There is one way to kinda build for melee as an option: make one of your fast moving, heavily armored short range front row units a high heat set up and then when the heat gets too high, spend a round punching the enemy. Heat drops, back to guns, heat rises, back to punching. That works pretty well but melee is a side-option, not the main dish.
I have a Battlemaster and an Orion K that utilize this strategy. Although the Orion is a heavy and the rest are assaults. So it won’t always be an option. The Orion pilot is Glitch, by the way.
Just found my first Heat Bank+, +20 Max Heat, +10 Overheat Threshold. Nice.
That’s nice, I look in every store for stuff like that, mostly just find pus weapons, never found heat related items, but I keep looking!
Oh, and finished the campaign today, kind of cool showing pictures of the team that made it in the credits. And amusing you get an achievement for actually taking the time to run the credits, haha
So far for me at least this is my GOTY for 2018 and easily my favorite among those I’ve kickstarted.
Taurian space, systems with manufacturing, star league, black market, battlefield and trade hub.
Ok, now that I’m done with the campaign I might just wander a bit into spaces I’ve not previously been allowed into and keep an eye out for those.
You finished the campaign? Dang. I’m at the Extraction mission. What did you have for a lance by then. Not a spoiler thing. Just curious. I have three assaults and a heavy.
The last two missions are kind of tied together (sort of), I went into them with two highlanders, a kingcrab and a jagermech as my missile boat. I handled the mission just fine as you’d expect. I didn’t go hunting for these to complete the campaign, I just liked wandering around and in the process slowly accumulated mechs.
Three assaults and a heavy should be up to the task, so you can dive into the grand finale whenever you decide you want to…
Ok, so now that I’m post campaign I’m faced with a new problem.
I can’t apparently take 5 skull missions because it says my reputation is too low. Yet I’m allied with the Federated suns with a bar showing off the scale at 265. What number exactly are they looking for here because I’ve done like a minimum of 30 or 40 missions successfully for these guys, I didn’t keep track, for all I know it’s more like 50 (I’ve played the campaign for 177 hours so far).
Anyone know what the gate thresholds are for 5 skull?
It’s probably your rep with the Mercenary Board that matters I think. Just do more missions.
Guess I’ll have to run some more missions, odd that they would show you a message saying “faction reputation too low” instead of mercenary review board rating too low.
How the hell does anyone get to 5 skull missions if I’ve not opened them at 177 hours? That feels like a bit of a design gap to me. I’m at 932 merc board rating after what I would consider a fairly long play time. I’ll assume I’ve got to get to 1,000 in order to finally open up 5 skulls.
For players who didn’t wander around the galaxy running side missions a lot as I have I would assume they’ll never get the option to play 5 skull missions?!
I didn’t play nearly that much, and was able to take 5 star missions. Not sure what else might be going on though.
That is odd. You should be good enough, unless you like to abandon missions.
True enough, I was interested in hearing from others who have run 5 skull missions what reputation they were at? Because you would think a full reputation bar w/ say the Federated Stars and being in an alliance with them would be indicative of someone who trusts you enough to take on such missions.
I have finished the main story keep playing it occasionally. I allied with the Taurans and liked by the Capellans. I am able to do missions for both, but not able to use Capellens store when i am at their planets. I havent tried Fed Suns or Free Worlds League.
One thing to note: if you hang around Coromidir after the campaign you can easily get 5 skull missions from the Restoration. Or at least, that’s how it was for me.
Finally! Had a mission with both an Awesome and a Victor. Dekker in his Awesome with 5 LL +++ headshot both of them. So now I have a fourth assault mech. Which do I give to Glitch? Ended up in the Victor. I could put almost the same loadout into it. 2 LRM15 +++ an AC5 +++ instead of the AC10 +++ due to armor needs. Ended up with more armor and one more LRM ammo.
I may just experiment with a second 5LL Awesome as well. It’s a serious assassin.
Sounds like a good haul. I’ve yet to run across a Victor. That’s part of the reason I’m still messing about with this one post campaign is both to play harder missions (just because) and to look for more mechs I’ve not gotten my hands on yet!
I really should try a 4 or 5 Large Laser assault mech out. Since the last patch drastically dropped the Large Laser heat without reducing damage or increasing weight, it’s gone from worst to first in terms of long range weapons. A Large Laser +++ (+10dmg, +3 ACC), which is pretty common in the late game, is a beast of a weapon for the tonnage/heat. Good range and reliable accuracy out to the limits of the range. Stacking them up on an assault mech for a long range fire support unit makes a lot of sense.