Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction starts with a five-minute raid on the oil facilities at Artiglio Port. Hit the required score before that timer expires, then hunt down all 20 tanker trucks in the sandstorm that follows. The sand hides them from your radar, so they can vanish from the display without actually disappearing. Don’t keep circling the same empty spot when a marker drops off the screen. Follow its last heading and check the roads.
Blow up clustered oil tanks for the easiest first-stage points, then use short radar checks and low-risk attack runs against the moving trucks. The real trap is assuming the first score requirement finishes the mission.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction: first-phase score requirements
You have five minutes to hit a destruction-score target at the enemy’s oil production facility. It changes with difficulty:
| Difficulty | Required score |
|---|---|
| Easy | 12,000 |
| Normal | 17,000 |
| Hard | 20,000 |
| Ace | 22,000 |
Oil tanks are the best early targets because one explosion can set off several others nearby. Look for closely packed tanks and equipment rather than attacking every small object individually.
A ground-attack special weapon makes the refinery phase considerably easier, but standard missiles can still set off the chains. Line up your shots at groups of tanks, let the explosions do some of the work, and move quickly towards another intact section. There are plenty of targets, but you don’t have time to wander aimlessly over the harbour.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction: all 20 tanker trucks
When the five-minute refinery timer expires, the mission moves to the tanker chase, provided you’ve met the score requirement. Scoring enough points early does not skip the rest of the countdown. You begin facing three trucks, with seventeen more scattered across the map. All 20 must be destroyed to complete the mission.
- Take out the three nearby trucks first. They’re directly ahead as the stage begins, so there’s no reason to leave them while looking for a distant marker.
- Check radar in short intervals. The storm causes tanker positions to appear and disappear. When one marker vanishes, remember its last direction of travel and continue checking rather than assuming it was destroyed.
- Use the road routes as a guide. These are ground vehicles, not aircraft. Fly along the direction a tanker was heading and look for the convoy on the road below.
- Attack from enough altitude to make a controlled pass. Poor visibility makes a very low, fast approach risky. Slow down your turns, but don’t hang motionless above a truck while missiles and ground fire are active.
- Keep following TGT markers until none remain. The last few trucks are often the most annoying because they have spread across the map. Zoom out, wait for a radar update and intercept the next marked target.
Those trucks keep moving when your radar loses them, so remember which direction they were travelling. Don’t waste time searching open desert for a vehicle that has continued moving down a road.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction: do you need to fight the drones?
After ten trucks are destroyed, MQ-99 drones arrive from the north. You can fight them if they get in the way, but shooting the drones alone won’t finish the mission. The remaining tanker trucks are still your targets.
Destroy a drone if it’s directly blocking your route or posing an immediate threat, then return to the truck markers. A dogfight in the middle of the storm can easily consume several minutes while your ground targets keep moving.
Be careful when closing on the tankers in Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction. Some carry Helios weapons, and their destruction can produce a damaging explosion. Make a missile pass, pull away and don’t linger immediately above a truck as it blows up.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction: GAZELLE spawn
The optional F-15E GAZELLE appears on a replay after you have completed the mission once, with Normal difficulty or higher selected. For GAZELLE, the ordinary score threshold is not enough. During the five-minute first phase, clear all of the oil-installation targets, including the objects labelled OIL FACILITY and OIL TANK, rather than leaving any refinery sections intact. GAZELLE appears to the north with the UAV reinforcements in phase two.
That’s a much tougher refinery clear than the normal objective. If your goal is only to finish Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction, stop when you’ve cleared the required point threshold and save the all-facilities challenge for a dedicated named-ace attempt.
Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction: S-rank score and time
The S-rank total is 40,550 combined points. Completing the entire mission within 10 minutes gives a maximum time bonus of 12,050, leaving a need for 28,500 destruction points. A slower finish reduces the time bonus and demands a higher destruction score.
Chain explosions during the refinery section are the best start. Then take an efficient path through the 20 trucks without circling the same area repeatedly. Don’t rely on the drone fight to rescue a poor score or time: the tanker phase is where a lot of an otherwise promising S-rank run can disappear.
Why Ace Combat 7 Mission 08 Pipeline Destruction won’t finish
If the refinery timer is still counting down, keep flying: the next phase starts when those five minutes end, provided you’ve reached the required score. If you’re already in the sandstorm, look for the remaining truck markers. Destroying all 20 is what finishes the mission.
One last reminder: seeing a tanker vanish from radar isn’t the same thing as destroying it. Keep hunting the red TGT trucks until the game confirms every one is gone.
For game details and official updates, see Bandai Namco’s Ace Combat 7 page.
