Tactical Operations Briefing: TOD 3 Mission 9

Capture Ethar 1 And Ethar 2

"Actually, this one's an exercise in Gunboat Diplomacy-- 'shoot first, question bad guys later'." said Kallysto, Corsair's XO. "You really don't have to worry about the mission objectives one iota-- the real problem is staying alive."

Kallysto turned to the vidscreen, tapping it to bring up a picture of a Cygnus Systems gunboat. "On balance, I'd rather be up against a whole bunch of TIEs, especially in Corsair's A-wings. Nothing hurts more than an engine up your forward sensor package, courtesy of one of those gunboat kills." He paused. "Well, except maybe a pair of concussion missiles in your engines."

"First off, you've got six gunboats against you, your X-wing, and two wingers. Common squadron tactics would have you set up against one flight over the other, but with novice wingmen, you're better off staying out of the way. Tell your wingmen to attack one flight, while you go after the other."

"Set your ELS to 100/75, giving you a max speed of 63 MGLT, more than enough to catch those slowcoaches and stay on their six. Remember to keep an eye on your distance indicator-- crashing into any gunboat is about as lethal as crashing into a cap ship. Don't ever get any closer than .10 klicks-- that's just asking for it. If you find yourself too close to a GUN, do one of two things; tap the 1/3 throttle key ("[") to reduce your speed temporarily, or jam your stick to the left or right until you do one complete turn. You can tell when you've come all the way around when the blip recenters itself in your control panel targeting scope."

"Pick a gunboat, and stay on his tail. In general, you'll be weaving and moving just staying with him well enough to avoid any missile locks from his wingmen."

"The Y-wings don't really need any protection in this level. They come in, disable the corvettes, and leave. And there's plenty of them to spare."

"Once you've destroyed all six gunboats, the Alliance shuttles hyper in, but then the Imps send their own reinforcements. You'll need to pick off four more gunboats (NU and MU flight) before they destroy the shuttles. Me, I generally have four torpedoes, a pair for one of each flight pair. Remember to fire the missiles one at a time, not linked-- GUNs have impressive shields, and the first torp hit only damages the shields. Tag one GUN, fire two torps at it, and then go after his partner."

"Following capturing the CRVs, another flight of GUNS come up. You'd do well to use the 'kill two, hull damage the last one' trick; because every time you kill a flight set, a new one comes in to replace it. This is always bad news, especially late in a mission, and you can dodge one GUN pretty well."

"No other real special tricks here-- I personally like to use quad linked lasers on GUNs in this kind of slow-fight level, but that's a personal preference."

"Good luck."

Author: Jeff Young (Kallysto - Corsair 11)
Strategy: Jeff Young