[amiralace]

Silent Threat: Reborn, Chasing Shadows mission.

"They all gone nuts" a pilot says. Huh huh. Maintain the blockade by destroying all vessels trying to make it out to the jump node, defend the Hope against superpowered bombs, defend beat up Atens against unlockable Lokis. All primary objectives. At the same time.

Gone. To. Hell.

Funny thing is that allied fighters end up doing all of the work, while you mostly shout orders and intercept bombs, or crash with transports to slow them down.

I pulled it through with one of the Atens finishing at 2% hull.

[Nightmare]

INF Nemesis ftw (even though that mission wasn't out when the thread was started)

[Mongoose]

INF Nemesis ftw (even though that mission wasn't out when the thread was started)

...my God, he's right.

[Goober5000]

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Playing Judas in FS1, because I never figured out how to get past the Dragon patrol and scan the cargo pods.

A Monster in the Mist in FS2, because I got killed by SAAAs once. Proving Grounds gets an honourable mention because the Tiamat doesn't take enough damage on Very Easy.

Hardest fan-made mission is the last mission of Deus Ex Machina, because I never plotted a correct path for the Iceni to jump out.

[Thisisaverylongusername]

Most of the missions in PI.

Okay, it's been a while since I played it, and I've gotten better since then, but I had to cheat to pass most of the missions when I played it. It was really tough.

[Kie99]

Took me dozens of tries to complete Clash of the Titans because I saw the Demon and thought that was obviously the main thing we had to destroy.  In my defence I was 7 years old when the game came out.

Didn't complete As Lightning Fall for many, many years until after I first completed the campaign because I never knew what the hell I was supposed to do.  I remember restarting a number of times to try and get through the dialogue but it never worked.   I always just jumped out 5 times to get the next mission or skipped out of SOC altogether.  I don't know if I've ever completed it legit rather than just going straight ahead, it's a real slog of a mission.

In terms of actual difficulty I always found Playing Judas very difficult.  From FS2 probably Exodus.

[Mongoose]

Playing Judas in FS1, because I never figured out how to get past the Dragon patrol and scan the cargo pods.

This is one I'll never understand, because as long as you fly almost straight ahead from the start of the mission and just park yourself right underneath the node, nothing from Arjuna wing gets close enough to matter.  And if one does start drifting close to you, all you need to do is target the nearest hostile and fly in the opposite direction for a bit.  The community has produced far more egregious stealth missions than that.

[Perry45]

Why? Ye, I know this thread is old, but whats the difference in create a new one or revive a old one? I mean, I searched for this mission on Google and found this thread, so if anyone else will search he will be glad all relevant information are in one thread and not spread apart right? I mean, the missions do not change, so the old information in this thread is still relevant   

BTW: I just beat the mission while getting the medal, my problem was I totally overlooked the first bomber wave which comes with the maras, so they (not the maras) dealt this much dmg. After the first bomber wave I concentrate on the second one and then on the Tiamat beam canons, was a piece of cake. Aquitaine survived with 70% health Tiamat got also destroyed, but I got no kill on it

Hey Perry in the past, tell me how you did that.

I just play the main campaign again with the latest MediaVps and so on and somehow I have the feeling the game is more difficult than before

I playing on hard like always, but I struggle again with this mission. The first Bomber wave fires so many bombs in a very short time. I try to take them out as quickly as possible but the Aquitaine is always at about 72% health, and then the second Bomber wave and the Tiamat jumps in and before I even try to take out the second wave or the beam canon the Aquitaine is under 50%

Well I will keep trying...

[Goober5000]

It's possible that code changes or model changes have created some subtle differences in balance.  I know that there were some turret bugs in FSO that were recently fixed.

[Novachen]

Well, i have the actually same problem like Perry for my Insane Video Playthrough, even i have a slightly changed AI Behaviour to use recent AI features

I stuck on "Proving Grounds" as well...
Insane was a walk in the park until now even with the AI changes... but here. Proving Grounds never felt so hard for me

In the past i played this mission always with EMP missiles as they were easily able to shut down the bomber wings and their bombs to collect their kills without any danger for the Aquitaine... but well... for whatever reason the EMP effect seems to be weaker, it does not even shut down the bombs any more... and it also did not helped me against the Pegasus' attack in the first part of the mission, which is however still possible to complete successfully with the morning star and some luck.
Interestingly it was the other way around in Retail. No problem to hold off the Shivans and Pegasus thanks to the EMP missiles... but there is no way to protect the Oberon with the Morning Star alone  .

Even i had the feel to remember, that the EMP missile also affected ETS aswell and so was able to slow enemies down temporarily (in other way than the D-Missile however).
But maybe i mistake it with an EMP missile from a mod.


So, right now i am still trying some new approaches . There have to be a solution.

[Perry45]

Insane? Ok wow. I tried it once, but it's so hard to hit any ship in insane. The AI is super smart in dogfight and always try to get you from behind, if you fight more than 3 targets at once, was happens quite often it was nearly impossible

But back to this mission. My current approach is:

1. I don't bother with the Oberon, I felt it is impossible anyway.
2. I try to estimate the jump point from the first bomber wave, which is pretty hard in this damn fog.
3. I try to destroy the bombers itself afap, because bothering with the bombs results in much worse results.
4. I try to estimate the jump point of the second bomber wave, wich is even harder, because I loose so quick orientation and because you can't really see the Aquitaine the direct way is often blocked.
5. I try to target the Moloch beam canons, but at this time the Aquitaine is already below 50%

So maybe I should try to swap step 4 and 5, im not sure. But it is not even enough time between fighting the first bomber wave and the arrival of the second one and the Moloch to get in the proper position.

I use a Myrmidon because it has 3 primary guns (3x Subach) and I load for secondary weaponry 2x Tempest und 1x Hornet. I try to fire 1 salve of Hornet and then switching to Tempest. I think this is the quickest way to get rid of the bombers.

I found also this is one of the last missions where you haven't Prometheus S which would also help in my opinion. And this second bomber wave are Nephilim class with this damn 1.600 shield points.

The main problem is anyway, that normally bombers are deployed about 3-4 clicks from the target away. This bombers are deployed abuot 1-1,5 clicks away and they are damn fast and the afterburner velocity is much greater then the afterburner velocity from my space superiority fighter. I mean WTF!

P.S. @Novachen Do you commentate your run? Can I watch it somewhere?


I JUST DID IT. Well I think you also need a little bit luck Also also equipped my allied ships with EMPs. The downside is, I couldn't destroyed the Tiamat, but well at least I got the medal

[Novachen]

P.S. @Novachen Do you commentate your run? Can I watch it somewhere?

Nope, as i want that the viewer is experiencing the game as it is, there is only some kind of text commentary in the video description in my videos.
And as mine is not even a normal playthrough, the commentary is only about changes that were introduced for NTP. But right now, i only have still the first act of FS2 online, as i still did not through Proving Grounds. That first act is however already online on my YouTube Channel. But i am currently unable to retry that. Had some technical issues lately, as i had to repair my fire button on my G940, i could not fire primaries anymore. Also something personal suddenly occurred again, which prevent me to play any FS2 lately.

[CP5670]

Most of the missions in PI.

Okay, it's been a while since I played it, and I've gotten better since then, but I had to cheat to pass most of the missions when I played it. It was really tough.

I played through it myself last year and found some missions pretty unreasonable. A few missions were too dependent on subtle gameplay and AI behavior that changed slightly over many FS2 builds, and if things didn't go exactly as they did in the builds 15 years ago it became much harder. If I ever get around to it, the campaign would benefit from an "easy mode" that scales better with the difficulty setting.

[CT27]

Most of the missions in PI.

Okay, it's been a while since I played it, and I've gotten better since then, but I had to cheat to pass most of the missions when I played it. It was really tough.

I played through it myself last year and found some missions pretty unreasonable. A few missions were too dependent on subtle gameplay and AI behavior that changed slightly over many FS2 builds, and if things didn't go exactly as they did in the builds 15 years ago it became much harder. If I ever get around to it, the campaign would benefit from an "easy mode" that scales better with the difficulty setting.

I definitely wouldn't mind an easy mode overall for PI.  So hopefully you can get around to that at some point (I do really like PI overall and it was the first non-canon campaign I played after setting up MVPs years ago).

However, if you wanted to do a minor fix in the mean time to reduce PI difficulty how about these suggestions:  Couldn't it make things easier if you just changed the Maxim from its PI version back to the normal longer range non-shotgun version?
-Also, maybe allow the PromS back in for an overall good cannon (and just remove that line in the beginning about gas restrictions)?