[Crazygar]

Starting to get things together for my eventual Campaign, which I assure you won't be anytime soon. One tactic that is always employed by weaker forces is the famous Hit and Run maneuver. Simply, warp in, fire off 1 Cyclops at one target and warp out again. Or as I prefer to say, "Soften the target".

I have a small sample mission already in the works for the opening act of the Campaign in which 4 Loki's, hop in, each armed with 1 Cyclops each, target a specific ship (in this case one, out of a group of 6), fire off the missile and then warp out again. I have a good part of the operators in place, but can't seem to get the Loki's to fire off their 1 Cyclops and boogie.

Instead, they warp in, and start to duel with the Escort Group, which in the specifics I have only tasked them with the "attack" a specific ship only.

I sense a huge learning curve again, which is fine, I'd love to finally create a campaign, in the process, I'll be asking loads of questions.

Regards,
Gary

[CommanderDJ]

Someone with more expertise might be able to give you better advice, but you may want to look into:

1) The good-secondary-time SEXP.
2) The "Ignore Dynamic Goals" flag in the Ships Editor. This will (IIRC) cause the Lokis to ignore things that may prevent them from focusing on the goals you've assigned them.
3) And of course, make sure to give your attack order a very high priority in the orders editor (something like 100) just to be safe.

[Slasher]

Looking at the wiki shows the default Loki can't even carry the Cyclops.  Are you working with a modified Loki?  If so, have you made sure it's tabled correctly, the table file is in the correct folder, and any mods necessary are selected via the Launcher?

[headdie]

you can set any fighter to carry any fighter/missile in FRED you just can't load them in the games loadout screen.

to fit the lore of the game
you probably want to use fighters armed with something like a stiletto to disarm the target.
as a rule of thumb bombs/torpedoes can only be carried by bombers, zeus and artemis would work well here
if the target is a cruiser then rocket and swarm missile strikes can be very effective.
Corvettes can be taken down by a small number of bombers with cyclops torpedoes.
due to their fighter capacity, hull and armament destroyers generally need either massively overwhelming firepower or a prolonged engagement to kill

[Crazygar]

Sadly, it can be selected with Loki, they can only carry one by default according to the Ship Editor. I might try a wave of bombers instead, pretty the concept is jump in, fire a volley of Cyclops at a Argo (will be replaced later on with something more suitable to the mission objective) and then jump back into subspace once the volley is launched.

A classic tactic of softening up a target, or in this case, quick elimination. The Bombers will not be hanging around to see what happens, it's a simple fire and forget mission.

I have somewhat of a working model already in which the fighters jump in, "EVENTUALLY" release their payload and then hover around (most annoying).

I was looking at, almost as they jump in, to unload their arsenal on the target and jump out again.

Gary

[Black Wolf]

Sadly, it can be selected with Loki, they can only carry one by default according to the Ship Editor. I might try a wave of bombers instead, pretty the concept is jump in, fire a volley of Cyclops at a Argo (will be replaced later on with something more suitable to the mission objective) and then jump back into subspace once the volley is launched.

A classic tactic of softening up a target, or in this case, quick elimination. The Bombers will not be hanging around to see what happens, it's a simple fire and forget mission.

I have somewhat of a working model already in which the fighters jump in, "EVENTUALLY" release their payload and then hover around (most annoying).

I was looking at, almost as they jump in, to unload their arsenal on the target and jump out again.

Gary

Well, they don't actually need to fire the missiles themselves, do they? There's a spawn-secondaries (I think - something like that) sexp - you can use it to spawn missiles directly in front of the lokis (using their local coordinates) so to the player, it will look almost exactly like they fired them.

[Crazygar]

Yeah, now that would fullfill the effect, I found that it takes 4 Loki's armed with a Cyclops each to take down an Argo.

Gary

[Goober5000]

Sadly, it can be selected with Loki, they can only carry one by default according to the Ship Editor.

Pay closer attention to what headdie said:

you can set any fighter to carry any fighter/missile in FRED you just can't load them in the games loadout screen.

The only place the loadout restrictions come into effect is in the loadout screen.  You can assign any weapon to any ship in FRED -- even ships on your own team.  In fact, you can even assign the player an illegal weapon provided the player can't visit the loadout screen (i.e. provided the mission is a scramble mission).  Volition did precisely this in Bearbaiting -- the Bakha can't normally carry the Helios.

[karajorma]

Nor is the Bakha ever set to player-allowed in the campaign. If you turn off scamble mission in FRED, the player can go to loadout and will probably find himself flying a ulysses with no bombs.