Help with Universal heart mission

[jRo]

Not sure if it is the last mission but it is the one where you have three choices and face two other versions of your fleet each taking one of the options you didn't choose. I'm going for destroying the key.

So far I'm getting my butt kicked by my evil brothers. In one attempted I managed to kill the two other motherships but I couldn't destroy the key first. Juno's device was almost dead and the constant appearances of enemy ships, especially battle ships meant I couldn't focus much attention on the key but instead I had to defend myself and Juno's device.

What's the best way to go about winning this mission.

[swa]

Kill those two stations before you choose which way you go. Then the enemy does not have any base and it is really easy to kill them.

[jRo]

Good tip, wouldn't have thought of it.

[Doolittle]

I am struggling with this level also.

I destroyed 2 of the bases first, but the 3rd is always given to an opponent,leaving me baseless,
I even positioned my ships around the remaining base but it was still enemy after the cut scene.
The enemy seems to have cheats enabled or something as even with all slots filled with "3" armor genes, 2 enemy ships can take out my Omni cruiser. If I concentrate all my Battle cruiser fire on one ship I can barely take it out before one of my ships goes down. I tried fitting my base up with long range weapons but the rof is so slow due to heating that it is ineffective. I tried using capture, petrify and sleep genes but I am still overwhelmed.

If I could find a way to set the other two against each other while I knock out the Key it may be possible, but they both seem to concentrate fire on me only.

I plan to fit speed genes next to see if they can be decoyed away.

[davidabray]

I wish I'd thought of destroying the stations. It's an incredibly simple but presumably effective idea. I wonder what happens if you destroy all three stations as I found owning one more of a distraction than a help.

My tactics for this, which are not perfect as it took me many attempts to win this mission, were to drag one enemy into a fight at a time. At first this does not seem possible but it seems the enemies will only attack you if you are close to their chosen target so if you get close to a target another is trying to defend or destroy, the corresponding fleet will start bearing down on you. If you then back off a bit you can destory this fleet, probably taking a loss or two in the process but not if you are lucky. At this point in the game I had 4 ships with level 3 freezers and if you get them in first, the opponent has no chance.

The other important point is that I had two reservoirs and a lab but I didn't leave them next to the base. They were just behind my 'front-line' healing my ships. My base was at best a minor distraction for the enemy.

If you can destroy the two major fleets and keep your own largly intact through healing and the Omni-Cruisers resurrect ability then this fight is pretty much over. The opponents will send heavy fighters in one at a time which you can deal with and at some point their reservoirs will pop-up to be destroyed as well. Getting rid of the reservoirs really stuffs up your enemies.

One last point is it's useful to give one of your ships an 'Embrace' gene to nullify the effects of the enemy bases. With all the action going on it is hard to avoid the first couple of shots but once you can get in close to the targets you can use 'Embrace' on one of them to create a force-field large enough to hide your entire fleet in.