[Mongoose]

I know how cool the concept of single-handedly taking out a Sathanas's main beam cannons is, but to me, "Bearbaiting" is single-handedly the most frustrating mission of the FS2 main campaign.  (Second would definitely be the first SOC mission, where you have to defend the Iceni and that science ship, and third would be the infamous Proving Grounds, featuring the Tiamat, everyone's favorite Moloch.)  Let me just put it this way: I've just replayed that mission about 25 times in a row, and every time, either myself or my wingmen, or just the game's physics engine in general, has managed to completely **** up.  

All right, so you have two wings of bombers and one wing of fighters at your disposal, plus a wing of reinforcements.  That all seems well and good, until you realize that not a single one of these ships will do anything useful.   Case in point:  I ordered every single one of those ships to cover me and to ignore the Sathanas, and about 30 seconds later, I had two Basilisks bearing down on me.  I have absolutely no idea where my wingmen were, but I know they weren't covering me.  I've ordered all of them to destroy the two main flak guns that represent the secondary objective and prove to be such a royal pain in the *** while attempting to destroy the turrets, but lo and behold, neither one gets anywhere close to 50% integrity.  Don't even bother telling them to attack a beam cannon; that ain't happening.  In fact, all they're good for in that mission is as a preoccupation for the Shivan fighters, and when they get bored with them, they start coming after you.

Now let's look at the actual bombing run.  You can't vary your loadout at all for some strange reason, so you can't carry more than 4 Helios torpedoes, making rearming during the course of a mission a necessity.  For your actual bombing technique, you'll have to fly at a precise angle toward each wing, blast your afterburners, and release both Helios bombs at the precise moment.  Otherwise, you'll end up at a turret with 5%, 15%, or my personal favorite, an astounding 55% integrity left over.  (I'm not kidding, but during one attempt, both torpedoes completely missed the arm, leaving me with a fully healthy turret and no chance of victory.)  The Helios torpedoes are the most powerful weapons in the game; no turret, however well-armored, should be able to withstand a pari of them going off within 30 meters of it.  Plus, as I'd like to point out, the turrets are located at the thinnest point of those gigantic arms, which by any definition of engineering should be the weakest point on the whole vessel.  Not in this mission, though.

Meanwhile, those aforementioned uber-flak guns are pounding away at your hull, wearing down your shields.  Since full power to engines is a requisite for moving around fast enough, this quickly becomes a problem, especially if you're being attacked by fighters at the same time.  Now suppose you did manage to destroy the beam with one salvo, or with a quick pair of trebuchets if you were lucky enough to get off with 5% left.  Now, you have to turn around, haul *** away from the Sathanas while it's in motion, and position yourself for another run.  Oh, did I mention the fact that the Helios's absurdly slow lock time, coupled with that flak, make it damn-near impossible to attain aspect lock?  All right, so you have two cannons down; now you need to rearm in the midst of the flak, while being shot at by enemy fighters.  Now you have to do the whole thing twice again, and by your last run, you'll literally have seconds to spare and absolutely no margin for error.  Nothing like doing the first three turrets perfectly, only to have your Helioses **** up on the last one.

Oh, I left out the one mistake that's my favorite of all:  forgetting to switch from the Helios to the Trebuchet after rearming or at the start of the mission.  There's nothing like doing that perfect run-up toward the cannon, letting your payload go, only to see two dinky missiles impacting with the turret and taking it down 5%.  Yeah, that'll just make my day so much more fulfilling.

All right, so you've managed to finally get all four turrets down.  Now, all you have to do is manage to avoid the absolutely massive capital ship that's about to jump out right on top of you.  You can forget about those flak turrets; you'd need another two minutes at least to take care of them, and that's with the help of your incompetent wingmates, God knows where they ran off to.  (Unbelievably, my wingmates once managed to take down these turrets by themselves; I still have no idea how or why.  Of course, managing to take advantage of such a gift, I promptly misfired my Helioses and ruined my chances for that attempt.)  As for that back bonus beam turret, I've never even so much as seen it during the mission, and with the time required to move down the whole length of the largest ship in the game, the odds of getting that one approach infinity to one.

So, you've managed to destroy the beam turrets and dodge the Sathanas.  You'd think that this would be the end of it.  But no, now you have to protect a puny Sobek that chooses to go mano a mano with a newly-arrived Demon.  You're now supposed to take out three turrets on the Demon (at least they aren't as well-armed as the uber-guns of the Sathanas), one of which begins firing at the Sobek as soon as it arrives.  If you don't kill that turret within the time frame of its first three shots, there goes the Sobek, which does absolutely nothing in the realm of fighting back against the Demon.   Oh, I forgot to mention:  you're already damaged from fighting the Sathanas, and you'll need to rearm yet again before taking it on.  Also, you only have a limited time frame to take out this Demon; don't get it done in time, and you automatically fail the mission.  Just today, I got the thing down to 2%, then it jumped without warning; despite the fact that I could take it down with one shot in the next mission and that it would provide absolutely no threat against the Colossus, and also despite the fact that I had done a 4/4 on the Sathanas, the oh-so-wise Command declared this whole thing a "failure."  High standards, anyone?  Finally, provided you've managed to take out both the turrets and the Demon, make sure not to jump before taking out every remaining fighter.  Somehow, leaving one damaged Basilisk behind also constitutes as a failure.  Thanks a lot, Command.

As you can tell, this mission has pissed me off to no end, and I needed a way to blow off some steam.  I'm sure there's more than one of you that will agree with me:  this mission's design blows chunks.  I think that's why the next mission, High Noon, where you get to sit back and watch the Big C blow the ever-lovin' crap out of the Sathanas, was made to be so easy: the [V] boys knew that we had all given ourselves coronaries after attempting the previous mission.  Anyway, I hope this has provided something of an amusement, and if you're reading this anytime soon, I'll probably still be getting pissed off at this paragon of frustrating game moments.

[Liberator]

*nods in silent approval*

You're given disrupters for a reason though, you can carve several points off of each cannon during you're runs.  You're real objective in that mission is to keep you're wingmen alive to help you with the Demon that jumps in.  For some reason the AI has always had problems with even attacking a Sath.  Best case scenario(and I only play on very easy) 3/5s of you're wingmen survive with 2 cannons down.  When the mission starts tell you're wingmen to ignore the sath and engage the enemy(not cover, they'll go fo the sath), then kill 2  cannons(they are only really vulnerable from inside the "basket")and attack the third until you're warned that the Sath is engaging it's subspace drive, all the while making sure that you are near the bottom of the Sath.  When the warning comes, order you're wingmen to form up and dive at full burners.  Since all the Shivan fighters are ordered to attack you you're wingmen should be close and they'll mostly avoid the 3 billion ton behemoth that tries to run them over.  After that, disable the demon and you 'win'.

[FireCrack]

The wingmen are more or less usefull for the flack, as are missiles. Most of the time when i noticed a flak was still up the bombers i had assigned to destroy it are gettng pushed along by the sath right by the turrets pitifully trying to use their disruptors on them.

Anyways, i find that during this mission your best bet is to start with the near bottom bean, then the far bottom beam, then work on the top ones.

Most people (like me) realy wnat to complete all objectives for this mission and no ther, at every cost.

[NGTM-1R]

I've taken them all out. Repeatedly. Got the flaks too, though that was something of a fluke. You have just enough time to do it all yourself. And if you go crazy with the afterburner, you don't have to divert power to engines...well, much.

My pet peeve with that mission is the support ship blithely cruising along through the Sathanas' flak fire and getting blown away before it can rearm me.

[Mongoose]

I just want to clarify something:  I have taken out all four beams in the past, plus the Demon.  It's just that it took me about 50 restarts last time, and it looks like I'm well on my way there again.  With the increased loading times required by the SCP, this gets to be even more annoying.  My biggest pet peeve is how damned lucky you have to be with the angle at which you hit the things...if they delivered a one-shot kill 90% of the time instead of 50%, I'd feel much better about the whole thing.

P.S.  Any comments on the other two missions I mentioned above, particularly the first SOC mission?  I want to know how many other people have managed to keep that Faustus at around 5% or so, only to have it and the Iceni do their typical let's-collide-for-two-minutes-straight, resulting in the Faustus getting offed?  There would also be times where the thing would suddenly drop about 40% for seemingly no reason; I always assumed a stray asteroid or two.  The really complicated thing about that one is that you have absolutely no control over your wingmen.  The next mission, "Love the Treason...", wasn't much better; I'd always want to save Snipes, even though it wasn't an objective, but he had a knack at getting himself killed.  You'd think that, since he's in the game later on, that would be an objective, wouldn't you?

[NGTM-1R]

I could've sworn Snipes' Herc II had ship-guardian on it...

For me, normally the Vasudan corvette gets the Hinton, or the asteroids do, way before the node. I did save it once, but I don't know how.

[Fergus]

Well although Bearbaiting was hard, and occasionally frustrating, I never had that much trouble with it.  While I'm approaching the Sath, I fire off 5-6 Treb's in linked config, switch to Helios (linked too) and 'em fire off at the ship.  If it doesn't kill is (sometimes it does, others doesn't) having all Alpha Destroy This subsystem works (they seemed alright to me).  Target nxt turret and repeat.  Take out as many as possible.  When Demon arrives destroy the beam that is firing on the GVCv Thebes, when that is done, switch to the other beams....and just shoot it + rearm.
  I know this all sounds rather simple, but if you get the timing right when you do the switch from Trebs to Torps, you can fire off the max ammount of missles before switching to the Helios'.

[Goober5000]

The Hinton is really hard to save, but it doesn't count against you as long as you scan it.  The Port includes a modified mission to give the Iceni and the Hinton separate waypoints so they don't collide.

The mission I find the most frustrating is Proving Grounds.  Between saving the Oberon, killing the Tiamat, and getting the Aquitaine through above 50% hull (for the medal), it's basically impossible to accomplish two of the three, let alone all three.  I'm so disgusted with that mission that I always switch to Very Easy so I can get through it as soon as possible.  It's strange, because Proving Grounds and Argonautica are nearly the same mission (and were done by the same author) yet I consider Argonautica to be much more fun.

I actually don't find Bearbaiting all that frustrating.  Hard, yes.  Challenging, yes.  But it's so much fun that I don't really mind it.  I've actually gotten quite good at it, to the point that I can regularly get all 4 turrets, most of the time get the flak turrets, and very occasionally get the bonus turret.

There's a trick to each objective, of course.  For the flak turrets, Delta is automatically ordered to attack them, and I send the rest of Alpha along to help them.  I also fire some Trebuchets and Akheton shots at the flak cannons whenever I can to help them out.  With Beta engaging the enemy, I can usually hold off the Shivans long enough to get the beam cannons.

The trick to destroying the beam cannons is to find the right spot to fire your bombs.  You learn this by trial and error: you have to hit the beam cannons on the flat of the arm or directly in the concave valley.  If you hit them on the edge or from the front they won't be damaged very much.  Incidentally, the same is true for the flak cannons: you have to hit them from directly above or directly below - hitting them from the front doesn't do much.  It's just how the model was made... you have to learn which attack paths work and which don't.  Next time I play that mission I'll have to take some screenshots.

As for getting the bonus cannon, this is surprisingly easy under the right circumstances.  If your wingmen manage to take out the flak cannons early on, then target the Sathanas, switch to the external view and swing around to the back, and toggle through its turrets until you're targeting the one just below the hangar.  Order all your wingmen to destroy that turret.  Given enough time, they can take out that turret easily.

Of course, this is all for FS2 retail.  I haven't played the main campaign with FSO recently, and we haven't fixed all the balance issues yet, so you may find some other unexpected problems.

[karajorma]

@ Mongoose

1) You aren't meant to take down all 4 beam turrets on the Sathanas. The mission requires you to get two of them to proceed. The others are there just as a challenge and to make the briefing seem more realistic. If you're not able to blow up all 4 turrets, the flak guns and the bonus objective then don't. FS2 frequently gives you mission objectives that can't be completed because that advances the plotline. A mission briefing which told you to blow up two turrets and then sit back and wait for the Sathanas to jump out wouldn't be realistic in the slightest.

2) I really don't think that Snipes can be killed. There are not just one but two events that make him invulnerable in the mission. It shouldn't be possible to get him below 30%

[Stunaep]

Yet he can be killled. Happened to me several times. Mostl likely the infamous getting-shot-by-a-missile-that-does-more-than-30%-damage -per-unit bug.

[karajorma]

Could be but that make his dying a bug rather than an oversight of the mission designer. There shouldn't be an objective to look after Snipes because he should be able to look after himself. That said it would be easy to change that.

When he's at 47% or so the game makes him vulnerable again. Change that SEXP to a ship-guardian and he'll never get killed.

[Nuclear1]

I have no idea why people think that Bearbaiting is so unusually difficult. I've played that mission on Medium and always seem to get all four cannons, the flak turrets, and sometimes even the rear beam cannon with time to move.

I always start off by Trebbing the nearest cannon till I'm out of ammo, then launching off a pair of Helios at it to finish it off. As soon as my Trebs are empty, I call in support, which promptly rearms me as I take care of another turret. Another Helios, then another Treb. Repeat for the last two, then I go after the flak guns (which are surprisingly easy to kill) with a round of Trebs, then a Helios from above.

I usually direct Alpha to go after the rear cannon, and have Beta engage any targets, while to Gamma I give a disarm order.

Simple. The Beleth is even easier.

[Kie99]

Beleth: 2 Helios to Engines.  Two trebs to beam cannons.  Lots of trebs and Helios to hull.

Most annoying mission:  As Lightning Fall(s?)
"S-- a---n Al--a 4 I-m --ving tr-bl- r-a-di-ng yo-."

[WeatherOp]

In that mission where you have to scan the Sathanas with the stealth. Anyone been able to kill one of the Sathanas's front beam cannons? After scaning everything one time, I tried. Got it down to around 39%, so I'm sure it can be done. But, then the thing jumps out and your a bug splat.

[Stunaep]

Originally posted by Goober5000

The mission I find the most frustrating is Proving Grounds.  Between saving the Oberon, killing the Tiamat, and getting the Aquitaine through above 50% hull (for the medal), it's basically impossible to accomplish two of the three, let alone all three.  I'm so disgusted with that mission that I always switch to Very Easy so I can get through it as soon as possible.  It's strange, because Proving Grounds and Argonautica are nearly the same mission (and were done by the same author) yet I consider Argonautica to be much more fun.

Funny that, I always figured Argonautica to be the harder mission.  Not because it was impossible to defend the Aquitaine or anything, but I always kept getting killed in that one.  Too much flying near the damn corvette with dragons on your tail.  The Molocs AoE missiles are killers. In Proving Grounds you never had to get close to the corvette, unless you wanted that secondary objective.

[Goober5000]

Ah, yes, I tend to die a lot in that one too... nasty bombers with Piranha missles.  It's especially annoying near the end of the mission, because it's about 15 minutes long.

But I said it was more fun, not necessarily easier. Sure, if all you want to do is save the Aquitaine, you don't need to do much to pass Proving Grounds.  But if you want to get the medal and destroy the corvette, it becomes a lot more frustrating.

[Mongoose]

karajorma, I know I'm not required to destroy all four beam cannons, but the fact that it can be done requires me to do it that way.  That's just me.  I've never been able to get close to killing the flak guns, not to mention the rear turret, and since my wingmen have never done anything useful at all in that mission, I don't even bother to try.

I think that Liberator's suggestion, using the Akheton on the run to the turret, makes the most sense.  I really don't get how some of you are able to use both Trebs and Helioses on one run.  The Treb has that 5-second rearm time to deal with, and when you switch over to the Helios, you have to deal with that obscenely long lock-on time.  I know that sometimes, even without Trebs, the flak bouncing me around has prevented the Helios from obtaining any lock on the beam, forcing me to restart the mission.  (Why do bombs take so much longer to lock than missiles?  It doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever.  If it's the same technology, shouldn't it take the same amount of time, regardless of secondary?)

nuclear1, I have absolutely no idea how you find the time to do all of that.  To me, that seems impossible in the 3:30 or so that you're given before the Sathanas jumps out.  As it is, I'm usually killing or attempting to kill the last beam turret around 3:20.  I only have time for one reload during that mission, so I have to make the most of it.  I don't know; maybe my technique is just wrong.

Goober, I wish my wingmen were as efficient at killing enemy subsystems as yours seem to be. It's not that I disapprove of the mission concept itself; it's a very cool thing to do.  I just know that I have never once had anything resembling fun in that mission.  My usual run-through consists of me flying white-knuckled, praying that my Helios shots will actually take down the turrets in one shot.  This usually ends up with me cursing and screaming at the monitor and pounding on my desk when things don't work out.

As for Snipes not getting killed, I must have bad luck.  Even going back to retail, it was about one time in ten that he didn't get killed before the Erinyes jumped in.  Most of the time, he was below 50% just from the initial wave of fighters that are sabotaged.  The next wing of Hercs that jumped in often finished him off.  The only strategy I have that works is to direct an order to Beta wing, which he is part of, to "Cover me." That way, he usually stays out of trouble.  The rest of that mission usually gave me trouble; since both the transport and the AWACS are so weak, one wing of Hercs could just about decimate either one.  It amazed me when I replayed that mission the other day and beat it on my first try.  As for the previous mission, where you have to protect the Hinton, I did find that the Vasudan corvette does decide to attack it quite frequently, and if it doesn't, then the asteroids are sure to do a number on it.  There's nothing to frustrate you, though, like the Iceni giving the death blow to it by ramming it.

As for "Proving Grounds," don't even get me started. I have never come close to killing the Tiamat; the Aquitaine has never been able to bring it below 15% for me.  And, because of that absolutely inane "big-ship" flag on it, disabling it and keeping it there after the Aquitaine bugs out doesn't do any good, either.  I'm usually content with managing to defend the Fenris and keeping the Aquitaine above 50% just to get the medal.  Just the last time through, I used a trick that someone had suggested: using EMP missiles on the stealth fighters.  It worked wonders; one direct hit, and the things were flying every which way.  Whereas I usually just manage to keep the Fenris above 40%, this time, it stayed at an astounding 90%.  That was definitely one of the better runs.  Once the Shivans show up, however, everything goes right to hell.   Right when they jump in, you have a wing of Maras at the front of the ship that seem to do a disproportionately large amout of damage; I've had them take the Aquitaine down to 85% by themselves.  Are those things modified in some way?  To add to that, the wing of bombers that waxes the Fenris soon turns at the Aquitaine, almost forcing you to hang back and take care of them.  In the meantime, the Tiamat jumps in far ahead, forcing you to put all power to engines and haul  *** back toward it.  After you take care of its three beam cannons with Stilettos, you have to haul *** again back to the Aquitaine to take care of the bombers before it drops below 50%.  I see absolutely no way that you can stay close enough to the Tiamat to let the Aquiataine destroy it and, at the same time, protect the Aquitaine from the bombers that do a huge number on it.  You need at least two Alpha Ones in that mission, one to take care of the Tiamat and one to defend the Aquitaine. Of course, all you're given is two measly wingmen, as well as Epsilon wing should these wingmen die.  My real question:  why the hell doesn't Epsilon wing get launched as soon as the Shivans show up?

I've had my share of problems with "Argonautica" as well.  Usually, if it isn't the Shivan bombers' cluster bomblets that get me, it's the explosion from the bombs themselves.  How's that for frustrating?

I've never understood why so many people find "As Lightning Falls" so annoying. Sure, you have the EMP storm messing up your sensors, but all you have to do is follow the nav buoys and wax a few Shivan wings that are as disoriented as you are.  After that, kill a few more Shivans, call in the transport, and you're done.  Simple.

[Roanoke]

I find most of the Barracuda missions tiresome. And as for Bearbaiting, how the hell do you have time to target the specific turrets ? Takes ages to cycle through 'em all. I can nail the 4 beam cannons but nothing else on the Sath.

[Kie99]

The rear turret can be taken out with 2 trebuchets IIRC, so can the Flak guns.

[Mongoose]

Targeting the flak ones, at least, isn't too bad.  When you start off flying toward the Sathanas, they're listed just a few after the main beam cannons.  I think Goober posted a method above for targeting that rear turret.