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The Breach has a series of stages that require a strategic approach to progress from one to the next.
It is suggested to begin the mission with bridge officers that allow you to scatter volley or fire at will. Emergency Power to Shields, Emergency Power to Engines, Engineering Team, a tractor immunity bridge officer ability, and shield heals are all useful. For this mission you will not need Hazard Emitters.
Stage One: Outside the Voth City Ship[ | ]
You begin at the nose of the crippled Voth City Ship with four other players. When the mission starts, the players may either remain in a group (recommended for Elite) travelling through the central 'spine' of the ship, or split up into three groups (recommended for Normal) with one group along the spine, and the other two travelling along the port and starboard sides of the ship.
The Voth ship is spewing out green plasma which improves your ship's flight rate while you are at Red Alert, although it can damage your ship if you go through the middle of a cloud of it rather than grazing its 'edge'. The purpose is to strafe weak points along the hull (each worth around 1% of the 100% goal), as you make your way to structural integrity nodes to destroy those (each worth around 15% of the goal). These nodes are protected by a forcefield and defended by turrets that can shoot you at more then 10km; in Elite, they are also defended further by a Voth Battleship overhead. The forcefield can be bypassed by a Point Defense Console if equipped, allowing the player to use Evasive Maneuvers to then leave that node and continue strafing the Voth ship. Destroying the Node's defenses (turrets and Battleship) does not add percentage points to the completion of the stage. Once enough damage has been done to these structural systems, the next step can begin. Players will be alerted to go to the Rally Point, and a button will appear on your HUD allow you to immediately go to that point.
Note: Defeated Voth ships can explode or just be deactivated. In the second case a repair ship flies to the Voth ship to bring it back to life. This can happen to all voth ships in all parts of the mission. Because of that repair ships should be the main target.
Stage Two: Initial Breach[ | ]
Players will be near a site of major structural weakness which will display a series of targetable weak points on the Voth ship's hull. Once enough of these have been hit, the hull will breach and allow ingress to the Voth City Ship's Hangar Bay interior.
If you have the ability and are not attempting to generate Threat, you may consider swapping over to a bridge officer with more targeted tactical capabilities (i.e. swap over the Fire At Will/Scatter Volley to Beam Overload/Rapid Fire).
The Hangar is a single room with three groups of enemies: a near group, a central group, and a far group. As (or if you can, before) you engage, go to the four Hangar Doors around the walls of the nearest group, and close them. These can be closed whilst your ship is at Red Alert and being attacked. If you fail to close one of these doors, more Voth attack ships will spawn from these doors until the doors are closed. Once the doors are closed, finish clearing the near and middle Voth support ships, then once these groups are cleared, move to the far end and clear the final group of ships, closing the next four hangar doors (for a total of eight Hangar doors in total).
You will also see captured Federation ships near these hangars that need assistance to be rescued. As with the Hangar doors, these can be assisted during your attack. If you fail to assist before they run out of time, the captured ship will be destroyed. The countdown for their time starts when you are nearby and may complete before you destroy or even engage the Voth, therefore you need to keep a lookout for these ships. Rescuing these captured ships forms part of Reward calculation.
A single ship with a cloaking ability can slip through to the back of the hangar for closing all 4 doors there and rescuing the 3 ships. If no ship can cloak it is still possible to slip through to the rear of the hangar if you fly very close to the right wall and very high. Be aware of the electric attack of the smaller Voth ships while doing so. The movement debuff and the damage over time can both be cleared with Science Team.
Once the Hangar is totally cleared, your team will be able to lower the forcefield located on the side of the hangar opposite to where you breached into the chamber. Once this forcefield is down, the next stage can begin.
Stage Three: Citadel Hangar[ | ]
Make your way down to the next bay, and you will see at the far end, a Voth Citadel Ship. Either side are pillars, with support craft. Many of these support craft are surrounding more captured Federation ships. There are also Tractor Beam Points on the ceiling, floor and walls of this chamber which can push your ship around and cause damage.
Rescue the captured ships, destroy the support ships, and destroy any of the Tractor Beam Points that are problematic (e.g. those near the Citadel, those on the walls, or those that are affecting you).
Note that a cloaked ship will be shoot at by the Tractor Beam Points but that it will not be pushed around.
Only engage the Citadel once the room is secure, and all team members are ready (i.e. healed, and have their abilities reset), and in position. It is an extremely powerful ship and will begin to move across the chamber once it is attacked. Its first action is to engage its ability to make its shield impenetrable (shown as a pulsing orange bubble around the ship) that returns damage. During this time it will attack most heavily, and be immune to your attacks. For this reason, the best opening move is for any science ships to engage scan, and a vanilla volley of normal (unbuffed) weapons only. When the orange bubble is down, engage abilities as required.
Note that if you are its target, it has a very strong Gravity Well that it will hold you in by using a tractor beam. You will likely need both tractor immunity (e.g. Polarize Hull) and Evasive Manoeuvres to get out of it. If you see a circly around your ship start moving because the voth ship will fire "rockets" that are doing high AoE-damage. Once the Citadel is destroyed, the door will be unlocked and you can move into the Subpower Core Chamber.
Stage Four: Subpower Core[ | ]
More support craft and more captured ships are in this room, and these should be cleared as for the others before proceeding. Note that there will be an interaction button to open the Subpower Core, but do not press this until the whole chamber is cleared. This button is an "Interaction" button so accidental openings are common, but be aware of it and avoid rushing ahead.
This chamber holds three Subpower Core structures, within which is a single, crystalline Subpower Core. There will also be 'shadows' of it, which will unleash a crippling attack on several team ships if this false Core is exposed and especially if hit with weapons. This attack will result in the Voth's electric attack, often completely stripping one or more shield facings and severely damaging hull. It can be cleared with Science Team.
- If the core shows "Subpower Core", it is real and may be attacked.
- If the core shows "Subpower Core ?", with the ? at the end, do not attack and be prepared to use your heals.
As a team, avoid opening more than one of these at a time. The Subpower Core will lose health and then the structure will close. At this time, it will have moved to another of the structures so will need to be re-found. This means that the core is never on the same position again after the chamber have closed. This usually happens a few times (2 in elite) before it is destroyed. Once it is destroyed, the final combat stage of the mission can begin in the next chamber.
Stage Five: Power Core[ | ]
At this point, if you have the ability to have two Emergency Power to Shields available, it is advisable to swap bridge crew to do so.
In this chamber is the large primary Power Core for the Voth City Ship. It is heavily armed with energy beams that can attack you further than ten kilometres away, and also has two impenetrable physical shields. Its main attack has two prongs: the first bolt to hit you will immediately disable that shield facing, and the second will create a large amount of damage to your hull. The damage is dealt by the long energy beams that are comming from the center of the core. Just try to stay away from them. There are also normal beams that will attack your ship but they deal minor damage. Another type of attack it unleashes will teleport your ship right onto one of the Core's physical shields, potentially requiring you to use Evasive Maneuvers to get back out of the way. You can evade the teleport by using polarize hull while seeing 3 "traktor beams" locking on your ship. If your ship is flying closer to the core then its shield, it will be destroyed very fast.
There are 2 simple tactics. One is positioning your ship along the bare Core, firing buffed weapons and torpedoes, and turning when a shield facing is hit and brought down because you are still in the arc of the steady beams from the core. The deactivated shield can be brought back online with Eng. Team or EPTS. As the core slowly spins around, your ship will find itself at some stage facing the Core's impenetrable physical shields. When your ship is facing the this Shielding, make a slow 360-degree turn so your ship travels back to get alongside the next unshielded portion and continue. It is possible for a team using this technique to bring the Core down quite quickly.
The other one is positioning the ship very high above or very low below the core. This way you evade the steady beams of the core and don't need to turn away deactivated shield facings while shooting at the core. That tactic is more suited for ships that concentrate their firepower to the front. Keep in mind that your weapons will need some time for the distance before they hit the core when using damage buffs. Watch your distance so that you are not closer to the core as the shield.
As a note for raiders. The "sides" of the core are protected by the shields while the front and the rear side are unprotected. If using damage buffs with longer cooldown wait until the core is showing his backside.
Once the Core is destroyed, you and your team must escape to the outside of the City Ship again.
Final Stage: Escape![ | ]
The Core Chamber has two doors near the base of the Power Core structure: the door your entered on the right (of your map), and a visually identical escape door, which is on the left on the map. When you fly through this door out of the Power Core Chamber, you will find yourself back in the initial Hangar chamber you breached into. Fly through this chamber to the end, turning left to exit the ship through the hole you originally made.
Players have 45 seconds from the time the Core is destroyed to make their way to the exterior of the Voth City Ship, in order to avoid being destroyed. It's best to fly right out to the middle or far side of the 'Exterior' locator circle on your minimap.
The number of players who escape in time forms part of the Reward metric.
Once the 45 'Escape' counter has counted down, the Reward is calculated and the mission is complete.