I'm stuck on the last mission of the base campaign. Well, not necessarily stuck but before I try again I'd appreciate some advice. On the FreeSpace wiki I only read that the mission is supposed to be super easy. Well, I'm playing on medium, I didn't have any major trouble in the campaign up to this point but now I've tried DOZENS of times and always fail.

So I'd like to know:
How many ships and how much armor should I have at the beginning of the mission? I only had five ships (one from Beta wing + full Epsilon wing) and the full Delta wing (the bombers) and just below 50% armor. I tried dozens of times and each time Delta wing died (unless I died first). They always managed to destroy four of the generators but they always screwed up the last one.

So next I will try to replay the first part of the mission in such a manner that I will have four full wings and max armor if possible but I'm wondering whether I should be able to finish off Lucifer even just with the few ships I listed above.

Also any other advice on how to get all ships into the final phase and how to destroy Lucifer?

Edit: Oh yeah, I'm playing the original game, not the FreeSpace 2 engine port.

Okay, nevermind. I did it. I did indeed replay the first phase of the mission in such a manner that I had all four squadrons and 100% hull integrity during the assault on the Lucifer.

On my first attempt with this full force I still managed to fail the mission, losing all four bombers when only one generator was left. The thing is that most of the time I gave many orders during the campaign, always giving my wings specific targets or ordering them to defend specific ships since I found that they are far more efficient this way (I lost *very* few wingmen once I began using them this way). On the last mission I ultimately decided not to give any orders and oddly enough the bombers succeeded. I think they still barely made it but whatever. The Lucifer is down and Earth safe... for now.

With a few exceptions here and there, the AI is competent enough for most situations as I have found. About the only time I will manage my squadron in both FS1 and FS2 are escort missions, and even then, only when your squadron doesn't have any default orders.

As a side note, it's great fun to go through the last mission as an Ursa with a full loadout of harbingers.

Can you explain that? I am now in the last mission (Insane difficulty) with an Ursa with six harbingers, and no idea how to survive. The only ones that survived to the last mission was me alone, and the bomber wing. All those epsilon and beta wings died when fighting the countless enemies while chugging my slow-ass Ursa towards the jump point.

Now in the last mission, I try to kill enemy fighters before they get to the bomber wing, but since I am so slow now, some of them do get by and kill the bombers one by one. Heck, even that bomber wing usually gets by me while I try to fight some of the enemy fighters, as I am so slow.

After the bomber wing is destroyed, the enemies turn their weapons towards me, and it doesn't take that long until I am dead. I tried to get close to Lucifer in order to destroy it, or the reactors, with the harbingers, but the harbingers will not launch for some reason, they just give that "Ewww Ewww" sound (I wasn't sure if I was close enough to Lucifer, I thought I was...).

Failing that, if I replay the first phase (earlier mission) again, which ship should I choose, and how should I try to get all my wingmen intact to the last mission? Some walkthrough suggested I just speed past enemies to the jump point in a fast ship (Valkyrie???) and wait for the bomber wing to come before I jump, but two problems with that approach:

- The bomber wing will not appear until a few of the enemy waves have been destroyed, so apparently I need to fight them anyway, or hope my wingmen can fight them without dying.

- Then I will have a very fragile Valkyrie as my ship in the last mission. I have hard time believing I could finish the mission in a Valkyrie without shields.

If you have harbingers, you should be able to deal with the reactors yourself and target fighters so your turret will fire. Shivans without shields are extremely easy to kill and the primary target if you are not in the bomber is the Lucifer's weapon subsystem. Destroying it will allow the harbingers to reach their target. Your wingmen should buy themselves enough time to destroy fighters and the weapon system before the Ursas can start bombing.

Thanks, I need to try that (destroying the weapon subsystem). It was never really clear to me what benefit destroying the weapon subsystem on an enemy ship yields. I did that in some earlier missions, but as far as I could tell it didn't seem to affect anything, the enemy ship turrets and missiles kept pummeling me and the wingmen IIRC. I figured destroying it doesn't really help anything, maybe disables some main guns used for mothership vs mothership fights or something, and in order to disable the turrets and missile launchers, you have to actually destroy them, one by one. That is not a workable solution in this mission, there are so many turrets and it takes quite long to destroy even one of them, unless you have harbingers (but then you could have max 6 of them anyway, so....).

I have replayed the earlier mission now a couple of times, for example yesterday so that some of my bomber wingmen have a couple of harbingers (just in case, earlier they had only antifighter missiles), and also I replaced one of my primary weapon slots from to [url=http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/GTW_D-Advanced]D-Advanced (having now Prometheus + D-Advanced), as I learned the latter is supposed to do over three times more damage to subsystems, maybe helping a bit with that. I earlier thought double-Prometheus would be the best, especially now as there are no shields, but I didn't consider that might not be the case for destroying subsystems.

I am still trying to finish the mission in a faster Ulysses (which can't carry harbingers) because that (or Valkyrie) is the only way I can outrun the fourth and later waves of enemy fighters in the earlier mission, in order to get all my wings in a relatively good condition to the last mission, and also having a high hull strength myself.

Flying an Ursa or Hercules means me and my wingmen has to fight each and every enemy wave in the earlier mission before reaching the jump point, except for The Prophecy which you can escape. I tried that, and by the time I got to the jump point, only Delta wing was alive beside me and the next mission was impossible (the enemy fighters would kill the Delta wing one by one, and then target me until I was destroyed. With no shield, it was always only a matter of time when they got my hull to 0%). Maybe I should try some trick like leaving only one Basilisk alive from the fourth (or fifth?) wave (tell wingmen not to fight it) and hope it won't destroy my passive wingmen. Anyway I think you need to destroy at least the first three enemy wings before both Delta and Epsilon wings will arrive, so you can't leave one Basilisk alive from the first or second wave only.

However, considering how incompetent the Delta wing seemed in the next mission (usually not being able to destroy even one reactor, sometimes killing max three of them on a lucky day), I figured maybe the only way to beat the mission in Insane difficulty really is that you fly an Ursa yourself and carry six Harbingers, and then kill the reactors yourself one by one. If destroying the weapon subsystem myself allows the bombers to do their work, then fine.

The solution I'd like the best would be to somehow get both of the Lucifer's engines offline (so that there is no time limit anymore), and then find some cranny near the Lucifer's hull which would be relatively safe from enemy fighters, autoturrets and especially the missile turrets, which are the biggest pain in the ass. And then just keep shooting at the Lucifer's hull from that position until it reaches 0%. I think there may be some such crannies near the hull, e.g. between reactors 1 and 2 where there is some kind of arch below which you can try to hide. I think I remained there for quite a long time in one mission, the enemy fighters had hard time getting there and Lucifer's missiles seemed to hit that arch mostly. If only the engines had been offline at that point... I've told some or all my wingmen to attack the engines, but they do pisspoor job trying to disable the ship, maybe getting one engine down to 98% at best. If I try it myself, I get one engine maybe down to 40% (engine 2 still 100%) before Lucifer escapes, so there simply is not enough time to disable engines, without Harbingers.

This walkthrough suggests one should order Gamma wing to disable Lucifer in the last mission.

What is this Gamma wing, or is it a typo? The only wings I ever see in the last mission are:

Alpha
Beta
Delta
Epsilon

In case you were still working at this, I found something that might be of assistance. http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/index.php/Good_Luck

Thanks, I read that too earlier. It is a bit vague though and doesn't go into details, like:

- They say that in the highest difficulties you might want to destroy Lucifer's weapon subsystem in order to assist Delta wing bombers. I've now found a semi-working way to achieve that, but the Delta wing STILL seems to fail their bombing run. I don't know what their problem is, they just seem to dick around near the reactors, taking potshots with lasers to them. Why aren't you using those Harbinger bombs already? I am rushing to destroy the weapon subsystem as fast as I can in a nimble Ulysses fighter so it shouldn't be about me taking out the subsystem too slowly either. Delta wing just seems oddly incompetent in performing their duty, no matter what I do

- They suggest taking out the two engines instead and then killing the Lucifer's hull, but they fail to point out that in practice you need to be flying an Ursa bomber with Harbingers in order to achieve that (and getting an Ursa to the last mission is problematic in itself, due to the earlier mission). You simply don't have enough time to destroy both the engines with any other weapons (before Lucifer jumps out), and your wingmen aren't any better for that, they will die quite fast if you order any of them to attack the engines..