Kadesh Garden Question

[sonderkraftfahrzeug]

This is my first time playing and I just want to confirm a few things about that Kadesh mission.

Is the enemy carrier invincible? It teleports as soon as it is low on health.
Do enemies use any resources to spawn their ships?
Does the enemy spawn infinite ships?
if you do not have the right ships built from previous missions and no money - do you need to restart from the beginning of the campaign to build things properly for this mission?

Thanks!

[sierra_one_]

As far as I could tell, the enemy needleship in Gardens of Kadesh is invincible throughout the majority of the mission, and when you damage it once the mothership is hyperspace-capable, the needleship will jump away leaving you to harvest the Gardens at will. The Kadeshi don't have any resource collectors and I'm pretty sure swarmers will be spewed out at regular intervals, so it's more of a timed survival mission than anything else.

What kind of ships do you have? I've found assault frigates and drone frigates to be the most effective, with destroyers or other heavy ships to go and hunt the Kadeshi fuel ships. Strike craft seem pretty weak, I had a squad of 15-20 defenders wiped out while protecting my frigates.

[Eryms]

Enemy MS is invincible, no idea on 2nd, they spawn for a very long time. You should have autosaves for everymission try loading on of those. 4 drone frigates do wonders

[Adino]

Is the enemy carrier invincible? It teleports as soon as it is low on health. No

Do enemies use any resources to spawn their ships? No

Does the enemy spawn infinite ships? No

if you do not have the right ships built from previous missions and no money - do you need to restart from the beginning of the campaign to build things properly for this mission?

Prolly not to start of mission 1 but you might need to go back maybe 1-2. What you need is debatable. Some would say 20+ heavy corvettes. Some would say 5-6 assult frigates and drone frigates.

[=[ JDSU ]= Sir Humphrey]

Originally posted by Eryms:

Enemy MS is invincible, no idea on 2nd, they spawn for a very long time. You should have autosaves for everymission try loading on of those. 4 drone frigates do wonders

I had 4 and they did nothing. The swarmers wiped out virtually everything I had in a matter of minutes...assault frigates lasted a minute or so apiece. All fighters and corvettes were destroyed, along with any support stuff that I couldn't dock with the mothership in time. Simply impossible.

[Larry]

You just have to hold out from what I remember. The ship will always jump and you can't destroy it. You will later though, obviously...

[Eryms]

I had 4 drone and 4 assault with a 2 destroyers and like 8 ion frigs and a couple support frigs and thats about it the swarms were chewed up and spit out

[sieur_metz]

The game is set so that you must attempt and fail to hyperspace before it will let you defeat the enemy mothership and move on to the next mission.

[HidesHisFace]

In the first mission in the Gardens, yes, their mothership is invincible.
They don't use resources.
They seem to spam ships infinitely.
Yes, you may need to restart from previous saves if you loose too much. Resources are relatively scarce so every more expensive unit is worth own weight in gold.

How to prevent it? There are some units you will never really regret.
In original - heavy corvettes - forget other strike-craft.
Salvage corvettes - you should always have a healthy supply of those - capturing enemy ships when and where you can is very important - these are basically free units and sometimes you will get either unique vessels or ships you may not construct YET.
Assault frigates - these seem to be the new "heavy corvettes" in Remastered - in original they were quickly becoming obsolete but in renewed edition they sport some decent AA.
Ion frigates - obvious anti-capital ship.
Any big capital ship.

[Pinard]

The mothership jumps away, then comes back, then jumps again but doesn't come back. Doesn't matter if you try to jump or not.

[sonderkraftfahrzeug]

Thanks all, looks like I did not hae the 6th sense to spawn the right ships for this mission, I will have to restart from scratch because I don't have the right units to fight invincible and infinite troops. Are there any more gotchas later in the game? Spawn-kill of mothership upon leaving hyperspace?

[Eryms]

So one thing to mention which might make a difference, i had those two destroyes go hunt down the motherships to make them warp away right away, and then destroyed fuel pods as a priority with them.

[sierra_one_]

Originally posted by sonderkraftfahrzeug:

Thanks all, looks like I did not hae the 6th sense to spawn the right ships for this mission, I will have to restart from scratch because I don't have the right units to fight invincible and infinite troops. Are there any more gotchas later in the game? Spawn-kill of mothership upon leaving hyperspace?

One extra tip is to save the game at the end of every mission, but before you spend all your RUs bolstering your fleet. That way, if you're taken by surprise in the following mission, you still have a save that will allow you to reinforce your fleet with hard counters to whatever the enemy is using.

[sieur_metz]

Originally posted by Adino NZL:

Some would say 20+ heavy corvettes. Some would say 5-6 assult frigates and drone frigates.

Debatable indeed! You should have a destroyer or two to play with and a good sized pack of frigates by this stage. Use them to knock out the fuel pods and the rest is cake. Salvaging the fuel pods is doable but more about an ego boost than any use for them. You can retire fuel pods for RUs but if you're having trouble, just go for the kill.

[Warchild]

Ok, first, you have to pay attention to what the mission entails.

The mission commander tells you that there are 3 hyperspace inhibitors around the ship.

Sometimes you can get really lucky (or unlucky) to get the actual enemy mothership and not a normal needle ship.
After you destroy the "other two" needle ships, you can take out the Needle mothership.

Its just the way the mission works. You take out the first 2 and then the third.

Just as the mission states, "...There are 3 hyperspace inhibitors..."

The Needle mothership will remain invincible and well head to the wreck (for lack of better description) South of where your mothership is. In actuality, they all tend to head there, you just have to destroy them before they get there.
The Needle Mothership should be there waiting foir you to finish it off.

In case you hadn't thought about it, a good tactic is to use the same tactic the Kadeshi is using on you. They swarm...so you swarm.
Use a Wing of fighters and bombers (12) and perhaps 2 wings of gunships with a wing of heavy and light corvettes.

Once you've fended off the primary attack from the 2 Needle carriers and the Needle Mothership, build up the frigates. It helps if you were able to capture a destroyer or two from the previous missions, but not neccessary.

[Donik]

Originally posted by sonderkraftfahrzeug:

Thanks all, looks like I did not hae the 6th sense to spawn the right ships for this mission, I will have to restart from scratch because I don't have the right units to fight invincible and infinite troops. Are there any more gotchas later in the game? Spawn-kill of mothership upon leaving hyperspace?

Oh please. Complain a little more. Yeah, it's hard. Really hard. Why cry about a game that gives you a challenge? Go back a mission or two, reconfigure or recyle/rebuild to better suit the mission. I haven't played the game since release, and I managed (just barely) to complete both the kadesh missions first try.