My fourth Star Citadel gallery. The game really has a few nuances, and the strategy you need to use to attack the cannon changes as you move through the levels - this was also to some extent true of the original Star Castle, particularly machines released later, which didn’t have the easily exploitable wrapping "bug".
Note that Star Citadel has two variants: a modern version, from which these screenshots are taken, and a classic version, which is designed to play as much like the original Star Castle as possible.
Click on the images to see larger versions.
The high risk inside the shields manoeuvre pays off, and I've managed to destroy the cannon.
Bugging out. Note the mine at the bottom of the screen has exploded, but there's another one that has just escaped from an exploding shield segment over on the left so I'll need to watch out for that.
Massive explosion in full swing - the cannon and shields are blowing up everywhere!
I am fully legging it now, and there's not much left apart from a lot of particle, but the mine on the left continues to defy death and is beginning to swing around.
Ha! And now the mine has been destroyed as well, and I'm starting to swing back in to lay some fire on, well, not exactly on the cannon, but on where it will be once it's materialized.
Here we are near the beginning of a slightly later level. You can see things are hotting up in that the mines are graduating through the shield layers more quickly. Worth mentioning that they also move faster as the levels increase in difficulty.
A relatively solid attack run here, in which I've started to penetrate deeper through the shields, and destroy one of the mines.
And now we're really making progress. Shots on target, I've punched through the inner shield layer but, of course, the cannon is now firing at me. Again, on higher levels the cannon can track your ship more quickly, so opportunities to shoot at it when it's not pointing directly at you become few and far between.
Well, the cannon has fired but surely one of these shots I've laid on it has to get through and take it out.
Yes! A solid hit takes out the cannon and I just about manage to dodge its energy projectile, which has been flying directly at me.
Here we are at the start of a level and I'm trying to do as much damage as possible. The only issue, as you can see, is that I'm not firing exactly on target.
In fact my aim is wide enough that I'm not even hitting the growing sheild rings at present.