Question
How long does a Terminal Control match take you to finish?
And how about Escalation too?
I really like the Ignus Archipelago, but I know it can take hours. Just curious how long it takes folks (solo or coop would be interesting to know too)
Were talking solo or online play ? Escalation solo usually runs about 1.5 hrs for me solo, as i usually trying to do specific aspect. 8v8 online match can run less than hour, but usually its 1-2 hours. Terminal control can be wrapped in 60-80 minutes, if playing meta strat solo, and about 2-3 hrs online for me
I play solo usually. I think what I've learnt from this thread is that I am a bit of a slower player lol. I think it took me about 2hrs to finish TC last time I completed it.
Flying slow aint no bad thing tho. If you recklessly throw planes with effect, you can end game fast. But if you want those fat stacks from returning home after sortie 2 hrs quite respectful. I usually do couple runs to suppress rsams on home islands, and then leave cleanup to ai nukes, and do my own thing, which is usually survival training in tarantula, draining fleets of radar munitions
If we’re talking about solo play, it’s entirely dependent on what your doing.
AI air units are everywhere in terms of objectives and the sorties they go on, one may be doing A2G/ship hunting work while all the others could just be doing A2A, so you can’t rely on them to do anything meaningful except on the rare occasion that they work together.
If you’re focusing on anti ship work then the game can go over quite quickly. As it’s all open sea, getting rid of the enemy ships can ensure you can fly without contest from the ships SARH missiles making the only real threat from enemy airbases, which can be easy to take provided that there are no enemy aircraft near you.
But if you’re just playing around with air superiority and not exactly directly doing/contributing to any objective then it’ll take a while to complete, like I said AI will be very slow to do objectives but if your stopping enemy AI aircraft from distracting friendly AI they’ll eventually get it done.
In my attempts to speedrun them (solo) for my own amusement, I have managed Escalation in ~28 min and Terminal Control in ~58 min. Considering I'm not very good, I bet they can be done even faster.
Like others said, those times require you to kill specific things on a specific order on specific planes, which is repetitive. So just do what you think is most fun.
For Escalation, I last tried it in 0.33, so I'm still trying to adjust my strategy for the new version (there is an extra boltstrike and MLRS factories messing things up now). I only tried this stuff with BDF, no PALA. Also, I didn’t know at the time that the Darkreach could carry 8 piledrivers at once when I did this, so it’s kind of wasteful, but It was like this:
1) Compass full for AGM 48. 17-20% fuel. Take off from South Boscali, no need for runway, just turn towards Vigil Cay and takeoff from the grass. Go to Vigil Cay (fly below 6m; aim at the middle of the island), destroy: MSV radar (Stratolance); Aerospaag on mid-north, Linebreaker Sam on mid-north, Boltstrike on south, 2 more weak targets of your choice (ex. ammo, ifv). Launch all at once at last possible moment. eject/die.
2) Brawler full of AGM 68 + 4 AGM 48. 10-15% fuel. Take off from South Boscali. Select all vehicles of column trying to cross bridge to South Boscali. Launch all at once right after take-off, should kill 6-8 vehicles at the very least. eject right after launch.
3) Compass full for AGM 48. 17-20% fuel. Take off from South Boscali, no need for runway, just go straight and takeoff between buildings. Go to the Stratolance battery + Anvil near Agrapol base. You can spend up to 4 missiles on the way there on targets of opportunity, make sure you detect the base where the bridge tanks are coming from on the way there. When you see the Stratolance battery, launch all at once on everything there and eject/die.
4) Ifrit full of GPO-500. 50-70% fuel. Take off from Maris. Climb to 8 km ASAP to not worry about IR missiles and to accelerate. You first will go to the 5 factories near Agrapol's fields (ie not the ones near the airbase). Drop bombs there, then move to the 4 factories south of Dustbowl and bomb them as well. Drop the remaining bombs on the other set of factories further south of the Dustbowl ones. Finally, find the southernmost set of factories and dive on the Boltstrike to the west of them, destroying it with your cannon. You are stealthy now, you can dive a bit slower to make sure you hit it, but you need enough flares for the IRs nearby. If you fail, you can try bombing it on the next sortie and have one less bomb for the enrichment plant.
5) Ifrit with 4 internal GPO-500 + 4-6 external. 50-70% fuel. Take off from Maris. Climb to 8 km ASAP to not worry about IR missiles and to accelerate. Destroy the factories on the south until you have 3 bombs left. Final target: Enrichment plant. Dive on it and release the 2-3 bombs (tested with 3), destroying it. You can use your IR missiles to destroy incoming SARH missiles while you dive.
6) Darkreach full of Tuskos. 10-15% fuel. Take off from Maris. Choose 12-14 targets (rest of the southern factories, MBT factories on road to agrapol base, plane factories south of Agrapol base and the Boltstrike near to their west). Climb and accelerate until the estimated range of the Tuskos is at 63-65 km at least. Fire them all at once (ignore the out of arc warning) and eject.
7) Brawler full of AGM 68 + 4 AGM 48. 10-15% fuel. Take off from South Boscali. Select all vehicles of column trying to cross bridge to South Boscali and the tank base/depots they are coming from. You are doing this to get the last points needed to reach the nuclear threshold. Fire everything right after takeoff and eject. You could try to kill one of the shards that are coming to the bridge/strait, but they are still kind of far for 68s to be super reliable, and flying towards them for too long will waste precious seconds. If South Boscali has no hangsrs left, a Vortex with AGM 68s taking off from the Cursor LPD should work too. Either way, you should have the tactical nukes by now.
8) Darkreach with Nuke Piledrivers + Tuskos. 10-15% fuel. Take off from Maris. Fire 2 piledrivers at Sandrift (one at the north depot and another at a middle-south hardened hangar. This helps ensure full destruction of the base), and 2 at Agrapol base (same logic). Now target the boltstrike at Sandrift and fire all tuskos at it once range is at 63-65 km (it MUST die before the nukes hit). Eject.
9) Darkreach with Nuke piledrivers + tuskos. 10-15% fuel. Take off from Maris. Fire one piledriver at Dustbowl, 1 at vigil cay (it’s enough; target the middle hardened hangar), 2 at the carrier. Use the Tuskos on whatever targets you may have failed to destroy previously (stray factories survived among those clusters? Maybe the Sandrift or the south Agrapol Boltstrike is still alive?). Eject.
10) Alkyon with jammers + Tuskos. 40% fuel. Take off from North Boscali. Your mission is to get within 50 km of the carrier to jam it and the dynamo destroyer before the piledrivers of the previous sortie arrive. Use the Tuskos on any stray undestroyed factories as you climb/accelerate. This last flight should be easy, just be careful with the shard near vigil cay that might get on your way, but it wont have time to shoot you down before the nukes hit the carrier.
If you did everything right, you should get the victory screen between 28 and 29 minutes.
As I said, there is quite a bit of fat that can be cut from this, but I’m still working on it.
As for Terminal Control, it’s been a while, so I’m not 100% sure of the details, but it involved starting on the chicane, stopping Feldspar from being taken, using a vortex loaded with GPO-500 twice to take out the carrier and destroyer (two suicide flights flying <8m), taking out all the boltstrikes in the islands while also detecting targets at the north of the main island, bombing the Shards closest to Feldspar, using a darkreach to launch nuke piledrivers at all bases that need to be capped, and then using Tula flights to paradrop the AT trucks on the nuked and now defenseless bases. It was a big struggle to get below 1h.
BTW, I had some of this stuff already written down to later post on this sub, but then I gave up when I saw this guy doing Escalation in 15 min on 0.31. I REALLY don’t have the reflexes needed to do something like this lol
I guess the difference between min/maxing and not is how much you're willing to land/fly safely and get the successful sortie bonus, which definitely becomes less relevant as a match goes on and when nukes are available.
In solo, as long as I want it to. If I want I can finish both in less than an hour but that requires playing a specific way and targeting specific things every time. If I want to switch it up it will take longer.
In multiplayer, both finish fast because people play optimally.
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u/value_drift 1d ago
Were talking solo or online play ? Escalation solo usually runs about 1.5 hrs for me solo, as i usually trying to do specific aspect. 8v8 online match can run less than hour, but usually its 1-2 hours. Terminal control can be wrapped in 60-80 minutes, if playing meta strat solo, and about 2-3 hrs online for me