Ancient One fight is retarded

[Amoc]

I don't usually complain about campaign missions being hard or broken, as the AI is generally so dumb that you can just cheese them, but Tindalos' design incompetence is once again on display in a way that's reminiscent of their idiotic "planetary invasion" missions in the first game.

The Ancient One fight in the Imperial Campaign, I have to say, is just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid.

An 8000 health target with 1200 regenerating shields is obviously a tough nut, but to force my fleet through an endless gauntlet of headbutting idiots that I can't detect until the afore-mentioned headbutting, who also hulk my ships within moments of engaging, is just pathetic game design.

I can see how different loadouts could handle this fight. I do. Things like stasis bombs and rad storms would make the fight far, far easier. I just don't have those skills on my admirals. I got a bunch of randomly asigned jank like Emperor's Tarot and Augur Disruption, which really isn't helpful in this case.

Spire is also in an Emperor, which is a fine ship, just not against the Ancient One.

It really feels like this is another example of Tindalos not testing their game. The UI lag in the campaign is sad enough, but for them to have not learned their lessons from BFGA:1 in terms of awful, completely avoidable campaign and MP design decisions is so disappointing.

The Ancient One Mission is not fun. It's not well designed. It's not impossible, I get that, but it's pretty much killed my desire to play the campaign anymore. I pretty much have to kill off my existing ships and fleet loadouts now because of admiral skills I had no input on, and a fleet makeup that I had no way of knowing wouldn't work with such a cheesy encounter. Yuck.

[GrenadeMagnet6]

I can’t tell if u completed the mission, but there was another thread this week that had several strategies discussed. The context was how the slowdown in boarding made the techinque for relying on Space Marine assaults to be made ineffective against the Ancient One.

Perhaps check out that thread for some ideas. Another option is to mod the game to reduce the Ancient Ones health, only so to quickly get thru the mission and move on.

[Amoc]

Yes I read that thread thanks. I know the mission's not impossible. On my 6-7 tries I can see how having a rad storm or a stasis bomb at a key moment would probably be enough.

I just find it frustrating how poorly designed the mission is, and how consistently lazy Tindalos is with their game testing.

As it stands, I'm going to have to mod the game or spend probably 10-15 turns re-assigning and designing my fleets (including probably losing some admirals on purpose) in the hope that I get a loadout with which I can make this work. That's really lame.

[STC]

they never tested the game themselves before releasing it.

[DarkKrieg]

How many escorts do you have available? Send a few out on all ahead and start pinging. Boom, no more inviso monsters.

If youre that worried about getting hulked, focus fire on weapons, tentacles are usually the first to go.


But To say they are lazy or dont test their game because one mission is difficult for you is the epitome of arrogance and childish lashing out.

Its also odd to me that you cry so hard about the devs being bad, and yet you're so determined to beat their game.

If you truly believed they were bad devs, youd have dropped the game and moved on. The fact you havent means that you either dont believe the words you say, or youve got a weird complex that makes you play games you dont enjoy

[Amoc]

Originally posted by disgraceDarkLyranz:

But To say they are lazy or dont test their game because one mission is difficult for you is the epitome of arrogance and childish lashing out.

Except that's not what I was saying. I said this is ANOTHER example of how lazy the devs are, and how they don't test their game. We all have BFGA1 for a bit of history. Heck, I even gave a specific previous examples.

Here you are, however, patrolling the forums looking for people you can talk crap to, like some sad little nerd.

Originally posted by disgraceDarkLyranz:

If you truly believed they were bad devs, youd have dropped the game and moved on. The fact you havent means that you either dont believe the words you say, or youve got a weird complex that makes you play games you dont enjoy

The stupidity of this comment is astounding. I LITERALLY said that this mission (among other problems) killed my desire to play, and here you are moronically telling me that I'm lying because I....keep playing? Just wow.

Problem is that I haven't kept playing. Reading is so hard. It's so much easier to just skim posts, project what you want out of it, and then snipe anonymously

[azerial_ventrue]

I agree I"m playing on easy and no mater what I do Tyranids eat me alive. I'm new to Battlefleet Gothic and I really like the game but the Tyranids are ruining this experience for me I have done the ancient one ten times with different fleet setups to no avail I lose ships, reinforcement don't show up, ships stop moving on their own or stop firing I'm experiencing micro management hell for a new player this is one hell of a learning curve.

[Harukage]

Completed it with Navy+SM fleets. Nothing really hard. The Ancient is just a huge torpedos target and can be fired upon with lock on stanсe without much retaliation.
The only thing is that it has a lot of hull points, so i got eventually bored with firing at it and just boarding spammed it with SM from it's rear when it was very low on HP. Yes, it can't turn fast enough to catch SM ships at its rear.
Normal Tyranid ships. Pfft. They just die really fast when sandwiched between IN ships broadsides or rammed.

[Amoc]

Originally posted by Harukage:

Completed it with Navy+SM fleets. Nothing really hard. The Ancient is just a huge torpedos target and can be fired upon with lock on stanсe without much retaliation.
The only thing is that it has a lot of hull points, so i got eventually bored with firing at it and just boarding spammed it with SM from it's rear when it was very low on HP. Yes, it can't turn fast enough to catch SM ships at its rear.
Normal Tyranid ships. Pfft. They just die really fast when sandwiched between IN ships broadsides or rammed.

The Ancient one is swarming with fighters, has a giant mass of turrets and has like 56 troops on board. Not sure what difficulty you're playing at....

When did you do this fight? Today, or like 2 weeks ago?

[YEGOR]

Originally posted by Amoc:

The Ancient one is swarming with fighters, has a giant mass of turrets and has like 56 troops on board. Not sure what difficulty you're playing at....

When did you do this fight? Today, or like 2 weeks ago?

I've just finished this mission today, used 3 SM strike cruisers on silent running to rush the Ancient One while Navy Battlecruisers fought off regular nid ships, then I just kept circling around the Ancient One with SM ships and boarded the ♥♥♥♥ out of it with Honour the Chapter, regular boarding and Thunderhawks. Managed to kill the sucker solely with boarding actions from the strike cruisers before they had a chance to overwhelm my fleet. Oh and I play on medium.
The thing is, apart from Space Marines having probably the strongest boarding actions in the game, they are also immune to the psychic scream which would devastate the morale of any other ships you'd try to approach with.
Also, regarding your other points
- Fighter screen don't help it that much, it's not like it can have them up all the time anyway
- Nid turrets are strictly tied to shield levels, you bring down its shield and it's completely helpless against your squadrons and torpedoes
- Neither turrets nor fighters intercept regular boarding actions

[DarkKrieg]

The above post is obviously heresy. The Ancient One is completely broken and cant possibly be beaten with any kind os sound tactics or strategy, you musy be a filthy cheating blasphemer

[SHTURM-333]

As someone else recommended, I spammed Space Marines along with Spire's fleet right into the heart of that damned beast after many frustrated tries. The Astartes fleet (main boarding part) consisted of a battle barge and 2 strike cruisers.

Forced it to implode in under 5 minutes under at least 45+ boarding stacks.

White Scars didnt even have time to show up.

The battle barge was severely damaged but it has now been repaired and renamed for a well earned kill.

[Hawkstrom]

Played this on hard and didn't have any trouble with it. I used a mix of Imperial navy and adeptus mechanicus ships (this was before the boarding rework and mechanicus buffs). The ancient one is pretty slow and as far as I can tell can't use rush (tyranid boost) so you can pretty much kite it forever. Not sure why this would ever be hard as a few minutes in it literally spawns a white scars fleet to help you that just flies straight towards it and holds it's attention for quite awhile.

["Eighty-Eight Fingers" Eddward]

Originally posted by Amoc:

I don't usually complain about campaign missions being hard or broken, as the AI is generally so dumb that you can just cheese them, but Tindalos' design incompetence is once again on display in a way that's reminiscent of their idiotic "planetary invasion" missions in the first game.

The Ancient One fight in the Imperial Campaign, I have to say, is just ♥♥♥♥ing stupid.

An 8000 health target with 1200 regenerating shields is obviously a tough nut, but to force my fleet through an endless gauntlet of headbutting idiots that I can't detect until the afore-mentioned headbutting, who also hulk my ships within moments of engaging, is just pathetic game design.

I can see how different loadouts could handle this fight. I do. Things like stasis bombs and rad storms would make the fight far, far easier. I just don't have those skills on my admirals. I got a bunch of randomly asigned jank like Emperor's Tarot and Augur Disruption, which really isn't helpful in this case.

Spire is also in an Emperor, which is a fine ship, just not against the Ancient One.

It really feels like this is another example of Tindalos not testing their game. The UI lag in the campaign is sad enough, but for them to have not learned their lessons from BFGA:1 in terms of awful, completely avoidable campaign and MP design decisions is so disappointing.

The Ancient One Mission is not fun. It's not well designed. It's not impossible, I get that, but it's pretty much killed my desire to play the campaign anymore. I pretty much have to kill off my existing ships and fleet loadouts now because of admiral skills I had no input on, and a fleet makeup that I had no way of knowing wouldn't work with such a cheesy encounter. Yuck.

Beat it on imperial campaign, just finished on Necron hard today. Took six tries with necron. Was going in with 2 BShips and an escort and not doing well.

I managed to go 1 BS, 2 cruiser scythes, rest were escorts.

I'd send in the escorts ahead of time, they'd get giant stacks of like 12-16 boarding actions. Then, I'd drive in for the attack, and warp out when the psychic scream was coming, then send the escorts back in to absorb the boarding actions, rinse repeat.

Wasnt too bad. Was easier on imperial. I just sent in adeptus astartes and boarded it to death.

[azerial_ventrue]

After 12 time I finally killed the ancient one the battle is very counter intuitive and messy, useing Space Marines, torpedoing then ramming with Battle Barges and Light Cruisers then boarding it. the back up Astartes show up when you drop it to half health the additional help takes the pressure of your forces I had to hide Spire in a Gas Cloud and use him the last few min to finish of the Ancient One. I'm glad its finished would rather not do that again though.

[Beldr]

If boarding worked before I don't see why it wouldn't work now. It always took about 2 and a half dumps of all your boardings so you have two spots in the fight where you're just waiting for all your skills to come off CD, so it doesn't matter whether it's instant or dot.