Im currently in the last mission of the second system where I have to escort another Drayman. There you encounter the Kilrathi ace Bhurak. Whenever I damage him slightly he retreats and I can't keep up with him. Is it impossible to kill him on this encounter so he can return later on? Or do I just suck and it should be no problem to kill him?

Edit: Oh yeah, I should have probably mentioned in the thread's title that I'm talking about WCI. I've tried killing this bastard for like six times but I just can't kill him.

Nevermind. Finally got the scumbag. So apparently killing aces is just about doing it as quickly as possible.

How did you do it?

I don't remember exactly but I probably locked him as my target ASAP and tried staying as close to him as possible (with frequent use of the afterburners) and threw everything at him that I have.

Ramming does help, this dingus just seems to run off whenever his health drops below 50%.

Yeah, I actually kill enemies by ramming rather often, at least when my shields are up and the enemy's are gone, obviously. And yeah, at least some (if not all) aces start fleeing after a while or when they are heavily damaged but often you can keep up with them for a while if you instantly engage afterburners. You can stay close enough to hit them with the guns if you have a steady hand but IIRC they tend to be too fast for rockets at that point.

This game has been supa tough for me. I still haven't quite figured out how to use missiles and know how many I have left. I read that you can use taunts to protect ships that you're escorting but the action happens to fast for it to really seem useful to me.

Shaking my fist at Bhurak and Dhralthi!

I don't know how much you already know about the game and which features you use but I'm just gonna fire away. :P Well, don't know what you're playing the game with, whether it's mouse, keyboard or joystick, but you should have one hand on the keyboard at all times and memorize most of the commands. And yeah, I've heard about taunting being useful but frankly I normally don't use it for the reasons you mentioned, only when I'm really desperate.

Oh yeah, something you may not be doing but wanna do is telling your wingman to break formation as this will make him far more efficient. IIRC that's only possible when enemies are nearby (or is reset whenever you use autopilot or something).

As for rockets, there's multiple types of rockets and they differ a lot in their functionality. I don't recall their names but there's "dumbfire" or "fire and forget" missiles (they should be the smallest default ones) and there's nothing to them, no targeting, no "homing", just fire one when you feel that the enemy will be unable to evade it. The other ones require a target lock IIRC, one type is a heat seeker so to get a lock you have to see the enemy's engine (and I guess the enemy can easily shake them off). Later on you also get rockets with optical or visual targeting which allow you get a target lock from any angle.

Also don't know if you're using the feature but when hunting for aces it's a good idea to manually cycle the targets and lock the ace into your targeting computer by pressing "L", you may also use it to focus on one regular enemy so you get quick definite kills instead of switching targets at random and risking that they regenerate their shields. Is that the mission with the two Drayman transports? If so, at least let me calm you down by saying that it's possibly the hardest one in the whole game. :P

Anyway, another "tactic" (or rather exploit) is manually traveling to the navpoints instead of using autopilot, in at least one mission (maybe the one you're in) there's a situation where upon arriving via autopilot the enemies are already shooting at the Drayman and it's almost impossible to save it. When approaching the navpoint manually they will spawn at a certain distance from the Drayman making it far easier (but still hard).

Anyway, I hope I've been able to tell you something new that may help.

I've successfully defended the transport three times and it keeps saying that I failed. Is there some bug going on?

Also: Autopilot?

Indeed, something's wrong with that mission. I recall that the failure music will play no matter what, I hope you've actually checked the debriefing and not just cancelled due to the music suggesting failure. But there may have been some more weird things about the mission, for instance loosing if you only distance yourself too much from the Drayman even if it ultimately arrives at the Tiger's Claw or something like that. Sadly it's been too long, I don't recall all those little details bugs and exploits, sorry. Uhm yeah. You know that you can manually pick waypoints via 'N' and press 'A' to fast forward via autopilot? :D

Sigh, now I feel like a bit of a dingus. Let's just say that I wanted the "real" experience of... babysitting a transport.

Yeah, the mission kind of does seem a bit messed up. I guess I'll try using autopilot after I get incredibly lucky and take out the Jalthi's again.

Thanks for the help, I'm hoping WC2 has less odd quirks.

Last time I played WC2 (and fully beat WC1) was in 2006 I think so I don't remember much but as far as I can tell WC2 is indeed more refined and has fewer quirks of this kind.