MISSION 6...

[FU]

Is this the final Mission?

[FU]

...also...it's a total meat grinder. I keep getting slaughtered, no matter what Aircraft/Weapon I try.
The difficulty level spikes real hard on this mission.

What am I doing wrong? Any tips?

[Morfeo]

Yep, it's the final mission. For tips look around for Fmily posts/videos, he has some good ones.

[FU]

Roger that and Thanks!

[filipenas11]

Originally posted by onwaaard:

...also...it's a total meat grinder. I keep getting slaughtered, no matter what Aircraft/Weapon I try.
The difficulty level spikes real hard on this mission.

What am I doing wrong? Any tips?

Choose your targets wisely. They have distinct behaviors, so adjust how you behave with them. STRATEGY.

[mike_box]

Strategy kind of goes out the window when you see 40 red markers flying towards you on the horizon. ;P

Less that trying to kill them, focus more on survival until you can whittle them down to manageable numbers.
There's a moment in-between barrel rolls that you can take damage, but if you keep moving quickly and rolling as much as you can, you can stay alive even in that swarm.

You can also use the environment to kill them, some times I'll move as quickly as I can around a the tallest butte I can find, and a bunch of my pursuers will end up crashing into it. The 5 cargos that spawn will be close together if you stay in the same place when they come, so that will also cause some collisions and damage to the cargos as stray gunfire and mines crash into nearby cargos/planes.

[madmaxneo1]

I found the easiest way to beat level 6 is to use the guided missile and change the settings to instant lock on. That way once they start swarming you you can just keep hitting the fire button and spinning. I started doing that and next thing I know 3 cargo ships were down and I wasn't even trying to target them... though I am pretty sure one cargo ship took another down as it was falling.
Once I was able to see the radar placements I went after all those then focused on the planes... and turning towards the cargo ships often and just smashing the fire button..lol. Once the cargo ships were eliminated I had like 30 fighters left. I whittled them down to nothing in no time with those guided missiles.

[reznik]

I found circling low around mountain on mission 6 to be helpful in both avoiding enemy fire and causing them to crash.

[DogGoneMad]

Originally posted by onwaaard:

...also...it's a total meat grinder. I keep getting slaughtered, no matter what Aircraft/Weapon I try.
The difficulty level spikes real hard on this mission.

What am I doing wrong? Any tips?

I got through mission 6 yesterday after several attempts. As already mentioned, it's about strategy. Pay attention to how certain aircraft move and weapons selected. If you observe closely, you'll see predictable attack patterns.

[Limygeorge]

Yeah level six is just right for ranking scores.
But, if you wish to play ENDLESS mode it gets more and more difficult, so much going on jets crash and so does cargo. It's a real blast, good training to. One death-game over.

Of course the daily missions are the main stay of the game, but I think endless is great. There is no ranking as it would be meaningless, but any players top score is shown in the Endless score board, and isn't ever wiped. (Not yet at least.)

If you can get far enough the amount of stuff in the air far exceeds level six of campain. It's just wild game play. Also due to the sky not having infinite space when heaps of stuff is in the air crashes occur (not to the player) as the sky is packed. There are ways to make crashes happen too. At a high level wiz past a cargo with loads of jets behind you. Listen for the boom when they hit the cargo. Two seconds later wait for a bigger boom as more jets hit it (sometimes) and destroy the cargo. Another fun thing is full speed through multiple cargos. The cargos crash into each other. Sometimes jets crash into cargo, cargo crashes into cargo as you wiz close by the cargo. Jets follow. It's possible to get wonderful massive crash sounds as multiple jets and cargo all smash into each other. The multiple crashes need (at the highest level I've reached) instigating a chase scenario between cargo as above, but single crashes happen by chance when the sky is full. And, my top score is not great, around or just over 60,000 I believe. I wonder how many crash tricks a player can cause at really really high levels like over 100,000. One guy actually has a score well over 100k.

As I said at the start there is no ranking, it really wouldn't indicate anything, but each individual players highest score to date is preserved and viewable in the endless mode score board.

Just adrenaline, sometimes funny wild fun, fun, fun!!!

[youaretheonedarlin]

I beat it flying low between the canyons. You hardly need to use your guns.

[Limygeorge]

Originally posted by youaretheonedarlin:

I beat it flying low between the canyons. You hardly need to use your guns.

Fully agree. Flying as low as possible works well, also causes jets to crash. I will add, just to really screw up the AI (temporarily) once or twice go as high as you can go, look down and can usually get 2 or so kills. Then down again and resume flying between the valleys.

I'm not really sure if it's my tactics or if it happens to everyone, but approx 1 game out of 4, level six, huge carriers crash, jets hit them, they crash again, one, even two carriers crash to the ground. It's pretty funny and really makes the screen shake a lot. A nice effect.

There is of course the problem that we only get 500 points, not 1,000 points, everything is half score if they crash. I've pretty much given up beating some of the best players, from memory Gimlar is often up top and a couple of others. They get really high scores. My best is 24k, and I don't really see beating that, so it's kind of worth the fun of chaos if multiple planes, carriers etc crash after the player being unpredictable, quick swoops by carriers along with already mentioned low flying. Ha Ha. Gotta love it!!

[CheekyChan]

Originally posted by Limygeorge:

Originally posted by youaretheonedarlin:

I beat it flying low between the canyons. You hardly need to use your guns.

Fully agree. Flying as low as possible works well, also causes jets to crash. I will add, just to really screw up the AI (temporarily) once or twice go as high as you can go, look down and can usually get 2 or so kills. Then down again and resume flying between the valleys.

I'm not really sure if it's my tactics or if it happens to everyone, but approx 1 game out of 4, level six, huge carriers crash, jets hit them, they crash again, one, even two carriers crash to the ground. It's pretty funny and really makes the screen shake a lot. A nice effect.

There is of course the problem that we only get 500 points, not 1,000 points, everything is half score if they crash. I've pretty much given up beating some of the best players, from memory Gimlar is often up top and a couple of others. They get really high scores. My best is 24k, and I don't really see beating that, so it's kind of worth the fun of chaos if multiple planes, carriers etc crash after the player being unpredictable, quick swoops by carriers along with already mentioned low flying. Ha Ha. Gotta love it!!

I got almost 22K on my very first time playing just today. The part that infuriates me to no end is that the enemies teleport in front of you, up to like 15 at a time and they all fire at you at the same time, as you barrel roll like a mad man to dodge these shots you get pegged 5 times right in between rolls and it's goodbye cruel world. The enemy jets can also fire from EXTREME angles at you.

So many times I almost beat it using the 30mm turret but in becomes impossible to dog fight and dodge 50+ enemies when there's a soft ceiling that throws you back down toward them and they keep teleporting around you as you're trying to fire at a single jet even in between the radars and cargo ships just to keep your timer up.

Enter the heat seeking missles and you can just cheese your way to victory as long as you keep the majority of the jets out of your forward view by being cautious when turning around and picking off the stragglers at the edge of the screen, rinse and repeat for a few minutes and boom bam, done. I would have had a really good run but almost every single tiome two of the cargo ships hit each other and I only get half points or the valks and falcons plow the cargo ship even if I try to prevent it because the cargo ship will reappear right next to you taking out the jets and the cargo ship.

Also, am I the only one who would like to see a conventional control scheme? I find that it feels a lot like Ace Combat in some sense and keep trying to pitch and yaw separately and hit an air brake that doesn't exist.

[Morfeo]

Originally posted by CheekyChan:

Also, am I the only one who would like to see a conventional control scheme? I find that it feels a lot like Ace Combat in some sense and keep trying to pitch and yaw separately and hit an air brake that doesn't exist.

You can do that by setting options > controls > stick mode to "roll & pull" (plus there are binds for separate yaw control). For brake control you'll have to wait for the sequel ;)

And I pretty much agree on the shortcomings of mission 6 design, for sure it could be better.

[CheekyChan]

Originally posted by Morfeo:

Originally posted by CheekyChan:

Also, am I the only one who would like to see a conventional control scheme? I find that it feels a lot like Ace Combat in some sense and keep trying to pitch and yaw separately and hit an air brake that doesn't exist.

You can do that by setting options > controls > stick mode to "roll & pull" (plus there are binds for separate yaw control). For brake control you'll have to wait for the sequel ;)

And I pretty much agree on the shortcomings of mission 6 design, for sure it could be better.

Ah yeah, I found that option right after writing that and used it to get the most recent top dog score.

Sequel you say? Consider my interest piqued.

I don't think it's so much the mission design unless the enemy AI is designed specifically for that mission, I like the idea of going for the radars and cargo ships while being bombarded by massive amounts of enemy air craft, the infuriating part for me at least is that you can be blasted so easily because of the way the enemies swarm and reappear which feels a bit unfair since they can stall turn on a dime and fire at weird angles but as I mentioned you can cheese them by keeping them off screen as you bank left or right but sometimes they just teleport swarm you and there's nothing you can do except barrel roll, pray and kiss your cheeks good bye or live with 10 hit points left and sweat profusely. Ultimately there's a bit of a learning curve even with the simple controls but I enjoyed it immensely and really like the feel, look and the sound design is superb so I'm definitely looking forward to the sequel. ;)

And I enjoyed it a lot more than some of the notorious indie AC clones floating around out there.

[Limygeorge]

Hey CHEEKYCHAN, congrats on 22k on first run. Better than me.

What I want to say starts with a quote from you below:

The part that infuriates me to no end is that the enemies teleport in front of you, up to like 15 at a time and they all fire at you at the same time, as you barrel roll like a mad man to dodge these shots you get pegged 5 times right in between rolls and it's goodbye cruel world. The enemy jets can also fire from EXTREME angles at you.

It's true. But I have found after numerous runs, with rockets only, this part is just adrenaline fun.
With rockets there is little time to aim. I race through the lot, rolling, zigzaging you name it, and keep firing without stopping. This alone will kill quite a few falcons.
To take it further, when familiar with it and when there is a chance double rocket a valkrie, not easy at speed but it can be done. A lot of hits will be just because firing wildly with minimal aim.
Sadly this doesn't work for Valkries so to do it best, some firing tactics are needed.

It might just be me, but I find this part really exilerating. Takes a bit of practice though. I admit the first two times I did this my feelings were similar to yours. Using the heavily armoured Hawk (probably Hawk if memory serves) with rockets will allow you to do as I said. Do maybe after a minute or less? in level six, then they spawn like crazy and you can do as above.

Privately I call that bit, "flying through the valley of death." I still die sometimes but more often than not now I don't. I can't exlain tactics deeply but by practicing that bit the players brain becomes accustomed to it.

Finally, if death on that bit it's not so bad because you are still fairly early in the level.

Different for everyone of course and you make think my idea daft, that's fine. Just wanted to say my opinion about that, and encorage anyone to try it out. I've only and always use rockets so doesn't really apply to cannon I guess?

Cheers.