How do i win retaking ceres?

[Dr. Death]

This mission is the first difficulty wall i've encountered in the game. I find myself unable to do out of plane maneouvers so im stuck doing forwards and backwards orbit motions until the drones and all flak missiles run out of Delta V. However that's fine, its not like i lose the game by not having Delta V, my issue is the part AFTER i evade the drones, the part where i have to send all my 200 missiles to defeat that stupid laser frigate so that i can send my own drones to wreck havoc. I sent all my 200 missiles to target the laser frigate, to focus as high priority target on the lasers from that ship, and it only was capable of disabling one. ONE laser.

Am i doing something wrong with the weapon systems? Did i forget how to play?

[cswiger]

This is a somewhat tough mission and I've never gotten better than Silver on it.

You can try launching one or two nukes against each wave of incoming drones or flak missiles. The flash from a nuke tends to take out enough of the wave that your fleet can shoot down the stragglers.

The enemy Laser Frigate is really good at shooting down missiles, so attacking it with both missiles and drones is better than sending two separate waves. You might find targeting the radiators to work better than trying to take out all 9 lasers on the Laser Frigate.

[Dr. Death]

Originally posted by cswiger:

This is a somewhat tough mission and I've never gotten better than Silver on it.

You can try launching one or two nukes against each wave of incoming drones or flak missiles. The flash from a nuke tends to take out enough of the wave that your fleet can shoot down the stragglers.

The enemy Laser Frigate is really good at shooting down missiles, so attacking it with both missiles and drones is better than sending two separate waves. You might find targeting the radiators to work better than trying to take out all 9 lasers on the Laser Frigate.

Originally posted by cswiger:

This is a somewhat tough mission and I've never gotten better than Silver on it.

You can try launching one or two nukes against each wave of incoming drones or flak missiles. The flash from a nuke tends to take out enough of the wave that your fleet can shoot down the stragglers.

The enemy Laser Frigate is really good at shooting down missiles, so attacking it with both missiles and drones is better than sending two separate waves. You might find targeting the radiators to work better than trying to take out all 9 lasers on the Laser Frigate.

Gotcha. Are you sure about the nukes though? Ive found that shooting down a small target using the nukes doesn't always work.

[cswiger]

Being a little lucky always helps. :-)

The stock missiles don't have very good delta-V or acceleration, so they have trouble pursuing a target moving quickly...especially at a crossing angle.

Fortunately, the AI used for your missiles/drones and the enemy missiles/drones tries to perform a head-on collision. If the nuke goes off reasonably near the center of the enemy swarm, the flash will take out most of the swarm because they have almost no protection.

Against flak missiles, just one nuke ought to do. However, the enemy drones do have a fair chance of shooting down a single nuke, so you might want to send more than one to be sure.

PS: Ellen Ripley from Aliens was right about nuking things from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.

[Echo]

You can use your ships as a first stage for your missiles.

[Dr. Death]

Originally posted by Echo:

You can use your ships as a first stage for your missiles.

Took me a while but i got it. Turns out that sending all the missiles and drones at the same time was a good idea. Now i just have to figure out how i can make a dragster spaceship to get to mars in 11 months, which seem impossible.

[AtomHeartDragon]

Ceres is basically about two things:
* weapon types/velocity rock paper scissors
* learning to strip enemy defense onion one layer at a time.

Ok, and a bit of drone survival via either counter-drone trolling, nukes or abusing Oberth's effect for fun and profit.

Homecoming - the important part is that dV is not everything - you also need thrust.
And good trajectory planning.