[Sushi]

Any hints on protecting the escape pods in mission 3?

No matter what I do, I can't seem to prevent Brahma wing from launching at least one salvo of missiles...and that's all it takes.

[Galemp]

Replay the previous mission and take a Valkyrie. Then hit your burners at every blue blip you see on radar for the first half of the mission.

[Goober5000]

The Valkyrie isn't strictly required.  What is required is tactical awareness; you can't simply attack the nearest fighter.

What you need to do is cycle through the hostile targets until you find one that isn't targeted by any of your wingmen.  Attack that one.  Once it's destroyed, you can attack at will.

[Snail]

Hmm. Would the Flail be any good in this capacity?

[Goober5000]

Dunno; haven't tried.  But my hunch is that it would only work (if it worked at all) if every friendly fighter used it.

[Kolgena]

I struggled a bit on this mission on hard as well. I can keep both pods at 100% until the basilisks show up. Then they launch hornets and it's gg.

The strategy here is to burner at them and cut them off before they're within range to 1-hit your pods. Don't simply shoot at the one fighter that has no wingmen targeting it; fire a few volleys at each of the fighters. The AI seems to break off its course to the pods once being shot at and start circling around and such. This gives you enough time to blow up 1 or two before your slower wingmen arrive and clean up. If you also managed to have some left over missiles from the previous mission (I didn't, which was a little frustrating), save them explicitly for this final basilisk wing.

[terran_emperor]

Galemp had an amusing tale about his work on this mission this mission. Goober knows what i'm refering to...

[Goober5000]

There are many amusing tales about most of the missions, so I probably don't know which one you have in mind.

[colecampbell666]

I got through this on hard, take the Interceptors, Valkyrie, S-Breaker and Proms. C-3-6 an enemy so that your wingmen take others in the meantime.

[terran_emperor]

There are many amusing tales about most of the missions, so I probably don't know which one you have in mind.

I refer of couse to the one where Galemp moved the Pods 500m further away from the shivan fighters without telling anyone in an attempt to make mission slightly easier. Then you noticed and moved them back to their original locations and didn't tell Galemp about it until he complained

[Narwhal]

I found out that spamming countermeasures while attacking the 3rd wing (the hardest of all), even though you are not the one targetted, will divert their cluster missiles from the escape pods. Once I understood that, its difficulty went from "Impossible" to "Tricky" for me. Just send an awful lot of countermeasures during the third wave while being in the way.

[PMY]

Yeah, spamming countermeasures close to the escape pods to distract Brahma's missiles is probably the best way to save them. Also, it's probably a good idea to fire at least 2 Phoenix V missiles at the closest Basilisk, so the Hercules in my opinion is the best choice for this and the previous missions (6 gun mounts, 2 secondary banks: Phoenix V to kill bombers and Basilisks and Interceptors to kill faster foes).

[Androgeos Exeunt]

Achievement unlocked:

* Androgeos Exeunt fires his SABeam.