Adventures in Mission Running

Sankkasen system The Citadel region

Received the Angel Extravaganza mission again. Decided to try it with this time around. I used a similar tank to the one I used with Happy Face the first time around and it worked great. The damage to the armour was soaked up and repaired before I even had time to notice. A tough nut indeed. As an aside, I switched back to my clone with +5 implants and a couple of 5% Noble implants a while back. They help the armour tanking a wee bit.

Here are some dramatic and exciting screenshots from my latest adventure

Target rich environment

Getting shot at

Bouncer

berserker making friend

I learned this evening that I really don’t need energy turret skills to fly a Curse-class recon ship effectively. My wallet may not like this enlightenement.

Santola system, The Citadel region

Warped to the mission site. Armour repair and tank mods active. While not quite as robust as the tank of a Dominix-class battleship, an Ishtar can be a tough nut to crack. Hopefully I don’t find a nutcracker on this mission.

Dropped out of warp. The overview shows several targets between me and the gate into the next area. Four turrets and several reprogrammed mining drones (that bear a striking resemblance to rogue drones). Noticing that they’re keeping their distance from my ship, I use one of my favorite ways of dealing of targets that like to keep their distance:  Tech two Sentry drones

curator sentry drone

Capable of popping destroyer and frigate sized targets at range in one salvo, five of them can make short work of even battleship rats in short order. Comparing them to artillery or railguns wouldn’t be too far of a stretch.

And like artillery, you need to have some way of dealing with those targets that get too close and orbit too fast for the sentry drones. Enter the tech two medium and heavy drones.

infiltrator medium drone

praetor heavy drone

After watching them dealing with the wave of reinforcements, I fly to the acceleration gate and jump into the next zone…

Acceleration gate with behind it

And meet my nutcracker. Fortunately I was able to escape before all the magic smoke escaped.

:) burns!

Unfortunately, I left my flight of praetors behind. Luckily they were all there when I came back. until I got one blown up by having it pull aggro. :S

But in the end, the mission was completed and I got paid. Which is good, because it was getting late and I was getting tired. =D

Halaima system The Citadel region

Infiltrated Outposts is a very different mission when you’re not in a Dominix-class battleship parked several kilometres away with Tech 2 sentries popping your targets at range. You get a sense of claustrophobia as you find your ship wedged in amongst the alien drone structures after chasing down a target. A sense of concern as they start to inflict significant damage to your armour plating.

It’s exhilirating! And here are some screenshots

Drone Structure

Stuck in the drone structure

Halaima system The Citadel region

You tend to forget certain things when you use a drone boat like a Dominix-class battleship or Ishtar-class heavy assault ship like I usually do for missions.

Ammo for one thing. Drones don’t run out of ammunition so all you have to worry about is making sure they don’t wander off and get themselves destroyed. More than once I’ve been orbiting a target wondering why it’s not being destroyed when I notice that the reloaded gun group is waiting for me to send the fire command… And then there’s the awkward moment when you notice you’re out of ammo so you have nothing to shoot at your targets.

Weapons range is the other little detail I tend to forget. Turret weapons are limited by factors like optimal range and accuracy falloff. What that boils down to is that you have to keep your target within a certain range for your guns so that you can hit and hopefully damage said target. There’s also the tracking speed of your gun turrets to keep mind as well. With Happy Face, the solution is orbit within a few kilometres so its blasters can hit the target. On the other hand, with my Maelstrom-class battleship Clear Skies with its artillery, they work best on targets that are further away and moving slower. Like they say in that popular film, “Stationary ships don’t react well to 1400s.” Of course a flight of drones is handy with either ship for those that get too close and/or fly too fast.

It does make it a bit more exciting to actually have to fly around to get to your targets though. Which is a nice change of pace from how I usually do things in my drone boats.

And of course, as soon as I bother to fit an ECCM module onto my ship, these Guristas don’t try to jam me.