How to down an Alien Fast Attack Ship?

[Alphidius]

Hi all,

 

Currently playing on Easy and in the second week, Transporters & Fast Attack Ships are already being used by the Aliens. I managed to down a Transporter & got it back for research at the cost of one of my Hovercars. Question is how do I get a Fast Attack Ship down using only 4 Hovercars & 1 Interceptor? Hawk is available for sale but they cost a whooping $100K and I doubt I could afford it in the current week.

 

So do I wait out for funding & purchase a Hawk to get one down? Or is there any tactics that I could use on the Hovercars? Thanks in advance

[NKF]

The fast attack ship is a very powerful ship to contend with until you get medium disrupters. Short of arming your Pheonix hovercars and the hoverbike squadron with Lineage Plasma Cannons (which in themselves are very expensive), you might as well hold off for a bit until you get some more heavily armoured ships. That's not to say that it's impossible - it's still hard. One hawk isn't enough. It needs to be supported by hoverbikes and cars, or even additional Hawks to be effective.

 

There's no need to shoot down every UFO that pops through the gates right away just as long as you promptly clear out the terror sites. You've already captured the most important UFO of all, the transporter (on account of its rarity), so you can afford to take it easy and bide your time.

 

Do try to shoot down any UFOs you can, especially UFOs that you haven't captured and/or have a new technology that you want (like the shields). But if the usual three fast attack ships manage to link up with the ship they're escorting, your ships will be massacred, so don't hesitate to break off from the attack and hide your ships away in nearby launch tubes until the UFOs have moved away.

 

- NKF

[Kret]

What I do, when I first encounter them, is to aim every single hoverbike and car against 1 of the usually 3 Attack ships. Depending on availability this can vary around 13 vehicles total.

 

Once the 1 UFO is down I just focus on the transports and avoid combat with subsecuent FAS. However, expect losing some vehicles in that initial hunt.

 

Once better vehicles and weapons are available and affordable they aren't that much of a worry.

 

BTW, try attacking only those that are near the ship they are supposed to escort as they slow down when near it, otherwise your fleet will just play catch-up while the FAS is sniping at them.

[Pherdnut]

FASes are most dangerous when they are close to another FAS. I like to have a lot more vehicles than what you're packing in week 2 from the very start. I'll start a game in superhuman just for the heck of it to give you an idea of how I afford them.

 

For base setup, I put in 1 more bio lab, 2 more Q physics labs, and a living quarters.

 

I play turn-based so my agent equip might seem odd if you're a real-timer.

 

Standard equip for my agents is 2 grenades, 2 stun grenades, an M4000 with 2 spare clips, and megapol armor. Aside from the motion scanner and the 2 grapples, I sell all other nonstandard equipment. I buy out all stun grenades, 8 more m4ks, all m4k ammo, and any additional motion scanners (I actually like those things). No additional agents.

 

For vehicles I unequip all Janitor missiles. The interceptor gets another Lancer 7000 and the cars get dual bolter 4ks. The additionial Lacer 7000, all Janitors, janitor ammo, ground vehicles, and ground vehicle ammo (easy to overlook) gets sold.

 

For new vehicles and equip, I buy out all the elerium, all the hovercars I can get (four in this game), all light and medium weapons control, the same number of bolters as hovercars, an SD special for the Valkyrie, and as many SD Turbos as I can get for the cars (5 in this game).

 

At this point I have 33,320 in cash left. I'll fast forward a bit for all the stuff to arrive. There are no more bolters for sale, or I'd consider throwing some bikes in for the heck of it. Now I'll strip out all the Janitors and replace the engines. After selling the excess janitors/janitor ammo, and the four leftover sports engines, I've got 57,680. Clearly enough money for additional hovercars if they were available and I've already got an interceptor and 6 hover cars. That's enough to spread your vehicles around for maximum coverage of any UFOs that show up, and you should have a relatively easy time of shooting most if not all UFOs that mess with you.

 

The lasers are actually much more powerful than the janitors if you take ROF into concern and cost no ammo. Selling the janitors is how I can afford so many freakin' cars and if you've stuck with janitors on fewer vehicles in the past, you'll be amazed at woefully underequipped the scouts and probes are for dealing with your laser packing car/interceptor armada.

 

In the first week I'm more interested hitting the cult of Sirius for cash than I am in aliens so aside from letting them drop troops off until I get a light disruptor and a living specimen of each alien type that shows up at this point, I'd rather try to gun them all down. I try to hit every temple 2-3 times in the week. Most of the money is so I can buy out all the prophet missiles and launchers I can for week 2, because once those FASers show up, you'll need to start setting the cars on evasive and they simply won't be able to get many shots in with all that bobbing weaving if they have guns. With the Prophet's superior range (over the Janitors), cars and bikes on evasive can handle FAS as long as you're careful not to let them get ganged up on.

 

Any excess cash at the beginning of week 2 goes to buying as many Air Warriors as I can. Air Warriors are only a few more grand than the Valkyrie and much more effective so sell the valk if it will enable you to buy an Air Warrior. If you keep the valk, stick with the Lancer 7Ks. Valks can't dodge well and don't take a lot of hits, so you'll want to be firing at a longer range. My favorite setup for the Air Warrior at this stage is plasma multi and autocannons. Rendors are better than the autocannons due to the range advantage but you're better off saving the Elerium for now and the autocannons pack almost the same punch. Autocannon ammo is ridiculously scarce at this stage for some reason so buy bikes, unequip their guns and sell them back for the ammo.

 

The ideal way to hit the aliens is to have your Air Warriors absorb the brunt of the FAS medium disruptor attacks while your cars and bikes swarm from farther away with their prophets, but the cars and bikes can easily take an FAS down without an Air Warrior if it's isolated. Be wary of UFOs getting cars into a crossfire. They can avoid most shots a lot more easily if they're only being targeted by one ship.

 

Cripes, why do I write these things? Nobody wants to read that much.

[magic9mushroom]

I'm starting to play myself, and I think the Prophet Missile Launcher is underrated as an anti-Fast-Attack Ship weapon. The missiles have a longer range than the Medium Disruptor Beams on the FAS, and unlike guns the Prophet can actually hit reliably at that range. The ammo is terrible, of course, so you need a lot of hovercars to pull off the battle, but in week 2 when you don't have the Lineage, disruptor beams or shields yet the Prophet really seems the best option for shooting down Fast-Attack Ships. I managed to down the entire first wave with zero losses via 7 hovercars with dual Prophets (could probably have done it with fewer, though I'd have needed something else to finish off the Transporters since I was, indeed, running out of ammo).