[TC] OFF madness

[whateve12]

Okay, I've been trying to do this mission over and over without success. I'm talking about the part where we have to destroy 3 stations in a khaak sector. BTW, I'm playing with SRM mod and CMOD4. Not sure if I should post this in SnM forum instead.

First time I tried, I went with my Vidar. Got blown to bits before I did anything significant. Then I did several other missions, and got myself a Shrike.

The shrike is good enough for 1v1 against a carrier/destroyer, not so much when ganked by 2-3 of them. It's also slow enough that it can't outrun the khaak capitals.

Next, I gathered more credits, built some complex, got myself an M7M and successfully boarded a titan (came with a bunch of gppc on the main guns intact). I kitted the rest with cluster flaks. My first time on an M2, Titan is good against about 2 destroyers and kills fighters easily. But the guardians murdered me.

I tried using the shrike on 'protect me', but the AI thinks it is piloting a fighter and decided it was a brilliant idea to 'dogfight' in the line of fire of my ppc.

Now the problems:
1. My combat rank is at Assassin, the sector was filled with about 2 KM1 and 3 KM2 or so. They respawn every about 10 minutes. These bugs are fast, heavily shielded and their gamma kyon hurts a lot.
2. My ally was a bunch of M7 and fighters. Soon after I arrived, they were surrounded by about 2 KM2 and obliterated. The most they ever did was kill one guardian.
3. Missiles, tons of missiles. There are 3 guardians close to each station, each carrying tons of thorns. The missile rebalance mod turned these guardians into anti-cap missile battery. It's like getting hit by a bunch of hammer swarm. Any ideas against missiles? Cluster flak on missile defense was rather disappointing.
4. For some reason, my gppc can't hit those guardians until I'm as close as 4-5km. At around 8-9km, the turrets were not aiming at the center of the sphere. Every shots lands at some space to the top right of the sphere, missing completely. This is weird as both the shooter and the target were stationary.

I've read people doing it on an M6/M7 in vanilla but with cmod and srm this mission is very challenging.

My bank is quite low so I can't afford to buy disposable fighters on a carrier although that will be fun. I do have a naked cerberus and zeus parked somewhere. I also have a few hammer/flail fabs which would be my backup plan if all else fails but that is rather cheap. Money is a bit thight, thanks to the hub leeching most of my profitss. Any suggestions?

[Catra]

1) sounds like its working as advertised to me.

2) since noone redid the MD code so your allies are atleast even matched, this isnt surprising.

3) put Ion D in with the clusterflaks.

4) complain in the CMOD or SRM thread about it.

as for some advice:

you need more firepower.

[StarTroll]

If you've got an M7M you already have your solution. Also you can missiles defence from your M7M by firing flails around, they will also auto target missiles.

[Shock223]

get a Cerberus, fill it with FFAs, and watch as the khaak fighters blow up like an army of roaches running toward a can of Raid that is being sprayed.

use the Vidar/anything else to attack anything m6 and above.

[whateve12]

After several tries, I guess mass hammer really is the best answer...

[aka1nas]

A decent-sized CODEA fleet would also work well. I had a similar-sized enemy force last time I did OFF, and was able to finish them off very easily with a small task force (a Panther as carrier flagship, and a few M2/M7/M6s for backup).

I'm also playing with SRM and CMOD, and am waiting on OFF until my fight rank is high and I have a very large fleet. Can't wait for the carnage!