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Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Between the Ashes => Topic started by: potterman28wxcv on December 19, 2017, 02:02:49 pm

Title: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on December 19, 2017, 02:02:49 pm
I'm currently having a lot of trouble completing Gerar's Judgement. I've tried a lot of different strats, both on Medium and on Very Easy, but there's nothing to do, there's just not enough firepower to take down the Cardinal before it jumps out. If the Trafalgar or the jammer ship don't get destroyed in the meantime..

I really feel like the balance is all over the place in this mission. My bomber has absurdly strong shields, in 10 minutes there are like 40 fighters that are launched from the Cardinal, when Gamma is ordered to take down the missile launchers it doesn't succeed so you have to take out those yourselves while being in inferiority numbers.. And your Alpha wingmen don't really contribute to the effort very much.

The icing of the cake is that the Engine subsystem of the Cardinal is hard-coded to stay at 33%. That's the most terrible mechanism I have ever seen. The Engine is hard enough to destroy as it is, it takes like approx. 20 tsunami bombs to take it down that's a lot. The least you could have done is to allow the player to disable the Cardinal.

This mission might be doable if I replace Medusas by Ursas, and carry Harbinger. But as it stands, I simply see no way out of it. I could suicide my way out of it but that would be a shame.

Is there anyone who managed to complete that mission? If so, what strat did you apply?
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: JSRNerdo on December 19, 2017, 02:30:27 pm
Spoiler:
You're not actually supposed to be able to kill the Cardinal
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on December 20, 2017, 06:03:55 am
Spoiler:
You're not actually supposed to be able to kill the Cardinal
Spoiler:
Oh my god. You mean that instead of resetting when Cardinal jumps, I should have waited. Damn I feel stupid now. lol
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: Novachen on December 20, 2017, 07:13:04 am
Well, debriefing stages with recommendations are there for a reason...  :rolleyes:

For example, they give tips about, how to rethink a specific strategy. One of the prime freespace rules: Never end a mission, before you are told to do so  :D
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: mjn.mixael on December 20, 2017, 08:32:16 am
You get some serious promotion points for trying this hard though. :)
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on December 20, 2017, 09:02:35 am
You get some serious promotion points for trying this hard though. :)
Best I managed was getting him down to 15% ! But the GTD Destroyer was at 4%.. lol

I did nothing but throw tsunami bombs from within the fighterbay, then going to rearm, repeat.. with an occasional sortie to destroy comm subsystem & missile launchers, while ordering my wingmen to protect the science vessel.
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on December 21, 2017, 07:49:07 am
So yesterday i flawlessly managed to beat the mission on Insane ! Hurray :D

Spoiler:
It's so much easier when you don't have to focus fire on the Cardinal and instead just focus on protecting the allied ships
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: mjn.mixael on December 21, 2017, 08:38:09 am
:)

You get lots of varied orders in the mission for a reason!
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: Redox on January 16, 2018, 04:09:44 am
Do you mean stopping what you're doing and follow each new order? Ive tried several times and either I fail or all hostiles jump out and no new orders come through and we just float along in space like the mission is broken.
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: Novachen on January 16, 2018, 06:20:59 am
You have to take out the Cardinal Navigation system to delay it's jump and also you have to protect the Science Vessel long enough, until the Intrepid arrives. After that the mission should only fail, if the Intrepid gets destroyed... and the protection of it is way easier since the 3.8 update.

And yes, as not stated otherwise, every new order should have always a higher priority than previous ones... it would make sense if that is also the normal practice in every real-life military  :D
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on January 16, 2018, 09:42:10 am
You have to take out the Cardinal Navigation system to delay it's jump and also you have to protect the Science Vessel long enough, until the Intrepid arrives. After that the mission should only fail, if the Intrepid gets destroyed... and the protection of it is way easier since the 3.8 update.

And yes, as not stated otherwise, every new order should have always a higher priority than previous ones... it would make sense if that is also the normal practice in every real-life military  :D
Just curious, what does 3.8 add that make easier the protection of the GTD Intrepid?
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: Novachen on January 16, 2018, 09:48:51 am
You have to take out the Cardinal Navigation system to delay it's jump and also you have to protect the Science Vessel long enough, until the Intrepid arrives. After that the mission should only fail, if the Intrepid gets destroyed... and the protection of it is way easier since the 3.8 update.

And yes, as not stated otherwise, every new order should have always a higher priority than previous ones... it would make sense if that is also the normal practice in every real-life military  :D
Just curious, what does 3.8 add that make easier the protection of the GTD Intrepid?

It was even on Very Easy very hard to get the medal in this mission or even to save the Intrepid in the first place if the player was not fast enough to reach it. But that requires, that the player had already to know what will happen. Some players of my translation complained about that difficult spike in the campaign back then.

The 3.8 compatibility update added a whole new defending wing aswell a 50% stronger hull for the GTD Intrepid.
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: potterman28wxcv on January 16, 2018, 11:49:41 am
You have to take out the Cardinal Navigation system to delay it's jump and also you have to protect the Science Vessel long enough, until the Intrepid arrives. After that the mission should only fail, if the Intrepid gets destroyed... and the protection of it is way easier since the 3.8 update.

And yes, as not stated otherwise, every new order should have always a higher priority than previous ones... it would make sense if that is also the normal practice in every real-life military  :D
Just curious, what does 3.8 add that make easier the protection of the GTD Intrepid?

It was even on Very Easy very hard to get the medal in this mission or even to save the Intrepid in the first place if the player was not fast enough to reach it. But that requires, that the player had already to know what will happen. Some players of my translation complained about that difficult spike in the campaign back then.

The 3.8 compatibility update added a whole new defending wing aswell a 50% stronger hull for the GTD Intrepid.
Even on Insane I managed to do it, but I had to be at 200% focus and Intrepid came close to dying (i think it was around 20% or so when it left). Without the stronger hull and the additional wing i'd have to switch to a lower difficulty for sure. There's a damn lot of bombers :P
Title: Re: Can't complete Gerar's Judgement
Post by: Novachen on January 17, 2018, 02:24:11 am
Yes in 3.8 this battle is much easier. In the initial release, this mission was very hard in comparsion to others in this campaign.

Actually i was able to beat it on Insane back then, but was not able to get the medal, for that the Intrepid needs to be over 40% hull status left iirc. It got through with ~10% only.

In the current version it is much more likely to got it through with over 40% in all difficulties.