How to Succeed at "Protect Resupply Operation in the Kuras Drift"
In the game X-wing versus Tie-Fighter: Balance of Power, there is a Rebel campaign mission titled "Protect Resupply Operation in the Kuras Drift". In this mission you are tasked with protecting an asteroid within which is a research and development lab, in addition to some freighters intended to transfer some warheads from a 3rd party to the Rebels.
The mission begins with some T-wings flying around and eventually attacking the asteroid base you are to defend. Once a few wings of T-wings are shot down, two things happen. First, some Imperial Gunboats begin warping in, two at a time, and attacking the asteroid base. Second, an Imperial capital ship (Star Destroyer?) warps in from a different angle and sends out a bunch of Tie-Interceptors and seems to attack whatever ships are closest. The ships attacked by this latter group seem to be a corvette and a ship resembling the Millennium Falcon (I can't recall the classification of that ship type.)
The problem is, whether I go to intercept the Gunboats OR if I deal with the interceptors, I receive a message after a couple of minutes stating that we've encountered unacceptable losses and the mission is a failure. The real trouble is that I don't even know which ship or ships were destroyed!
Does anyone know how to complete this mission, what I am doing wrong, or what friendly ships seem to be destroyed quickly? I am stuck in the Rebel campaign until I figure this out. (It is pretty annoying to repeat because the T-wing portion of the mission involves a lot of waiting.)
Solution 1:
The answer comes from the post linked to by sous2817. It worked for me, although I play on Easy difficulty. The trick is primarily to identify the Corvette that warps in very close to the Imperial Star Destroyer. Once identified as only carrying fuel, the Rebels cease to care if it is destroyed. Other strategic details about this strangely difficult mission:
The initial T-wings will crash into the asteroid if you wait too long. This does a surprisingly high amount of damage. Make sure you don't spend too much time identifying craft before wiping them out.
The moment the Star Destroyer and Corvette jump in, you must redirect all power from your lasers (and maybe your shields on a harder setting) to engines in order to reach the Corvette in a reasonable amount of time to identify it.
Once identified, you must immediately leave it to its doom and ignore the Star Destroyer. The Gunboats will destroy the base pretty quickly. That post recommended hyperspacing to get an X-wing closer to the gunboats, but on Easy simply flying there quickly was enough. You have to shoot down these gunboats pretty quickly as they'll deal massive damage to the asteroid base with their torpedoes.
Once all 12 Gunboats are destroyed (they come in two at a time), rush to the Star Destroyer. It will likely have a few Tie-Interceptors left which you might be able to ignore and leave to other craft to gun down. I ordered my wingmen to target only the Star Destroyer, trusting in Gold wing to handle the interceptors. Quickly take out its two main laser cannons on the bottom of the ship, and the two tiny ones if you can find them. Then just pound away at the destroyer. At about 60% hull and 0% shields, it will start to turn away from your asteroid base. You could either finish it off or allow it to retreat at this point as your base should be safe.
Destroying or deterring that Star Destroyer was a race against time. My base was at under 50% hull and no shields due primarily to the T-wings and especially the Gunboats. If the Star Destroyer had entered range, it would have been toast in seconds.