Planetary Assaults/Invasions

[CommanderJohnson]

What do all of you think about them? Have you yet attempted to fly down shuttles loaded with ATVs and Marines to blow up a base while FCs bombed the base to bits overhead? Have you fought alongside your fellow troops and had a sniper shoot your head off? Post here....

[TARWMSRK]

Yes Ive assaulted a base alongside with my troops... Let me tell ya... 40 marines seems like alot to send into battle but the enemy base churns out 3 times that amount... So usually I let the FC's blow up a bunch of things for a few minutes then recall them and let the OC's and the marines have the cleanup

[Supreme Cmdr]

I take it you have a fast system and vid card, running at 800x600x16 Bit?

I find massive surface assaults very system intensive. Hence the upcoming major optimization to the laser firing and collision detect determination.

When I assault a base, from 50+ fps (on a 1Ghz, GF3, 1024x768x32, 512MB RAM), I drop down to like 15 fps (even in space).

But anyway, the upcoming 1.0.02 update is purely optimizations (and any new issues discovered between now and then).

[TARWMSRK]

Not that fast but I do get a GIANT fps drop... Thats nothing compared to when im strafeing a naval fleet... Got too close and it took 5 minutes to recover my comp from the amount of laser fire from those ships killed my comp...

[CommanderJohnson]

I just attempted a very well planned attack on a Ter/Rai base in my new Megaron. 4 shuttles drop off 2 HAVs and 2 LAVs (then deploy drones on a safe area of the planet), while 4 FCs (1 which im flying with Nightwing as co pilot) do strafing runs, and 10 marines in the transporter ready to be called down.

I establish planetfall first, get locked on to by about 10 SAM cites. I (being the genius pilot I am), activate my EMD jammers. I put it on autopilot and activate tacops, ready to call in the marines and find out where the other FCs are. I hear "armor has been breached". I switch back and land the FC somewhere relatively safe (with 40% int). I go back to the tacops and the support had arrived....well, half of it. Two of the shuttles were destroyed, along with their OCs. I beam in the marines next to a SAM site and they....dance?!?!? That's right ladies and gentlemen, they start to dance in front of a SAM site, all standing next to each other. I turn off tacops in disgust and notice i've been strafed multiple times by aircraft and hull is at 20%. I attempt to take off, almost not making it, but i manage to fly back to my cruiser in orbit. I turn back on perscan and notice that 70% of my marine complement is dead, 3 marines are registered as "on planet", my FCs are getting torn apart, and Nightwing is almost dead. I get back to the bridge and do the unthinkable, I fly down to the planet. After destroying most of the base with my guns, I decide to take on the 15 fighters scrambled after me. Well, to make a long story short. Shields are up....shields are up....shields are up.....ship explodes. BOOOM. Guess they had better weapons than I thought. Back to the drawing board.....

(Planetary Assaults are hard)

[TARWMSRK]

no, no NO!!! You did it ALL wrong!

10 marines? The bases prob sent out around 40 marines to take out yours and the others were just waiting to die...

That was more like a puny raid..

The FC's are mainly your 'first in battle people' (make sure you arm them with ATA/ATS .(mainly ATS) msl's that kinda helps with blowing away bases) You are going to want to first focus of all of the anti air before your send anything in. (we are going to say you are flying an FC instead of being on the ground)It sometimes can get sorta hellish when getting rid of those things. (the only thing I hate about this game is things are simply too small to destroy easily in FC's which is why I prefer being a commander or a marine) Normally id take out stationary objects first (of course the way I do it takes some skill since I swoop down REALLY close to the ground and start shooting then quickly switch to VTOL and shoot up in the sky, then hit FTOL again and go on another pass which normally is what usually damages my craft.. But hey its a habit ) Now normally if you value your pilots (and even more... your FC's you should leave the others in the CC (but ready to launch) unless they are REALLY good at bombing or you have ALOT of FC's. (but you wont unless your CC is a space station) Of course if you arnt skilled enough you wont beable to pull this off with one FC.. eventually youll make mistakes so if your craft is really getting banged up to the point where it just isnt going to fly for much longer fly a little ways from the base so your enemies cant reach it. Then ditch the craft..(if theres enemy air then you should have wingmen to take those guys on, ditching will only give them an excuse to blow your fc up..) But dont ditch in the water.. You wont beable to exit your craft and ejecting will just make it explode. (why it explodes is beyond me.. better look up the def. for eject..)Anyway once you ditch exit your craft open up TacOps and beam yourself back on the ship.. By now you should have destroyed enough anti air.. Get into another FC anyway because now here is where the fun begins .... (if you lost 2 or more fc's in the anti air busting then just nuke the place.. it isnt worth the lives lost..err on your side)launch your shuttles and the rest of your fc's tell your fc's to escort the shuttles.. get down to the planet and have your atv's deployed just outside the base (you dont want to get too far in there if there is still anti air around there... believe me..seeing the craft that are your escape pods when your CC is screwd blow up isnt pretty..) once the ATV's are deployed tell the shuttles to get a little ways from the base and hang around there.. get your FC's to start blowing up buildings... by the time you order your fc's to start building busting your oc's will be in the base... Now deploy the marines.. And now you start blowing up buildings.. (before you deploy the marines... If you dont want to see your marines get massacred but want to see a firefight then blow up a few buildings that deploy marines.. I believe barracks and bunkers normally deploy marines.. I think command centers and starports do also..)

Now try and help your marine buddies out by strafeing some enemy marines. (make SURE there enemy .. In FP mode I made that mistake... I had 40 marines and I was down at the base fighting too.. Since everyone looks alike I went on a killing rampage on what I thought was the enemy... At the end of the battle when I decided to beam up the enemy killed 3 of my boys... I killed the other 37... ) At the end of the battle collect your boys, get back to your CC and count your exp points .

As far as the dancing goes... I think your marines had been off-duty too long in the galley with the ships supply of alcohol

[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Carl Burning ]

[Supreme Cmdr]

Jeez Carl, here's a nickel, buy some paragraphs.

Anyway...

quote:

---

In FP mode I made that mistake... I had 40 marines and I was down at the base fighting too.. Since everyone looks alike I went on a killing rampage on what I thought was the enemy... At the end of the battle when I decided to beam up the enemy killed 3 of my boys... I killed the other 37...

---

yep. I deliberately don't enable TTDs in fp mode for that reason. It makes it all the more fun. When in doubt, use your DIE. Which is why there are two more modes in mode 3 to help ID marines.

[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

[Badgerius]

Well, I've been trying out my gro/po skills and things have not gone smoothly!

I'm in orbit around Krystar, about 150 km out from the surface, and I decide to try a limited engagement. I've got 2 Mk1 interceptors in good shape (the other 2 are in the body shop) so I plot SAD waypoints in a small city (not a base, but a city, with less bad guys in it), with a repeat actions waypoint away from the base to give them a chance to recover before going in again.

Then I march 9 marines down and myself (of course) down to the transporter room, and launch the fighters.

I also launch a probe, so I can keep track of what's going on in space while I'm running around down there. Just as I do so, a Sentry and an Aestrom enter the region. They approach the station and launch SF marines just as my fighters hit dirt. The machine grinds to a halt. Down to about 5 FPS. (Probably hadn't turned everything off before I launched BCM). Anyway, I couldn't control the CC because I'm in the transporter room, so I cloak. Then I discover that you can't transport while cloaked (I think, there may have been other things going on as well). By now, the fighters are screaming bloody murder, and they're not in very good shape, so I call them back. By the time they get back, the SF marines have about killed each other, and the frame rate came back up to normal.

Against my better judgement, I decide to press forward with the attack, I throw some medpacks in the transporter, and beam down on the outskirts of the city. Wow. It's dusk, the sky is golden, and there's a beautiful city stretched out in front of me. However, the marines, who were supposed to go into SAD mode and destroy anything they see, are just standing there. Ok, I fire up TacOps, and see they have HOLD orders. No problem, I give some of them SAD orders, and some orders to defend me. As I'm doing so, the first enemy marines arrive. They start firing on my marines, who, lacking orders, haven't moved yet. To my surprise, the marines didn't return fire when fired upon. So I get the orders in, and return to first person mode.

As was previously mentioned, Friend/Foe detection is difficult in FP. But I managed, as enemies tended to be facing towards me, while my guys generally had their backs to me. I shot quite a few guys, and was running low on ammo, so I turned to head back towards my supplies. I turned just as an enemy shuttle was lifting off, my cargo in tow. I watched it head back to its landing pad and land. So, I heading for a supply point. I got there, and started loading up. That's when they got me.

All in all, a wonderful experience. Especially when you look up to see enemy fighters streaking overhead.

[Vandal]

There's always the Duke Nukem way of differentiating friend from foe...."Shoot all the mother ******s and let God sort them out." Besides, have you guys learned nothing from WW2? Invasions with ground troops are messy, OTS all the way baby! Then go plant your flag on what's left of that charred mound.

Vandal

[Roberto]

WOW! Didnt expect the game to send out shuttles on the ground to pick up Cargo for the enemy

[Badgerius]

Yeah, I was so surprised I didn't take any pot shots at the shuttle. Its shields would have been down, with the tractor beam enabled.

[Supreme Cmdr]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Roberto:

WOW! Didnt expect the game to send out shuttles on the ground to pick up Cargo for the enemy

---

Pah! If you think thats something, wait'll some ship beams marines down to a base you're running around on. The first time they beam down, all you'll hear is the pffftt of the BMP9. Then its probably curtains (or a nasty headache).