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The delta formation (with evasive tactics) is good for harassment squadrons
Level XIV: Bridge of Sighs
Almost every game in existence has at least one level that will make people stop playing. This one comes close. Right as you come out of hyperspace, flick on your sensors. See that big ball of evil? That's a cluster of well over 100 enemy ships, and many of them are Ion Cannon Frigates. Make sure to research the Cloak Field Generator as soon as possible—you'll be using it liberally.

Your first real goal should be to turn some of that ball of evil to your advantage. Send your carrier to a spot about 70km away from the ball with a small squadron of Scouts (say, 15) and 20 Salvage Corvettes. Send your scouts towards the ball, using evasive tactics and Delta formation until a part of the ball starts chasing them, at which point you press "D" to make them run back to the Carrier.

Harvesting Ion Cannon Frigates from the Big Ball o' Evil. (Mission 14)
The hapless fish should then chase after your Scouts. When they finally get far enough away from the ball that engaging them will not bring more Frigates out of the horde (at least 50 km away, but the more the better), set your scouts to attack (leaving them on Evasive). The Scouts are far too weak to actually destroy any of these big ships, which are two large and slow to track a little scout. While the bad guys are confused, step in and reprogram them via some Salvage Corvettes. Repeat until bored or you capture all of the ships (it takes around four hours to capture 75, which only seems to be about half.) Even if you only take twenty or ships this level seems to take days.

Once you have enough new capital ships to last you awhile, put at least three Missile Destroyers and then 15 or so Ion Frigates into a group with a Cloak Generator and a few Proximity Sensors. By this time you should either have been told about the hyperspace gates or seen them while performing your specimen collection. Send your merry little band to the nearest gate and destroy it. Make sure you cloak just as the gate is destroyed and the small group that comes through it will just sit there and be killed. Repeat for the other two gates. Next head upward and let your cloak machine recharge while positioning yourself above the final target of this mission.
If you have a lot of patience, you too can have 84 Ion Cannon
Frigates after Mission 14
As soon as the cloaker is ready, turn it on and send the group in. Make sure you have some Proximity Sensors with you, because the real inhibitor is cloaked. Fend of the enemy capital ships while concentrating fire on the Inhibitor. Trigger hyperspace as soon as possible.

Level XV: Chapel Perilous
How easy or hard this level is depends on how many frigates you have, but even a moderate-size army should get it done pretty quickly. Send a probe in the general vicinity of that big flying rock and then use its vision to send your capital ships after it. Keep them in Neutral tactics (or they'll fly right into the rock) and use the traditional sphere to destroy it. All told, this mission should only take a couple of minutes.

See that big red ball? It consists of over 100 frigates. Bet you'd like to have some of them...
Level XVI: Hiigara
Everything you've done up until now culminates in a mission that is either par for the course or impossible, depending on how good you've been at harvesting resources and ships. If you've got large number of Capital Ships, like 70 or more, things should be just fine. When the mission briefing stops break them up into groups of 8-10, and send all but two to form a protective sphere around the Mothership (bonus tip: to make them fly a bit faster, place them on evasive tactics and convert to aggressive when they are in position). Send the other group to the front of mother, where the first attack will come from. When sending the ships to the Mothership, use Evasive tactics because the ships will fly a bit faster. As soon as a group reaches its positions around the Mothership, switch tactics to aggressive. Use the groups that didn't go immediately to the Mothership to engage the invading party, especially concentrating on the destroyers. You'll probably take quite a beating, but you'll survive and Mother will have plenty of time to repair herself before the next raiders. Retire all unnecessary ships (like your Research ship) and send your resourcers out to harvest. Start building as many Repair Corvettes as you can. Twenty is good.

Without these Repair Corvettes the Mothership would have been dead a long time ago
The next raiding party is fairly small and a small squadron of Scouts will confuse them enough for your Ball o' Defense to cut them down to size. The next attack is brutal.

Two groups will attack at once: one from below and to the front and one from behind and a little above. Break away three groups, or about thirty ships, for the frontal attack and two groups for the back ones. Set up your Repair Corvettes to support your Mothership. Even so, it's going to be a very tight squeeze. In front, concentrate on the Ion Cannon Frigates and then the Cruiser. Don't worry about the Assault Frigates until last, because they do relatively little damage.

The "Sphere o' Life": put a group of ships in sphere formation and have them guard something
Scouts will not distract these ships, so you have to attack and attack relentlessly. Send your ships in on aggressive, aggressive, aggressive, and don't change formations until the attack is already joined. Of course it doesn't matter, because just when you think you might have a chance of beating them back, more reinforcements show up above you—you can't win. Wait! It's Elson, the guy you rescued way back in Mission XII. He'll give you a couple ships and tell you that the Emperor's capital ship is in the system. Make sure you take care of the threats to your Mothership before going anywhere.

Once you've dispatched the third raiding party, your Mothership will not be attacked again during this mission, so it's time to win the game. Put all of your ships in a wall formation and send them towards your planet. Eventually they will reach the Emperor's Mothership. Depending on how many ships you have, this could take only a few seconds or a few minutes. Once the Emperor goes down, the Bentusi (snitches of the Universe, apparently) show up with the Council and end your little war.

mmorphon00@yahoo.com

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Page Updated Mon Feb 28, 2000 8:25pm EST