The text told me to go to a Paranid Shipyard, which I did, and I got a message that a supporting fleet would be along shortly and I should get ready to jump to Xenon 534. I was flying an Argon MM6. So I stocked up on e-cells and missiles, and waited around. My first point of confusion: I saw some Paranid invasion ships gather, and then they started to jump out. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to jump too or wait for another message telling me to go. I decided to jump with them, so I jumped to 534, and boom, I ended up in the middle of some paranid M2 after the jump. Ok, reload and try again
I jumped again after the reload and that went OK. While preparing I had jumped my fleet to the N gate of Getsu Fune. This fleet was 3 M2 Titans with 9GJ / 24 GPPC each, plus BPPC and assorted other weapons. Each Titan is escorted by an M8 Custodian shield frigate. The M8's have 4xAPPC and some AFLAK and APBE for anti fighter screens. I didn't take any of my M3 ships because I didn't want them all dying to Xenon FLAK.
After I got to 534 in the MM6, three K's started to chase me. I killed their escorts with guns and missiles, and managed to kill the 3 Ks by myself in the MM6, which I was happy about. However, it seems that no matter how many Titans I put on the task, I cannot trust the AI to kill a single K using my whole fleet! I set all 3 of my Titans and their escorts on a lone K, thinking that 3xM2 + 3xM8 would be enough to get a kill without losing any of my ships. Guess again! One of my Titans cheerfully flew directly into withering GPPC fire without seeming very inclined to try to move or dodge it. Only his front guns could fire on the K at the time, so he didn't damage it much. He died within seconds, before his tactical retreat could even jump him out.
I had a similar experience later on. I was soloing a K with the MM6, and got it down to zero shields and about 25% hull. I figured my Titans could mop it up from there, which they did, but I dang near lost another Titan in the process. The K beat one of my other Titans to within 10% of total shield loss before it died, and that was with 2x Titans starting at full strength, and the K starting pretty well thrashed after I'd beat it up with my MM6!
There were some other K's and J's in the sector. I guess there were a total of around 6-8 K's and about that many J's. When I was just killing the last of the J's and mopping up some fighters, I got a message that there were too many losses to the invasion fleet and I'd failed the mission
My biggest problem is that I can kill a K using a ship I'm flying, but not using any of my AI ships, even if I put 6 of them on a single K. It seems like my M2's like to fly around 6 Km from each other, which means one of them comes into range of the K long before the others can get there, and he dies very quickly even with 9 GJ shielding. I can't seem to get all my M2's to beat on the same K at once. I wish capital ships fights took longer! Right now once the GPPC fire starts coming in, you've only got about 30 seconds before the ship is going to die - even less if its taking fire from several ships at once. I've seen capships die in under 10 seconds. So there just isn't time for nearby friendly ships to get in range, even if they're only a few Km from being in range already. I think I'd prefer to have *all* weapons toned down to about 1/5 of their current damage, so both dogfights and capital ships fights took longer.
Because of that problem, it seems like in the future I should not bother with an AI fleet and just try to solo the whole sector myself - but I'm not sure I could do it fast enough to pass the mission (and I'm an old-fart gamer so I don't have super fast reactions any more myself, either).
I did manage to collect 12 GPPCs, 3 BFLAK, and some other lesser weapons for my effort though.
I want to try another one now, but since it took me 6 months to find the first one, who knows how long it'll be before I see another
