Defending convoy missions.... FFS

[Fantoche]

I'm playing the campaign and can't manage to win that damn defend the convoy mission. The orks just ignore everything and make a beeline for the ships, how the hell are you even supposed to win these??

I had three gas clouds in my starting zone, all 3 in different clouds and the orks still knew where they were and made a beeline for them. They're slow and impossibly frail, what the hell?

[M.a.r.t.i.n.]

Split the convoy ships, clouds don't do anything because the ai cheats, ram, focus on enemy engines.
Most important: rember that you won't loose the campaign if you loose a single mission

[Alex_x86]

Few ways:
#1
Your battleships: try to tie up orcs in battle, ram them (Imperial ships are as tough as orcs), build a life fence with your battleships to isolate transports, deploy in the corner so you would not need to worry about one flank.
Your transports: run for your life!!!! Try to not spent the whole fuel in one blast, let it recover a bit and run again. Avoid orc ships at all cost, listen up for that nasty horn and run as soon as you hear the damn thing. You might want to install Antiasteroid shield on transports so you can run through asteroid fields without any damage as well as it will eat up some damage if you get rammed.

#2: Well...admit a defeat and move on. Loosing missions in the campaign would not end a campaign but would make it a bit tougher... There are only few missions that would loose a campaign for you. I know it is not a good feeling but oh well. Further in the game might not even have a chance to attend all the battles so just accept the consequences and move on.

[Alex_x86]

One more thing: try not to get all your battleships killed or heavy damaged. B/c if you get all your ships stuck in warp or for the repairs (or worse both) the next battle you'll have to fight with escorts... Which sucks, trust me.

[Ashardalon]

dont split up, spire gives horrible advice
have a close formation at the map edge
close formation so they provide a small target so its hard to hit for the orks
at the map edge so the enemy comes one at a time
dont go trough the middle, you will be surrounded and killed

torps are your friend
a cruiser and light cruiser shooting torps can halve a ork cruisers hp befor it even reaches you
the first cruiser is the biggest treat, its the only one that can really catch up to your transports if you boost

dont boost unnecesarily
your transports should always have half their boost leftto dodge in emergencies
using the other half to get to the other side faster can be done
carefull, boosting reveals your ships making them vulnerable to assault boats, zapps or lucky gunz

running silent can stop aproaching bombers or zapps that could damage your transports
if shields are down and there is 5k inbetween your transports and the enemy it can give them a moment safety
brace wont do enough to save a transport from a ork cruiser ram
so use your orders for running silent, not brace
it can help against light cruisers, but honestly it wont

ork mobility
ors are slow and clunky
they are fast enough to catch you, but they only get one shot if they ♥♥♥♥ up the catch
they have a big horn that sounds when they are about to boost, they can also be seen slowing down a little just before the horn goes off
when they boost they go forward and cant turn, they cant interrupt their boost
abuse that
its a bad idea to put your side and hope your ship can stop the orks forward momentum
what you want to do it ram it to the side just before it boosts
it will fly off into the distance and wont have a chanse ever catching your transports
this also gives you plenty of opportunity to shoot the orks in their low armored ass
dont forget to brace before ramming orks like this, imperial front armor is very good, but ram damage is speedxship max hullpoints devided by armor (simplified explanation, not 100% literal), and orks have a lot of hull points so ramming them will hurt your ships a bit
ramming a ork ship head to head without brace will end in the imperial ship losing

hiding in clouds
ai cant fall for mind tricks
they dont technically cheat, if you lose detection they cant shoot you
but it does know where your ships are, making a ai not know things is hard to do in a functional way
so this means that while the ai follows the same rules as you, mind tricks like hoping they dont know where your transports are and using distraction escorts as bait wont work

ork ships are ramshackle
if you diverted their boost and shooting at their unarmored rear using the aim order can deal a massive amount of damage
orks suffer double damage from crits, aim order doubles crit rate
this can kill ork ships surprisingly quickly

undisiplined rabble
orks have bad morale, so if an escort gets in your way its a good idea to boost and ram it to death while you have the chanse
increasing the chanse that the survivors will insubordinate
insubordinations when stopped cause two crits, and with ork crit vulnerability, this can kill them quickly, it will also reduce their rate of boost recovery

think thats almost everything

if you see one of your escorts isnt going to make it, spit them off from the formation
chain explosions from transport plasma explosion is a stupid way to lose a mission like this
the explosion can also do a lot of damage to enemy ships
dont use it when you dont have to tho, you dont have a lot of spare escorts in that first transport mission

ship survival is very important
every mission survived is levels gained and easier missions later

[Fantoche]

Yeah i used the corner strategy and it worked..

Now I'm at the mission where I need to defend some sitting duck inquisitor against three freaking waves. That's twice he gets blown up at the third...

[Ashardalon]

dont fear ramming chaos ships
they have only 50 armor on all sides and standart hp, a braced ram with an imperial cruiser can do almost half of a light cruisers hp in damage
stick together, your ships do better when focussing on a single ship
try to stay within 10k of the inquisitors ship, you need to engage them as soon as possible but cant afford to spend time running back all the way
the inquisitors ship still has cannons, if you can push a chaos ship infront of those they will do decent damage
and kill one ship at a time, except for weapon crits a low hp ship will do as much damage to the inquisitors ship as a full hp one
and if things are going bad, dont be afraid to bodyblock the enemys shots
if your ship is inbetween them and the inquisitor they cant do much to hit it
lances go in a strait line , unlike macros so they cant arc around your ship

but mostly its practice, the better you get to know your ships the easier it gets
did that mission a few days ago on heroic and the inquisitors ship and my ships never got below 2/3 hp

[Fantoche]

BTW any recommendations on a second cruiser? My first is a tyrant, solid macros and tough armor so it sees action but.. should I take a Lunar for a second, or pick the one with launch bays?

[oddball]

Carriers are very good in this game. Esp vs orks and chaos because your fighters will rip the ♥♥♥♥ out of their bombers (and assault boats and torps for orks).

Carriers are also just generally good vs orks, especially if you build them for speed.

[Ashardalon]

i like dictators
but a thing about this game is that ships tend to synergise well with themselves
a dictator works well next to a dictator, a tyrant works best next to a tyrant
lunar i wouldnt advise, its mixed weapons and imperial lances arnt great
the turreted lances and the dauntless prow lance are exceptions, but imperial broadside lances are pretty bad
but most of all mixed weapons means you cant focus on the upgrades that could make lances viable

dictator is a nice ship but its almost pure hull damage, ram, bombers, torps all ignore voids so it cant really support your tyrant
if you suffer from enemy bombers often it can be good to bring some dictators for interceptors, but that will cut down its damage even more and if the enemy has more carriers (wich chaos and orks often have) they can still often get trough
it also lets you almost ignore enemy torps if you have 2 in your fleet

but neither your tyrant nor the dictator can really reach its peak in a fleet like that, better to just have another tyrant and dodge torps while you focus more on broadsiding then ramming (tho do ram when the opportunity presents itself)

[Erikon]

The AI in this game cheats so hard, so ignore the objective and fight.

[Ashardalon]

Originally posted by Erikon:

The AI in this game cheats so hard, so ignore the objective and fight.

it doesnt tho
but killing the heretic is the easiest solution for imperials

[dv]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

dont split up, spire gives horrible advice

Splitting them up works fine against ork AI. Nothing wrong with that advice.

[Ashardalon]

ai is better at dividing its attention then humans
the best thing you can do is focusfire to kill ork ships before they can hurt your transports
and splitting up leaves you with split firepower or you have a undefended transport
using split transports alongside distraction escorts can work vs humans to split their attention but vs ai its pointless
unless you send the distraction transport further ahead then the other fleet to abuse ai behavior
generaly it can work, but its better to focus your attention on one place and break trough the ork line instead of trying to wiggle past orks with the slowest ships in the game even if orks arnt much faster

[dv]

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

splitting up leaves you with split firepower or you have a undefended transport

You don't have to defend all transports. Only 3 of 6 need to reach the end of the map. AI splits its forces against six separate transports. You get roughly 2:1 superiority around three of those transports. Works fine. I'm not saying that's the only way to play those missions. Only that it's a valid strategy.

A lone escort is unlikely to destroy a transport. Unless the initial ram succeeds. Any transports targeted by one escort require no protection whatsoever.

[angrybunny]

Originally posted by dv:

Originally posted by Ashardalon:

splitting up leaves you with split firepower or you have a undefended transport

You don't have to defend all transports. Only 3 of 6 need to reach the end of the map. AI splits its forces against six separate transports. You get roughly 2:1 superiority around three of those transports. Works fine. I'm not saying that's the only way to play those missions. Only that it's a valid strategy.

A lone escort is unlikely to destroy a transport. Unless the initial ram succeeds. Any transports targeted by one escort require no protection whatsoever.

6 transports? I only have 3 when I deploy for the first escort mission.