I’ve also seemingly learned a valuable lesson in this game: Always follow the military maxim of “don’t divide your forces”. I just had a mission where there were 3 different geographical objectives I had to destroy and it looked like there was no way to accomplish it within the time limit without separating my forces after destroying the 1st obj due to the the distance needed to be covered. In the event my separated mechs were decimated individually while I did destroy the objs. Yet I also had to destroy all enemy forces, and I became too weak to do that. I had to replay the scenario it got so bad for me.
On the second replay I kept my lance intact, and destroyed each obj in sequence even though it cut closer to the time limit than before. Yet I still won the mission and even destroyed all enemy forces before I destroyed the last obj.
I’ve found throughout the missions that you really need the concentrated Firepower of your entire lance to bear on the enemy, or you will be defeated in detail. There may be one or two missions where a single mech needs to make a rush to accomplish some objective, but those are the exceptions and usually the scenario makes pretty clear that’s what you have to do. Otherwise, keep your mechs together, use focus fire where and whenever necessary, and destroy the enemy with your full force in fairly close formation.
To refine my possible bug report, it’s now clear that if the enemy mech is previously “unsteady” you appear to be able to get a knockdown regardless of how many stability boxes were already filled. But it still remains that you cannot seem to get a knockdown on a previously “clean” AI mech under any circumstances, regardless of the amount of stab damage you deliver.
This is, I should say, in contrast to the player mechs which do appear to be able to be knocked down on the first salvo of an AI mech regardless of whether or not it has previous stab hits.
If you’re talking about the storyline mission that involves destroying some generators, I had to rush a fast mech to hit the generators while engaging the opfor with my three remaining. The first run where I kept everyone together I got held up too long and couldn’t reach the third target.
I realize a lot of people like the storyline missions, but I found them a little frustrating because they almost need a different playstyle than the regular missions. I rarely ran out of LRM or AC ammo is a regular mission, but fighting the same way in a storyline leads to being dry before the second half it seemed. Once you know what’s coming you can set up a lance special…
I really like the variation in the way regular missions are set up … I’ve had convoy ambushes where I’ve had to race to cut them off, and others where my spawn let me set up a deliberate ambush and wait, base defenses where I was overwhelmed, and others where I waited and the enemy never made their approach. Really liking the game still, even with the storyline done.
Picked this up this week and I’m enjoying it. Makes me wish they’d do a redesign of all the mechs, though. A lot of the FASA designs from the 80s always looked sorta fan-made, and not in a good way.
Also, I discovered I drive by Harebrained twice a day. They’re just off the Kirkland exit on 405. Lol.
I like the story missions because they’re challenging, but yeah they can be annoying. I failed the 15 turn one. Lots of awkward triggers that put you into a bad spot without knowing it.
The Orion is my close range. I put the Gauss Rifle in a museum and gave the Highlander 2xAC/5 and 2xLRM20. The Zues seems suboptimal at the moment – I gave it 2xAC/5 and an LRM15.
Then there’s the Trebuchet with 2xLRM20. It has 200 total armor. I think it’s been fired upon once in the last 10-15 fights. It was a tense moment.
I haven’t actually tried this yet to see if it’s any good. I suspect it lacks killing power after getting knockdowns from all those missiles.
Heh, I’m getting all the variants without missile hardpoints. Just accidentally CT’d an Orion-V and ended up with another Orion-K instead. My Jaegermech has no missile hardpoints.
I think you’re correct in your stability observations (whether this is design or bug).
Either way for now it may be more efficient to put 1 LRM on various mecs for the stab damage. Normally I just run 3 close range mecs with SRMs and 1 pure LRM boat. May change loadouts.
edit: noticed one more thing post patch. I have now manually run to the evac point a few times. Pre-patch this almost never happened because all the units in a pod would activate. It seems some units in a pod are now getting lost?
