Turret detachment demonstrated, for your viewing pleasure…

(5:46) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. Following on from the set-up work shown in BCM98, this tutorial shows how to get the dropship turret detached (there are nine examples in all), and how to consolidate with a checkpoint thereafter.

Released March 31st 2014, gameplay recorded March 23rd-29th.

00:02 (Success 1 - Intro with freeze-frame replay) In this first demonstration of detaching the turret and landing on the bridge, I wait until the ship has come into view before moving off. The Banshee hits the ship almost dead centre and I get bounced to my bridge transport. Ideal! Events near the dropship happen rather fast though, so I've added a freeze-frame replay to show when I'm bailing (namely when the Banshee is about level with the front of the ship), and when the flip prompt appears.

00:47 (Success 2 - Flip causes brief levelling) Another straightforward success, giving you a side view of the ship as it gets pretty much vertical against the cliff for a moment. With this clip I wanted to mention what flipping actually does. Namely, it has a brief levelling-out effect, which results in the ship deviating from its scripted path. If the flip is done within the appropriate short window along the ship's path, it'll end up scraping a protruding part of the cliff and losing its turret.

01:02 (Success 3 - Far bridge) This time I get bounced to the far bridge. But as you can see, it's possible to jump across to your Banshee transport. Quite dangerous though. When you jump up onto the panelling, it's easy to misjudge it and fall to your death. You better jump straight!

01:26 (Success 4 - Far bridge with Banshee following) In this example I land on the far bridge and then my Banshee amusingly crashes down right in front of me, ready for boarding. No need for a dangerous jump, yay! It's actually pretty common for your Banshee to land where you can use it. But nowhere near common enough to rely on - which is why you want transport prepared in advance.

01:45 (Success 5 - Steep right banking) There's plenty you can vary in your technique, and by way of a first example, here's one where I head out early to the left (you can see that I'm well clear of the bridge when the ship appears) and bank in steeply, ending up almost orthogonal to the ship. It's quite like an exaggerated version of what I was doing in BCM88, when I was new to this and struggling for success. As you can see, even this odd-looking approach can work.

01:59 (Success 6 - Hitting in a corner) This time I curve left near the ship to deliberately hit it in the corner, rather than trying for the usual central area. I end up bounced to the far bridge on quite a novel trajectory, and I'm subsequently able to get a view of the turret falling and bouncing off the ledge.

02:25 (Success 7 - Fast getaway) Here I get a nice bounce to my bridge transport and I'm able to board right away, fast enough to catch sight of the turret just before it comes to rest. A good example of things working really nicely.

02:43 (Success 8 - Handy high cushioning) I get bounced dangerously high this time, but I'm able to drift to get cushioned by a high sloping surface. Be on the lookout for breaking your fall like that.

02:59 (Bailed too early) I bail too early here; you have to leave it really late or you're unlikely to bounce. Typically you'll end up falling to your death or getting killed by impact with the ship (rather than getting bounced away by your Banshee). I think I made this mistake a lot when I was a beginner, so I thought it was worth emphasizing with this clip. It's also why I showed the earlier freeze-frame of how close you should be before bailing.

03:13 (Bounced too low) Continuing with the theme of bouncing, in this clip I hit the ship a bit low, so it's not surprising that I get bounced low. I freakily end up on the bridge support, where I'm stranded. However, at least I get the chance to take a few shots at the turret, and I subsequently score a long-range tag for good measure - just a bit of extra entertainment for the movie. Pity I didn't turn left sooner though, or I might've got a nice close-up view of the turret rubbing off.

03:44 (Watch out for the gap) You won't often be heading for the gap between the bridges, but you need to be aware that it's cyborg sized! In this example I think I was caught in two minds as to which way to try and drift to escape it. I was hoping to hit the panelling - a high point to cushion me (if I reached it alive at all) - but I ended up going straight through. Doh!

04:01 (Success 9 - Final example) This is just a final nice example, during which I wanted to make clear that although success can be hard to start with, it can actually get quite routine. Nowadays I've got a good feel for it and usually wouldn't need more than a few minutes. In this example I started my path by sinking quite a bit, before the ship arrived.

04:32 (Getting a checkpoint) To finish off, I demonstrate getting a checkpoint if you want one. It's a simple matter of backtracking to trigger covies, and eventually finishing with a delayed door checkpoint. On this play you'll notice that I take down an enemy Banshee. It's the twin bridges Banshee I'd been using on my detachment attempt. It must've landed upright, and the pilot was thus able to transport to it and use it. I could've overturned it beforehand to prevent that; but then I wouldn't have had the pleasure of blasting it out of the sky! That footage was actually a continuation from the 'Success 3' clip, where I landed on the far bridge. I was rather gung-ho with my Banshee here. I could've kept it safe for possible later use, tackling the covies on foot instead (which is the main reason I like to have my sniper rifle well stocked), but I wasn't fussed about that for this movie, and I thought aerial action would give more exciting footage.

Closing remarks This tutorial should be enough to give you the general idea with a few tips thrown in, but see the relevant section of my article for more detail and advice.

I hope you liked the freeze-frame business at the start, because that took quite a bit of work. Initially I was just going to have silence during the freezes, but then I got ambitious and thought it would be good to also have some frozen sound, so to speak. Using Audacity I was able to produce some appropriate sound files based on the game sound at those two times, and I added them to my movie project. I reduced the volume for those, as it seemed appropriate. With the frozen sound, things were definitely better.

By the way, I haven't finished with this business yet. I expect to also do a movie demonstrating getting the turret without using the bridges, plus I still need a movie focusing on playing around with the turret.

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