Walkthrough Level 13

The Karos Graveyard - The Shining Hinterlands

[3:0:0:0]

• Note that (A)Captain Elson arrives (on his independent HS drive) late
• Keep all your CSp's in Military Formation; the Junkyard Dog (Corvette) can steal a HC or Carrier single-handedly
• Group your MGC's together and send them [L] until they can move forward and pass down the left-hand-side of the Junkyard without having to enter it
• Send them to the end of the map (where the white bits of Junk turn into brown ones, near the Junkyard Office) Send them so that they do not pass near to the Junk on their right. Set them to Normal tactics so they don't waste fuel
• Focus on the MGC's. Forget the rest of your fleet; they're safe where they are and they can't help where you are
• Turn on the Tactical Overlay. (E)PS's are shown as Non-combat ships and an (E)Autogun (a stationary frigate) shows as a rectangle
• Move the MGC's into the Junkyard and set them on every that shoots them. Don't go out of your way to kill an Autogun you can see but which is not shooting you; you get no 'points' for this and you cannot afford to waste the fuel. Don't shoot any (E)PS's either since there is no need and fuel is precious
• Slowly, carefuly, make your way to the Junkyard Office. There are many (E)Autoguns in range of it, so take them each out (but only the ones that can shoot you as you stand in front of the Junkyard Office)
• Set one MGC to Dock with the Junkyard Office
• Leave the way you came. Avoid shooting anything. Get back to your MS as fuel levels go into the red
• If you want to get on to the next level, you can HS straight away. (But manually Dock your MGC's before HS so that they will be ready at the start of next level)
• The next step is to harvest the RU's that stand in a column in the Junkyard near you. Sending a RC in would be suicidal against the (E)Autoguns. Cloaking them would not achieve anything because the (E)PS's will detect cloaked ships
• Build a wing of Cloaked Fighters
• Send them into the Junkyard and set them to kill the (E)PS's. They will be detected by (E)PS's while cloaked, and they will decloak every time they fire, but you ought to be able to finish the whole level with the only ships being lost being a few CF's
• Keep a close check on their fuel levels and refuel them before it is necessary. You only need to take out the (E)PS's that you can see from the column of SpaceGas and those that you can see on the way to it from the MS
• Now set two CFG's to 'Guard' each RC you want to send into the Junkyard. The clouds of SpaceGas at the bottom of the column contain just under one RC-full. The clouds at the top of the column contain just over three RC-fulls. You may want to send in a RCn with four CFG's as escort
• Read the Hints On Cloaking
• Once you have the RU's, there is nothing further to be done on this level
• However, I noticed one time I played this level, that the Junkyard Dog got stuck. He was just about to enter his HS window when I had to switch CFG's on one of my RC's. He turned around to steal my CFG's and RC and ended up revolving, trapped, in the HS window. He was still there when I had finished Harvesting so I sent my D's, MD's and HC's through the Junkyard, cleared out all the Autoguns, all the HS windows (except his one) and burned the Junkyard Office to the ground (umm, wait a minute...) The Junkyard Dog was still stuck there. A single SC said, "This ship's too big..." but more SC's wouldn't approach him (man! I'd love to have that guy working for me!!) So I just set my beamers on him and after ten minutes he was toast.