a shock-jump). And it demonstrates those tactics in The Great Hunt. It could very well be the Ravana was intended by the developers as a fragile, but powerful blitzer, designed to destroy ships quickly and jump out. More like a howitzer than a tank, if you will. Given that skill-set I could see how a corvette and a SQUADRON of bombers wouldn't really have a problem taking it down.
In game however, that aspect of the Ravana isn't mentioned. It's presented to be the successor of the Lucifer, essentially.
It really does only take minutes in game, even on Insane. Your wingmen will all be dead, unless you manage to lead them to the corvette and tell them to defend it.
The interceptors from the Ravana are frustratingly distracting, and they will kill you, but it's perfectly winnable. In fact, as I said, the corvette can win itself. If you're really having trouble in that mission, and you aren't being a kill-whore, just cover the corvette.
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Well the Ravana definitely looks and seems like it's made for blitzkrieg tactics (what in BP is called a shock-jump). And it demonstrates those tactics in The Great Hunt. It could very well be the Ravana was intended by the developers as a fragile, but powerful blitzer, designed to destroy ships quickly and jump out. More like a howitzer than a tank, if you will. Given that skill-set I could see how a corvette and a SQUADRON of bombers wouldn't really have a problem taking it down.
In game however, that aspect of the Ravana isn't mentioned. It's presented to be the successor of the Lucifer, essentially.
The majority of shivan capital ships, especially FS2 ones had this philosophy. Rakshasa, Ravanna, Lucifer, and the Sathanas all had massive forward firepower, but were useless at any other angle.
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The Lucifer was less like that because of its side beams (which did not appear in missions to be fair) the fact is though, the Ravana is completely ineffectual used any other way.
The odd part to me is that this aspect of Shivan tactics is never explicitly mentioned.
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The Lucifer was less like that because of its side beams (which did not appear in missions to be fair) the fact is though, the Ravana is completely ineffectual used any other way.
The odd part to me is that this aspect of Shivan tactics is never explicitly mentioned.
I believe they make some note of such tactics in the Ravana's Techroom entry; the Sathanas has just about zero info stated, though.
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Once you see it in action, there isn't much that needs to be said. :p