Rendevous
Mission 5: Operation Whalebird – September 30th, 2010 | [NO COMM]
Overview: Wardog Squadron is dispatched on its first official sortie under Blaze’s command: escorting OMDF 3rd Fleet and its aircraft carriers, the Kestrel, Buzzard and Vulture through the Eaglin Straits to Osea’s inland Benning Sea.
Guest Commentator: For this mission I am joined by four-time returning Ace Combat co-commentator Skippy Granola.
EAGLIN STRAIGHTS
A narrow inlet leading from the Ceres Ocean to the Benning Sea. A massive bridge across the straight connects the western Osean states of Bronstein and Shelton via a stretch of Osea’s massive interstate highway system. The bridge, as well as a large portion of the highway on either side of the straight, has been closed temporarily by the Osean military to allow the Kestrel and her fleet to move through the area and to keep civilians out of a potential combat zone should a Yuktobanian ambush occur.
MULTI-PURPOSE BURST MISSILE
You knew it was only a matter of time before these wonderful bastards reared their ugly heads again. After a brief blip of a “cameo” in Ace Combat 04, the dreaded MPBM makes its “return” (debut, actually) in Rendezvous.
Belka may be long dead, but her awful toys are still making life miserable for the world. Among the many items the South Belka Munitions Factory staff saw fit to scatter to the winds of the international black market before the SBMF was shuttered were the plans for the Hypersthene Multi-Purpose Burst Missile (MPBM). The MPBM is a massive, hyper-volatile ballistic missile that uses a nitrogen polymer accelerant and a molten tungsten shrapnel component to creative a massive, unstoppable burst shockwave capable of disintegrating nearly anything caught in its blast radius, followed by a near-instantaneous bombardment by a “rain of molten metal,” which pulverizes anything that may have withstood the original blast.
In the 15 years since the SMBF’s dismantlement by the Osean Federation, the Yuktobanian military has worked in secret to replicate and enhance the old MPBM design, producing an even deadlier variant as the primary weapon of its two Scinfaxi-class super submarines. The Scinfaxi’s burst missiles contain multiple independent warheads capable of creating multiple air bursts around a target area. Each warhead has a blast radius of approximately 2,500 feet.
SCINFAXI
Since the initial announcement of their construction in 1991, the Yuktobanian Navy’s two Scinfaxi-class nuclear super submarines have been shrouded in mystery and misinformation. Even after 15 years of peace between Yuktobania and Osea, they were still considered a top-level Yuktobanian state secret, and virtually no information about their capabilities, armament, crew compliment, or location at any given moment has escaped from the halls of power in Cinigrad.
As of Operation Whalebird, it has been confirmed that the Scinfaxi-class is capable of launching multiple Submarine-Launch Burst Missiles (SLBM) from an unspecified depth below the surface of the water and from well beyond visual range of any surface ship it may be targeting.
The Federation of Central Usea and the Independent States Allied Forces have forwarded declassified intel on the FCU’s former Dragonet-class submarines Fensalir and Folkvangr (which the Yuktobanians were accused of copying in an act of brazen espionage) to compare with sonar and spy satellite data on the Yuktobanian sub.
However, it is unlikely any useful information will be gleaned from this. The OMDF has stepped up its anti-submarine patrols of the coastline and the Eaglin Straits in an attempt to locate the Scinfaxi before it escapes to deeper waters.
Osean Central Command is currently formulating a strategy to counter the deployment of the Scinfaxi.
WHALEBIRD
In nautical terms, a whalebird is any type of bird known to follow and flock to whaling ships out at sea and feast on the oils and excess byproduct and scraps of the whaling process. Petrels are the most common types of whalebirds.
THE HANGAR
What is this sorcery? Yes, it’s taken five missions, but we finally have access to the hangar, for an ever so brief stretch.
Ace Combat 5’s hangar functions generally identical to the hangars of the other games in the series, however there are two key differences that set its hangar mechanic apart from the others. The first is how the game treats its special weapons sections. Instead of giving you the choice of three different special weapons to unlock and chose from per plane, each plane on 5’s roster has only one special weapon unlocked and equipped on it at the time of its purchase. This allows 5 to pad out its roster to an utterly bonkers degree by restricting certain special weapons to certain variations of planes.
For example, the F-5E Tiger II, our default plane has UGBs as its special weapons. To bring an air-to-air weapon in the fight, you have to (like I do in this mission) unlock the F-20 Tigershark with its SAAMs instead.
Ace Combat Zero would hastily abandon this mechanic, returning to Ace Combat 04’s style of a (semi) free choice of special weapons per plane in addition to cutting some of the more redundant planes from 5’s roster.
The second element that sets 5’s hangar apart from (most) of the other Ace Combat hangars is that planes purchased in the shop are not universally unlocked for your squadron. They are instead purchased on a per-pilot basis. This approach has its strengths and weaknesses, of course.
If your aim is to diversify your squadron, then you only need to buy specific planes for specific members of Wardog Squadron. The good part about this is that Edge, Chopper, and Archer are all relatively well-rounded in the AI department, so you don’t have to fret on building any of them towards a specific role exclusively. Generally speaking, diversifying your squadron with at least one attacker, interceptor, and multi-role is a sound strategy to cover your bases in terms of whatever The Unsung War will throw at you, but most missions will telegraph quite heavily.
The downside to this, however, is that buying multiples of the same plane gets prohibitively expensive after a while, so if you want to present a united squadron for one reason or another, it can be quite difficult to accomplish sometimes, at least on your first go through the game.
Again, this is a feature later games would ultimately move away from. In Ace Combats 2 and 04 you were only buying planes for yourself because you were basically a squadron of one, with Edge and Slash in 2 coming with their own planes already based on whatever role you wanted them to fulfil in each mission. In Ace Combat Zero, you only had to focus on buying planes for yourself as you couldn’t select what plane your wingman sortied in, only what special weapons they used (Pixy stuck with his F-15C while PJ kept his F-16C). In Assault Horizon Legacy, when you buy a plane for the shop, it automatically purchased for Edge and Slash to use as well. It’s been quite some time since I’ve played Ace Combat 6, so I can’t say for certain if you also have to buy Shamrock his plane as well you’re your own, but I’ll edit this with the proper information either way.
Tracks featured in Mission 5:
DISC 1