Need help with Dakota 1 in WC1

W

WraithTDK

Spaceman
I've played this mission half a dozen times now, and the same thing happens every time: I can get the first transport to jump, and I can get the second transport to the Tiger Claw, but as soon as we get there, the transport just sort of...wonders off...I have killed all the Kilrathi, so they're not a problem, but if I land, it says the transport was lost! Anyone else experience this?
 
What is it - what IS IT about me that no matter how much difficulty I'm having with something, every time I ask four help, I almost immediately afterwards figure out on my own and end up looking like a bigger banana head? ARG!
 
May I ask what the problem was?


I think I remember experiencing similar problems in WC1 sometimes (although rarely). Loading your savegame and playing the mission again usually solves it, although that can be frustrating if the mission was hard.

So I guess it's a bug - similar to the bug we all know that in some missions, even if you meet each and every victory condition, it plays the "sad" music on your way back to the Claw?
 
You followed the transport until it had reached its checkpoint but that differred from the location where the claw actually was? I had thesame with winning defending the ralari by accident first time through. Iv'e also once lost a transport that did just not make the jump, but the mission was a success.. Oh hey at least then you get to see the other branches without "intentionally losing a mission", which I hate.
 
Oh hey at least then you get to see the other branches without "intentionally losing a mission", which I hate.
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Yeah but I like it better if the enemy actually screws you over (through bad luck), instead of a game error. Then just don't be too proud not to just load your savegame and replay the mission... ;)

So you actually managed to defend the Ralari? I draw my hat before you. I tried it dozens of times. Maybe hundreds of times. I didn't count, let alone add up my attempts from multiple play-throughs of WC1. I never won the mission. Sometimes I got close...


"A proper fate for a coward." :mad::mad::mad:
 
I've done the Ralari mission 4-5 times.

I tend to set my ship to ramming mode.
I just dive in and shoot guns and missiles and the smash them with my ship.
Destroy 2 Gratha in the first 30 seconds and you stand a very good chance.
 
Yeah, I know, I tried it all, ramming, missiles, and so on, but well, if I rammed too agressively I usually died, if not the Ralari died. Grathas are tough so the missiles aren't too helpful. I also varied my tactics, but somehow I never managed to succeed.

Before you asked, yes I figured out not to use autopilot in the mission. I also tried going around the Asteroid encounter completely, but that doesn't make much of a difference either.
 
I gave up trying to win the Ralari mission. It's not essential to winning the game, so losing the mission doesn't matter. Just wait until you're playing Secret Missions, and random pilots come up KIA on the chalkboard due to some bug in the game. Try flying the Dralthi missions (Corsair C series) in Secret Missions 2 all by your lonesome because of a game bug. I didn't know how to make that "fixer" program work, so I just flew the missions solo instead of with Angel (or was it supposed to be Iceman? I don't remember). Many, many keyboard bangingly frustrating nights, those were.

What really chaps MY hide is that I had to cheat in order to win the final mission in WC2: Special Operations 2. I played that mission over 40 times before I lost count. Never won it on my own merits. Winning that mission is tied to winning the game on the winning path instead of finishing the game on the losing path, which is ridiculous. It still makes me angry just thinking about it.

I don't expect every mission to be easy, but shoot, to make something so hard that the average player plays the mission more times than you can call "sane" or "reasonable," and still can't beat it is wrong. No biggie if the mission isn't tied to winning the game, giving the player a second chance to fight his or her way back to the top is a good challenge. Though, to make the ridiculously hard mission the last one in the game seems like someone decided to say: "Let's do something to really fuck with people. This ought to make them really mad!" :mad::mad::mad:

Of course, I hate cheating. I bristle at the thought of lowering the difficulty setting from Ace to Veteran in WC3 just to pass a mission. So far I haven't had to.
 
Prometheus said:
Yeah but I like it better if the enemy actually screws you over (through bad luck), instead of a game error. Then just don't be too proud not to just load your savegame and replay the mission... ;)

So you actually managed to defend the Ralari? I draw my hat before you. I tried it dozens of times. Maybe hundreds of times. I didn't count, let alone add up my attempts from multiple play-throughs of WC1. I never won the mission. Sometimes I got close...


"A proper fate for a coward." :mad::mad::mad:
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I once won by sheer luck on my first playthrough, I later tried to repeat but the one tactic that worked for me ever(maybe 1 out of 20 times), if full burners and shooting everything you have at the closest enemy fighter and ramming a second one.
 
Highball said:
Just wait until you're playing Secret Missions, and random pilots come up KIA on the chalkboard due to some bug in the game.
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I thought that was a pretty well known bug by now.
The solution is, when starting to play Secret Missions after transferring your character, use a savegame editor to reset your number of "sorties" to Zero.
Alternatively, don't tranfer your character at all, but that will of course cause you to loose you rank, medals, kills etc.

If you already are in the middle of your Secret Missions campaign and don't want to start over, you could, in addition to resetting the number of sorties, also just "resurrect" the pilots that have gone KIA by the bug.


I am not sure but I think in the Kilrathi Saga version this bug doesn't happen in the first place. Can someone confirm or deny this?
 
That's what I was saying: I didn't know how to make that savegame editor work. I tried it several times, and could not get it to change anything at all. Finally, I gave up and flew the missions solo, because I figured that was my only alternative.
 
That wouldn't necessarily work because the Series Overflow bug is quite common, from experience, and you'd mysteriously lose a pilot nearly every time.
 
Wedge009 said:
That wouldn't necessarily work because the Series Overflow bug is quite common, from experience, and you'd mysteriously lose a pilot nearly every time.
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Yep, Wedge is right. Tried that, too, and lost pilots the second and third go 'round. Eventually came back to my original game and just played until I won. Too bad the regular WC games don't give you the option to run away from (and eventually outrun) your opponents like you can in Privateer.
 
Highball said:
Yep, Wedge is right. Tried that, too, and lost pilots the second and third go 'round. Eventually came back to my original game and just played until I won. Too bad the regular WC games don't give you the option to run away from (and eventually outrun) your opponents like you can in Privateer.
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Somehow I get the impression I've been playing a different game... :D

1. About the overflow bug, I thought it was an overflow of the "sorties" number that caused it. When you start a new character, how can it happen, as the Secret Missions (each of them seperately at least) have fewer missions as the original game... I had reset the sorties to zero on my game (DOS version) a while back and never had any problems.

2. About the outrunning of enemies, since when is it impossible? In fact I'm pretty sure I did that sometimes, although it really doesn't come in handy very often.
However, the game sometimes appears to get "confused" if you do stuff like that, let me quote as story I posted a while back to the CIC Game Guides section:
I experienced strange thing yesterday in the mission McAuliffe 3... on the way back to the Claw, when the Salthi wing attacked, I went after Bhurak Starkiller, nearly killed him, but as usual he fleed... my Auto-Pilot light was on, so I pressed it, w/o checking NAV before... i thought it would bring me back to the Drayman, which was wrong, I went to the Claw, alone. NAV tells me Drayman is still on its way, so I set it as my destination and engage... From now on strange things happened: 1. My wingman was suddenly with me while he was not when I went to the Claw. 2. I arrived at the Drayman, it was still alive and also was Bhurak (I had shot him down to RED, now he was in perfect condition!) 3. While I attacked Bhurak, he suddenly turned INVISIBLE! He was visible on the radar but not by eye. I managed to hit him a few times anyway, but he destroyed the Drayman and then pushed his afterburnes as usual and disappeared. 4. Music was quite messed up for the rest of the mission, for example while landing it played the music which is normally used, when you get a medal.
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Oh by the way, that strange occurence was in the Kilrathi Saga version, not the DOS version.

Another thing I remember from one mission in Secret Mission I (although I don't remember which one): I didn't follow the Nav points in the normal order but changed it manually and at one place I suddenly encountered a single Fralthi without escorts, which I then destroyed. If I had done the Nav points in order, I would never have come across that. Also, the debriefing made no mention of a Fralthi at all. (I'm not sure if this was the DOS version or Kilrathi Saga, but I think it was DOS.)


Oh, and I just noticed there in the Game Guides section someone else seems to have experiences a "mystery loss" like the opening poster on this thread:
Submitted by : Amadyr
Mission : Mc Auliffe 3
Comments : Strange... I've killed all the opponents... i went back to the Claw with the Drayman and my mission is still a failure ?? Somebody could help ?
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The bug as I understand it is related to the number of mission series you have flown - when it 'overflows' whatever the magic number is in Secret Missions, that's when the save game gets corrupted and you lose wingment. The number of mission series is, of course, related to the number of missions, so your observations come to the same conclusion.
 
Highball said:
I gave up trying to win the Ralari mission. It's not essential to winning the game, so losing the mission doesn't matter. Just wait until you're playing Secret Missions, and random pilots come up KIA on the chalkboard due to some bug in the game. Try flying the Dralthi missions (Corsair C series) in Secret Missions 2 all by your lonesome because of a game bug. I didn't know how to make that "fixer" program work, so I just flew the missions solo instead of with Angel (or was it supposed to be Iceman? I don't remember). Many, many keyboard bangingly frustrating nights, those were.

What really chaps MY hide is that I had to cheat in order to win the final mission in WC2: Special Operations 2. I played that mission over 40 times before I lost count. Never won it on my own merits. Winning that mission is tied to winning the game on the winning path instead of finishing the game on the losing path, which is ridiculous. It still makes me angry just thinking about it.

I don't expect every mission to be easy, but shoot, to make something so hard that the average player plays the mission more times than you can call "sane" or "reasonable," and still can't beat it is wrong. No biggie if the mission isn't tied to winning the game, giving the player a second chance to fight his or her way back to the top is a good challenge. Though, to make the ridiculously hard mission the last one in the game seems like someone decided to say: "Let's do something to really fuck with people. This ought to make them really mad!" :mad::mad::mad:

Of course, I hate cheating. I bristle at the thought of lowering the difficulty setting from Ace to Veteran in WC3 just to pass a mission. So far I haven't had to.
Click to expand...

I just ran through the nav points on those Dralthi missions.
I mean trying to shoot down 8 jalthi and 4-5 Rapiers, in a Dralthi?
Never going to happen.
 
I'm suffering through those Dralthi missions right now for the first time. I was never able to beat the mission where you saved the Hobbes' Ralari before, but apparently I'm much better than I used to be and I am on my way to beating SM2 for the first time.

I can take on anything that the game can throw at me in a Raptor or a Rapier (I actually prefer the Raptor) but a Dralthi? The game designers really were sadists! At least the missions I've played so far let me run away like a scared rabbit, but I'm sure an escort mission is right around the corner and I'm screwed.
 
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