---------------------------------------------------- | Naval Ops: Commander | ---------------------------------------------------- Copyright 2004, Joshua Colin Nelson You may take this FAQ and post it anywhere or on any site you wish, just please do not put your name on it and pass it as your own. This guide was intended solely to help people who are lucky enough to have purchased/rented/borrowed the great video game known as Naval Ops: Commander, but have a problem that will inhibit their having fun with this great game. The guide is not close to complete yet, but will be as I put in more stuff for the game and actually beat the later levels and bosses. Version 1.0: I have completed all the boss walkthroughs for A through F areas, first campaign. More, especially more strategies for the regular levels, will be added sometime. ------------------------------------------------------------- | Table of Contents | ------------------------------------------------------------- Part 1: Introduction\General Strategies Part 2: Shipbuilding Tips Part 3: Game Walkthrough 3-1: Bosses 3-2: Sector A 3-3: Sector B 3-4: Sector C 3-5: Sector D 3-6: Sector E 3-7: Sector F 3-8: Sector G Part 4: Miscellany 4-1: Custom Designs 4-2: Other Information If you need to Control-F search for something in this guide, type the exact name of the boss you are looking for or the number of the stage you need help at. ------------------------------------------------------------- | Introduction+ General Strategies | ------------------------------------------------------------- Naval Ops: Commander is a great game, but you need to know about some of the essential tips for doing well in the game or else a complicated section of the game may have you stuck. Strategy Tips Use Escorts to their fullest! You may have a super-tricked-out Super Wave Gun Battleship of Doom as your flagship, but a reason you might not be doing so well is if all of your escorts are your two original Light Destroyer A's. Having good escorts can add to the weight of your firepower by a significant margin and protects you from the full force of the enemy assault. Your escort quality, like everything else in this game, will often determine the difference between your victory and lying at the bottom of the sea. Therefore, research Metallurgy a lot to keep your escort quality in step with that of your flagship. Research whenever you have the funds! You won't get far in the game without up-to-date equipment and vessels, which require some serious research to acquire. Though research is very, very expensive, at least every few missions you should increase your technology levels in relevant fields. At the start of the game, pour the majority of your funding into Metallurgy, because Metallurgy research garners you powerful prebuilt ships. While the late-game bosses can rip prebuilt vessels apart with ease, they are quite useful in the early game as a shortcut to obtaining a good vessel without giving money into all fields and constructing custom vessels. Which brings us to our next tip...... Replay missions for funds, kills, and good parts! If you need money for technology, specific ship kills to get the 100, 500, and 999 kill bonuses, or specific mission pickups, replay earlier missions to get those necessary bonuses. You should have a more powerful ship so you can beat these missions easily (and repeatedly, if necessary.) Battle-Specific Strategies Don't split your fire! Especially in the "battle a big fleet of enemies to sink a number of a certain ship" missions, it's not a good idea to shoot at different ships than your specific target. You will be wasting time and ammo if you shoot other classes of ships and your target is within range. This is one of the few cases where automated target lock may be useful. Sink carriers first! If there are both carriers and other enemies in play, sink the carriers first. The aircraft the carriers deploy continually harass you and can actually inflict damage on you if there are a large number of them at a time. They are also big targets with low armor, so they go down fast. Don't waste your heavy, long-reload guns on smaller ships! Smaller vessels like cruisers and destroyers are not worth wasting your big guns (or wave guns later in the game) on. If you have a secondary battery of smaller, fast-firing guns on your side, use them on smaller ships. Stay at full speed except when you need to maneuver! You will get around the field of battle much quicker at full speed. This also makes it so you are not a sitting duck for enemy fire, and is absolutely necessary to get anywhere when you have a ridiculously slow battleship. However, moving at a low speed is a good idea when you are collecting crates or life rafts from dead ships. Shoot inland targets from close range! If you have to destroy a certain percent of enemy shore installations, bump your ship right up to the mainland. Your guns will be in range of more shore installations from here so you can manage complete destruction. ------------------------------------------------------------- | Shipbuilding Tips | ------------------------------------------------------------- While prebuilt warships can get you through the first sector, later on you will need to modify these prebuilt vessels extensively or make new ships from scratch if you hope to want to have a chance of defeating the extremely powerful late-game bosses. There are multiple different ship classes, and multiple ways that you can modify each of them. This guide assumes you have the basic shipbuilding interface down, if not use the tutorial in the game or the manual. Destroyers (DD) The basic ship that you get early on in the game, destroyers are small, fast ships with multiple different types of armament for multiple situations. However, they are too small to mount most of the large armaments seem on battleships. Their speed is useful when racing about a level, but their low weight makes it tough to put good armor and weapons on. The 2-hull destroyer you get by destroying 100 transports later in the game is probably better, but by then you will be facing battleship-class enemies and the destroyer will be easily blown out of the water. To customize your existing destroyer, max out your gun barrels. You will have improved firepower for negligible cost in weight. Torpedoes don't seem that useful, so you might want to remove them. I don't know. A way you can maximize firepower early on is to put some of your back guns forward and increase your frontal firepower. Cruisers (CC) If you've been researching Metallurgy well early on, you should be able to get a prebuilt cruiser before facing the first boss (Wirbelwind.) There is a 2-hull cruiser in this game, but it is no longer the 100 transport kills reward (that's the 2-hull destroyer.) You can get it in G-9, first campaign, but by then you will be facing challenges you MUST BY ALL MEANS have a battleship for or else you will be VERY quickly sunk. Anyway, cruisers will (probably) serve as your mainstay ship for the last part of sector A and for all of sector B. By about the end of sector C you should have enough Metallurgy to get a prebuilt battleship. The guns on a cruiser are better than a destroyer's, and cruisers also have more room. This will allow you to load more and bigger guns onto your vessel. Increased tonnage also means you will have more room to mount armor and engines. On the other hand, due to their tonnage these ships are slightly slower than a comparable destroyer. They seem to form the best balance of tonnage and speed available in this game. Carriers (CV) You seem to get Carriers pretty early in the game, a bit after Cruisers become available. However, from my (admittedly minimal) experience with aircraft, it doesn't seem to me like their large carrying capability for planes is worth it. They are very weak armor-wise and have almost no weapon capability. Until you have maximum air tech, it's best not to even consider it. Battleships (BB) These ships have the biggest guns and the most parts room in the game. They can also pack the best armor available. You can get a prebuilt battleship if you research lots of Metallurgy by level C-5 or earlier. The best battleships, though, require heavy investment into all fields. They are capable of carrying the absolute largest guns in the game, and can carry all kinds of special weapons like Wave Guns and lasers. However, they cannot carry torpedoes and can only use some missile and VLS systems. This makes it tougher for them to fight against aircraft and submarines. They are also ridiculously slow, unfortunately. You have to put on lots of auxiliary systems and advance engine technology by a large amount to boost a battleship's speed up to that of a smaller vessel like a cruiser. However, their sheer armor and firepower are worth it in the later battles and boss fights. They have increased deck room, so they don't have to mount all their guns on the centerline. They can instead put guns side-by-side to increase the amount of firepower that they deliver forward. Unfortunately, this limits the amount of power they can put into a broadside, because some of the guns won't be able to hit ships to the other side. Since you should generally be pointing forward at an enemy, I consider this trade-off worth it. (NOTE: You get the Pocket Battleship instead of the 2-Hull Battleship for 500 transport kills in this game. You can only get the 2-Hull battleship later in the game in some replay stage for an S-rank.) Weapon System Tips Regular Guns Your mainstay weapon type throughout at least the first half of the game, until you start getting enough tech and pickups to start experimenting with different weapon types. The early guns all fire pretty fast, at least until you get past 25 cm. At about that mark, guns get WAY longer reload times and become much less attractive and powerful. They fire in an arcing trajectory, with the shells themselves moving pretty slowly. Not your best weapon against the faster aircraft and ships later in the game, but never bad. Depending on the size of the gun, they can usually be installed in multiples on your mighty vessel. Unfortunately, they are heavy to mount, especially if you place them far from the centerline. (NOTE: When you are mounting or modifying guns of any sort, it is a very good idea to always mount them in 4-barrel mode. Though this ups the weight, it doubles or quadruples the firepower pouring from one turret and is more weight-efficient than putting multiple gun turrets with the same total amount of barrels.) High Angle Guns These small, secondary weapons are generally pretty good against planes, but their range and barrel sizes limit them severely against other ships. High Angle guns generally have small mountings, enabling them to squeeze in deck space on the smaller ships. They are generally good early in the game, where their dual use serves them well. In the late game however, enemy ships will have armor and other defenses that High Angles can't scratch. I don't like them very much, except if you're just trying to load in extra firepower for low weight or if you don't have the room for a dedicated anti-aircraft weapon. Machine Guns Machineguns serve no purpose but to defend the ship from missiles, torpedoes, and occasionally planes. They are very small, low-weight weapons that fire at a ridiculously fast rate. They have very short range, but it is sufficient to destroy attacking ordinance and aircraft. The early ones have multiple barrel sizes, though unlike with guns increased barrels doesn't seem to increase performance that much. They do so little damage anyway that the only thing they're killing are PT boats. Speaking of PT boats, I think it's worth it to sink 100 PT boats early in the game, because that will garner you 4 30mm CIWS. I forgot what CIWS stands for, but having them is a very good thing when trying to protect your vessel. They are basically improved machineguns with only one barrel, but they are a very good thing to have when trying to intercept massed ordinance swarms enemy fleets and bosses fling at you later in the game. They are also short-ranged, but the rate of fire they put out is worth it. Special Machineguns The guns covered in this section actually have nothing to do with machineguns other than their fast firing rate. Special machineguns are either rapid firing cannons or chainguns. These guns are all mounted in turrets facing a certain direction like regular guns. I don't know much about rapid firing cannons, but chainguns are worth the deck space and weapon research it takes to get them. They are unfortunately short-ranged to the bigger regular guns you get about the same Weapons level. However, their extreme rate of fire can chew apart smaller ships and actually sinks battleships in a reasonable amount of time. You only get them as pickups until your Weapons tech reaches about 20-25, so they are not available early in the game. When you get them though, they definitely deserve a place on your ship and might even replace standard guns for most situations except bombing land targets, which can only be reached by the arcing trajectory of main guns. Missiles and VLS Missiles are generally useful only for specific situations in the game, as when used everyday against ships enemy machineguns can intercept them. They are divided into two groups: basic missiles and VLS. (VLS stands for Vertical Launching System, or something to that regard.) Basic missiles are much less advanced than VLS and can be researched earlier in the game. However, they seem to take up more weight and much more deck space. There are three sub-categories of missiles and VLS each: Anti Ship, Anti Air, and Anti Sub. (Battleships cannot mount anti-sub armament except for anti-sub VLS.) They are only capable of attacking their specified target type, except for the multi-purpose missile VLS that you can get by sinking 999 battleships or by S-ranking D-7, neither of them enviable tasks. If you have a sub problem or an aircraft problem that must be dealt with, attach the appropriate system to your vessel. Battleships have limited options dealing with submarines, because they cannot carry depth charges or anti-sub missiles. If an upcoming mission necessitates you having to sink submarines, you might want to get the best cruiser hull you can find, give it great auxiliaries, mount the most advanced technology possible, and load it up with anti-sub missiles (which I have found to be way better than depth charges.) Keep this vessel permanently for dealing with subs if at all necessary or until you gain anti-sub and multi-purpose VLS later in the game. Unfortunately, all missile and VLS systems don't pack much ammo, so running out of ammo in extended fights is actually a risk if you have these weapons. Their range varies, with anti-air systems having a pretty good range and anti-sub missiles with apparently lacking range. Rockets I don't use rockets on my ships, but from what I have heard they do not seem too useful for just about anything. They have low ammo like missiles, and are not guided. They move in a slow trajectory pattern like main guns, so it is easily possible for the weapon to miss or to be dodged by the enemy. From what I have heard, they are only really useful against land-based targets. Optical Weapons This translates into "sci-fi laser guns." Lasers in this game are powerful weapons, but they are easily countered by EM shields, which all bosses have in abundance and so do some replay campaign enemies. They are useless against submarines, and I do not know how well they would work against aircraft. Some of the more powerful lasers in the game can tear apart unprepared opponents, but by the time you have effective laser technology the enemy force will wield powerful EM shields that make your laser attacks ineffective. You only get them as rare pickups or by getting weapons and possibly electronics tech levels to around 25 or so. Normal enemies will fall before them, but they are much less useful in the replay campaign and useless against bosses. Special Weapons This is a catchall category of weapons that don't fit into all the other categories. Some of the most notable are flamethrowers and wave guns. Flamethrowers are mainly useless but are necessary to beat a boss later in the game. Wave guns are the epitome of destruction, taking huge chunks off a boss's life bar and flat-out killing all other enemies that you face. Another special weapon is the Rail Gun, which hits one ship for severe damage. You get the Rail Gun Astal by killing 100 superships (not an easy task.) I don't know if it's worth it. You also get some more wave guns (I assume) at about the 500 and 999 supership marks. Vital Equipment Engines Engines are a vital part of any ship's construction. Your ship may have a Wave Gun and a hundred 80cm chain guns, but that doesn't mean much if its top speed is 0.01 knots. While firepower is of course important, missions take forever and some of the missions are effectively unwinnable if your ship is slow. During most of the first campaign, the engine setups follow a boiler-turbine system. You have to place boilers and turbines in specific spots to maximize your efficiency. You can place these engines boiler-turbine-boiler to maximize engine efficiency, or you can use "shift placement" to negate some speed advantages but minimize engine damage. Later in the game, you get gas turbines that don't require boilers to function properly. I haven't yet compared gas turbine setups to the level of boiler-turbine setups that you also get about that time. However, I use gas turbine setups in most of my ships these days. Bridges The forward and aft bridges are vital components of your ship, but they are reasonably large and depending on your hull they take up a lot of deck space. You hardly want to lose gun space to your bridges, so you have to position them properly. I don't know what statistical advantages a better bridge offers you, but they are a vital part of construction. Auxiliaries Auxiliary systems add to the fighting power of your vessel for a minimal weight investment. They are generally improved by research in Electronics. You have seven slots for auxiliary systems, which are broken down into Offensive, Defensive, and Movement. Offensive systems include radar, sonar, auto loading systems, ETS, fire delay systems, and anything else that will help you shoot stuff. Defensive systems include Emergency Purge, Anti Radar Systems, Electromagnetic (EM) fields, Gravitational Fields, and anything else that will prevent your opponent from shooting you or will minimize the effect. Movement auxiliaries, though I don't have any yet, make your ship go faster or be more maneuverable. A recommended accessory at any time in the game is the latest version of the Auto Load System. This system increases your fire rate and helps you at just about any task. The Emergency Purge System increases your hit points by a certain percent, which can help you survive enemy attacks. Later in the game though, when you have gravitational fields to block the enemy's physical attacks and electromagnetic fields to defend against their lasers, you may elect to remove it in favor of some other auxiliaries. The ETS systems increase the distance at which auto weapons may attack. This is helpful if the enemy has a lot of aircraft or if you have multiple different gun sizes. Sonar and Radar at maximum help you see more enemies at a greater distance. (NOTE: If you aren't going to be facing any subs in a level, minimize your Sonar level. It might save you enough weight to put an extra auxiliary on that may be more useful.) Better sensors are especially helpful if you are in a level where you need to defend allied ports or hunt down transports. Later in the game, you will get EM fields and Gravitational fields. EM fields protect you from lasers and Gravitational fields protect you from regular gunfire. Though they cost LOTS of money, they are critical in helping you survive the onslaught of lasers and guns in the late game. I don't know what precisely the Fire Delay System's usefulness is, because it reduces your salvo concentration. The Auto Fire Extinguisher extinguishes fires faster, but since fires eventually extinguish themselves it doesn't really matter. The Optical Intensifier helps if your ship has lasers on it, increasing a laser's firepower. There are a lot of other auxiliaries too, so experiment with what is best for your ship design. Aircraft and Launchers/Elevators I generally don't care that much for aircraft, because they didn't seem to have a lot of offensive potential the few times I used them. The launchers that fire them take up a lot of useless deck space if you're not using any actual aircraft, so delete them from your ship if you have no aircraft. Prebuilt ships sometimes come with a launcher that you will want to get rid of if you aren't giving them aircraft. Carriers carry the most aircraft in the game, but they don't have any room for guns or armor. All other ships don't carry enough aircraft to nearly be worth the deck space and weight that using a launcher takes up. Armor With armor, it's best to keep the armor you're using in step with the amount of firepower you expect to be facing. For the early stages of the game, armor is very vital to the survival of your ship because you have no other defense mechanisms whatsoever. Later in the game, you will be getting defensive fields and accessories that reduce the amount of damage that you will be taking from enemy fire. You may want to reduce the amount of armor significantly later if you want to reduce weight. Armor is very weighty, so without it you may have more tonnage to mount stuff. Still, armor combined with accessories offers the absolute most effective defense that you can have. Armor does not seem to be as useful against the lasers that later bosses spit at you, so you might want to reduce the armor and upgrade your EM field to deal with this. There are two kinds of armor- deck armor (for defending yourself from arcing projectiles and bombs) and hull armor (for defending yourself against line of sight attacks and submarines.) Depending on the enemies you're going to face, maximize or minimize certain armor types accordingly. ------------------------------------------------------------- | Game Walkthrough | ------------------------------------------------------------- Bosses As most people who have problems with this game seem to have them with the bosses, I'll make a separate section at the start for them. General Boss Strategy Always keep your ship at maximum tech levels! Though this is always a good idea, keep doing missions, collecting funds and researching technology before dealing with a boss. After your first fight to see what he's like, you might want to go back, do previous missions and bosses again, and gain a few tech levels. Bring your best escorts! The enormous bosses completely outgun you. Only with the help of your Escorts will you stand a chance. Bring boss-specific escorts to add to the weight of fire hitting your foe. Use EM fields and EM shield ships against laser bosses! After Sturmwind, the majority of bosses use deadly laser cannons against you. They are much more powerful than regular weapons, but EM fields can dramatically reduce their effectiveness. EM shield ships are also good because in addition to shielding you, they shield your escorts too. Add this to your EM shield, and you will have a necessary layer of protection against the laser bosses. With your escorts protected as well, you will not have to worry about coughing up Escort Rescue funds. Bring boss-specific weapons! If the boss can't be hurt by specific weapon types, remove them and put in something else. Never use lasers on a boss, as they all have super EM fields. Don't bring anti-sub weapons unless you are fighting a sub boss, and anti-air missiles are useless against anything that doesn't fly. There's no point wasting deck space and tonnage on weapons that don't do anything. Don't let the boss just hammer you from out of your range! Lots of bosses have weapons with longer ranges than yours. These are usually some of their most powerful, too. Though the bosses have lots of weapons that they can use at short range, you can at least hit them back. You hardly want them smacking you for a loop and you not being able to do anything about it. Specific Strategies Wirbelwind You should get a strong prebuilt cruiser and at least cruiser-class escorts before trying to deal with this guy. Not only does he nearly outgun your entire attack group, but he's really fast for such a big ship. Here are his attacks: Long Range Cannons: Wirbelwind is packing long-range, heavy cannons to hit you from well outside your range. Since he's firing from so far away, you should be able to dodge his attacks. Don't let him hit you that much, though. Short Range Cannons: These fire faster than his previous cannons, but they are short-ranged. You are too close to maneuver if he fires these, so just take it and give some damage straight back to him. Torpedoes: Wirbelwind launches these at short to medium range. Your machineguns can intercept them before they damage you. Machineguns: Wirbelwind uses these to intercept any torpedoes you may launch at him. Hopefully, torpedoes aren't too much a part of your offensive. (Note: Most bosses use long range and short range cannons in addition to their special attacks.) He starts the fight with hit and run attacks, mainly using long-range cannons on you. You need to hit him with a couple of barrages to make him stay around and fight. He has a lot of HP compared to the amount your cannons can dish out, so a concerted pounding will be needed to finally sink him. After you've hit him with a couple of barrages during the hit-and-run part of the fight, he will slow down and unload on you with all his weapons. This is when he will do the most damage on you, but this is also the time that you can hit him hard. Heavy firepower will help a lot during this stage of the battle, so you should upgrade your guns and barrels beforehand. Remove anti-sub and anti-air weapons from your ship beforehand, because they don't do anything at all to Wirbelwind. If you're seriously having problems with this fight, look at upgrading your escorts a bit more. In the early game, escorts aren't that expensive, so you should do some more Metallurgy research to get better escorts. If you keep at him, he's not really all that hard. Dreadnought He's a bit different from your previous fight, because Dreadnought is an underwater submarine. As such, in the first phase of the fight you can only hurt him with Anti-Sub Missiles. Go back to mission A-3 and A-rank it continuously. This will get you Anti-Sub Missiles. (This assumes that you haven't already done this to get past the first couple transport escort missions in B sector.) Take your cruiser and put these missiles on the back. If you haven't sunk 100 PT boats and gotten 30mm CIWS, do so. Get better escorts to help with the surface phase of the fight and so that they don't die to Dreadnought's missiles in the underwater phase of the fight. Don't take a battleship (if you have one) on this fight because you have no anti-sub weapons as of now that you can put on one. This fight operates in two phases: underwater and above water. After you've done him enough damage underwater, he leaves the water and you can finish him off with your cannons. Here are his attacks: Heavy Missiles: While underwater, these are his main attack. He fires them continuously and rapidly. They do a lot of damage if they hit. Though, being missiles after all, they can be intercepted if you have good machineguns or CIWS. He has multiple tubes and fires in all directions. They seem to have good range, but it seems like it more because of the short range of your anti-sub missiles. Torpedoes: Seeing as he's a sub, Dreadnought wields a lot of torpedoes to destroy you. However, he either doesn't seem to bring them out often, or you lose them between them and his missiles. Short and Long Range Cannons: When Dreadnought surfaces, he brings out his deck guns. They are similar to Wirbelwind's powerful cannons, and Dreadnought uses them similarly. He tries to keep his range and blast you with his long range guns. Close the distance and finish him off. All of his other attacks are similar to the ones already listed. For battle strategy, drive right over him if you can. Since he's underwater, you won't bump into him. You will have to do this because anti-sub missiles only aim backward. Unload on him with missiles when you pass over him. He will fire his missiles and torpedoes at you during this phase, but if you have CIWS they shouldn't be too much trouble. After you do significant damage to him in this phase, his health bar will refill and he will surface. In this phase, he uses his cannons often, but his missiles are no longer a threat. However, entering your zone was a big mistake. Now you can blast him with regular cannons and your escorts can too. He will have more health now, but it goes down faster. Your escorts will come into play more here. With their help, you will inflict much more damage on your underwater foe. When he finally goes down, chapter B is over. Congratulations! Archaeopterix You will need to radically revise your ship for this fight. Archaeopterix doesn't even touch the water (except when he dies that is.) He is a giant flying bomber plane that the game says is trying to destroy allied port cities. Thankfully, he immediately targets all attention on your group instead of the cities. This will make the fight easier. He flies faster than your regular cannons will track him. Therefore, they are almost useless in this fight. Go back to Dreadnought's level and sink his guardian subs for anti-air missiles. Put a lot on your ship. He flies pretty fast, but most of your missiles will hit him. If you want to and you have one, take a battleship so you have more room for your anti-air weaponry. Be careful though, as speed helps in this battle. Pick a lot of anti-air escorts, but make them sturdy so they stand up to Archaeopterix's attack. He will be sending a lot of firepower your way. Here are his attacks: Long Range and Short Range Cannons: Yes, these attacks are similar to the previous bosses. If you have a fast ship, you might dodge them. Bombs: If you let Archaeopterix pass in a straight line over you, he'll drop bombs on you. If you keep at full speed and stay out of his way, this won't be a big concern. Missiles: Archaeopterix fires airborne missiles and torpedoes at you. These shouldn't be too much of a concern if you have good machineguns and CIWS. He does the same hit-and-run pattern as the previous bosses, but he moves even faster than Wirbelwind. He moves way too fast and changes altitude much too frequently for regular guns to be of any use. Though anti-air missiles aren't a whole lot better, at least they can track him and (eventually) hit him. Due to the lack of times you can hit him and his evasiveness, the battle will take a while. Thankfully, he doesn't seem to have that much health (being a plane, after all.) Your escorts will help, but not as much as you may want them to since they lack anti-air missiles. Try this fight enough and you'll eventually win. If you are still not doing well, go back and do money missions to upgrade tech levels. Dual Crater This guy isn't too tough. He is thankfully waterbound, unlike the non-conventional recent bosses. He is a landing craft with two hulls. The landing craft part is important because if he reaches your base, he takes it over and you lose. He deploys PT boats from two hatches on his back, but unlike Warship Gunner they don't seem to actually do anything and there are not a lot of them. The key to this battle is simply being able to trade fire with him and survive. His own weaponry is underemphasized, due to his special features. Get a big battleship, even if it's slow. Fit rapid-firing, short-range guns onto your ship. If you have chain guns, use those. His attacks are as follows: Long and Short Range Cannons: Similar to those of all other bosses. Missiles: He fires a lot of missiles at close range, inflicting heavy damage unless you have CIWS. He doesn't seem to have many other attacks, and his health is low. Beat on him with your guns until he sinks. He doesn't employ the hit-and-run attacks of the previous boss set, just gunning for your harbor. Having powerful escorts will also help you a lot here, so you and your escorts can blast him to the bottom of the sea. Speed doesn't seem to matter when fighting him, so you can just devote all you've got to heavy guns. His weapons don't seem to be that powerful. Even with a relatively weak battleship, I've never been sunk once by him. Later in the game, if you need funds or if you want to test a new ship design, just return to this mission and pummel Dual Crater a couple thousand times or something. Sturmwind You probably won't be expecting Sturmwind's arrival in mission D-04 if you weren't reading this FAQ, since he wasn't listed in the mission objectives. He appears at the south of the map after you've destroyed the runway listed as the mission objective. He's basically an exact clone of Wirbelwind, the first boss, except for enhanced statistics and the fact that he happens to be packing laser guns. To counteract these mighty weapons, add in an EM Shield Mark I or II. His shots should bounce off. Use your mighty cannons to pound him into debris. Other than his lasers and more HP, he's a Wirbelwind clone. Trollslegur This guy is pretty tough if you aren't properly prepared for him. Trollslegur is a laser-carrying battleship, so you need (you guessed it) EM fields. Get at least an EM field IV and bring along an EM shield ship or two. This will make you effectively invulnerable to all of Trollslegur's weaponry. It is a good idea also to edit your ship and replace your regular guns with chainguns. These rip even the mighty Trollslegur (and just about everything else) apart. The 88mm multi-chain gun is one of the best. Still, you need all pieces of a powerful ship if you are to win over him. These are his attacks: Blue Laser Gun: One of Trollslegur's many lasers, he has a lot of these and pounds with them repeatedly. Red Laser Gun: More powerful than Blue, he has only one red laser gun, but it will hurt unless you have EM fields. Blue Laser Gun of Doom: A more powerful blue laser weapon, Trollslegur only uses this once his HP dips. Get ready to hit the bottom of the sea unless you have an EM field mark IV and an EM shield ship along for the ride. Missiles: Like Dual Crater's, they are not really that powerful unless you don't have a ship full of CIWS. And please tell me why you wouldn't. Red Laser Gun of Doom: The mighty Trollslegur's most powerful weapon, this gun creates two red lasers on either side of your ship. They sweep together and most likely sink you unless you are packing an EM shield ship and a good field. Even then it hurts. Trollslegur is no doubt a powerful boss, though I have not seen many people in trouble with him. This is probably because a good field and one shield ship take a lot of the bite off his advanced laser attacks and makes his first-phase ones bounce off. Two shield ships make his attacks less powerful than a PT boat. Even when you've knocked off his attacks as a threat, he still has a high health bar. It will take a lot of pummeling to destroy him unless you have a load of Chain Guns mounted to your vessel. With Chain Guns and EM shield ships, he is no threat whatsoever. Once you have a good Chain Gun oriented setup, just take a lot of EM shield ships and sink him over and over again. S-rank this mission to get Multipurpose VLS, which will help you against subs if you are a battleship. Counter his attacks, and he won't be much trouble. If you have serious trouble with this boss battle, do Weapons research until you have 88mm multi-chain guns. Put a lot of these on your ship and pound him to debris. Brillodein Brillodein is another aerial boss, in this case a UFO. Not only that, but he also has some of the most powerful lasers in the game. His erratic movements also make him a tough adversary. Before battle, create a reasonably fast ship equipped with a lot of anti-air missile launchers. Chainguns are decent against him, but they don't rack up the damage on him fast enough because they miss a lot. Anti-air missiles are at least decent at fighting your foe. Pack at least two EM shield ships and a good field, or you are dead. Even with those, you need the right strategy to win out against him. These are his attacks: Cannons: Like a lot of other bosses, he has short and long range cannons. They aren't his most powerful attacks though. Missiles: Brillodein also attacks you with powerful missiles. They are no match for CIWS. Laser Disc: This laser misses often and seems to be one of his weaker weapons. Brillodein fires it in an arc away from your position, then it turns around and attacks you again. It shouldn't be too big a concern. Laser Lighting: This is one of his worst attacks. He flies over you and zaps your whole squadron with laser lightning. Even with a field and two shield ships, you will take significant damage. Other Lasers: He has some more lasers than these, however they aren't that powerful. Instead of employing a hit-and-run strategy like most of the foes you've faced, Brillodein flies circles around you. His direction isn't that important, seeing as he's a UFO. Regular guns are useless like with Archaeopterix, so your only hope is anti-air missiles and VLS. He doesn't have much hull capacity, but the low amount of damage anti-air missiles do may dishearten you. His powerful lasers probably will sink you a large number of times, so don't expect to win the first time around. Since your escorts, wielding normal guns and all, can't hope to hit him, bring along a lot of EM Shield Ships. Their protection will be just about invaluable against his might. If you are really having trouble, upgrade to the best battleship hull you have and start working on a custom ship. Muspellheim Muspellheim is basically Trollslegur with a carrier section stuck on each side. He also has a time limit like Dual Crater: you have to prevent him from blowing up your base. This shouldn't be too tough if have a battleship loaded with Chainguns and a really good grav field. Check the Ship Designs section at the back of the guide for the Executor, a ship that should wallop this boss with no problem. Just put one EM field ship on, he doesn't have superpowerful lasers like Brillodein. These are his attacks: Side Cannons: A bunch of weak cannons he mounts. They will only give you trouble if you happen to go right alongside him. Everything that Trollslegur has: He will only use Trollslegur's weaker lasers when the carrier sections are still on, but he will use the Lasers of Doom once he "transforms." Muspellheim has a whole bunch of planes that he launches, but just set some chain guns on autofire and they will be irrelevant. Just ignore them and concentrate on the big guy. His battleship escorts will not try to stop you unless you get in their way, and besides they die almost instantly assuming you have lots of chainguns. Just sail circles around him and blast him with your chainguns. This battle is truly made WAY easier if you have chainguns. After you have taken away most of his life bar, he drops the carrier sections and basically becomes just Trollslegur. He uses the Lasers of Doom now, though you should have an EM Shield ship protecting you so this shouldn't be relevant. You should know the strategies for defeating him above. If you have loads of chainguns pummeling him, this fight is pretty easy. Harima Harima is a dual-hulled battleship that is of course way bigger than you. He lacks fancy lasers, preferring just to blast you repeatedly with impossibly big guns. Though it's expensive and requires a whole lot of tech research into Electronics, get the Grav Field Mark IV if you can. It blocks half of all physical damage, so Harima's cannonfire will not scratch your mighty vessel. Add in heavy armor plating and Harima's attacks will not harm you much. As before, use lots and lots of Chainguns, ignoring all the people who say that you should attack his deck. Your Chainguns might take longer than usual to sink him, because he has his own gravitational field. Fortunately, it's apparently a low-level model. Your Chainguns will still sink him though if you keep up the pounding. These are his attacks: Heavy Cannons: Harima has a whole lot of different varieties of cannons, all trying to plaster you. With the Grav Field and heavy armor, I have not found that they hurt me a whole lot. Not much variety here, this is just a straight-out slugging match. He uses typical boss hit-and-run tactics, though he seems not to run as far. He has powerful cannons, but is no match for Chainguns. He seems to have a lot of HP, even against chainguns, but it still goes down comparatively fast. If you have good engine technology, you should be able to go after him even if he runs and blow him to dust. Using the power of Chainguns I don't think he is too hard. Arahabaki If anybody ever wanted to fuse a BattleBot (TM) and a Naval Ops supership, it is very likely that Arahabaki would be the result. He has a drill mounted on his front, and two saw blades on each side. He may look humorous, but is not to be underestimated. Collision between his drill and something= Instant Death. Even if your actual speed is fast enough to escape him, your escorts may not be so lucky. Since your escorts move at the same speed you do, adding more engines and increasing your engine technology will hopefully save both you and them. Even when you have a whole lot of Chainguns, preferably at least six mounted forward, it will take a while to sink him. Still, Chainguns rip him apart faster than anything else in your arsenal. Here are his attacks: Cannons: Yes, he has cannons like everyone else. By now, you should have at least 51cm armor on most parts of your ship and a grav field of at least mark III or better, so this attack should not be a concern. Drill and Saws: Instant kill for you or your escorts if you get hit with these. Thankfully, they are ridiculously short-range, allowing you to hopefully dodge them. Missiles and Torpedoes: Like all other superships he has weapons like these. No match for grav fields and CIWS. The key is to circle around him, pummeling him with chain guns. You need a speedy ship that can outmaneuver him and continually pummel him before one of his close-range weapons connects. Your speed should be about 37 knots, and you should have a decent turning radius as so to be able to stay behind him. Here, you will have increased chaingun pummeling time and a better position to maneuver. The boss's maneuvering and speed are decent, and hopefully yours should be the same or better. Unlike the last fight, it's a turning battle. You just have to stay on his tail and sink him with chainguns before he scratches you with any of his weapons. His other weapons are no concern if you have a ship full of CIWS and a good gravitational field. If you are having serious problems, take some things off your ship or get more engines. Amataseru Yes, another drillship. But don't underestimate him after your victory over the Arahabaki, he is much tougher. He may look similar to the Arahabaki, but he has much more health. Even with a powerful chain gun setup, he takes forever to defeat. During this time, he's spearing your escorts with his drill and costing you heavy money. You just about NEED chain guns for this fight if you haven't loaded them on already for the previous foes. Without them, you'll have just as much success ramming yourself into his drill head-on. Here are his attacks: Everything that Arahabaki had: All of Arahabaki's weapons transfer over to this ship. Multi-Warhead VLS: Amataseru's big weapon difference is this new missile system. He fires multiple missiles at you. Each of these weapons split into a number of smaller missiles. This weapon is not affected by gravity fields, and it seems tough for the CIWS to intercept it. This does a lot of damage. Lasers: In the lower stages of his health bar, Amataseru uses a couple laser weapons. It isn't advised to bring an EM shield ship to the fight just to deal with these, so with a good EM field you'll hopefully just weather the attack. Amataseru carries much more powerful non-drill weapons than Arahabaki does, so it isn't just a maneuver battle like the last fight. Even CIWS and gravity fields don't seem to effectively counter his missiles, so load up on the deck armor. You will certaintly take a lot of damage in this fight whether you like it or not, so be prepared for that. Keep maneuvering around him, but don't by any means run into his drill. You also do not want to get him out of the range of your chain guns, because then you will lose precious hits that he will take advantage of. Because he has more health than Arahabaki, make sure your escorts are at least Heavy Battleship D's or something similar. Their heavy firepower will help with the boss. There is a very high chance that you will lose escorts and need to pay Escort Rescue whether you like it or not. If this mission is siphoning your funds, go back and beat someone like Trollslegur or Dual Crater a couple hundred times. You will probably end up having serious problems defeating him, but my only suggestion is that you beat some early bosses a couple hundred times so you can get more money. If you can take the annoyance, beat 100 superships (preferably someone easy like Dual Crater) so you can get the Astal Rail Gun. This will hopefully help in the battle. Habakkuk This is an unusual supership boss- he is actually an iceberg loaded with weapons! He is referred to as an "iceberg carrier" but the planes he launches are irrelevant. It's his lasers you need to worry about. If you hit him with any weapon other than flamethrowers, he starts regenerating his health bar. You must either use flamethrowers to prevent him from regenerating or continually pound him with more chain gun hits than he can regenerate. He also has a load of battleships escorting him, but you can blast them with chain guns or just ignore them. If you have flamethrowers, put them on. If you don't, go back and see which missions have flamethrowers or just rely on the almighty Chaingun. Unless you are very lucky or have a whole bunch of extra stuff tacked on to your ship, you WILL take engine damage in this fight. To minimize this, load up on hull armor so that low shots do not get through to your precious engines. Whether you have flamethrowers or not, load up on chain guns anyway. They do the most damage. The heavier chain guns you have the better. Go back to some of the earlier missions (D-10 has a lot of chain guns if you can A-rank or S-rank the Brillodein fight) if you want to to load up on chain guns. You will not need to bring along EM shield ships for this battle because his lasers miss so often. Here are his attacks: Regular Supership Weapons: He has missiles, cannons, and torpedoes of all sorts. You should be insulated from most damage if you have a good grav field and armor. Green Arcing Lasers: He has a lot of these green lasers, but they seem to miss alot. Even if you do get hit, a good EM field will provide protection. After you've halved his HP, he also uses a laser that moves in a DNA-like pattern. This does not miss as often as the arcing lasers, but does not seem that powerful anyway. Before he appears, you have to get through some icebergs and fight a couple of battleships. The battleships are no problem if you are loaded with chain guns. You first have to catch up to Habakkuk himself, then keep on his tail because he runs away from you. Shoot him with your heavier chain guns, which are hopefully long range weapons. He will use his powers of healing, but they will not heal him faster than your chain guns can kill him. With a good chain gun-based ship it's easily possible to kill him in about five minutes. He gets slightly more aggressive and uses a more powerful laser once he gets his health halfway, but you will still do more damage with the chainguns. If you have flamethrowers, they will only make this fight easier as they will stop him from regenerating. Overall, this fight is pretty easy. If you need to max out your tech before challenging Druna Skass and Druna Skass II beat this guy up a lot. Druna Skass No, this is not the final battle. But it is pretty tough. Druna Skass is a ridiculously large warship with a gravitational field and a very strong EM field. He also has other weapons that make him pretty powerful. But the biggest threat in this fight is definitely his Wave Gun. If he gets in position to use it, you are quite dead. Therefore, this will become a maneuver battle to avoid you getting in front of him. Max out your engines so that you can stay behind him. If you are lacking money to max out your tech, go back to the Habakkuk fight and sink him until you have level 30 on everything except Air Tech. You will then have the pick of all the weapon types that money can buy. To get those you can't, go back and go to missions that you can get kill rewards, rank rewards, and crate rewards on. Get everything that you need for this fight, because it is not easy. Your weapons should be chaingun based, because without chainguns you don't have a chance. If you feel you require it, sink Dual Crater until you get the Rail Gun Astal, which will take his health down. The setup that I beat Druna Skass II with and probably will beat Druna Skass is this: Go back and A-rank the Brillodein fight 4 times, so you have 4 254mm chainguns. S-rank it once, this will get a 356mm chaingun. Get the best battleship hull you can find and put the four 254mm chainguns forward, side-by-side. Move the back two guns one up. This will allow all guns to shoot forward. Behind them, put the 356mm chaingun and put it to maximum height. This will give you maximum firepower forward. Get the best gravitational field and EM shield you can and put on 61cm deck armor and 41cm hull armor. Put as many Gas Turbine VI's or higher as you can in all the space not filled by chainguns. The rest of the ship setup is up to you. Anyway, here are his attacks: Lots of regular guns and missiles: Cannons and Multi-Warhead VLS are some of his main weapons. The VLS are your only concern, since they aren't stopped by grav fields. Load up on CIWS. Lasers: Druna Skass starts the fight with lasers, but not that many of them. The lasers he uses can inflict a bit of damage, but not a whole lot. Max your EM field and you shouldn't have all that much trouble. Wave Gun: Druna Skass only uses this at about half health. You know he's trying to use it when his speed and maneuvering increase drastically. If he gets something in his sights at this time, he fires the Wave Gun. This sends him flying backward at incredible speed and does him a lot of damage. When it hits you though, you are instantly dead. Even if he misses with the Wave Gun, this is still bad. He will be so far out of your range that you will have a tough time closing the distance or out-maneuvering him before his next Wave Gun shot. Even if you evade it, you will probably lose an escort or two. Druna Skass starts with the not-so-intimidating strategy of running away. He keeps his rear weapons trained on you, but they cannot slug it out with a good chaingun array. He has a gravitational field, so he will take less damage from your chainguns. This still should not be so bad. The real threat comes when you halve his health bar. Not only does he start using more lasers on you, but he also uses his Wave Gun. If you don't always stay behind him, you will not have a chance. If you pound him with chainguns, he will eventually fall. Druna Skass II Yes, another Druna Skass. He is bigger, packs more firepower, and has an EVEN BIGGER WAVE GUN! He can still be taken down with the same basic strategies though. To get to him, take the middle path. I have found you will take less damage here. As usual, pack the best chain gun set up you can. If you haven't repeatedly A-ranked and S-ranked the Brillodein fight to get the best chainguns, do so now. If there is any fight you want max tech on everything before, it's probably this one. Sink the easy superships a lot to get more money and get everything excluding air tech to level 30. If you feel like it, get the Astal Rail Gun to do more damage. The Chain Gun setup I listed to defeat Druna Skass I above should work here as well though. You should have Grav Field Level 5 and EM Field Level 4 or better before this battle. This will ensure that you are protected against everything Druna Skass II has except the wave gun. All of his attacks are slightly powered up versions of the attacks Druna Skass I has, so I'll just get to the battle strategy. Except that it's sunny out so you can see farther, this battle is quite similar to the first one. Pound his rear end while he runs away, weather the rear weapon fire, and get into a battle of maneuvering once he's at half health. His wave gun is bigger and more evil than before, but the same strategies apply to avoiding it. He also has slightly more health, but chain guns should still take it down swiftly. How you fare with him depends on how much you've upgraded and how you fared against the first Druna Skass. General Mission Strategies It's a bit tough to go back through each mission and give walkthroughs on every single one. Also, most of the missions fall into one of a number of categories. Therefore, I will give strategies for missions of a certain type, which will hopefully help you beat them. Sink number Y of ship type X These are the more basic missions that you encounter. Since you'll be sinking lots of stuff, try to maximize your ship's firepower before entering the mission. Defense also helps because you'll be taking fire. Speed is less important, though if your targets are far apart, you may want to balance your ship more so you can get them faster. Of course, it depends on the mission. If your targets are battleships or something similar and they are not that far apart, you might want to max weapons instead of everything else. If there are lots of enemies between you and your target, you might want to consider maxing defense out. Speed is critical if your targets are at two ends of the map. Unless you're trying to complete secondary objectives or you're looking for an S-rank, ignore other enemies unless your target is in range. Use the objectives window to find your target, and then lock onto him and blast him. Only shoot anything else if it gets in your way and you can't hit your intended target from here. These missions usually go by pretty quickly. Destroy X percent of enemy port installations (NOTE: This is one of the few missions where chain gun ships may have problems because they can't hit installations with their trajectory. Substitute out some of your chain guns for really big long range guns. You should be able to keep some of your chain guns for antiship combat and also destroy inland installations.) For this mission, a fast ship helps. The enemies usually aren't too numerous, so you may want to cut back on defense. The installations are scattered far and wide, so you will want to move fast. Keep the ship at high speed until you detect targets. Then slow down, to zero speed if necessary, and unload your cannons on the installation until every single piece of ground-based installation has been wiped out. For best results, park right next to the shore to maximize your range. This, combined with decent cannons, should allow you to get through these horrible missions in the fastest time possible. (If you haven't guessed, these are my vote for worst Naval Ops mission type.) Protect X number of transports (or protect unidentified ship) In these annoying missions, you have to defend a certain number of ships from enemy attack. Your focus in this mission type switches from protecting yourself, which means you can dump armor if necessary, to protecting an allied ship or ships. Weaponry is predominant, including machineguns to intercept enemy ordnance, and regular guns as so to wipe out ships before they have a chance to fire. Speed helps when going ahead of your charges to destroy enemies, but is not as critical as powerful guns and interception.