[jr2]

Avast!  Pirate Day!

[CP5670]

Just FYI, my game will start in about 30 minutes.

[Super Nova]

I can not see your game.

[Shade]

Same. Firewall/router is mocking you again. Make it pay

[CP5670]

Okay, I'll try again. If it still doesn't work, that router is going out of here for now, as it's half broken anyway.

[Super Nova]

Still not there.

[Shade]

No go.

[Edit] Still, it's a good sign. Last time you had router problems, we got medals

[CP5670]

I can't imagine what's blocking it. It seems to be failing without the router as well, and I have no firewall software running. I haven't hosted off this machine before and might not be able to fix it right away. Does anyone else want to take over for now?

[Shade]

Sure, I'll take it. Give me a minute and it should be up.

[Edit] Up, the server is.

[BloodEagle]

I probably won't be able to host tonight, just giving you a heads-up.

[jr2]

Soon as my hard disk gets done defragging, I'll be able to... let me know if you want to join; I'll be on IRC (link at the top of this page, see my sig for instructions if you don't know how)... if I'm not on IRC, then I've dropped out for about a minute, and will re-appear shortly.  K? 

[CP5670]

I got my port forwarding issues fixed, hopefully for good. It's basically time to buy a new router. I'll check it again just before I host next time.

Also, I found a nice little program that tests the port forwarding for you. It may come in handy for other people too.

[Shade]

Well, cet_m01 is starting to annoy me, so I took a look at it in FRED to look for clues as well as any loopholes we might exploit next time we try. And thankfully there are a few things.

First off, the reinforcements that we kinda didn't know we had look like they could be a huge help. It's a wing of 4 Thoths armed with Prom S and Trebs, with 6 waves. That right there is a huge help, the ships and loadout are tailor made for escort which is exactly what we need.

Second, all but one of the enemy wings have no wing threshold. This won't be of much use for the bombers since they'll be killed by capships anyway, but if we could reduce on or two of the 20 wave fighter wings to 1 fighter and leave it alive, it could take a lot of heat off our backs.

Finally, it looks like there's about a 1 in 3 chance that the enemy Leviathan cruiser (Fenrir) will actually defect and join our side. Needless to say, adding 4 AAA beams not to mention a non-essential target to take heat of the Shai would be a huge help, but since it's random we just need to get lucky.

Oh, and one other thing. The massive waves of fighters are not due to us losing, they always appear. It's simply because more and more wings have their arrival cues satisfied, while older wings have a massive number of waves and are practically unkillable. So by the end, we have 4 wings of fighters with 15-20 waves in addition to any that are just arriving. Which is why trying to keep one or two of those waves crippled by exploiting the lack of a wave threshold might be a lot of help.

[Edit] Forgot to mention this: None of the bomber wings (Gebo, Nauthiz & Fehu) have an impossible number of waves, so if we concentrate on them as they arrive we should be able to wipe them out for good. So we should definitely ignore fighters in favour of bombers, since many of the fighter wings have a huge number of waves and will just keep coming.

[karajorma]

I always love it when people take apart Cetanu's missions. There's always so much going on behind the scenes

[Shade]

Have lost to it thrice now, so getting kinda desperate. Enough is enough

[CP5670]

I think we know enough about the mission now to get the IOV medal next week (unless anyone is interested in playing later today). You still get the medal if you call in the reinforcement wing, right?

The Fenrir thing is interesting and I think I've seen it happen at some point. It may have been in the PXO days. I don't think it will make much of a difference either way, as the ship poses no threat after its main beam is gone and the enemy fighters don't usually stray that far.

Check out Codename Robin Hood (Odd_M02) as well. That one seemed to be harder to me, probably the hardest of any of the missions I've played so far, and the fact that it has some AI bugs doesn't help.

Also, karajorma, it's increasingly looking like 12 players in co-op are in fact possible. We fell just short yesterday, getting only 8, but players can be moved to Gamma without any problems. It's a pity that Black Omega mission is so stupidly easy. If activity with this picks up some more, I might make a decent 12 player one myself as I have some ideas for one.

[Psychoo]

Easiest way to complete ToF:
Debeam Hades (front and tower main beams ASAP, before they shot) and other NTF capitals as soon as they arrive.
Order AI ignore Urd and eliminate all waves of Nauthiz when Orion is still alive. Mission will be easier later.
At the end debeam Skuld and Ygrda and mission is won.
I suggest playing it in 2- 4 players, there is additional wing of bombers armed with Helios when there is a lot of players (I dont remember the treshold).
Important: Host always should be the one that eliminates bombers and bombs. It's almost impossible do destroy bombs by other players.
Persolally I prefer playing ToF in pair - one player is debeaming capitals (and he may bomb as well) while the other (host) kills bombers.
ToF is easy mission, but sometimes a bit of luck is needed to complete it.

[Shade]

You still get the medal if you call in the reinforcement wing, right?

Yep. Just need the Shai and the Renenet to survive. I might be up for one or two games tonight to give it a shot, but I won't be playing until 3am like yesterday

And I'll make sure to take a look at odd_m02 before next saturday and see if there's anything we've missed. Not the only seemingly impossible mission around though - cet_m09 is downright insane, but thankfully that medal isn't unique.

[Edit] Psychoo: Thanks for the tip about the number of players, I had not noticed that No wonder we had trouble keeping the Shai alive at the end. It looks like if you have 4 players or less, they won't appear.

[CP5670]

I put myself down for the weekend again. I will be in Rockville and will host on my old connection and computer, so there should be no problems (although I have things fixed over here now too).

Note that this 10:00 PM game is at the same time as the last few, which were labeled for 9:00 PM. I had earlier forgotten that EST is currently GMT-4 and not GMT-5 due to daylight savings time.

[jr2]

Ugh... no wonder everything's all messed up for my time.    I forgot that, too.