Campaign Mission: Crucible
Objectives
| Required Objectives |
|---|
| Defeat the Enemy Attack |
| Secondary/Implied Objectives |
|---|
| Rescue Long Lance |
Ships
| Allied Ships | Enemy Ships Present | Enemy Reinforcements |
|---|---|---|
| ANS Long Lance (CL) | OSPN Nothing Personal (100 shuttle) (cutscene ship) - E/M/H |
OSPN Little White Lie (100 shuttle) - E/M/H OSPN Somewhere In Here (MMT) - E/M/H |
Area Outline
Upon arriving in Crucible, you’re introduced to the Vauxhall-class light cruiser Long Lance. The Long Lance is effective against every enemy unit in the campaign and is one of your most valuable military units. Try really hard not to lose this ship.
The first thing you should do after the cutscene is to launch a SEWACS Sundial and have it fly off-center into the map, ready to provide offset tracks. Most of your enemies in this campaign will have radar jamming and the SEWACS is your primary way to get around this.
You’re given some time to reunite with Long Lance. No matter which direction you are coming from, you want to join your frigates with Long Lance so you can support your light cruiser. If you’re coming from Lamplight, you’re dangerously close to one of the group's arrival points and should prepare to start shooting and firing missiles immediately. If you’re coming from Labyrinth Gate, you have some distance to prepare.
This starting enemy force isn’t overwhelming, but there are some nasty elements.
First off, a group of two Ferryman-class gun shuttles will try to flank you. The Ferryman is the lightest protectorate warship and can be damaged by every weapon in the Alliance arsenal due to having no armor. They are fast and that’s their main defense. This particular group is a non-issue against your Vauxhall, but their T20 100mm guns can do damage against your frigates. The shuttles are, however, quite fragile, so use RPF rounds to deal with them before firing HE to kill them when they are stationary or slowed.
Attacking you directly is a single Draugr-class Tugboat, the equivalent to your frigates, and you will see many of these combat-type tugboats in the campaign. Its single 100mm casemate gun is effective against your frigates, but its most annoying armament is in its jammer and missiles. Its jammer can blind your fleet for short periods of time, unless you have that Sundial SEWACS aircraft up to get offset tracks on it.
Moreover, many Draugr tugboats in this campaign have Active Radar[Command verified] missiles. These require an Interruptor Command-signal module to jam out and softkill. However, the only ship in the campaign that has this jammer is Winter Chain at Lamplight. If you did go to Lamplight first, then use the Winter Chain to softkill the enemy tugboat and jam it so you can kill it. However, if you didn’t, ensure that at all times you are facing the Draugr tugboat and be prepared to employ the “Cease Fire” (once) so that your ships can auto-target the missiles with their dual-purpose weapons. You can also use fighters from the Harsh Winds Blow to intercept missiles, but be careful of friendly fire from your dual-purpose ship guns. This is also why the offset Sundial is important, because it lets you see the missiles coming.
The other nasty element of this force is that close to the tugboat are approximately two Ferryman-class shuttles carrying rockets, also known as “rocket shuttles.” They will attempt to close on you and release R2 Piranha rockets into your ships at about 2- 3 km of range. Do not let this happen as the R2 can disable all but the heaviest Alliance warship. You can identify these rocket-armed shuttles by the fact that they will not be firing guns and will be charging towards your ships. Make sure you kill them first.
Once you focus fire on each of the enemies, however, you can disable and kill them one by one and then loot them for ammunition. In this case, there is not a ton of useful loot in this group, but grabbing the Tugboat’s Thunderhead missiles is a good steal as they have good validated seekers.
