Arvoch Alliance – Lots of Shooting, Some Mining and Some Dying…

After completing my training, as noted in the previous article, I, Space Pilot Veloxi, decided to be recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the…wait, that’s not it. Yes, I decided to join the Alliance and defend the Evochron quadrant from the nasty folks in the Federation. No, not THAT Federation – the blokes from Star Trek, who seem pretty personable – no, this was the EVIL Federation. I know that because their ships show up red on my H.U.D. Yes, join me as I venture forth to battle the evil Federation in the our first foray into AA’s campaign.

The first campaign mission is entitled, “Learning the Ropes” and is a simple two-waypoint patrol mission using Ferret scouts. Apparently this mission is continuing my training, so I’m to impress my superior officer, Commander Garrett, in order to get promotions and such. After reading the briefing and checking my ship’s loadout – what, only TWO missiles? AWESOME! – I left the carrier and headed to the first waypoint.

I ordered my plots to form up as we approached, noticing how the bass from the game shook the walls of my apartment, and wonderfully so, as their engine noises added to my own. Awesome stuff. Anyway, about ten clicks out, we detected a four-ship enemy patrol. I ordered my wingmen to “Attack Hostiles” and off they went.

As we approached the enemy, both they and my wingmen began firing missiles at range. After shooting down the first one heading for me, I dispatched two fighters while my mates splashed the other two. The combat was fun, tense, explosive and loud…all good things! :) In the game, Alpha 3 and 4 were damaged, so I sent them to get repaired and rearmed while slowly approaching the next waypoint, giving them time to catch up.

Once they caught up, I increased speed, and again found an enemy patrol about ten clicks out of the second waypoint. Alpha 2 got a bit bloddied, but in the end, we dispatched all of the enemy fighters, and then made our way back to the carrier for a landing.

On a small tangent, one thing that bugs me about enemy fighters is once they make their initial pass, if you fly after them, they all seem to use the same tactic of flying in a tight circle to avoid being hit. It kinda works, honestly, but it’s damned annoying. The best way to break this circle of theirs, I’ve noticed, is to approach with burners and get right up in their exhaust, which I usually prefer to do anyway, but still, kinda annoying. Anyway, it was a successful mission overall.

Mission number two was entitled, “Scanning Orion”, in which I was to drop off a satellite in the upper atmosphere of the nearby planet Orion Prime. Again, I was to lead Alpha Wing, which again consisted of four Ferret scouts. After leaving the carrier, we used the warp drive – this game timeline takes place before the Evochron games, and therefore has no jump drives – to approach my waypoint, which was about 42 clicks away.About six clicks from the drop-off point, we detected an enemy patrol. I ordered my wingmen to protect me as I burned to the drop-off point.

After dropping off my satellite, I helped my wingmen take out the rest of the enemy patrol, but also lost Alpha 4 in the process.

Sniff…you’ll be missed, my old friend with no name other than a generic callsign. I remember the time we got drunk in Bar Beta over in Alpha Prime with those girls Gamma 2 and Zeta 3 who had…wait, I’m rambling, sorry, back to the story. During our approach to the carrier group, we all got jumped by another enemy patrol. Those damned Federation bastards are persistent, I’ll tell ya that.

We dispatched them in short order, thankfully, due to a combination of our skill and the capital ships’ anti-fighter defenses, and then landed safely on our carrier, conveniently named “Carrier”. I wonder what they name all the other carriers…I mean, they ALL can’t be “Carrier”…can they…?

Anyway, the next mission was entitled “Building Orion,” in which I was tasked to…mine asteroids. Now, I enjoy mining in space games as much as the next fella, but I wasn’t expecting it in a combat-focused game like this. Regardless, the fleet needed minerals, and it needed me to mine ‘em, so off I went with my mining beam. After warping into the asteroid field – but not INTO an asteroid, fortunately – I began to mine one of ‘em. Whilst mining, an enemy patrol appeared, so I ordered my wing to defend my, and ordered Beta Wing to “Attack Hostiles”. I thought this would work to keep the enemy off me, but nooooo…I got my shields HAMMERED, and not in the fun way.

I broke off mining to engage evasive maneuvers and try to help my wingmen shoot some of the enemy down, which I did, while not shooting any down myself, so I guess I got the assists on those. ;) In returning to my carrier group, we saw that they were AGAIN under attack by an enemy patrol, but since I figured the cargo in my hold was more important than engaging the enemy, I burned toward the carrier and did a fast landing. Cowardly move? Maybe, but it got the job done. Sometimes you have to look at the big picture my friends.

This all apparently impressed my superiors because I was then promoted to lieutenant! Lieutenant Veloxi…has a nice ring to it.

Anyway, the next mission was titled “Springing the Trap,” in which I was to lead an attack against a Federation convoy, which sounded like a milk run. We’re also told we have access to the Wraith fighter.

Upon this, I looked at the loadout screen and saw THREE new fighters listed there, not just the Wraith, but the Aries and Shadow. When they hell did we get access to THESE, game? They could’ve come in handy earlier, ya idgit.

Anyway, in my shiny new Wraith fighter, I left the carrier with Alpha and Beta Wings and headed toward the waypoint. Once we arrived we found the transport and…a cruiser? “That doesn’t seem right,” I thought to myself, “Where’s the convoy? I don’t know if we’re equipped to handle a cruiser…” Just as I thought that, several enemy fighters jumped in. All of a sudden, things went BATSH&T INSANE. There were missiles flying everywhere, fighters exploding left and right – most of them my colleagues – and tons of radio chatter.

At one point, the Vonari – have no idea who they are – jumped in and wipeed out the transport and began, I think, attacking the cruiser as well. I could barely see anything because of all the missile warnings that kept me moving around erratically. Eventually it was everyone versus just me.

As you can imagine, I didn’t last very long.

So damn, died in the fourth mission in the game. The first few missions were like being gently held by the hand by a friendly…friend…while learning some more about the game, like dropping off cargo or mining. Then, BAM, the fourth mission throws you out of a moving car and expects you to walk home…or something to that effect. The difficulty seemed to jump WAY up between missions three and four. Maybe I didn’t shoot enough missiles or some such, but man, that burned.

So I successfully made it through three campaign missions, received a promotion, and then got my butt handed to me in the forth, which all in all was still a good time. Join me next time wherein newly minted Lieutenant Veloxi will try to pass this mission the next several missions in the campaign to wipe out the evil Federation. Same space time, same space channel.

Below, please enjoy all of the screenshots I took for this article, and to continue reading, read part 1. Thanks for visiting!