Fortress Aircraft Carrier Despina


 * 564605.jpg"As long as I'm alive, those aliens will have to answer to me."
 * —Despina's Captain being typically heroic

Fortress Aircraft Carrier Despina is a non-playable vehicle that the Air Raider can call on for artillery support in Earth Defense Force 2025 and Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair. The name of the actor who plays Despina's Captain is not given in the credits: it sounds like Richard Epcar, who also plays HQ.

Description
This 1.4 kilometre battle-carrier is the EDF's most powerful warship. Her runways are enormous, enough that she is able to launch even large aircraft like Whale and the strategic bomber Midnight. She is also equipped with Lionic Cruise Missiles and Tempest intercontinental ballistic missiles, with the Captain claiming Despina has more firepower than an entire fleet.

While strikes from Despina are available as soon as an Air Raider unlocks one, she is first mentioned in the storyline in mission 59 (62 in 4.1) Mountains Ablaze, where it is revealed that the EDF air units fleeing the destruction of their bases by Dragons made their way to her and can offer support again.

Despina's strikes count as normal artillery and are disabled by events in the missions Brute Force and City of Horror, even though the whole point of Mountains Ablaze is that the events of the latter mission did not affect Despina. More obviously, they also cannot be used underground.

Calls for Support
All of Despina's calls for support use a Guide Kit marker. The missile or missiles are fired from one edge of the map to pass over the initially targeted area horizontally; they will not turn down to face the target unless the Air Raider holds the laser on it, and will simply fly off the other end of the map and be wasted.

N-Series Coastal Missiles
These follow on from Whale's AH Coastal Missiles, firing a small number of fairly high-powered cruise missiles over a short period.

Lionic Cruise Missiles
The Lionic series follow on from Whale's AH High-Speed Missile Group strike, and like that strike are a prolonged barrage of low-powered missiles which allow aim to be adjusted multiple times during the course of the attack.

Numbers in (brackets) are EDF 4.1 changes.

NX Large Coastal Missile
The precursor to the Tempest series, this one-off missile is very effective on lower difficulties. It is extremely slow-moving and therefore immobilizes the Air Raider for some time while it is being guided, but has a massive area of effect and deals immense damage within its level range.

Tempest Ballistic Missile
Tempest missiles are mentioned during Beach Fear as a naval and silo-based ballistic missile strong enough to bring down even a Mothership. Despina carries them too, launching one per request. They will not do anything to a Mothership in-game, sadly.

The Tempest missile is the successor to the NX, a slow-moving aerial leviathan dealing gigantic damage with a huge blast radius and a long reload. They are immensely powerful weapons which excel at destroying dense groups of tough enemies or clusters of Tunnel Exits, and are particularly good in missions where a large group are not aggro'd, though they are guaranteed to aggro anything that survives the explosion.

Supposedly, Whale fires the S1A, though the description says Despina does and this is very slightly more sensible.

Trivia

 * "Despina" is the Greek word for "lady."


 * "Coastal" is a mistranslation, it should be "cruise" missile.
 * The weapon descriptions also like calling Despina a battleship. Then again, Bombing Plan A calls Charon a battleship.
 * Tempest missiles are enormous; by comparing the strike to a Walking Fortress Balam it can be shown the basic Tempest is over 50 metres long, while the S1A is larger than two Balams stacked one one top of the other, and therefore is over 100 metres long.
 * The NX and Tempest's ground collision point appears to be in the same place it would be for a normal (Lionic-sized) cruise missile, meaning the weapon will not explode when the nose touches the ground: instead, almost the entire missile ends up underground before it detonates.