Takedown

Takedown is the thirteenth mission in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. It is the first to require the destruction of Transport Ships.

Objective
2025: The enemy transport ships are continuing their drops and causing more damage. Our aircraft haven't made a dent due to the transport ship's thick armor. But intel may have a solution. We must attack when they make their drops, through the open hatch and destroy it from the inside. The hatch is only accessible from the ground, so it's up to you. Equip with long-range weapons and move out.

4.1: The enemy transport ships are continuing their drops and causing more damage. Our aircraft haven't made a dent due to the transport ships' thick armor, but intel may have a solution: We must attack through the open hatches when they make their drops, destroying them from the inside. The hatches are only accessible from the ground, so this mission is in your hands. Take long-range weapons and move out!

Storyline
HQ begins things by telling Storm Team that "the Ravager Transport Ship is in the sky" and that they cannot be allowed to continue to contaminate the Earth with giant insects: they must be killed no matter what.

After some EDF soldiers helpfully confirm that the Transport Ships exist and say that their attacks are ineffective due to the heavy armor, HQ, who has read the mission briefing for once, points out that the Transport's weak point is its hatch and that Storm Team should aim for the inside when it is open. He then calls up to say the same thing again just to be on the safe side.

This shocking display of near-competence is interrupted by Aurora Situation Report. The reporter states that giant insects are being dropped throughout the world, commenting that while the Ravagers can only bring a limited number of giant insects to Earth, if they succeed in building a nest then the EDF will have to fight an infinite number. This rather suggests nobody has bothered to tell her about the nest the giant insects already have built on Earth.

As the mission concludes, the Tactics Officer calls in with a confirmation that Ravager battle machines dropped by the Motherships are coming ashore, bipedal robots known as Hectors. HQ, continuing his streak of actually knowing what he is doing, remembers the 2017 war and states that they are a terrifying enemy and cannot be allowed to come on land. He orders units to be dispatched to the shore to "meet them with fire!"

4.1 Changes
The start location is changed slightly to be further to the right near the middle of the map border rather than off to one side, with the NPC Rangers now right in front of the starting location rather than a couple of blocks ahead. All three Transport Ships are now lower, with the lowest grazing the rootops and the highest roughly where the middle one was before, making it much easier to hit with an Epsilon. The transports now deploy more bugs, and for some reason each deploys a different number of them.

The mission proceeds as normal, but after a while HQ will chime in with "Deploy the Wing Divers as backup!" and a unit of NPC Wing Divers will appear on the left side of the map, followed a while later with HQ saying "Ranger Team, join the Fencer team!" and a new NPC Ranger team with sniper rifles and a Fencer team with Galleon Cannons appearing respectively at the left and right of the edge of the Town, near the river.

When the Transport Ships crash, they will now destroy all buildings under them when they explode, which tends to make for clearer lines of fire around the crash sites.

The mission is made significantly easier on Easy and somewhat easier on Normal: on Easy, all three Transports will always have their bay doors open, while on Normal the middle one will but the other two will open and close as usual.

Enemies
2025:

3 groups of black Ants deployed from Transport Ships, starting deployment 9 each, normal drop 14 each, single drop of 28 from remaining ship when two Transports are destroyed

3 x Transport Ship

4.1:

3 groups of black Ants deployed from Transport Ships, starting deployment 9 each, normal drops 24 (centre ship), 16 (right ship), 14 (left ship), single drop of 28 from remaining ship when two Transports are destroyed

3 x Transport Ship

2025
This mission features three very tough Transport Ships that circle over areas of the Town map; the nearest one is the lowest, the one to the left is moderately high, and the most distant one is very high. Assault rifles and shotguns are mostly unable to hit the uppermost ship.

Prior to anything else it is important to explain precisely how a spawner in these two games actually works. All spawners (Transport Ships, Tunnel Exits, etc) function in the same way. Each spawner has an assigned "group" of enemies and a time-based cycle of possible spawn times: these are easy to spot with Transports, as they are the times when the bay doors are open.

At each potential spawn time, the game will check if the spawner's group of enemies is still intact, and the spawner will replenish it up to its assigned limit. If the whole group is gone, the spawner will drop a complete new group; if only one is dead, the spawner will only drop one. Spawners identify which specific enemies are "theirs" and will not replace those that were dropped by a different spawner. The engine does not assign aggro status to new members of a group, so it is sometimes possible, especially if all players have moved a significant distance away, for a spawner to drop replacement enemies that are not aggro'd, though this does not happen on this level.

Sometimes a spawner will drop a wave that is different to its normal spawn size or even a different kind of enemy to what it normally drops based on level conditions; for example, if it has taken a set amount of damage it may have a special one-off wave that it deploys. This does not change the size of its assigned group of enemies; for example, in this mission the initial groups deployed are just 9 bugs from each Transport, but the Transports actually deploy 14 which those nine are not part of, and when two are shot down the third will throw down a single wave of 28 but only replenish its normal group of 14. The irregular deployments generally do not count as part of the spawner's group, so in this mission totally ignoring the Ants and shooting down two of the Transports will result in 97 of them running around in 2025 and 109 in 4.1. This is a bad plan, oddly enough.

As most players will probably have already surmised in previous missions, the only way to damage a Transport Ship is to hit the circular glowing "core" that is revealed when the bay doors open. The dark structure and its glowing middle is the target, the red glow around the outside does not take damage The core can be hit from the side by firing at the gaps between the "teeth" of the bay door, it is not necessary (or a good idea) to stand directly underneath the ship in order to hit it. Like all mechanical enemies, a damaged Transport Ship will generate trails of smoke to indicate it has been damaged with more appearing as it approaches destruction, and Transport Ships will also generate showers of sparks from their underside when they are severely damaged.

It should also be noted that NPCs, no matter what they are armed with, will never attack a Transport Ship.

While it is possible for a Wing Diver to fly up into the bay and stay there when it closes, the core will only take damage when the doors are open. This tactic can be an effective way to deal with stationary Transport Ships in other levels by recharging when the doors are closed and then using a Rapier to attack the core the second they open, however.

Since the targets are tough and high up, it is necessary to bring a long ranged weapon. A Ranger should bring a high-powered Sniper Rifle (Lysander or Stringer) or rocket launcher (Stingray or Goliath), with the latter being somewhat more useful in the fight on the ground but requiring more target-leading, a Wing Diver can bring a Thunder Sniper, but by getting up on buildings it is possible to score hits on even the highest ship with all but the weightiest of Plasma Cannons, and these are more useful at dealing with the Ants. A Fencer can bring either Hand-Cannons or Gallic Heavy Cannons, though Galleon Lightweight Cannons can hit the Transports too and are a little more useful against Ants, and at low difficulty levels the Powerdyne is useful here. A low-level Air Raider only really has the option of shooting at the Transports with their Limpet Guns or trying to score hits with a low-level BM03 Vegalta if they have one, but starting out on Hard should have an Epsilon Armored Railgun D by now. The highest Transport requires a little work to hit with this and it will need ZE-Gun support to see off the Ants, but it will take down the ships faster than anything else the Air Raider has access to at this point.

If a suitably silly Fencer and Air Raider are together and have a good sense of timing, using a Guide Kit and Leviathan missiles will make very short work of this level indeed.

The only ground enemy in the level is Ants, but while all three Transports are still in the air it is a very large number of Ants with only two units of NPC Rangers who start out a couple of blocks directly ahead of the starting location to distract them. Focusing too heavily on the Transports will very quickly lead to Storm Team being overwhelmed, and so efforts should be taken to thin out the Ants from time to time, even though this will just lead to the Transports dropping more. It is particularly important to thin out the Ants prior to shooting down the second Transport, since doing so will have the remaining one deploy 28 Ants the next time it opens even if its entire group is still present. Trying to rush this mission is the easiest way to lose it.

Obviously since it features infinitely replaced Ants this mission can be used for farming up some Armor or weapons by leaving one of the Transports alive, since the Ants deployed from just one are easy to manage. There are much better farming levels later, however. It should also be noted that it is impossible to gain more than 999 Armor from a single mission.

Generally at the end of the mission there will be a few Ants that have been dropped into gaps between buildings that they cannot escape from, which gives plenty of time to gather items before killing them.

4.1
The mission is fundamentally the same, though the additional NPCs make dealing with the swarm easier and the lower-flying Transports are easier to hit. Hanging around near the Fencer Team while attacking the highest Transport Ship can be good to avoid Ants sneaking up on Storm Team while they are preoccupied. Obviously, since it deploys the fewest Ants, it is best to leave the ship on the left until last in this version and focus on ending the 24-Ant drops from the middle ship first.