Solo attack at the third tower
Posted September 29th 2008
Among the enemy forces guarding the third tower are two AA Wraiths. If either of those gets destroyed, the Arbiter and his buddies will drop in by Phantom to aid your attack, and will accompany you inside. If the AA Wraiths remain intact however, you can enjoy tackling all the other enemies in your own good time, both outside and inside, without any squid-faced buffoons cluttering up the place and stealing your kills - which is fine by me! You won't see Arby until after you've done your work inside. And when you do see him, he won't have any buddies alongside; they seem to stay on the ship, hovering not far off. The AA Wraiths will be gone.
Setting up
To set things up for going solo, it's best to destroy the Hornets that would normally accompany you along the coast, otherwise they might destroy an AA Wraith and thus trigger the Elites. You can easily destroy the Hornets with your own Hornet. If you do it early on, that would effectively make the whole coastal assault a solo affair, ignoring the superficial effects of the Elite Phantoms hovering at the second tower. Mind you, the AA Wraiths are pretty good at foolishly wandering over the edge of the cliff and plummeting to their doom, which would trigger the Elites. That can be a bit annoying but there's nothing you can do about it; you'll just have to hope they stay topside.
Acknowledgement
Finally, a word of thanks to fellow cyborg Nerd Boi, who happened to realize all the above stuff independently, emailing me about it in connection with a general appeal I made for Arby elimination techniques. This one had temporarily slipped my mind, and the email was a handy reminder.