The Disrupters and D-Advanced are for destroying sub-systems, not necessarily just on capital ships. You know how you've got the key that cycles among subsystems when you target capital ships? It works the same on fighters. Target a fighter and go after its engines to disable it, or its weapons to disarm it. This will be trickier because fighters are much smaller and more maneuverable than capital ships, but it can be done. I think usually it is easier to just blow up fighters, so it doesn't come up much.

If you can disable a fighter, it can't chase your wingmen and you can leave it stranded behind you. If you disarm it, it can't shoot; I have no idea if it will continue to chase you and just fly around (maybe doing some collision damage on accident?) or whether it will eventually jump out.

Not the Lucifer.

If you destroy a fighter squadron Lucifer will send more. If you let one fighter live, it won't, to my knowledge. To prevent this fighter pestering you and your wingmen, disable it and you have "peace".

Edit... ninja'd :-)
It's hard for the player, but the wingmen can usually do it.

Yeah, I am unsure about that. To me even the walkthroughs seem to suggest that there is indeed a time limit in the second last mission, hence I was surprised that nothing (bad) seemed to happen if I missed that time limit. The mission was not failed nor did I see much of difference to the last mission, regardless if I reached the jump node in time, or entered it only afterwards. I didn't check the distance to the Lucifer or how long it stays in the last mission, but as far as I could tell there didn't seem to be difference there.

Earlier I did make it to the jump point in time in an Ulysses fighter (which is almost as fast and more agile than even Valkyrie), by simply outrunning enemy fighters. I just had to make sure that Delta and Epsilon wings have appeared before I make the jump, otherwise they will not be helping in the last mission. Some walkthrough suggested they appear based on a timer, but to me they seem to appear based on how many enemy waves you have killed. Ie. Delta wing will appear after you have destroyed the third enemy wing, and Epsilon after destroying the fifth enemy wing. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with timing, just destroying enough enemy fighters.

Not sure if I ever tried that with the Ulysses fighter, but i got an impression that the Delta bombers fail (and die) primarily due to Lucifer's autoturrets and missile launchers, more than the enemy fighters. As long as I have my other wingmen (Alpha, Beta, Epsilon) available in the last mission, they seem to handle the enemy fighters quite well... for awhile. But eventually they will die, as they occasionally take some damage from the enemy fighters (and possibly from Lucifer too).

No I don't recall reinforcements being available at all in either mission, nor resupply.

Most probably it was just a typo in that GameFaqs walkthrough, there is no Gamma wing in the last two missions. Maybe he meant either Beta or Epsilon (I think Delta wing doesn't take any orders from you in the last mission anyway, they just try to bomb the five reactors and that's it).

So you target fighter's subsystems with S, similarly as with capital ships? And after that it is enough to just hit the enemy fighter anywhere with the Distruptor or D-Advanced, and that subsystem gets damage? With capital ships, you still have to get that particular subsystem to your crosshairs.

That would then allow me to reach the jump node in the previous mission, if I disable one fighter after Epsilon wing has appeared. Good tip, if it works. Odd that none of the walkthroughs ever seemed to suggest this, they merely told to leave one enemy fighter alive (as in, tell your wingmen to ignore it, and don't shoot it yourself either).

Since I am trying to reach the last mission in an Ursa bomber, I guess Distruptor is the only option then. D-Advanced is more powerful (for destroying subsystems), but I think it can be mounted only on the Ulysses fighter. I had that before when I thought I could destroy Lucifer's engines or weapons subsystem with it, but even with it it was far too slow, Lucifer would escape before I had destroyed even one of the engines.
.

Switching between "Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders" and "Two Worlds II". I've finally gotten my brain trained to accept viewing TWII on my laptop's 1366x768 (or whatever the exact number is) screen without sending my stomach motion sickness signals, so I've been able to go for longer play sessions and am finally feeling like I'm making headway.

timppu your a great guy but, please can you try a few less words bro, damn. Okay, your playin a game, a ten thousand word thesis on the thing is a bit much. :P Five thousand words is good.

Not until I finish the game. :) Any tips?

:P

I'm not sure if I can find the name of the game in all that without like, excavating fossils of the epic book you've written, buried for a hundred years, uncovered, then lost again, translated into aribic. :P

I'm just kidding. I don't want to inhibit your excitement. You are a gamer my friend.

In timppu's defense, the game is Freespace 2, which is enormously complex, and he really does have to be that wordy just to describe what's actually going on.

Just occurred to me that maybe you get an extra squadron on a lower difficulty level. I honestly don't know; I never bothered to try and play on Insane, considering the difficulty I had at Normal sometimes.

You still need to hit the system in question, just like on capital ships. The targeting and disrupting works the same, regardless of ship type, it is just easier to hit larger, slower, less evasive targets (like capital ship engines). That fighter you are targeting will still be doing all its usual dashing and spinning around (until its engines are gone, anyway).

It is like when you need to disable some of the cargo ships in earlier missions.

---

In deference to bad_fur_day1 (and anyone else that cares), shall we take this to your thread in the FreeSpace sub forum? (Subtle game name drop!)
Freespace 1, actually. ;)

The last remnant of humanity that may survive in a hundred thousand years, might be a data block of timppu's conversation about Freespace... :P

Who were these strange creatures, they did seem to fight a lot of space battles.

No, no, I'm just being a little dick-ish. That's what this thread is all about.

God so help me but on a retro-nostalgia kick I went ahead and bought Starflight 1+2 yesterday after class for $6.99.
Wow, first game... couldn't even get it to load. There's an intro screen and then it claims that you already have a game in progress that cannot load (or is not saved?) and asks you to please press any key to exit. The hell? Finally in disgust I uninstalled that buggy mess and am trying to work together the stones to attempt reinstalling it later today. We'll see how that goes.
<- In retrospect, I used to play a ROM of the Sega Master System or Genesis one back in the day on a teeny low end netbook so was kind of disappointed. The second one works awesome though and how nice of GOG to include a clue book, code tools, maps, etc. to help you look for stuff while taking a bit of the at times frustrating randomization of the planet generation out!

Update: Yeah, as usual... uninstalling it then reinstalling seems to have fixed whatever registry kerfuffle was fouling things up the first time around. It was [In a Spock Voice]: "...most illogical captain."

I started GUN today. Woo! Great start to a game! What a blast! thanks, friend from far away!

Badfur, you are right about something: this would make a good thesis, how to beat Freespace's last mission (and the previous mission) in Insane difficulty. At least it seems to take quite a lot of research of different weapon combinations, tactics etc. A doctorate in Freespace, how cool is that?

So, I equipped Alpha and Beta wingmen flying Hercules fighters with Distruptors (a Promoteheus+Distruptor combo). That didn't work too well. When I told them to disable some lone enemy fighter, they would still destroy it, only slower than before. Maybe it is that Distruptor does some damage to hull too, hence it is near impossible to disable a fighter without destroying it.

So I changed my three Alpha wingmen to Ulysseus fighters with Prometheus + D-Advanced combo (because Ulysseus is the only fighter that can carry the D-Advanced weapon), Beta wing had Hercules fighters with twin.Prometheus weapons.

This seems to work better, I think D-Advenced doesn't cause any damage to hull so it can be safely used for disabling fighters too. I tell Alpha wing to disable a lone fighter, and Beta wing to ignore it (just so that they don't kill it accidentally). That way I saw the fighter's weapons, scanner etc. subsystems drop to 0% after awhile, but I think engine was still running. So it was still moving, but without fangs.

I think that's the point when I should tell also Alpha wing to ignore it because that fighter still got destroyed after awhile for some reason. I am unsure why, is it so that if a fighter's all subsystems get disabled, then it gets destroyed anyway?

I'll hold on to this tactic for now, I think it is my best shot on saving the humanity. I can't leave them hanging, you know?

Reminds me of a Ender's Game quote.

"Then a legendary hero emerged."

timppu, legendary star fighter. ^.^ Now I wanna play freespace too and gain my doctorate in space combat.

Also Devil May Cry 4

Dante, it's good to see you again my man.