Mullet's Silly Sunray Observations.

[Mulletproof]

Believe it or not, this event is vastly easier than the initial rescue mission because it is mostly about procedure-- how and when you do things, less what you spec and stuff you install. To be be perfectly blunt, it almost doesn't even matter how you spec your captain or what modules you take. As long as you have a halfway competent team, you WILL beat this with five stars.

1. Don't go charging in.
Yay! You saved the Translyvania! ...With Zikas hot on its trail. Fortunately, your new ships will pop them like balloons, so there's no reason to charge into melee range or even assume escort positions around the Translyvania. Speaking of, it's no longer the main target, so you can afford to neglect it a bit more than you could in the rescue missions. Charging in will just pull you out of critical positions for when the Filth begins to expand.

2. Stay together.
Common theme, huh? A lot of your healing abilities are based on range, damage and/or potency. Staying together can ensure that everybody stays topped off. For example, a CA popping off inversion charge not only becomes a self healing machine gun, but is an impossible to kill juggernaut inside a BBs healing zone, whose own abilities scale with damage. Conversely, a single BB way out on the left flank becomes much easier to focus down by the enemy.

3. Rally on the first tower.
3.5 ...Or the second.
This should be your first objective since it will be the enemies' primary target. Stay together. Don't scatter. Eventually that enemy trickle will become a horde massing on the nearest tower and if you're not there, it will go down and you're already 1/3 to failing five stars. This is a blood in the water opportunity for anything with torps, BTW.

[edit] In further review, the first tower does seem very hard to keep alive. My run might have been a fluke. In either case, enemies will port in at close range. All your fleet will need to be there for this defense to be successful.

4. Focus Fire the Rasputin
As soon as it appears. Everybody. No exceptions. You will likely have only one shot to kill the Rasputin once it appears before it retreats back into the Filth. It's HP also regenerates like mad, so it cannot be left alone for any length of time. one of my games had it below a quarter HP and by the time I could rearm my bombers and get back into position, she had retreated into the Filth and was damn near back to 100%. Kill the Rasputin with prejudice. He appears around F2.

5. Watch those DDs
Especially the player DDs. They seem to like close quarters combat, which means if you can splash them at range they're rarely a concern. In CQC, they're amazingly effective player-DD killers with guns and will drop several braces of torpedoes on hapless battleships, both of which have happened to me. Just kill them before they become more than a simple nuisance.

6. Spam your abilities
In PvP it's natural for us to conserve our limited resources. Here, the engagement is on a timer. Don't hold back. Also remember most of your abilities are damage based. If you pop one, you better be doing damage in tandem so it can be more effective. If you spec superintendent, you'll get a silly amount of them. Use them as soon as their cd runs out.

7. Exploit the Filth.
As long as you can assure the survival of the towers and death of the Rasputin, DDs should exploit the filth since they have an ability specifically designed to manuver through it. Filth decreases visual ranges, but even that works to your advantage since it's much tougher for an enemy to evade torpedoes that were launched from visual acquisition range. CAs also have an ability to boost visual acquisition range that would work well with DD ops in theory. In practice, I never wanted to be close enough for it to be effective.

Summary--
It's not about what you spec as a captain. It's not about the modules you carry. It's about the order of what you do and when you do it. Sure, the first two things will help you, but I'm poor. I don't have several million to spend across four boats that will get removed at the end of the event anyway. You'll also notice they took away the free captain respec. No, I'm not spending real doubloons either. Yes, the first few games were rough but once you know when and where to do things, it becomes much easier. I had a stripped boat without modules and five-starred my 5th game by spamming the basics in chat.

And I got my Kagero camo first pumpkin, which was the only thing I was after.
Score.

 

Miscellaneous--

• As mentioned, a CA popping off Inversion Charge can tank nearly anything one on one. You can eat multiple citadels and as long as you can keep the DPM, you'll heal through them. Combined with BB Repair Zone, and you're a god for the next 30 seconds.
• Ram to your heart's content, BBs. Remember where ramming Rasputin wasn't a viable option in the first mission? With Energy Shield, you can ram whatever the hell you want and not feel a thing.

[Goodwood_Alpha]

Thanks for this, Mullet. My clan was having problems with this, so it's good to have a reference point.

[Ace_04]

Great write up.  Well written with some really good advice here.  But since I haven't played the scenario yet, I have a couple questions:

 

• Does the enemy ALWAYS go for the north tower first, regardless of circumstance?
• Or will they divert their efforts if you blockade the first tower?

[vonKaiser]

3 minutes ago, Ace_04 said:

Great write up.  Well written with some really good advice here.  But since I haven't played the scenario yet, I have a couple questions:

 

• Does the enemy ALWAYS go for the north tower first, regardless of circumstance?
• Or will they divert their efforts if you blockade the first tower?

From what I've seen it's 1st tower first, regardless.  Thing i've been trying to figure out is is the destruction proximity based.  Been in a number of matches where it's nigh on full health, that one DD, or CA get's close and boom, down goes tower and the ships. 

[pewpewpew42]

Anyone to do this op with me tomorrow night? I've gotten 4 stars, but want that last pumpkin...

[Mulletproof]

4 minutes ago, vonKaiser said:

From what I've seen it's 1st tower first, regardless.  Thing i've been trying to figure out is is the destruction proximity based.  Been in a number of matches where it's nigh on full health, that one DD, or CA get's close and boom, down goes tower and the ships. 

They actually fire upon it. The game we won five stars had a stupid amount of them massed on the tower, but we were diverting enough of their fire so it could self heal. At least I think it was self healing. got a bit hectic.
But for argument's sake it's could be the fact that you leave it completely unopposed within a zone area? But really, it looked like they actually have to fire upon it.

[Mulletproof]

20 minutes ago, Ace_04 said:

Great write up.  Well written with some really good advice here.  But since I haven't played the scenario yet, I have a couple questions:

 

• Does the enemy ALWAYS go for the north tower first, regardless of circumstance?
• Or will they divert their efforts if you blockade the first tower?

I've never seen them divert.

[CylonRed]

FF turned off like in the first operation?

[vonKaiser]

3 minutes ago, Mulletproof said:

They actually fire upon it. The game we won five stars had a stupid amount of them massed on the tower, but we were diverting enough of their fire so it could self heal. At least I think it was self healing. got a bit hectic.
But for argument's sake it's could be the fact that you leave it completely unopposed within a zone area? But really, it looked like they actually have to fire upon it.

Maybe it's a torp salvo then or something.  I could swear I've seen it go from 100% to 0% when they're closing in, but I could be mistaken.  Highly possible, so much going on at once on screen with aiming and trying to get the herd of cats out of the filth that I might have simply missed it taking big chunks of damage

[CylonRed]

11 minutes ago, pewpewpew42 said:

Anyone to do this op with me tomorrow night? I've gotten 4 stars, but want that last pumpkin...

I would like to - not sure what time though.  Got 4 but would like 5 stars.

[Edgecase]

The first tower can die with no penalty, and it takes out any enemy ships within a few km of it when it blows. The best use for it is honestly to let it blow up either the flanking pack that spawns by it (i.e. leave it alone) or try to bait even more ships to it. No need to defend it to the death, it's meant to be used as a wave-clearer.

Although yes, if you want to do it the hard way, you can fight to keep it standing.

[Mulletproof]

4 minutes ago, vonKaiser said:

Maybe it's a torp salvo then or something.  I could swear I've seen it go from 100% to 0% when they're closing in, but I could be mistaken.  Highly possible, so much going on at once on screen with aiming and trying to get the herd of cats out of the filth that I might have simply missed it taking big chunks of damage

You have a point. There's been times when it looks like they just suddenly appear there, but I always kind of assumed that was a spotting distance thing.
Now you make me wonder if they're unchallenged, it simply gets destroyed outright. Oh well. Peeps just need to be there and its not a thing :)

[Mulletproof]

1 minute ago, Edgecase said:

The first tower can die with no penalty, and it takes out any enemy ships within a few km of it when it blows. The best use for it is honestly to let it blow up either the flanking pack that spawns by it (i.e. leave it alone) or try to bait even more ships to it. No need to defend it to the death, it's meant to be used as a wave-clearer.

Although yes, if you want to do it the hard way, you can fight to keep it standing.

Meh, it's not hard to keep it up. They all cluster around it and invariably run into each other, run aground, etc. Mass salvo of torpedoes cleans it all up nicely.
That said, I hadn't thought of just using it as a nuke

[Skpstr]

When playing a CV, is it a good idea to go after Gorgon? Or are you just throwing your planes away?

[Ghostdog1355]

Good write up. Haven't had a chance to play but plan on it tonight.

[Skpstr]

One thing I really like about this op is that, unlike Pt.1, I'm not passing up on credit earning to play it 

[Sovereigndawg]

2 hours ago, Edgecase said:

The first tower can die with no penalty, and it takes out any enemy ships within a few km of it when it blows. The best use for it is honestly to let it blow up either the flanking pack that spawns by it (i.e. leave it alone) or try to bait even more ships to it. No need to defend it to the death, it's meant to be used as a wave-clearer.

Although yes, if you want to do it the hard way, you can fight to keep it standing.

Doesn't the fact that it takes longer to close the gates count as a penalty?

[Buck_Meatmissile]

The Magnu-S can take out both the Rasputin and the Gorgon instantly with no damage by turning on the invulnerability shield just before ramming them.  This even works inside the filth, but the BB is going to take a lot of damage inside there.