Mission 3

[Dyntheos]

M03 - Sarum

[ToasterOven]

I used six platforms around the shipyard to aid in defence, and this technique really eased pressure off of my forces.

As for the carriers: there are 3 carriers attacking the shipyard; 2 with frigate facilities and 1 with a fighter facility. Take out the carrier with the fighter facility first. That way, you can pump out bombers and pulsar corvs that will get little to no resistance from Vaygr forces. Do your best to try to eliminate the other 2 carriers as soon as you can, and at least keep knocking out their frigate facilities with your bombers (which they will eventually rebuild them).

[ÜberJumper]

My biggest tip for this is move the mothership to the shipyard.

That and put an interceptor squadron at the mothership, one in the secondary resource op and at least one at the shipyard. Destroy the probes quickly with them when they appear.

Once the shipyard attackers are dealt with, move your interceptors and bombers to the secondary resource op to deal with the carrier that shows up.

Leave a mass of gunships and pulsar vettes at the shipyard. Use gunships to go after the fighters, pulsars to go after the infiltrator (and other) frigates.

[motiv-8]

Using the Mothership to help screen Nabaal is a good tactic, but not really necessary. When the mission begins, send out all but one of your Interceptor squadrons to engage the Vaygr forces attacking Nabaal (I'll explain why later). Send your resource collectors to the closest resource patch, NOT the one Fleet Intelligence directs you to. Doing so prematurely triggers a Vaygr attack. Use your Gunships to guard the harvesting operation, and build an extra Resource Collector or two plus a Mobile Refinery to make things more efficient.

Your Interceptors should wipe out the Vaygr with little or no damage. You can then either send half or all of them to your resource op. When Nabaal requests repairs, send only *ONE* Resource Collector to repair the shipyard. This allows you to gather resources and build your fleet a little longer and generally prepare a defensive line that you're going to need later.

Build at least two squadrons of Pulsar Gunships as they become available. They'll prove useful later.

Some time during this period three Vaygr probes suddenly appear; one near the resource op, on near Nabaal, and one near the Mothership (I hope you left that Interceptor squadron at the Mothership, you'll need it now!). Destroy them ASAP or suffer a premature attack.

Research Platform Tech as soon as you can! Then build about five Gun Platforms and send them to the resource area that Fleet Intelligence directed you to go. By this time your Resource Collectors should be moving on to that area. As they harvest, you'll be beset by a Carrier planning to raid your resource operation. Use your Gunships and Interceptors to destroy enemy fighters/corvettes while the Platforms protect the Collectors from any squadrons that make it through. Use your Bombers to quickly disable the Carrier's production capabilities and then destroy it utterly. After it's gone move all your forces to Nabaal, which should be nearing full strength.

After receiving your shiny new Carrier, immediately use its Frigate facility to construct at least three Flak Frigates and four Marine Frigates. Organize your smaller craft into two separate strike groups; Interceptors and Gunships to engage enemy fighters/corvettes, and Bombers/Pulsar Gunships to engage the coming Infiltration Frigates. Alternatively, you can keep them separate if you can swing the micromanagement. Order your Marine Frigates to hang back, and have your Flak Frigates guard Nabaal, positioning them in the way of the invaders.

Now Infiltration Frigates covered by (usually) Assault Craft and Lance Fighters should be pouring down on Nabaal. Don't let it be captured! Immediately destroy the frigates' escorts with the appropriate craft, while the Bombers and Pulsar Gunships destroy the frigates wholesale as they come right next to Nabaal. Just keep your Bombers safe from enemy fighters, and dock and refit any badly damaged squadrons. Your Flak frigates will have a field day against the Vaygr escorts, making things a lot easier.

Once production of Vaygr frigates and fighters slows down, counter-attack. At the least, you should quickly strike against the Carrier producing the fighters and destroy its facilities. After that's done, you have all but won. However, even that's not necessary so you don't have to attack directly with fighters if you don't want to take the risk of losses. Grab three of the Marine Frigates you've been holding back and assault each of the Carriers, with the fourth held in reserve in case things go bad for some reason. While the Carriers cannot be subverted, "capturing" them with Marine Frigates halts their production, movement, and defenses for at least a couple minutes. This will allow you to attack each Carrier with Bombers without losing a single craft.

If you're really bold, you can send your Marine Frigates out as soon as you become aware of the Carriers' presence. This will relieve strain on your fleet and stress on your brain. :] Just keep those Marines protected; the fighter-producing Carrier will suddenly begin building Bombers as soon as it notices frigates.

[Alpha_1]

I find platforms totaly needless in this mission, max out on fighters and corvettes and use them right and you will have little issue.

Key points for this mission.

Workers carry 200 res each, at the start of the mission max your workers, may as well do it now you will need them later.

Scouts kill probes fast and can be used as probes themselves.

Pulsar corvettes put a serious hurt on most ships you encounter in M03.

Particulars:

However many workers you entered the mission with, add 4 more to it then 2 refineries.

Move the refineries to the closest patch to your MS. Start your MS to the shipyard and send all your fighters after the ones attacking the shipyard.

Once the vaygr are dead dock all ships with the SY (shipyard). You will need to use the SY as a forward repair base for the fighters and corvettes you send to it's defense so learn to use it well.

If you do not have any scouts get yourself 2 squads, send one to the start spot, one to the location fleet command says to collect from, and use the inties at the SY for the probes when they arrive.

Once you have maxed fighters and corvettes, start building the MS frig mod (FM) you do not need to build flaks if you don't want to but you can.

Destroy the probes as they appear and once you need to move to the location Fleet Comm told you to collect from, send in all your fighters (except the scouts) to take out the vay group that will hyper in. As soon as that group is dead, move the fighters/corvs back to the SY.

At this point you need to make sure you have at least 6 bomber wings. Take out the fleet coming in to take the SY then repair using the SY carrier and MS, send inties to one, bombers to another, and corvs to the last.

Send the bombers up a bit above the MS and head them over to the center carrier. Use the inties on the fighters and the corvs on the frigates, it takes a long time to capture the SY so you have enough time to take out the SM (strikecraft mod) on the center carrier. Take out the mod and if you can the engines.

Once the SM is dead send the bombers for repairs, you want to now use the inties to take out all fighter cover so you can have free reign in the area.

As soon as the bombers repair, send them to take out 3-4 of the capture frigates then send them after the carrier in the center again, this time you should be able to kill it.

Once it is dead use the bombers on the other 2 carriers FM to temporarily stop the capture attempts. Repair your inties and corvs now.

Once all the fighters are dead you can leave the 6 wings of bombers on a carrier to take it out. Once all but one of the carriers is dead, repair everything. Send some of the 20 workers you built to gather the carrier debris, research any and all tech you can so you do not have to in the next mission. Replace any losses but do not build frigates at all if you don't need to. Wait until you are sure you are ready then kill the last carrier.

BTW the last carrier will keep makeing capture frigates 2 at a time, it will rebuild it's FM to maintain appearences so you will still need to kill them off as you regroup your forces, without the fighter support though it should be easy.

What you want to try and do is go into M04 with only corvs and fighters, build a few probes as well so you can spy out the locations in the next mission. By keeping your frigate pop down you reduce the number of ships you face in the next mission, but with a carrier and MS you can pop out frigates really fast against the now reduced enemy fleet.

So in summary you want to have the following at the end of M03:

20 workers (collection AND repair)
4 refineries, keep them all at the same spot and you will not need fighter support.
6 bomber wings
6 intie wings
2 scouts
4-6 probes (they carry over if not destroyed)
your choice of 12 corv wings (I like to use pulsar in M04)
1 carrier
1 MS

This will reduce your overall difficulty level in M04.

[F/A-22 Raptor]

you don't need four MFs, just two. once the IF(s) starts to infiltrate the shipyard, use the MFs to capture it. don't worry, if you lose control of the shipyard, you just have to capture it back within five minitues to prevent the self-destruct sequence.

use FOUR (takes some time) capture frigates to capture it back (or reduce the hitpoints a bit). if the countdown reachers zero and you STILL haven't got the shipyard back, then its gameover.

[slammer]

Alpha_1 cheers mate that info you said really helped . Now for the 4th missions onwords fleet.

[Resorath]

If you can't seem to beat this mission, try an alternative approach.

One way to beat the mission is to simply recapture the shipyard. For some reason, recapturing the shipyard prevents the Vs from ever capturing it again.

Usually your MFs are a prime target during the battle, but for some reason the Vs lay off once they have the shipyard.

So the initial strategy is simple, move your mothership and your carrier right beside the shipyard, and create a fleet to take out bombers and heavy missile frigs. You can completly ignore the inf frigs.

While this is happening, build two marine frigs from each the mothership and the carrier (4 total). Guard the first two that come out with your entire fleet, and when the second two are about finish, pause the construction (you can build other things in the meantime, just bump those new ships to the top of the list).

Now once the shipyard is captured, finish construction on your marine frigs, and send them all to the shipyard. Guard them with everything, including repairs with your resource collectors. If you lose even one the strategy goes to waste. At about 30 seconds left on the timer, you should have it captured back.

You didn't even really have to kill anything.

[CrazyWolfHW2]

I found this strategy was interesting.

In this mission, I have built one capture frig, I used this unit to capture enemy capture frig when they are capturing my shipyard.

Once I have done that, I used two (one just captured) to capture the rest of the capture frig...

Because of that I managed to have 4 capture frig when I only built one. I used them to capture enemy HMF and Assult Frig.

The HMF that I captured, I used it to destroy enemy's carriers.
And using the captured assult frig with my other 3 flak frigs against enemy fighters.

My fighter and corvettes were concerning fire on their fighters, corvettes, and frigs.

However, I what I don't understand is that the enemy seems to have unlimited resources to build capture frigs. Damn, may be their resource collectors and refinery was hiding some where...

[Amaron]

I was forced to redo this one a couple times as I wasn't satisfied with my remaining forces after beating it a co uple times.

Destroying the first two attack forces is easy enough if you have a medium size fleet.

I kept loosing a lot of ships on that third wave with the infiltrators though. I moved my mothership up and built a couple platforms right next to the shipyard but I still kept getting rocked.

Basically I found that what worked is totally ignoring those infiltrator frigates. Just flat out let them start taking the shipyard. Don't even try to stop them. Make sure you've enough strike craft to deal with all the escorts though. Just keep targeting the escorts for the frigates then take 10 bomber squadrons (with the upgrade to knock out subsystems) and head for the carriers the minute they warp in. Knock out the ship facilities on each carrier (this will go really fast if you've got the upgrade). Then start destroying a carrier. Whatever the rest of your fleet is should have no problem taking out all the escort stuff since you knocked out the production facilities. Keep the carriers from rebuilding the production facilities no matter what and take them out then mop up the remaining units. The shipyard is probably being taken over but it doesn't matter as killing all the enemy units ends the mission successfully.

[leixusam]

Yes, this mission is not that hard, and interesting. Like CrazyWolfHW2 said, capture the enemy Heavy Missle Frigate.

What I did was to destroy the carrier with the fighter facility first, and doing that, moving my mothership and everything else toward the shipyard. This will only make your repairing faster and reinforce your fleet faster, so if you don't have any trouble with that, then you don't have to. Then I put my squadrons of bombers, gunships, intercepters where the shipyard is, and leave the other two carriers alone. They build infiltrators, yes, but they also build heavy missle and assult some time too. Build 4 marine and concentrate them on one carrier, by concentrate, I mean to put them there and capture whatever you can. If they build heavy missle, great, capture it, and be sure to have 3 resourcers to repair your marine. You will find mission 4 extremely easy when you have some of the heavy missles there to deal with the enemy. If they pump out some infiltrators, let them pass and your bombers/captured frigates will eliminate them.

Another thing is, when you just came to (or is it just finished repairing?) the shipyard and have to defend off the Vaygors, just know that it takes a long, long time for them to capture your shipyard, so you can concentrate your fire on the other attacking vessels first, and when the blue bar reaches a half, then come back and deal with the infiltrators. There are usually more than one (4, I suppose) capturing it at a time, so be sure to rotate around the shipyard to find all the infiltrators and destroy them.

Again, capture as many heavy missles as you can, because they are your best frigate (maybe besides ion), and will be great against the frigate armada in mission 4.

[CrazyWolfHW2]

Just build one capture frig to capture the enemy capture frigs. I built one and captured three. I retired mine and use the rest to capture MHFs and assults. Happly finished off the mission.

However, you still have to build a few flak and trop frigs in order to protect the shipyard from bombers and other ships.

While capturing enemy frigs, fighter and corvettes should be finishing off the carrier ASAP.

[ilia1986]

Well, I edned up at the beginning with 6 ints, 2 gunships, 2 elite gunships, 2 bombers, 2 elite bombers, and 4 pulsars. I directed my collectors and refinary to the patch FC instructed. after that, I came to the shipyard, and eliminated all the attackers there. After that, a carrier HSs near my RUs patch. I evac the refinary and collectors, and engage the defenders with no losses. at all.
Then I move to the SY, and send 4 plats there to defend it.
3 carriers pop out. I direct the bombers to gaurd the SY, and move with the rest of my fleet towards the first carrier. I destroy the attackers while losing only a single inty. Then I swich to the other carriers one by one. In the end I ended up with -2 intys (counting the 1 mentiond earlier), and a lost non-elite bomber squad. I believe I could do better, though.

Oh, and I DIDNT USE THE PAUSE BUTTON!
I also upgraded my fighters and vettes all the time, and didnt build a single Flak frig. They were simply unnecessary.

[Stewart Ramses]

The key to this mission is destroying the Hypergates immediately. Then you can deal with wave after wave assuming that your fleet is strong and diverse enough. Keep the dread near the MS and repair it with your workers. When the yard arrives move it to the MS so it's guarded by the force. Of course destroy the attacking fleet with bombers and a few fast frigates.

Without the Gates the enemy cannot suprise you wish their overwhelming force and you deal easily with wave after wave until a shipyard knocks on your door so that you may summarily destroy it with bombers.

I forgot to mention that with your main force you can blow up one carrier while a large squad of bombers mops up the others with ease. The next arrivals are also easily destroyed. When your dreadnought is repairing, its much easier now to destroy the rest of the attackers. No gates to worry about massive reinforcements. And surely no worry about being destroyed as long as you keep your wits about you.

Its all about using your head. Common sense and a bit of brain power makes this mission simple.

[Stewart Ramses]

I forgot to mention that you must keep your dreadnought out of the repair dock for as long as possible. Only when you are sure that the bulk of the attack is over. That way you don't have to worry about two things. Just one; the enemy.

[Drunk]

...Theres no dreadnaught in mission 3.

You on crack?

[Azreal12]

I must be doing something wrong. I never have enough resources to build all the things everyone suggests.By the time I get to where I can research and then build a weapons platform I am severely short on resourses. I have three collectors but they never seem to gather enough.

I get to the point where the Infiltrator Frigates are attacking and have been managing to hold them off from taking over but never get enough ships to destroy the three carriers. Whenever I divert some bombers to attack the carriers I have to send them back to attack the infiltrators. A few times I have destroyed the frigate facility on one but then I need the bombers to attack something else and it gets re-built. Any suggestions?

[AngelTLSC]

I would suggest you restart the game and make sure you dock damaged squadrons.

This way you dont have to spend more ru than you have to.

Try and have another 1-2 carriers to ensure good ru flow.

Dont send your squads on death missions - i.e 2 of theirs for every one of yours.

Be persistent and you will get there :D

[antialias]

ideally you should not have lost anything in the previous missions - easy to do if you start docking squadrons as soon as they turn yellow.
in this mission wait with repairing the shipyard (the shipyards health status is the trigger for the force that enters the asteroid field). set up a good resourcing operation (4 collectors and a MR) in the area indicated and build up your forces. upgrade ints and bombers (important) and upgrade ONE type of corvette (the type you wish to go for first - which one that is doesn't matter, but since you get given some gunships in the previous mission I'd suggest upgrading gunships. do not waste RUs on upgrading anything else. after this mission you will have abundant RUs to catch up on that. build some gunships. max out on fighters. move the MS to the shipyard.

the shipyard will repair itself in time, so there is no real need to put a resourcer on this job. the longer it takes for the shipyard to be repaired the more time you have to build some forces. keep an eye out when your resource patch runs dry and start resourcing the patch close to the shipyard.

now on to the battle. junking the lone carrier that 'threatens' your RU ops shouldn't be hard.

head back to the shipyard. organize your forces into two groups. one that defends and one that attacks individual carriers.
there are a number of ways you can go here:
- half a dozen plats and a number of gunships at the shipyard do the job nicely
- a mix of ints and bombers is good for attacks on carriers. 14 bomber squads works also well

gunships are an exceptionally efficient home guard in this mission. 5-6 gunship squads can take down all the incoming fighters and -in concert - kill off the infiltrators.
let your attack force take out the MIDDLE carrier first (it produces the fighters which are a nuisance). go back, repair, and hit another carrier.

some 'do nots'
do not build marine frigates here
do not build flak frigates - unless you really are swimming in RUs (which is possible if you conserved your forces and have a good resourcing operation going).
do not use scouts
do not repair the shipyard too soon
do not send your fighter piecemeal to the carriers. always attack with all and retreat with all or your fighters will not come home (enemy fighters will follow and be chewed up by the gunships/plats easy).

[Azreal12]

Thanks I'll try it again. I don't think I loat any ships in the previous mission. (I still have the elite bombers and elite gunships that you get in mission 2). I may have been building too many gunships and pulsar gunships instead of enough bombers, I also built three flak frigates last time I tried the mission and that sucked up a lot of RUs.

I read in one walthrough somewhere that once you get gunships that you should not bother with interceptors, do you agree with that or not?

[antialias]

Yes. Interceptors are a total waste of RUs after mission 2 (apart from one later mission, but you will get told to build interceptors then). Full bombers are indispensible in most missions. bombers do modest anti-fighter duty. Pulsars are OK for that, too. Your main tactic should always be to bait swarms of enemy fighters into following you towards your flak frigates. 10 flak frigates backed up by fire control towers chew through fighter squads with alarming ease (build FCTs on all carriers, MS , BCs and the SY - retire the research module on the one carrier you get given and build one on the MS). keep an eye on fighter/vette health and dock hurt squads (yellow).

After mission 4 or 5 you should have enough RUs to always be maxed out. With a good spread of flaks and torps you should be fine (I personally don't like ion frigs as there are more effective ship killers available to you shortly and ion frigs get targeteed by every large enemy ship first - i.e they die like flies).
My preferential loadout is full bombers, pulsars, torps (because there will be some ships that get hurt more by anti-vette weapons in some missions). full resourcers for repairs are a must.

for the all-out battle missions I switch to 50/50 torps and flaks (no marines, unless you are told to build one, don't lug the one you have around. it is dead weight. retire it as soon as posible). don't forget to max out on mobile refineries. they have guns too! and get all 4 carriers so you can switch your tactics in a jiffy (RUs are plentiful from now on - use what works best).

use plats freely (I prefer gunplats over ion plats...but that is dependent on the mission).

[Azreal12]

Thanks!

[Pherdnut]

I actually found that I preferred Ints and Pulsars later on in the game. Bombers are nice for disabling BCs, but the capital hitting power lost from building flaks and torps instead of ions is pretty severe. I preferred to mix ions with a few torps and build pulsars to help with vettes if they get out of hand. The interceptors fill a much needed speed gap to help your corvs against lance fighters and other corvettes. Frigates are good for defending a fleet, but take too long on missions like 9 where you really need to spread out and hit targets all over the place. Fortunately, if you do choose to go bombers, the AI never seems to upgrade the speed on its ACs, so they can easily run away and draw enemy strike craft into groups of plats or flaks. Those elite bombers are fantastic units to have in the earlier missions, however.

I never found bombers to particularly helpful against strike craft whatsoever, although apparently they slaughter EMPed vettes.

[antialias]

well, especially in mission 9 bombers come in handy (knocking out all those pesky hyperspace gates).

you can do 3 groups there easy.
1: 5 destroyers
2: 12 pulsars and 10 movers
3: 16 bombers

each of those can take out a carrier in no time. leave the frigs with the destryers for protection or just leave them as home defense (there is nothing big enough to threaten a destroyer while there are carriers popping in)

[HarveyPooka]

Hello, how do you place the gun turrets where you want? I thought the mother ship produced them and simply planted them down when finished? Is it possible to move them?
Cheers.
HP.

[Azreal12]

You can move them once.

[Illuminatus]

to deal with the infiltrators, I just placed turrets all over the shipyard so the incoming frigates were badly damaged before they even began capturing.

using marines to hijack the infiltrators and then using them on the vaygr carriers is good too

[Sandman333]

Actually, there is a much easier way to beat this mission than what has been posted. Unfortunately, you have to fight the friendly AI to do it. Instead of destroying all the initial Vaygar ships at the shipyard, leave just one missle corvette. It will continue to attack the shipyard, but the shipyard self-repairs faster than a single missle corvette can damage it, even without getting repairs from your resourcers. That frees up all your resourcers to harvest. Build your fleet until you are maxed out. The shipyard will be long repaired, but the incoming carriers won't arrive until you take out that last missle corv. Then, pick your favorite strategy to destroy the infil frigs and attendant corvs. Personally, I like using flak frigs, about 6 or more of them, as it's fun to watch them tear everything up that the Vaygar send your way. Remember that once you start resourcing in the "remote location" (recommend building a refinery and at least 3 resourcers for this), you have to defend against a carrier and corvs.

Why fight the friendly AI? Because just like in HW, if you set your forces to passive tactics, they still fire at the enemy. You have to have split second timing, and move your forces away from the attacking Vaygar just in time so that you don't kill them all. It's a bug they should fix. Give us a weapons hold command that cuts off weapons completely.

[Azreal12]

Cool strategy, I'll have to try it.

[Sandman333]

Report back here and tell us how it went. I found that strat on another site and it worked wonders. Makes the next mission much easier too, as you have plenty of forces built up.

[Azreal12]

I'll be sure to do that, it won't be until sometime next week though as I'll be out of town and away from my PC 'til then (gotta get an Alienware laptop).

[Sjet]

Something I gotta ask about this one: when defending the shipyard against the boarding assault, suppose you killed off the carrier with the fighter module on it, so you face nothing but frigates; then you wait for an Infiltrator Frigate to come along and attack the shipyard. Then you board the Inf with a Marine Frigate, capture it, fly it to your MS and retire it for the RU, wait for another Inf to attack, capture that, retire it.....

Could you build up a nice nest egg of RU this way? (Unless retiring doesn't give you RU back for a ship or something? While I've played both HW1 and HWC, I'm new to HW2 and the rules may have changed.....)

[kaskara]

That would work if you could retire Vay ships that you've captured, but you can't.

You probably won't need the extra resources though. I don't think I ever managed to run out after mission 2 or so.

[FleetCommand]

Intelligence on enemy forces
This mission is very easy. If you know what's coming, you can safely deal with them as you fancy. However, enemy forces are calculated based on your starting fleet.

1. "Vaygr Recon Elements" include a single frigate (Assault or Heavy Missile), a small group of fighters and bombers, plus a handful of Missile Corvettes.

2. Vaygr Forward Assault Force are so kind to alert you their imminent arrival with probes. Destroy the probes or not, they'll come: A Carrier, a group fighters and a handful of Laser and Missile Corvettes. They'll first attack the forward resourcing operation, and then the shipyard. The Carrier doesn't produce any unit for a long time.

3. Vaygr Main Assault Force arrive after the shipyard is repaired. First two pairs of Infiltrator Frigates come with fighter escort. An Assault Frigate follows them. Then Three Carriers will arrive with escort. The two Carriers on the flank have Frigate Facilities and produce ONLY Infiltrator Frigates, in groups of two. The one in the middle, has a Fighter Facility and produces Assault Crafts, Bombers and sometimes Lance Fighters. Limited number (totally not more than six) of Assault/Heavy Missile Frigates usually exit hyperspace and join the battle, one by one, alone, without escort, all by themselves, defenseless, ... (Have you noticed that I mean they are easy to capture?)

[ForGreatJustice]

Uh...am I a complete moron? Why don't my Marine Frigates do anything when I order them to capture? THey just sit there and shoot at whatever I targeted....do ships need to be weakened first? subsytems destroyed? gods appeased?

I keep losing Mission 4 because my shipyard gets captured, and I can't get my frigates to get it back. Although, the capturing infiltrators trick is great. I've got to try that, and maybe keep a MF around whenever infiltrators get near.

Also, is anyone researching all the advanced facilities in this mission? I don't seem to have enough resources to do research, build frigates, AND keep up a stream of fightercraft to do the actual fighting.

And lastly, is it smarter to retire all major ships before every mission to decrease your next opponents, or simply have a big-ass fleet and play smartly with it?

[ScarleTomato]

I like to always start with the biggest fleet I can. 'sides, it looks cooler when you hyper in ;)

As for your problem, when you have the marine (or infiltrator) frigate selected. You should be able to hover your mouse over the carrier and get the red down double-arrow icon http://www.thefreeimagehosting.com/Uploads/Images/4404321875000mousecap.PNG (http://www.thefreeimagehosting.com/) next to the cursor, indicating that it's captureable. When you see this, right-click and the marines should be about their way, showing a teal line to reiterate to you their task.

However you unfortunatley can't capture the carrier. You just disable it for a minute or so. In SP you're not supposed to be able to capture any carriers, shipyards or motherships.

The other thing about capturing is that(unlike HW1) you can't exceed unit caps. After you have 4 capture frigates, all boarded after that they're just disabled like the carrier.

EDIT:
Thinking more about it, what may have happened is that when you first told them to capture it, they did, but you missed it. Then when you looked back, they were done disabling it, and they do like to bring their peashooter to bear if you don't give them any other orders. If I remember correctly, you can't immediatley tell them to recapture it after it's been disabled. That may be where you encountered problems.

[ForGreatJustice]

Actually, I LEFT clicked when I saw the red chevrons because left clicking is what executes everything else everywhere.

[sezam]

I have a problem with resource collectors in this mission. They get scared by the attack and they gather around resource controller in the dust and wait. Thought that was an intelligent move but then after danger is gone I tried to activate them again but they just won't move! Don't know what to do, I clicked everywhere, they're driving me crazy. Please Help!

[Abro]

Well this mission was pretty impossible at first- I played it for like 3 straight days (yes, days) and tried it every way I could think of, but I either got shredded by the V’s fighters and frigs, or they captured the Syard and I ran out of time and ru’s before I could get it back. After reading posts here from these tactical geniuses, I beat it on the first try- here’s what I did--------
I came into the mission nearly maxed in inties and bombers, so I maxed out on those, then on corvettes- I built ALL pulsars with the exception of the Elite squads I already had
and about 50/50 bombers/ interceptors. While I was building up, I took out the v’s attacking Nabaal and set my resoucers to collecting ru from the nearest patch right in front of my M-ship- I did not build any mobile refineries. I sent one interceptor to the Syard, kept one by my mothership, and sent a third halfway to the ru patch intelligence directed you to. I began moving the M-ship towards Nabaal (to speed up reinforcement arrival time later) and sent ALL the rest of my strike craft towards the fleet Intel ru patch. When the probes arrived in their positions they were easily destroyed, then I took out the marauding carrier that showed up. Then, I ran all my strike craft to the M-ship for repairs, then moved them toward the S-yard. I got the carrier and immediately ordered up 3 flak frigs, and moved the carrier a little ways away from the S-yard to protect it. I also ordered up more strike craft for reinforcements. The vaygr arrived, I started attacking them, took out the first wave fairly easy. When the V carriers showed up, i had no strike craft to spare, except 4 pulsar vettes scheduled for reinforcement. I grabbed them, and sent them straight for the fighter producing carrier (the one in the middle) along with 2 interceptor squads I stole from the battle. But it didn’t matter, cuz by now all 3 flak frigs were built with a fourth on the way, and were totally hammering the V fighers, and Inf. Frigs, although taking pretty heavy damage. So my puny force of the 4 pulsars and 2 inties flys right over to the fighter carrier, and totally obliterates it for the price of only the inties and 1 pulsar squad. With their fighter cover gone, it was all downhill from here. I sent the remaining 3 pulsar vettes to take out the far right carrier so no more frigs would come from behind, while my flaks and remaining strike craft obliterated one more wave of frigs, then took out the last carrier. I was SO SHOCKED at how stupidly simple this mission was !!! The keys to this mission- build all pulsars, get @ least 3 flak frigs and destroy the fighter carrier ASAP, plus I never went to the ru patch fleet intel said to, until the very end for some quick ru’s.