PROJECT SYLPHEED

Okay for this achievement you have to sink a gigaton's worth of ships. 1 Gigaton == 1000 Megatons == 1000000 Kilotons. Obviously this will take awhile.

I'll start with the obvious tips just for completeness sake:

- At any time you can see how close you are by looking at Pilot Status in the main menu
- Play on Easy, why make things harder for yourself?
- Destroy all big ships, especially S Battleships, Battleships, Cruisers, and Carriers. Destroyers are worth a bit, but not nearly as much as you'd think. Fighers are worth next to nothing.
- To find big ships, look at your full map (down twice on the D-pad), and the large squares are warships. Destroy as many of these as you can.

Now, there are two ways to approach this one:

1) just play through the entire campaign over and over. You'll get the achievement after about 13 runs through the campaign. A full run of the campaign is going to be about 3-3.5 hours *IN FLIGHT TIME* (not counting cutscenes, load times, time in the hangar, etc), so you're looking at a good 40 hours or so of playtime doing it this way.
2) Just play key levels, skipping the others. If you do this (using the method I outline below) you'll go through the entire campaign in about an hour (real time, not flight time), but you'll have to do it about 15 times to hit a gigaton.

Intrigued? Good. First before doing this, be sure to have unlocked all achievements *EXCEPT* 10,000 kills, gigaton patch, and TCAF Pilots Commedation as you'll earn a good chunk of tonnage doing the other achievements. Then when you go to start your next playthrough, what you're going to do is only play the following levels: Level 1, Level 10, Level 12, Level 14, Level 15, and Level 16.

You might be wondering about now how you go about only playing certain levels as using the "mission select" in the extras menu from the title screen won't allow you to contribute towards your gigaton and 10k kills awards. And that's true. BUT, what you can do is if in the campaign you fail a mission 3 times you are given the option of skipping that mission. So what we're going to do is just play the levels I mentioned, and on the others, you will destroy your ship by crashing into something as soon as you can three times, thereby giving you the option of skipping to the next level. Anything solid will work, the Acropolis is my personal favourite. :)

Is this boring? Yes. Does it suck? Yes. Is it the fastest way to the achievement? YES.

Now, the only other key tip I have is in terms of weapon selection. I used the following:

Nose: Twin Saber LG2H (though I rarely use this)
Main Weapon 1: Condor 105AM (some like the Eagle 120, but I find it far less accurate)
Main Weapon 2: Gray Head T76H (this is key for mission 10, as it allows you to kill Margras with a single shot)
Main Weapon 3: Either the Maelstrom Bomb or the Long Spear HBP depending on the mission (see tips below)

The Long Spear is the best weapon for dogfights in the game, however the Maelstrom will take out any warship with a single shot (on easy difficulty, on Hard you'll need 2 shots to down a S Battleship, but if you're grinding towards Gigaton you should be playing on Easy).

Now here's a breakdown of each of the levels you should play through and the weapon to use (Long Spear or Maelstrom):

L1 (Surprise Attack): Long Spear HBP
- you pretty well have to play this one out as there's no place to crash your ship. Just focus on objectives, and kill them off as quickly as possible. There's a destroyer in part 2 as well, be sure to get it (use the Gray Head which will down a Destroyer with a single *FULLY CHARGED* shot).
- The level will net you about 0.1Mt in 4 mins
L10 (Traces of the Nightmare): Long Spear HBP
- Again, no place to crash, just try and kill Margras right away, ignoring his friends. If you can get him with a fully charged Gray Head shot, you'll down him in a single shot.
L12 (Impending Chaos): Maelstrom
- This is the best mission in terms of tonnage per minute played.
- Be sure to sink the 1st S battleship ASAP, then wipe out all others before killing the 2nd (killing the 2nd S Battleship will end the mission).
- The level will net you about 26.5MT in 6 mins
L14 (Two of Destiny): Long Spear HBP
- You really have no choice but to play this one out, it's almost impossible to die on easy in the first part.
- In the first part, use the long spear and Condors to kill off the ships as quickly as possible (it's possible to do this part in about 3 mins or so)
- In part 2, as soon as the mission starts, immediately switch to he Gray Head and start charging it. As soon as Margras is in range, let go for a very quick one-shot kill.
- The level will net you about 0.8MT in 4 mins
L15 (Into the Light): Maelstrom
- This is the best mission for total tonnage in a mission.
- In part 1, just focus on the warships first using the Maelstrom. Once they're all gone then clear out any remaining fighters.
- In part 2 avoid destroying the S battleships as long as possible.
- The level will net you about 36MT in 12 mins
L16 (Lonely Blue Planet): Maelstrom
- No real trick to this, just let loose on the defense weapon first, then the reactor core.
- The level will net you about 2MT in about 2 mins (though I've done it in less than 1 minute)

And that's it, if you follow this pattern you'll do a single playthrough in about 26 minutes of flight time, and 1 hour of real time (including loads, etc). And in doing so you'll earn in the ballpark of about 280 ships killed, and 66MT of tonnage sunk. So: 1000 / 66 == 15 runs for the achievement. In all liklihood though by the time you've earned all other achievements you'll already be at around 400 or so MT earned, so following this method will only be another 8 or so runs (so about 8 hours versus about 15-20 playing every mission).