And now the final entry in the trilogy. I've beaten the campaign with the three weakest ships in the game. Every other ship has equal or greater firepower and maneuverability than one of these ships (except the Humpback), so we now know the campaign is beatable with every ship in the game.

As for the Startracker, here we go.

My initial observation that the Startracker has less firepower than the Rhino turned out to be incorrect. The Rhino can deliver damage fast from seven hardpoints, but the power runs out after three seconds of that. The 'Tracker has a surprisingly beefy powerplant for a ship of that low level; it can sustain 3x Adv. Scorpion fire for a good thirty seconds before running dry.

Regarding maneuverability, the Startracker lives up to its name quite well. Its sustained turn rate may be down there with the Defender and Anubis, but its acceleration is right up there with the Starflier and Patriot. It takes a while to get on an enemy's six, but once there the 'Tracker can stay there very well and can fire nonstop the whole time.

Since the Startracker isn't available until after mission 2, I just took my save from the Maximum Fun campaign where my Defender had four Adv. Scorpions before mission 3, and bought a Startracker to mount them on.

There's only one good combination of weapons for this ship. It doesn't have the hardpoints to spare to mess around with shieldbusters or missiles; it needs three guns. And nothing compares to the Adv. Scorpion to fill the class-3 slots, but the only good class-4 companion to them (matching projectile speed) is the Outcast Dragoon gun. I didn't go out of my way to get the Dragoon, but just used three Adv. Scorpions until getting to Cali Base normally where I bought one Dragoon.

For mission 4, I bought and equipped a Sweeper class-4 EMP missile launcher to play around with, but it really isn't all that effective because once you shoot a missile at an enemy fighter, your guns will bring down the shield anyway before the missile gets there. It makes a nice zappy effect, but it's pretty useless.

The Startracker cruised through the first eight missions quite easily; I had to run away to recharge maybe once in the Rheinland battle at Willard, once in the Tau-29 fleet battle, and two or three times at the Transport. The 'Tracker's beefy powerplant and small size let it take down the Tekagi weapons platforms easily. Based on my results with the Startracker, I think that the Starflier's ability to take little damage is probably more due to its small size than its maneuverability. The Startracker does not share the 'Flier's maneuverability, but it shares its small size, and did share its ability to avoid damage most of the time.

Tekagi's arch delivered me my first death; three in total in all. One against the Tekagi patrol (these ships are noticeably more deadly than anything in the campaign before them), and twice in the exact same way at the Arch. Both times at the Arch I successfully took out all four shield generators with heavy use of Drillers, but the system/graphics lag generated when the shield goes down make me take several quick missile hits before I could respond. The third time I made it, and with 13 nanobots and 11 batteries to spare.

Mission 10 was easy, with Drillers to register three cruiser kills in the fleet battle and to kill the experimental battleship.

Mission 11 was the hardest, as it is for anything that isn't a freighter. On this mission, I realized that the Startracker is very effective at applying mines to stationary targets. Its small size means that the mine launcher is effectively closer to the target than it is with a bigger ship like the Rhino, and a closer mine is of course a more effective mine. At the beginning of mission 11, I flew right into the middle of the Navy satellite and took it out with mines right away. (Screenshot is below.) The rest of mission 11 was flying around as usual, picking off fighters at the edges of the fights when possible. Oh, and three rather embarrassing deaths in the battle before the jump gate when I pulled a thruster-kill getaway, and backed up right into the minefield. Yes, I did that three separate times.

Mission 12 was easy as usual again (do the Nomad fighters intentionally not shoot you during this mission?) The battle on the other side of the jump hole was somewhat hard, but this time (unlike the Starflier and Rhino) I got through it on the first try. As I wrote in the Rhino campaign, the big problem here is the gunboats. The Startracker (and thus any class-4 or better ship) has enough firepower and protection to fly in to a gunboat, keep its guns trained on the target the whole time, and blast it to death usually before the other Nomad fighters take down the 'Tracker's shields. Being able to take out the gunboats made this fight MUCH easier than in the class-3 ships.

Mission 13 - cake. Small size is the biggest advantage you can have against the shield generators, which the Startracker has in spades. A load full of Driller mines, and the Nomads were history yet again.

Screenshots coming in next post.

And now on to the FLDQ runs...

--