Enough with the escort missions

[Sabaithal]

I'll be the one to say it: There are too many escort missions.

You either have to defend some hapless civilian ships in a group, defend them until the timer runs out (meaning if you are doing too well the game punishes you by calling in more hostiles), defend a freighter that is right to the enemy fleet, facing them, takes forever to turn around, and can take damage about as well as paper.

Or my favorite, defend a single freighter until the time runs out, that is close to the enemy fleet, is being target by missiles before your fighters can even get to it, and every ship will fanatically target that ship as though it insulted their mother on mothers day. Did I mention the ship is extremely slow? And if you do kill off all the enemies targeting it before the timer runs out, the game calls in more ships to kill it RIGHT NEXT TO IT so you can't leave it alone. And even if you babysit it, you can't do much about the revenant (that just spawned right next to it) unloading all of its ordinance into the side of it besides desperately try and use a battlestar to block the shots.

I understand one or two, but it really does feel like every side mission, and every other campaign mission is a bloody escort. I hate escort missions. EVERYONE hates escort missions. In the future please try and tone them down.

[gmuir77]

I generally hate escort missions in games but I've found them fairly doable even on admiral. The most challenging ones I had were chemical warfare and the cottle Minerva mission and the two freighters to get the nukes. Had to meta game a little with cottle to put assets in place before he shows up but all doable. I've had more trouble keeping ships alive in the random spawn battles.

The thing you have to remember is to keep moving ships to avoid easy torpedoes.

[Sabaithal]

I stand by my opinion, especially since I just lost another escort mission because the freighter got swarmed with raiders about 4 turns in and my fighters couldn't kill 8 squads of them fast enough.

These escort missions are very poorly designed.

[gmuir77]

Weird. I've not had that happen for me with an escort mission. Was this a scripted mission or one of the random spawns?

[nozwizard]

after patch, game AI tends to attack weakest units first if opportunity arises. so in escort misssions cylon fighters now swarm the cargo craft. (after patch most of fighter attacks goes to the deadalos in my case. but if it doesnt around ... most valuable target is cargo)

after big bodies become common (argos basestars etc) its better to skip them (as secondary missions)

even before patch additional cylon forces were zaps allmost next to those cargo craft. and next turn would fire misssiles (not guided ones though, so evading from them is possible)

edit. actually i wanted better AI. and they made better AI with this patch. defending possible but sometimes become hard on admiral

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Weird. I've not had that happen for me with an escort mission. Was this a scripted mission or one of the random spawns?

Random spawns. I can defend the escort with anti-missile support just fine, or 1-2 squads of raiders. But I cannot defend a cargo ship against 8+ squads, or a revenant that just jumped in right next to it and started firing only at it.

[gmuir77]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Weird. I've not had that happen for me with an escort mission. Was this a scripted mission or one of the random spawns?

Random spawns. I can defend the escort with anti-missile support just fine, or 1-2 squads of raiders. But I cannot defend a cargo ship against 8+ squads, or a revenant that just jumped in right next to it and started firing only at it.

Gotcha. I do not get many of these missions auto spawning and the ones I have had have been fun. Had a trio of civvies to escort, 16 turn timer, and I was popping Cylons as they jumped in left and right. But I can certainly see getting Kobiyashi Maru'd if there's too many of them for you to handle vs. one ship. I've tried keeping my support ship close for missile defense but this also means it's close enough for gun range if the enemy starts shooting and distance is the only shield against bullets.

[Epic The Incandescent]

Originally posted by nozwizard:

after patch, game AI tends to attack weakest units first if opportunity arises. so in escort misssions cylon fighters now swarm the cargo craft. (after patch most of fighter attacks goes to the deadalos in my case. but if it doesnt around ... most valuable target is cargo)

after big bodies become common (argos basestars etc) its better to skip them (as secondary missions)

even before patch additional cylon forces were zaps allmost next to those cargo craft. and next turn would fire misssiles (not guided ones though, so evading from them is possible)

edit. actually i wanted better AI. and they made better AI with this patch. defending possible but sometimes become hard on admiral

in my experiences thus far they seem to divide their fleets: lions share chase down my fleet admiral, 1 usualy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sized ship like a revenant or an arachne chases after my freighter. Now usually I save these days before a escort because past rage inducing set backs have taught me that you can kinda sorta ♥♥♥♥ with the random placement of the enemy vessels. By this I mean you can just keep reloading and trying different placements for your starting warp and it will cause them to switch around were they place their heavy hitters, which in turn makes these ♥♥♥♥♥♥ missions more manageable in my experience.

IMO they need to give us the means to upgrade the civi freighters to q ships or just outright slap point defense turrets on them because why the hell are the transports unarmed in a active war?

Oh I will say that a pair of rangers and a minotaur go a long LONG LOOOONG way in these missions, you can just aboslutely maul the lone ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that chases your freighter and the remainder 3 adamants and what ever adamant sized or larger vessel you can stick in 4th slot can move as a hammer to your angry missile spewing anvil.


with the execption of mission 9, ♥♥♥♥ that dumb ass mission. The random ones my previous statemens count for, just did mission 9...♥♥♥♥ that stupid mission.

[The Roofus]

Too many escorts? You've seen the show right? It's a 4 series long escort mission lol :D

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Whatupwidat:

Too many escorts? You've seen the show right? It's a 4 series long escort mission lol :D

And they looked like they enjoyed it sooooo much, didn't they? What with people constantly being depressed, lashing out at each other, doing copious amounts of drugs, and shooting themselves in the head without any warning.

[gmuir77]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Originally posted by Whatupwidat:

Too many escorts? You've seen the show right? It's a 4 series long escort mission lol :D

And they looked like they enjoyed it sooooo much, didn't they? What with people constantly being depressed, lashing out at each other, doing copious amounts of drugs, and shooting themselves in the head without any warning.

Then again, that allowed for one of the most perfectly awful accidental product tie-ins in history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDjAFi7oJ4

[wessley]

Originally posted by Epic The Incandescent:

Originally posted by nozwizard:

after patch, game AI tends to attack weakest units first if opportunity arises. so in escort misssions cylon fighters now swarm the cargo craft. (after patch most of fighter attacks goes to the deadalos in my case. but if it doesnt around ... most valuable target is cargo)
.................................................................................................................................
with the execption of mission 9, ♥♥♥♥ that dumb ass mission. The random ones my previous statemens count for, just did mission 9...♥♥♥♥ that stupid mission.

Yeah..... That "Let's get us some Nukes" mission is quite the headache...... Usually I like to stick the 'random spawn' freighters between 2 of my 4 Artemis Battlestars and engage the 'flak walls' to either side. Have the Right side Battlestar engage Left flak, and Left side engage Right flak..... that puts a nice little box but also prevents your own munitions launches. Still, you can usually return fire immediately after the Cylon missile barrage and re-engage the flak fields before they can release a new volley.

Still, I agree this mission was especially tricky.

As for the Resource Missions I stopped playing escort runs like "Freighter" once the Cylons started bringing in the BaseStars.

[phily]

To be honest, the escort missions are really boring. You just get them to run and generally, unless you're really unlucky, the enemies won't be close enough. The big problem that I see is that it is just easier to blow the cylons away rather than just protect the civilians.

Perhaps there should be missions "beyond the red line" or some such, in the uncharted parts of space so they can be more creative.

[Leyline]

but the red line was established after the first war....

[gmuir77]

Well, the complaint I've had before is that the scripted missions are more interesting than the auto-generated missions and there's no way to replay the scripted missions without doing an entire new playthough. The solution to that would be a mission editor and mission library where users can create scenarios and trade them back and forth with the most popular missions curated by the developer and included in the game by default. But that's a lot of development to go through. The advantage, theoretically, is that new content becomes user-generated for the most part at this point. Still won't be as comprehensive as a professionally-produced campaign but still better than what we get with the random missions.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by gmuir77:

Well, the complaint I've had before is that the scripted missions are more interesting than the auto-generated missions and there's no way to replay the scripted missions without doing an entire new playthough. The solution to that would be a mission editor and mission library where users can create scenarios and trade them back and forth with the most popular missions curated by the developer and included in the game by default. But that's a lot of development to go through. The advantage, theoretically, is that new content becomes user-generated for the most part at this point. Still won't be as comprehensive as a professionally-produced campaign but still better than what we get with the random missions.

Also user generated content won't become a thing unfortunately (which is a real shame, seriously, so much potential with this game's mechanics...) because WB studios @#$%&*! owns the BSG rights, and is only lending them to the current devs for this game. Any mods anyone attempts to post will be pulled down and likely the person doing so will be sued, ect ect.

At least I'm pretty sure it was WB studios. I'm having a bit of a few issues confirming that right this moment.