You’ll need a mod for that, lol.
Kintaro has the most slots at 5, but as a 55-tonner they’re not able to all support big LRM racks. A few assault mechs have 4 slots and more capability to rain death from a distance.
FWIW, I adored my Kintaro until its limited armor made me put it on the backburner.
re: stomping on vehicles, I’ll again trumpet the joys of support weapons; the massive 80-ton tanks may not go down with a single stomp, but one followed by several small lasers may do the trick.
And ignore them in the future.
Sounds like everyone has to go through the impossible 1 skull convoy ambush, the 3.5 skull mission with two heavy lances plus an assassination target, and the 4.5 skull mission with a single vehicle as the target.
It’s part of the shared experience!
Right now I’m usually running the Highlander, with an AC/10 to replace the instantly-gibbed Gauss, a Battlemaster with PPC and MLs, a Grasshopper (or two, if no LRM Boat), and the LRM Boat Catapult, with two LRM/20s.
I ended the campaign with:
All but the scout mech have Comms systems (for a total of +9 morale gain) which is really nice for called shots. I also use jump jets in every mech so they can move, change facing and gain evasion that much easier.
Got past the convoy mission after about a half a dozen attempts, thank you for the feedback everyone. The mediums are slow, so sprinting didn’t seem to get me in that much better of a spot. I did manage to get my Jenner and Shadowhawk to the convoy and destroy it finally. The Blackjack and Vindicator are just too slow, but they hung back and took long range shots at the convoy and dealt with the enemy mechs. My Jenner got roasted though and I don’t have the scrap to fix it, which is a growing trend in my game. Everything is slowly being downgraded.
I get about 2-3 contract offers usually, in one or two systems. Is that all the contracts in the galaxy, or just what is close? Can I fly off to some remote place and get all new offers? I need to waste time to fix stuff, so I guess I have nothing to lose in trying.
Oh heavens, yes! Use the navigation panel to check nearby systems. Pay attention to the details in each, including climate (the majority of missions will be on that planet) and—most importantly—the number of skulls (average mission difficulty).
I hadn’t really noticed the audio on this game, just playing with default monitor speakers, but today I put on my decent quality Corsair headphones and discovered this game has some good, metallic, mech sound. It added a fair amount to the experience.
Yes, the audio is good. The barks get a bit repetitive, and I really dislike the injury voice clips, but overall, good sound.
Oh god I’m on that mission everyone was talking about earlier, with the ammo dumps.
Missions like this infuriate me.
I’ve tried being clever and going south to then go west and position myself far to the west and then come in that way, no dice there’s timers on this mission.
Then the 2 convoy trucks go, and you have started at precisely the opposite side to them.
So you either let them go or you screw yourself over chasing them and maybe you get them, but then you get smashed in the next few rounds.
Then there are 8 mechs facing your 4. Yeah have fun with that, as even when they cluster around an ammo dump and you blow it up, doesn’t kill anything.
What a frustrating mission.
And it really really highlights the slow pause before everything style they chose, because it draws out the pain of wrong positioning.
The best I’ve managed so far is destroying the convoy trucks and killing 3 mechs and wounding another severely, and having 2 very badly damaged mechs left.
Is there a way to do this well?
EDIT: I’ve decided to leave the convoys alone.
Depends on your definition. I managed to do everything except I let one truck through and only had a couple mechs with internal damage, but that was after a couple tries. Still, the “bonus missions” are just boosts to your payout. If you’re okay on cash, forget the trucks and blow up the ammo dumps as needed (I believe you only need two in order to win the mission).
One thing I will say is the front-right dump has LRM turrets around it, and so I blew that one first (or else you’ll get LRM’d by them each and every round until you can get the turrets in range and enough hits on them).
Send one dude to the left to squash the convoys. You can either blow ammo to catch them, step on them, or shoot them.
Rest of the mecs camp on the hill on the right.
YOU DO NOT NEED TO PRESERVE ALL THE AMMO DUMPS
That was driving me crazy before I modded the game. The specific thing was if I messed up and needed the next turn to straighten things out, it would take forever (subjectively) for the enemy to finish it’s turn and by the time my turn came up I was crazed. It’s a combination of frustration at yourself plus the delay which allows the frustration to simmer, causing game-induced-psychosis.
I do sometimes watch the animations, etc., but there are times when I just want to zip through the turns.
As to smithton, you need at least 2, preferably 3, mechs with reasonably potent long range ability. You can cram 35 or 40 LRMs onto a Trebuchet or Centurion, which you should have by the time you go for Smithton, and those should hang back and hit from afar. You want 1 or 2 heavily armored mechs up front to soak up enemy fire and smash the fast mechs. If the mission is hard for you, just ignore the convoys. You miss out on a combined 30% boost to the payout, but that’s it. If you blow up 2 crates, you still have 6, and you will get a 30% bonus on payout. If blowing up 2 crates is not enough to thin the enemy, blow up 5, and you will still have 3 to get a 15% bonus.
Bottom line: blow up at least 2 crates to thin the enemy and ignore the convoys if they are difficult.
I was just a little overpowered with my mech team and I found it all pretty much worked out. A lot of the intermediate story missions can just be overwhelmed by grinding a little up front and coming up with a better set of mechs and a few more levels of warrior skills.
You explained it far better than I did.
edit: there’s something I don’t get…
I snuck a mech up behind the hill on the right, sensor locked on of the central turrets, combat starts, and the turret is no longer sensor locked…?
Did a turn process? Sensor lock is lost at the end of a turn.
This. Sensor locking when you’re out of combat instantly starts combat and ends the “turn” you were just on, killing the sensor lock.
The value behind sensor locking out of combat is to initiate long range combat, and you can then apply it again. I suggest putting your sensor lock Mechwarrior in one of your higher-initiative mechs, so nobody needs to hit reserve to take advantage of the lock (side note; if you’re locking a mech who is toward the faster side, waiting until after the mech moves may actually be to your benefit because the pips taken off get replenished by its next move).
I got my fancy Highlander up on ridge by the convoy spawn spot and just lit them up when they spawned. It has the JJs. The main thing for me on the story missions has been taking some extra time to try and optimize my positioning before I break LoS and start the mission/timer. Gets more important later.
yeah that was my thinking.
Doing quite well this run through, except the enemy Griffin, who has almost 0 armour or health, just meleed my Centurion mech, who has loads of armour and health, and somehow hit the head…
This isn’t the first time it’s happened either.
Memory is obviously fallible but I’ve had pilots incapacitated from head shots or head hits about 10 times now, and managed to get it in my favour about once…
begs the obvious question of whether or not there’s some magic rng going on…
EDIT: if this means the pilot - Behemoth - is dead, I will be very pissed off!..edit…she’s dead, very very dead.