He Who Rides the Tiger

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SILENT THREAT: REBORN MISSION 6

Fighter squadron: 91st Phantoms

Description: A routine escort mission turns deadly when the GTI loses control of its volatile cargo.

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Background

With the Talus Particle Accelerator secure and pirate attacks virtually nonexistent in Antares, GTI R&D is sending nearly completed projects from Antares to Beta Aquilae. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma wings are sent to escort the Moreau, Idun, and Ratna of Project Eumenides on this leg of the journey.

Walkthrough

The GTF Valkyrie's extreme speed is very helpful, and you'll engage a lot of fighters, anyway.

It's all straightforward until the Shivan lands on you. You can shake it by engaging your afterburners. When the SD Abaddon jumps in, destroy its main Shivan Megafunk Turret to help the Repulse a bit. It will survive without your aid, at least on Medium, but it's better to make sure until the engagement is relatively silent. Then engage the fighters to the best of your abilities, but don't waste any warheads. You won't have time to reload at all from here. Players who are good with primaries are at a huge advantage here.

The two transports that you must destroy are on your escort list. They aren't hard to destroy, but don't waste any time. When Command orders the Ratna to head to the jump node, order all your wingmen to defend Lambda 1. The Basilisks and Manticores will attack the freighter. You can pick which one poses the largest threat to it by targeting the freighter and pressing 'G'. Do take the effort of handpicking your targets. If you don't, you'll lose the mission. This mission was fine-tuned to be won or lost around its 12th minute.

Bonus objective is to destroy the Abaddon, which is impossible while dogfighting and defending Lambda 1. You can order some wingmen to disable it, and as soon as Lambda 1 jumps out, Command will deploy some reinforcements to destroy the Abaddon. If you do decide to destroy the it, keep in mind that you must destroy it, otherwise you won't get an RTB. If you don't disable it, it will simply jump out when Lambda 1 escapes.

Typically, the Seraphims that were attacking the Repulse stay in the area the longest. If you want to achieve some more kills, know the risks.

Tips

• If Lambda 1 is shot down hauling the Ratna, Lambda 2 will be deployed and pick up where 1 left off.

Developer Commentary

The name of the mission is derived from an Asian proverb, "He who rides the tiger must beware lest he end up inside." This proverb has several variants and its culture of origin is not clear.

This mission is ostensibly a remake of On the Run from the original Silent Threat campaign, but the only common elements are the Eumenides Project and the GTSC Ratna being towed from one place to another. Galemp's original instructions for this mission say, "The original mission is so screwed up and confusing, it would be best to redo it from scratch. Refer to the original mission, keep the basic elements, but don't worry about getting everything perfect."

Goober5000 21:51, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

On the Run and Secret Recovery were the only Silent Threat missions with any Hammer of Light elements. In ST:R, the HoL doesn't appear at all as they don't contribute anything to the plot. Their story receives focus in Operation Templar years later.

The Shivan landing on your fighter is inspired by one of the secret videos on the original Silent Threat disk (see below).

Galemp 21:02, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

I actually exceeded the retail SEXP node limit when FREDding this mission. Quite a bit of effort was required to compress the events down to fit within the limit, including extensive use of send-message-list and some creative combining of cues. The campaign file (which contributes to the SEXP node count) was also rewritten to use the minimum possible number of nodes.

The head ani that appears when the Shivan attacks was created from the FreeSpace 1 species animation. We were delighted to learn that the two animations were the same size and format. However, it was necessary to convert the palette to grayscale, which was done by a now-forgotten contributor. It may have been Sesquipedalian.

Goober5000 03:52, 28 January 2016 (UTC)