2685

The vehicles aren’t killed in one melee hit from the Spider. The things are tough and hit hard, the 4 of them can severely damage or knock over the Spider before I can even kill one with it. An alpha strike from a medium will usually kill one outright, but I can’t get all the mediums there in time to prevent a loss. Especially since that would result in their mechs coming in from behind.

Think I might have to take @Tim_N’s or @Miramon’s advice.

2686

Are you sprinting with your Mechs? I found that sometimes it’s just critical to sprint into a better firing position than tangling with the guard mechs/vehicles. Also you have a better hit percentage from an elevated position.

2687

Yeah, the 80t vehicles are not one-shottable by lights usually. At least, that’s been my experience. And of course, your 95% chance to melee hit attack will always miss if it’s the last chance to kill the crawler before it exits…

2688

I’ve been running a diamond team. My one heavy is the center/point with full armor and ML loadout with Medusa as Vanguard. Move forwards, gain their attention and either sensor lock opponents or blast away when they get close. Two 55 ton mechs act as wings/flankers. Currently I like staying at a little range to use ac5s as we’re still in the part of the game where their stability damage is really nice. Finally one long range shooter using lrm. Currently a Centurion but probably the role for my second heavy.

2689

I’ve got a 55 tonne mech (centurion?) And a 60 tonne (?) Dragon.

Both are loaded up with SRMs. Centurion also has jump jets. Dragon has more arermout but no jump jets.

I think I’ll put jump jets on the Dragon (fits the name really) and sacrifice a little armour.

Those 2 occupy the centre and hit things. They can soak up a decent amount of damage.

With the jump jets the centurion typically gets rear arc shots.

Offloading 3 SRMs and a medium laser is quite nice.

The 3Rd mech is a vindicator with double ppc and loads of heat sinks.

The enemy tend to try and take this down but it has decent armour so it can stand a few rounds. Whilst that’s happening the centurion and dragon are laying out damage.

Or they’re getting focused on and the ppc takes pot shots.

I can’t remember the name of the last mech but it has 3 LRMs iirc.

I really want to find a mech which will let me load like 8 LRMs lol.

This last mech is a long range damage dealer.

So far this setup works quite nicely.

I had a kill the convoy mission. I jump jetted the centurion around and just kept offloading SRMs and ignoring the mech escorts. Centurion could handle it.

Now that I think about it…maybe my centurion is actually a shadowhawk. Not near computer, can’t check.

2690

The Dragon with Heavy Jump Jets has less available tonnage and deals about the same melee damage then a Shadow Hawk with Light Jump Jets, plus the Shadow Hawk moves sooner.

The 55 ton mechs are just better than the 60 ton mech after you add in Jump Jets.

On a different subject, anyone else annoyed that there are only 5 levels of initiative? If I knock an assault mechs on its ass, it’s annoying that they stand up right away. Hopefully there is some thought to adding to the levels of initiatives.

2691

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.

2692

And ignore them in the future.

2693

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!

2694

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.

2695

I ended the campaign with:

  • Battlemaster with 5xML, AC/5, SRM6, 4xJJ and Rangefinder. Piloted by a Scout mechwarrior and used to spot enemies and sensor lock them for the LRM mech. Very nice to get rid of vehicles and turrets before they have a chance to see and target my mechs.
  • King Crab with LRM20, 2xLRM15, 5xML and 3xJJ. My LRM mech. Piloted by a Sharpshooter, which probably should have been a Lancer instead, since Sensor Lock in a LRM mech is not very useful. I used a Highlander with 4xLRM15 previously in this role, but I prefer the extra tonnage to get some medium lasers in case I run out of LRM ammo.
  • King Crab with AC/20, 3xSRM6, 3xML and 3xJJ. Driven by a Lancer. Close combat mech for hitting CTs.
  • Highlander 723b with Gauss rifle, 3xML, SRM6, LRM20 and 3xJJ. A bit of an all-rounder. Piloted by a Brawler which was a bit of a mistake since the Juggernaut skill is useless against assault mechs. Should have used a Lancer or Vanguard instead.

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.

2696

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.

2697

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).

2698

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.

2699

Yes, the audio is good. The barks get a bit repetitive, and I really dislike the injury voice clips, but overall, good sound.

2700

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.

2701

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).

2702

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

2703

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.

2704

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.