ITOD Home > Academy Tour 2 > X-Wing Academy 201 - Probe

Avg. Rating: 7.0

Reviews

FA Licah Fox on 1 March 2020
Rating: 7
This mission provides a relatively fun dogfight. A decent casual fly, taking about 25 minutes to complete. Replay value low, as the only challenge seems to involve staying alive in a standard dogfight, but a fun single-run mission overall.


== Mission Summary ==
On the first run of the mission, I had to fight off three Gunboats or three X-Wings at the same time as four TIE Fighters, a 7-on-1 battle. The Gunboats quickly demolished my wingmen with missiles, and the TIEs eventually joined the party. This kept me on my toes. The timing of the mission went very well. I had just destroyed CRV Rat when CRV Kepa hypered out and I completed the mission.

On my second run, I sent my wingmen home right away, pounced on the Gunboats, and only had to deal with one flight of enemy fighters at any given time. I had to wait around a few minutes for the convoy to hyper out.

On both runs, the TIEs had no chance of reaching the transports and nobody attacked the freighters. The Corvette looked dead in space with a bevy of torpedoes launched at it by the X-Wings, but for some reason the torpedoes all circled around the Corvette and didn't hit it directly. Also, the X-Wings couldn't manage to shoot the Corvette with their lasers either. If they had, this mission would be extremely difficult to complete. One would need to try to find the X-Wings' arrival point and blast them before they can target the Corvette. One salvo of torpedoes from the X-Wings is enough to fail the mission, and that would happen within seconds. Later games in the series make it much easier to shoot down enemy torpedoes. I have no idea why the Corvette is invulnerable - the mission file yielded no more clues either. I flew on X-Wing DOS as usual.

I missed a TIE both times - possibly stolen by CRV Kepa, or from friendly fire, not sure.


== Mission Strategy ==
Send home wingmen, tackle Gunboats as soon as they appear, wait for T/Fs to come back and clear them out. Depending on how the X-Ws behave, you might clear out all TIEs and then the X-Ws, or you might deal with both at once. Finally, destroy CRV Rat and wait for the convoy to leave.


== Bugs ==
- CRV Kepa is invulnerable, though this is what makes the mission possible to complete.
- T/F Vanz should not hyper in - should appear from CRV Rat.
- Mission time should be increased, 20 minutes is not enough. 30 would be fine. The last ship makes it to hyperspace around minute 24-25.
- A little typo of "freighter" in the briefing.