A remote research station in the shadow of a giant super nova provides us with the perfect spot in which to start out passage through the Taiidan Empire. It also provides us with an excellent source to gather information about the Empire as we seek a safe means of traversing it to get to our Homeworld.
Mission Objectives
New Research
New Ships
What I do
This is your first mission where the only corvettes you will want to use are salvettes. It takes very little time for corvettes and fighters to die if they stray out of the dust veins so prevalent in this mission. From this mission on corvettes and fighters will have less and less of a role to fill in the main mission sequences. I'll launch my salvettes and form up all cap ships to travel up the main vein of dust I find my MS in. There is plenty of room for all the ships to travel up to point A on the map.
Now if you are short on resources you might want to start collecting them from the 2 main locations, one in front and one behind the MS, I like to wait though because the collectors have to be baby sat in order to keep them healthy, it can e a pain if you are also in a battle elsewhere so the aggravation can wait. Plus I have 9-10000 RUs from retiring salvaged ships to this point anyway so I don't really need them.
As I travel up the main arm of dust I reach point B and encounter a wing of interceptor and corvettes easily dispatched with the assortment of frigates and destroyers, the missile destroyers (MD) being the most damaging at this point. Once they are gone it is on to point C. Points C, D, and E are all mine fields and a minelayer. I use the force attack command (ctrl+shift) on the mines and the minelayer with all the cap ships I have and take almost no damage at all. The MDs and a large group of ICFs and standard destroyers (DD) make this task easier than eating pie.
So far you may be wondering why the salvettes are tagging along, point F on the map is where they come in handy. You will find at least 2 DDs and a heavy cruiser there (HC). With a total of 12 salvettes you can get all three with little problem if you have the SFs repairing them as they capture the vessels. It takes 5-6 salvettes for a cruiser (the computer keeps changing it's mind as to how many here) and 3 for each DD, if you don't lose any you will get them all on the first try. At this point you can stop your advancing force at point F and wait for the 3 new ships to be processed so your salvettes can once again join your fleet.
Once all 12 salvettes are back to point F I proceed towards point A. The ships located at point G and H are set to attack your fleet once you start attacking the main target, so for now you can ignore them and continue to your destination, besides you don't want to risk damaging your fleet traveling between the dust veins.
As soon as you reach a point slightly above point A, close enough for you to actually see the research station in normal view, start your fleet towards it, keep the salvettes and support frigates back though, you will need them if you want to capture the carrier. Once you start to attack the research station the carrier parked in front of it will head out, I like to salvage it but you can destroy it if you like. Once it is taken care of you can mop up the research station with little problem. There are 2 ICFs and 2 AFs guarding the station and the 6 AFs from point G and 5 from point H will be badly damaged and easy to finish off.
There is a curved wall of defenders in front of the research station but they were no problem with all the MDs, DDs, and ICFs I had with me. Once all the ships on the map are dead I am ready to exit the mission.
