Death Loop with 3rd Ace?

[Zalym]

I ran up against the 3rd Ace last week after a great grinding run (I thought). But, my bomber was blown out of the sky (seemed to be torn apart in the air) by the incendiary rounds before I could really make a dent. It had all the armor it could and extinguishers--but I couldn't get all the fires put out inside the bomber quickly enough.

Now I can't seem to regrind enough missions to upgrade my plane and get my gunners upgraded to incendiary rounds so I can down this Ace before he shows up again. And he has just downed his 3rd bomber.

Have I soft-locked my progress and should I just restart a new campaign and try again? Or is it just a luck of the draw having him show up?

[cavaliere309]

It is indeed unlucky when you find him, but I suggest to keep grinding, avoid any Ace missions and level up gunners and pilot, after you feel ready to get his ass, try to find him in the rescue missions (where you need to drop supplies to a spitfire in the sea). When the motherf*cker shows up, wait till he stands still to shoot you and activate all gunners with focus and incediary rounds, in case you run out of them use the pilot corkscrew to avoid any deadly runs. I kept doing this tactic and I killed 5 Aces this way,

[Zalym]

Thank you very much for your advice!

I had to take a break for a bit but I'm still at it. I did start regrinding better (and read some guides on how to upgrade my plane more efficiently) and have made my plane much better in functionality. I'll meet him again soon, I'm sure. Hopefully I'll be more ready this time!

I love Bomber Crew, but man it can be a kick in the teeth--anyway here's hoping :)

[TulipNova]

did he shoot your bombs?

[Zalym]

Originally posted by Theelite(No Mic):

did he shoot your bombs?

Good question, but I couldn't tell you. He had a couple of runs on me and I couldn't do much to him.

I thought maybe my plane had just run out of armor/hit points and came apart.

The bomber was a mess on that mission. I could imagine that he had enough hits on my plane for him to hit through the armor to the bombs, but the doors were closed as I was heading home.

[He Who Has No Name]

You've found a fundamental design flaw in the game, with the way it does ramping difficulty versus resource curves (XP and money) compared to how far back it sets you when (not if) you get killed.

There are ways to fight off the aces but they are not entirely skill; luck is a large part of it, and if you get unlucky, you're pretty much done. The amount of crew skill and plane tech loss is huge, and it actually makes the difficulty WORSE because you don't get access to lvl 1 missions again to rebuild them - you only drop back to the current missions, which are scaled for high XP crews and upgraded planes.

The game needed design fixes to solve this and never got them.

[Zalym]

Originally posted by He Who Has No Name:

You've found a fundamental design flaw in the game, with the way it does ramping difficulty versus resource curves (XP and money) compared to how far back it sets you when (not if) you get killed.

There are ways to fight off the aces but they are not entirely skill; luck is a large part of it, and if you get unlucky, you're pretty much done. The amount of crew skill and plane tech loss is huge, and it actually makes the difficulty WORSE because you don't get access to lvl 1 missions again to rebuild them - you only drop back to the current missions, which are scaled for high XP crews and upgraded planes.

The game needed design fixes to solve this and never got them.

Hmm, well that is unfortunate. But thank you for the information.

[Veritas]

Yeah if you're like 75% or more done with the campaign recovering is really really really difficult to the point you're likely starting a new game. Even if you cheated money the difference skilled crew makes, especially gunners, is too huge and there's no going back to easy missions.

[Zalym]

Originally posted by Snazzy Dragon:

Yeah if you're like 75% or more done with the campaign recovering is really really really difficult to the point you're likely starting a new game. Even if you cheated money the difference skilled crew makes, especially gunners, is too huge and there's no going back to easy missions.

Yeah, it's a strange cliff.

I ended up going back and grinding up my entire bomber and crew about 3/4 of the way on the easy mission--at that point I was able to usually breeze through most of the missions and grind at some of the higher missions and finally complete the game.

I avoided all ace missions until I got incendiary ammo and then made sure I went after them on the Search/Rescue/Drop supplies mission because they almost always come from straight-on and can be taken down with incendiary/focus.

I had one emergency landing when I got swarmed later on in the game that I lucked out on with only one gear and one engine that almost sunk me.

By the end I was able to 100% the achievements--but I'd never play through the campaign again, and that is a shame frankly--the game is a great concept but very slow grind when there's so many chances for having to restart.