Defend Station

A Mission offered at stations.

Objective

Defend specified station from Pirate or Yaki attack. Warning, you will lose rep with the Yaki or Pirate if you attack them.

General Difficulty:

Medium/Hard.

What you will need:

Excellent combat ship that is not prone to friendly-fire;

• M3/M4 is fine early on in the game.
• M3+/M6 when things get tough.
• M1/M2/M7 with extremely high combat ranks.

What you will find:

• M3/M4/M5 Pirate or Yaki ships early on.
• M6/M3+/M3/M8 at intermediate fight levels.
• M7/M2 - In rare cases you might have to face an M2 if your combat rank is high.

Commentary and Strategy

There are a number of ways to attack this mission, but all are complicated by the fact that it is very easy to hit the station you're supposed to be protecting, which can bring the police down on your head before you have time to deal with the issue.

You should try and pick off targets as they jump in.

The first strategy involves gate-sitting and blasting enemies as they warp in, but some of the faster M5s will inevitably get past you. No matter if they're not powerful enough to bring down the stations' shields. What you should labour to avoid is letting heavier ships that can single-handedly bring down a station's shields slip past you (anything bigger than an M4+ can do this). This strategy often leaves you chasing off after the first heavy fighter that gets past, whilst the rest jump in unchecked, but with a small ship is possible. It won't become unmanageable until the medium/high fight ranks.

As you progress, there will simply be too many enemies to hold at the gate. Here, the second strategy, a capital ship, becomes useful. Parked between the Gate and the station, and equipped with weapons to take down anything, you can allow your turrets to pick off enemies as they pass. Those that do get through can be dealt with in one of three ways; left to the Sector Police who will get the job done only slowly if at all, picked off by a well-managed fighter wing under your command, or walloped with homing missiles from your ship.

If you leave the killing to a band of Sector Police you will still get a reward and not lose rep with the Yaki or Pirates!

If you accidentally make enemies with the station in question, but you finish the mission it will become friendly to you when you complete the mission.

NOTE: The equivalent corporate missions do not pay out for each target killed.

List of Missions