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Post by mavericksawyer on Sept 28, 2016 23:46:08 GMT
For the life of me, I cannot successfully complete the Main Belt Extraction mission. Either the enemy ship shreds my forces, or, for some unknown reason it fails me automatically before I even get a shot off.
Anyone have any successful strategies to share?
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acatalepsy
Junior Member
Not Currently In Space
Posts: 97 
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 29, 2016 0:36:44 GMT
Okay, so your target is a gunship. You need to disable it, which means blowing away all of its weapons and engines, without killing the crew underneath the hull...or just blowing up the reactors or their radiators. The latter is a lot easier, and more importantly, doesn't have any critical crew compartments right next to it Let's see how we can do that, by looking at the gunship in the ship builder view.  Good stuff. The reactor and radiators are far enough away from the crew compartments that it shouldn't be a big deal. Unfortunately, you have to deal with the lasers, which means a high speed flyby with Stinger drones is going to be a no-go. Your options then are to go in fast and hard with capital ships, targeting the radiators with weak weapons, or trying to hit the reactor only with flak missiles. The latter is going to be very hit and miss, literally, but with some patience and low closing velocities, it can work. (The actually easy way is to use custom modified lasers to snipe the radiators, reactors, and engines from extreme range; but you don't have that option yet.) |
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Post by mavericksawyer on Sept 29, 2016 0:52:56 GMT
Hmmm... I had been trying to lob a bunch of flak missiles at it, but haven't had much success in actually scoring a hit yet. The damned ship evades every time. >.<
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acatalepsy
Junior Member
Not Currently In Space
Posts: 97
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Post by acatalepsy on Sept 29, 2016 1:19:51 GMT
Hmmm... I had been trying to lob a bunch of flak missiles at it, but haven't had much success in actually scoring a hit yet. The damned ship evades every time. >.< Try a very low velocity intercept, with as much of your dV remaining in the missiles as you can. What may help, especially if you're trying to get the record, is building a ship with a very high acceleration and dV and a boatload of flak missiles just for this mission. EDIT: I tried again with just a stock missile boat. Very doable. You need to bring yourself to rest next to the planetoid it's orbiting (orbit behind it, maybe, or just use the trajectory - the gravity is extremely weak). Then I lobbed clusters of striker nukes and flak missiles at it until it was a total wreck, then moved in with the missile boat's cannons to finish off the last radiators and drives. |
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Post by mavericksawyer on Sept 29, 2016 3:49:32 GMT
Wound up doing a really funky j-hook approach at less than 100 m/s and salvoed about 60 flak missiles in clusters of five and twenty. Shredded it real good and got a win.
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Post by Greg on Sept 30, 2016 5:44:43 GMT
Played this a few times - haven't passed it yet. The last time I took out the reactor, but then it failed me, may have hit a crew compartment  My strategy has been to use a gunship and do a quick burn to get me close, but adding some blue so that I arrive out of plane above the target in about 40min. I slow down so that I'm in roughly the same orbit but inclined. This means the target is never obscured by the rock it is orbiting. Then I lob 10 flak missiles at a go arriving at ~350m/s and target the engines. The lasers get a few of them but many get through. |
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Post by mavericksawyer on Sept 30, 2016 6:08:30 GMT
As others have mentioned, approach at relatively low speed. It really does make a difference.
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Post by subyng on Sept 30, 2016 23:21:47 GMT
How exactly do you get the win on this mission? I completely disabled the ship, but nothing. On one of my attempts, I failed the mission (somehow, I have no idea what triggered it) folllowed immediately by a dialog message saying that I was successful. Wtf?
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Post by blothorn on Sept 30, 2016 23:31:32 GMT
You win by disabling the ship and lose by killing the crew; since killing the crew also disables the ship, it tends to spawn both success and failure messages (with the success being spurious).
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Post by captinjoehenry on Oct 3, 2016 18:52:58 GMT
Well I'm the odd one out! I just tossed a whole load of strike nukes at it and then I won  |
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Post by thorneel on Oct 3, 2016 22:52:44 GMT
I had a hard time passing it, but mostly because either my ships/drones or the target ship kept crashing on the magical invisible bubble surrounding the asteroid moon a few km above its surface.
One would assume crews and drone software would be careful not crashing into asteroids, but who can blame them when the secretive Romulians and Remians equipped themselves with invisible, indestructible force fields?
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