The best way to beat the Kadeshi

[Karos Grave Kpr]

what do you think is the most efficient way to beat the two kadeshi missions in the original homeworld?

because my old computer died on me and now i have to start from scratch.

[Fiirks]

I'm going to say MGC but with some additional chatter. Your best bet is to make a corv wall and go around popping swarmers. Use frigs to kill fuel pods quick and use your corvs to pop the swarmers. To make a corvwall, take all your light, heavy and multigun vettes, make them a group number (I usually use 2) and put them into an F4 wall (F9). Use three or so supports on them by holding Z and dragging a box around the vettes. This wall will pop swarmers fast and be impervious to thier fire.

Happy hunting!

[Starblade]

If you're Taiidan, will you have the Defense Field Frigate yet? If so, you just shut down the Swarmers.

If not, Defenders have always worked well for me.

[Fiirks]

I tried to use the DFF when I originally played through the campaign and there were a few problems with it: Swarmers tend to attack in at least 3 places at once (especially in the Cathedral Mission when they're comig in from 3 dirrections). The dff is slow. Thats the problem, and they're expensive. By this time I only had one or two frigate slots left (unit caps bleh in SP!) so I scrapped that idea and went for the support frigs instead. That was definetly more useful.

[Starblade]

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of putting one with your resourcer collector/controller, having it not move, and placing the DFF on top of them, basically. Same deal with the research ship.

[dbrower]

I tend to pay little attention to the swarmers at all, concentrating first on capturing fuel pods and MBFs, then on killing needle ships. It seems to me when you do that the swarmer problem pretty much takes care of itself.

I'm developing a new love of drone frigates, though, which are fantastic if you take advantage of the ghost-ship carrier build trick and make yourself a few dozen of them.

-dB

[AlphaOmega3]

I tend to set most ships on agressive and micromanage about 15 salvagevets capturing fuel pods and MBFs best have captured 14 MBFs and 27 Fuelpods in the cathederal mission swarmers blow up if pods are taken away.Concentrate most heavy firepower on Needleships
Question: Anyone every have the 3rd needle ship attack Mothership after the rear 2 were destroyed? this happened to me only once in all times played through it.

[Aesaar]

I used interceptors. Not much can stand the firepower of 80 interceptors for 30 seconds.

[mailpup]

Kill swarmers? What a waste. It's so much more fun to salvage them. Use supported bait ships and decoys, salvage fuel pods, anticipate where swarmers will run out of fuel and try to have salvettes waiting nearby. Liberal use of kami/salvage needed. Well, there's a lot more to it than that but if you are so inclined, you can grab a bunch without taking any losses.

[Starblade]

We aren't all salvage gods mailpup.

[mailpup]

You mean you're not all crazy, eh?

[Bobacanoosh]

I second ghostwind1 (though I did it with about 40) I always had better luck with large numbers of fighters, because the drone frigs are too slow and the multi-gun corvs are expensive, which means that a few lucky swarmer hits and you're out a fair bit of RU.

[atmawpn]

I'll have to go with both drone frigs and multiguns. But if asked to pick one over the other, I'd go with drones since they are available earlier than the multigun.

Drones provide for some excellent anti-fighter capability in the first half of the Garden mission, when you haven't researched the fast-tracking turrets yet. Later on when you DO get multiguns, drones are still good as a general purpose frigate. They give you more coverage than assault frigs, yet provide decent firepower as anti-capital ship options.

12 drone frigs in a big sphere formation is an excellent weapon. You just set them to aggressive, deploy drones, and move them to wherever you want to dish out destruction.

[Fiirks]

The cost of 12 drone frigs is insane. I don't know where in the world you could get that many RU by the Kadeshi missions.

[Splitstar]

I scuttled my mothership on those bastards. Hah not much can survive a MS scuttle.

But in all seriousness, 50 heavy vetts can decimate swarmers before they touch you.

[atmawpn]

Of course you can't get enough RUs for 12 drone frigates by the Kadeshi missions. Which is why starting with 4 or 6 is good enough to hold off the swarmers till you get the multiguns. You can always build up to the 12 mark later on.

I was merely commenting on the effectiveness of having the ideal 12 frigates.

[Locutus]

The cost of 12 drone frigs is insane. I don't know where in the world you could get that many RU by the Kadeshi missions.

Well, there is a reason you want to capture the enemy fleet in early missions. I usually set myself a goal of not killing a single enemy ship above frigate class when I play though. Difficult sometimes, but gives me plenty of resources.

For the Kadeshi I typically form two 5x5 walls of heavy corvettes to do the actual killing. I first send in captured assualt frigs to draw their fire, then the 'vette walls sweep in and do the dirty work, while my support frigates and salvage corvettes capture enemy MBFs and fuel pods.

[dbrower]

The reason I don't go for multiguns is that I don't want to consume covette slots with them, nor do I want to overbuild corvettes before the ghost ship opportunity arises. That, to me, argues for frigates that work.

A spreadsheet tells me that in terms of offensive firepower and speed, the drone frig is TWICE as good as any other frigate, and better than any smaller unit in terms of power vs. RU. Take firepower * speed, and effective range, and you'll see why the drone is Pretty Much the Cat's Meow (pmtcm), For instance compare the AF, fp 2400, er=4800, vs the DF fp=4900 er=6500, and you'll see why the DF is more than worth the RU cost. On the raw FP/RU, the AF is 4.17 vs DF 6.13. The ion frig is marginally better in terms of FR/RU, but they are worthless to me being slow and hard to bring to bear.

For yuks, I just took 15 DF's down to the Nova station and they wiped the defenses out pretty darned quick.

I guess I've only had a handful of DF's available at the Kadeshi missions, but they sure did the job.

I'm just learning the KamiSalvage. I can see it works, but I'm not sure I have the patience to snatch a zillion swarmers and defenders.

As a new game, I might suggest "how fast through" rather than "how big a fleet you can get" as an alternate game. I'm not sure how to reliably measure it though.
"Quake Done Quick" could be a fun model to emulate.

-dB

[Starblade]

I've suggested speed running the Homeworld games already, but sadly, I have no means of recording it. In Cata's case, due to time compression, I'd go with in-game timer for the final time (If anyone wants to try it, anyway).

[AlphaOmega3]

The cost of 12 drone frigs is insane. I don't know where in the world you could get that many RU by the Kadeshi missions.

Took this as a challenge replayed game.Had over 11,000 rus by end of Diamond Shoals ,more then enough to build 12 DFs but had to retire several captured frigates though to make room in the frigate line for them .Yes they do work quite well against swarmers lost no ships in garden and only 3 captured MBF ic second kadeshi mission

[EarthBorn]

It's really quite easy to capture all the MFBs (16/17 IIRC) in the second Kadeshi mission.
The Kadeshi Swarmers, fortunately, do not attack the Salvagers if they are not targetted by them. Of course, you have to make sure that none of your ships fire on the MFBs and that you have enough salvattes.

PS- Heavy Corvettes FTW!

[omega]

When i sent ru collectors out they usually got swarmed so i stuck a few defenders in a sphere around them,worked fairly well and insured i had a fresh supply of ru's coming in.

[guysnocussing]

Heavy Corvettes and MCGs are your best bet I think. I've had bad luck using fighters to fight Kadeshi Swarmers, and Drone frigates are usually picked apart. They're too slow and the swarmers love taking on capital ships first.

[PULSTAR]

Doesn't anybody believe in the balanced assault force? I voted for drones, but my best approach seems to be drones (4-6) with all sorts of fighters (scouts, defenders, bombers) and heavy corvs to take on the swarmers, with a horde of salvettes for the MBFs, and ICFs/destroyers/MBFs for the needleships. A strong, well-balanced task force that serves me well for quite a few missions at that phase of the game.

[guysnocussing]

I just redid the mission. I didn't use any fighters except for Defenders (close to 30 of them), I also ultilized mostly Heavies (close to 20) and MCGs (near 12) to fight the swarmers. It worked pretty well, I don't know how well scouts and interceptors fight the swarmers though.

[AlphaOmega3]

Interceptors work well in numbers 20-40 though scouts I find do not last long against swarmers

[Krabjuice]

Mission 7: Crazy story, I did it with 11 captured Assualt Frigates and 2 captured Destroyers. I simply moved all my non-essential units to the furthest point of the map and supported my frigates. The assualts were able to pick off the swarmers as they went in for re-fueling and the destroyers made occasional surgical strikes with their ion cannons. I did not destroy any fuel pods, nor did I loose anything. In addition, the swarmers that were sent after my resourcers barely had enough time to attack before they ran out of fuel and self-destructed. At the end, I had captured some 51 marooned swarmers and 8 advanced swarmers.

I intend to use these swarmers in mission 9. They're faster then scouts, with 1500m/s cruising speed. They've also got better weapons, and are beefier then defenders. This will make short work of the ghost ship before the missile destroyer can deal too much damage.

[Merturk_NB]

when I play this mission, I turtle down.

I have a couple of corvette walls, and I put all my ships right in front of my MS. I set a few Drone Frigates in the mix, in the middle to guard everything, and pick apart the swarms with my corv walls.

I also salvage the fuel pods if I'm in the mood.

[Peter]

I always use about twenty interceptors to deal with swarmers. I also have twenty heavy corvettes to guard my resource controller. (i mined all the possible resources on each map) i also use 5 Ion firgs, 5 Assault frigs, and a Destroyer (captured) to crush Kadesh motherships. The interceptors are good to fight swarmers. I also use my two salvage corvettes to capture multi beam frigates, swarmers, and fuel tanks! It is effective!

[Captain Elson]

my tacitc i got form my dad, build up 30-max slavage corevttes take tthe fuel pods then the multi frigs then the swarmers, then use the swsarmers to take the needle ships down as you now had hundreds of evil ships

Best catch
72 swarmers
12 swarmers advanced
13 multifrigs
all the fuel pods
I wanted so badly to capture a needle ship though
As for Frigates i couldn't build any until after 15 because i had captured betwwen 10 and 15 ion array frigs from the raiders and other taidani and kadeshi frigates, i mean why bother building when you can catch and turn them on their masters.

[Deathzealot]

Hmmm... Here's how I did the Garden, before I hypered out of DS I built up my interceptors sqauds (I had like three sqauds of like ten by that time) to about fourteen ships each, built like Four Drone Frigs, then i retired all my remaining bombers. Next I beefed up my Heavy 'Vettes to about 30. Finally I replaced all my retired bombers with Defenders so I had like 42 'ceptors, and 38 Defenders. When I started Garden I put all three interceptor Sqaudrons in Claw Formation in front of the MS. Then put all my Defenders into a Sphere Formation around the MS. Next I put my two of my Drone Frigs on Agressive and had them gaurd my two destoryers. The other two went to gaurd the Collector and Controller (I had only one of each of these). One group of Heavies in Sphere whent around the Collectors and Controlers Each. Then My remaining Heavy group in Claw Formation joined the Interceptors.

Finally I let my Collector go to trigger the Kadesh reponse. My defender group made short work the first group of Swarmers. Then the second Group ran afoul of my Vettes protecting the Resourcers. All through this I had my "Rover" Groups (The Intercopters and last group of Heavies) run around killing stranded Swarmers. Lastly I had my five Ion Arrays and Two Destoyers pop all the fuel pods. (I don't capture them at all). Granted a lost alot a small amount of my fighers and Vettes. But I did not lose one cap ship nor my collector. (Though one of my destoryers where in the red by mission end, I forgot the repair vettes Opps!) Anyways thats how I did it....

[Rebel]

I need to agree with the salvage sentiment. Go all crazy, destroy every fuel pod you can, and keep as many swarmers alive as you possibly can without risking major harm to your MS and maintaining acceptable losses. There's nothing cooler than having that one carrier filled with Swarmers and Advanced Swarmers.

[Eddy]

Just playing through those two missions now, I tend to use scouts/interceptors and heavy/multigun corvwalls for the swarmers, and my captured destroyers, ICFs and IAFs for the pods and needleships, with salvettes taking on the MBFs. In the Garden, I lost a total of three scouts, an intercepter, and a support frigate that I forgot to cover. I never use Drone Frigates, I find them to be more of a pain in the backside than they're worth.

[4ries]

Well I did get one or two DF's but they are near worthless imo. I never saw them doin any damage... So I jusy retired them to make room for another frig...

I used my interceptors and vettes to take on the swarmers. But I didnt know you could actually salvage those swarmers... I did capture some Fuel Pods and MBF's but I retired those Pods because you cant refuel/repair your own SC at them. But I had 3 or 4 MBF's. And I used them alot. If only to see HOW they fire... They target a ship and when they start firing they start spinning around their axis.