vyshka
1865
Yeah, those are a pain. In the ones I’ve done luckily the ai has played stupid and instead of focusing one building down they spread their fire or shoot at mechs, and I’ve been able to scramble and defeat them. They have been fairly low skull missions though 1 or 1.5.
Hit each guy once, it seems to ‘taunt’ them so they don’t shoot the base. I had a similar hopeless situation that I was able to turn around when I tried that out of desperation.
edit: multi-target is a godsend on these
vyshka
1867
Yes, that and sensor lock to target enemies that are hanging out outside of visual range.
No idea if it changes, but I guess they justify it by thinking mercenaries are by definition, well, mercenary, and your rep depends on your reliability, not your affiliations. So, Steiner might use you, and so might Liao, and even Davion, and they all know you work for whomever is paying. As long as you stay bought for the duration of the mission, and do the job, they’re cool with that. They don’t expect you to be an extension of their house, unless you’re sort of like an informal part of their forces (Kell Hounds for the Federats, for instance).
I think you do gain negative rep in many of the missions, I just did. I don’t think you can with individual planetary governments, but with the Great Houses you certainly seem to.
AStott
1870
Ah, I see. That’s unfortunate.
Has anyone been able to put together a Steiner Scout Lance yet in the game? That’s my end goal. Also, all of them get Jump Jets.
Atlas so far have been very uncommon outside of the campaign. As in I haven’t seen any. You need probably two missions with them to get one, unless you luck out with a head shot. So that’s a loooong term goal.
I typically field 2 with sensor lock and 2 with multi, so I only had 2 that could “taunt” 4 of them. I wonder if sensor lock is treated by the AI as a taunt as well?
Next time this comes up I’ll try and see.
P.S. The batch of 4 and 2 mechs on one side started up on a hill and could move to LOS of the structures on first turn, so I couldn’t get to them and engage before they could start targeting the buildings. Part of this one I suspect was just bad luck, I got a bunch of stuff showing up at once and half of it had an easy time from the outset targeting the buildings.
JFLS
1874
What a great game. This is one of the best tactical strategy game I have ever played. Despite the annoying pauses and technical jerkiness on the technical side, the one thing that I really like is the slow pace of combat. The durability of the mechs, compared to that of the units in most tactics games, really gives the battles a feeling that I’m not used to. I have been alternating between this game and Battle Brothers lately and the difference is striking. Both approaches work and are interesting, but the pace of Battletech is not something I have experienced often.
I usually consider my first campaign a throwaway and usually start my real one after getting familiar with the systems for a few hours. I got somewhat careless in the first phase of the Argo mission and let the enemy turrets and vehicles get more shots in than I should have. That meant that I was going into the final phase with my two best mechs having no armour on their left arms. I had to come up with this strange formation with the two damaged mechs facing the enemy at 90 degrees and more or less waltz them in tandem around the battlefield to keep those arms protected until the final wave with the “boss”. It was quite a fun challenge !
RichVR
1875
No such thing for me. All of my squaddies are named after people I knew or famous folks.
I don’t have SEVEN friends, geez. Show off.
I ran into the first mission that just seemed too overpowering for me to fight. I have 3 medium mechs and a light, and I found myself against 4 strong mediums with reinforcements of 3-4 more mechs, only one of which I i.d.'d and it was a light. But even 3-4 more lights would be overwhelming. It was a 2 skull mission, and I thought the 4 strong mediums were enough to warrant that rating. But another lance? That’s a bit much isn’t it? Should I just scrap this mission? Or is there some way I should figure out how to beat it?
Depends on your loadout, but 4 vs 8 is common later in the game (at more or less equal tonnage per set of 4).
The AI is not very good at avoiding getting surrounded. If you can get a good starting position and focus fire a mech, you can win the upper hand.
It could be doable. Again, depends a lot of what exactly you are fielding.
vyshka
1880
What are the requirements for a good faith withdrawal? I thought as long as you killed a mech you were good, but last night I got tagged with a bad faith withdrawal in a mission where I think I killed at least 2 before calling the retreat.
Kill an enemy AND accomplish one goal
I had one mission that I did save scrub, simple because I had no idea how tough 1.5 skulls could be if you didn’t have all 4 mechs (I had to wait for repairs, on my heavier mechs before I launched).
It wasn’t too bad. 2 light and 2 medium mechs, and 4 tanks. I won because the tanks started on a hill, and I stayed away from them. My origin line up could not have beaten that map, so I reloaded waited for my big mechs to be repaired. (Original I had 3 45 ton mechs and a beaten up locust, and I just didn’t have the fire power to take on a wolverime and a Shadow hawk, while being supported by tanks raining down LRMs and PPC fire).
Lantz
1883
The skull rating is an estimate, the actual rating can be something like +/- a skull. So sometimes you will just get a much harder mission that you have to decide how to deal with.
And if you save scum and reload the pre-mission autosave, that +/- can get recalculated and the force composition you face will change.
