Wing Assassination Missions: WOW!

[sb413197]

I just returned from 6 weeks in deep space exploring. After selling my treasure trove of data, I decided to try out some of these newfangled wing assassination missions, since I saw mentioned here that they were fun, even in an engineered ship.

So I busted out my fully engineered cutter (pre-3.0 but not too far off the current engineering). I found the first signal source and dropped in - 5 vultures and an anaconda. Killed the anaconda rather quickly and left after shooting at a few of the support ships, nothing too exciting although shields were weakened a bit. Back to supercruise and onto the next one.

This one was....different. I immediately saw something odd - the anaconda's rails are orange - PENETRATOR RAILS! It also starts raining down incendiary multicannons - I had to check my scanner to make sure this wasn't a player, but it wasn't. Sparks shooting out from my dashboard from shield penetrating lasers from the vultures, and I start to see my shield ring fade, my fighter explodes....this is serious business. I turn on my 8A SCB module and fire it once it's charged while using a feedback rail to block the SCB of the anaconda, but it is fast and causing trouble - I boost and turn with FA off and am hitting it at range with my long range lasers, and HE is hitting ME at 5K out with his rails. I switch fire groups when its shield falls and start blasting its powerplant with my own wing feedback rail. I lose a bunch of fighters, most of my SCBs are depleted, and when the anaconda blows up my shields aren't in great shape - I'm out of there, forget those vultures.

That was a great experience. Definitely the most challenging NPC battle I've had in a very long time, other than the thargoids - true endgame play. These are great fun and well-implemented missions - I'm glad that unlike the wing cargo missions they are still workable for one player without penalty. It almost makes me want to build my "assassination FDL" that I was planning for nefarious open mode play, but for doing these missions instead (4 torpedoes and one huge overcharged cannon) to kill the main ship fast...! Good stuff [up]...let's see if my shield is charged at the station to finish the other ones I accepted...!

 

[Cmdr DRAGONHEART]

Good to see some cmdr's still have fun...

 

[BlackSpaceCowboy]

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

 

[Pendergast]

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

Can't please everyone.

 

[znôrt]

that's good news.

 

[znôrt]

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

good point, but it is at least challenging pve (other than thargoids with their imposed weapon grind).

dunno if it is doable without engineering, though, but definitely a 'nice to have'.

 

[Steyla]

Yes they are fun. I had a 1.7 million Assassination Wing Mission to kill some terrorist. First I saw a Cutter which was my Mission Target. I tried to interdict but failed. When I was back to SC the Mission Target was suddenly a Conda with 5 other ships. Asp, Fdl, Vulture and 2 Eagles. I tried to interdict but failed again. OK, back to SC. 3 is the charm. Then the mission target was in a Cutter again. That was kind of weird. But this time I interdicted it and I had a 15 minute fight. Cutter vs Cutter. That was the first time I had a Cutter as a Mission Target. This all happened in around Colonia.


Fly/land safe.

CMDR Steyla

P.S. And of to the next Assassination mission. lol

 

[ilo]

looks almost like a battle of an anaconda with some vultures against a non-engineered ship

 

[sb413197]

Did 4 more. Used reboot/repair in between them...one of them I actually messed up on and they got my shields (sloppy!), I backed off for a reboot/repair and rushed back but they were jumping out, and I lost my target...MISSION FAILED!! First time I've seen that in a VERY long time - fun stuff. The missions upon completion gave tons of materials - 5 of the highest grade stuff.

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

Wellllll....yeah, a wing of fully engineered big ships or FDLs would probably rip them up with ease. However in all fairness, I consider my cutter to be fairly strong; it rocks a size 8 prismatic shield with over 8000 hp, has fully engineered weapons, and so on (still needs updating with the new engineering though) - a wing of non-engineered big ships, or a wing of fully engineered small ships, would still find it challenging I suspect (unless they were packing reverb torps!)

 

[Fendalton]

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

You can do anything in a shield stacked Cutter.

 

[Ziljan]

I was hoping to hear that it was great with other players. The fact that you can complete a wing assassination mission on your own suggests they would be too easy for a real wing. Is there any kind of mission scaling based on number of players?

This really depends on the mission and your ship. Some of these are easy enough to beat with just a solo FDL/Chieftain. Some are extremely dangerous even for a Hull/Shield tanking beast. I took my fully engineered Corvette (which had never needed SCBs before, even vs swarm waves of police) into a wing assassination mission solo thinking it would be cake. But I a few short seconds later, was facing a Rebuy screen. Went back for a second attempt, and the NPCs killed me even faster! Third attempt and swapped out some cargo and SRV pods for more HRPs MRPs and a crucial SCB. I *barely* survived the third attempt, and had to flee before being able to kill the Target. On the fourth and final attempt, was able to just barely kill the Target Cutter and escape with a limping ship.

I am one of the better pilots in the game and can hold my own in 1v1 PVP vs all but the best CMDRs in the game. Even though the game seems to scale the difficulty compared to your ship/skill level, I would recommend that newer to middling players bring at least one friend on these wing assassination missions, just in case you hit a "difficulty spike" like I did

 

[GroundxZERO]

I had a similar experience in my vette. Except I was against another corvette and a bunch of vipers. My shields were fine and I made quick work of it but it was fun. I do wish FD would raise the difficulty ceiling on the NPCs.

 

[sb413197]

This really depends on the mission and your ship. Some of these are easy enough to beat with just a solo FDL/Chieftain. Some are extremely dangerous even for a Hull/Shield tanking beast. I took my fully engineered Corvette (which had never needed SCBs before, even vs swarm waves of police) into a wing assassination mission solo thinking it would be cake. But I a few short seconds later, was facing a Rebuy screen. Went back for a second attempt, and the NPCs killed me even faster! Third attempt and swapped out some cargo and SRV pods for more HRPs MRPs and a crucial SCB. I *barely* survived the third attempt, and had to flee before being able to kill the Target. On the fourth and final attempt, was able to just barely kill the Target Cutter and escape with a limping ship.

I am one of the better pilots in the game and can hold my own in 1v1 PVP vs all but the best CMDRs in the game. Even though the game seems to scale the difficulty compared to your ship/skill level, I would recommend that newer to middling players bring at least one friend on these wing assassination missions, just in case you hit a "difficulty spike" like I did

That sounds awesome. What were the ships running? In the one I struggled with they were rocking TLB plasma I believe?!

One of the battles involved a cutter with what must have been specialized 8a shield cells. Had to pull out one of my PVP tactics to get its shields - moved backward to lure it forward and then afterburner rammed it. 42 percent hull left LOL

 

[Ziljan]

That sounds awesome. What were the ships running? In the one I struggled with they were rocking TLB plasma I believe?!

One of the battles involved a cutter with what must have been specialized 8a shield cells. Had to pull out one of my PVP tactics to get its shields - moved backward to lure it forward and then afterburner rammed it. 42 percent hull left LOL

TLB plasmas seem pretty common on this wing assassination missions. In this case though, they were focused more on pure DPS, hull/shield smashing and module wrecking mods. I think they had module damaging mods too because my FSD was gone pretty quick despite having 2x C5 MRPs. Putting in a 3rd MRP and hull gave me the protection needed to survive the last 2 attempts.

It should be noted that most Wing Assassination missions aren't as hard as the one I described above. But I sincerely hope that the very challenging ones aren't too rare either, because they are pretty damn fun

 

[rrobes]

They are a bit of a challenge at first but there are simple ways to avoid getting your *** kicked. In one encounter, the big was shooting me w/ some blue-colored weapons (not all of the weapons it fired were that color).

A good ship helps as well. Enjoy the fun!

 

[zarking]

Well, guess what missions I'll be trying out today, sounds like a great way to test a few different ship builds And a nice change of pace from passenger runs lol

 

[MrReynolds]

I was enjoying these until recently when I've found that the police arrive on their side making it impossible to solo.

Did I experience a bug? I did take them out of FS and indeed they were clean whilst taking them out of cruise. But they were either terrorists or pirates....
Ended up notorious, do that's me not doing these missions again-that quite frankly were the only thing left for me to enjoy.

Anyone know of a system offering missions to an anarchy system?

 

[GammaZ]

Where do you find all those hard wings, i wonder?
I've done something like 10-15 of those missions and from my experience they can be easily facetanked by half-engineered corvette, or completed in like a minute or so in double frag vulture by killing main ship and running from the rest.
May be there is specific mission type that is harder, or it depends on system/location?

 

[Aashenfox]

The kill order is critical...

How to make it trivial... FDL, Vulture, Asp, Viper mk3, Cobra, Eagle, Anaconda. II didn't do exactly that order in the video below, but after further research, that is the optimal order, imo. In this video, the enemy vette was using corrosive MCs and phasing sequence lasers. I think at least one other ship had phasing sequence too.

I can do this is Federal Gunship too, but it's a lot messier.

[video=youtube;VaOAtWOMsfE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOAtWOMsfE[/video]

 

[Muetdhiver]

I use nearly the same kill order, just dealing with the ASP before the vulture due to the ease of dispatching it. Plus it's less rails.

I really wonder if an iCourrier can solo it. It's on the bucket list of things to do ^^