Yes they are. Creep up. Make contact on the crawleys and fliers and walk backwards, picking them off. Then when they’re gone, creep up again and make contact with your assassination target. Shoot him and draw back into cover. Tell the lancemates to stick close or go to a point a bit back so they form a kill-zone away from the base defences.
Wading in expecting to tank all incoming while laying waste to all comers is not something you can do in this game. On the one hand I find that sad, where’s my mech power fantasy? On the other hand it makes for a more realistic feel, having to fight smart, like you would have to in a tank simulator. On the gripping hand, in the end it’s about being a fun game, and wading in tanking everything would grow boring far quicker than being in over your head and having to compensate with smarts for lack of strength.
Well that’s a relief! Seems from those first release videos upthread that is exactly what players were doing… on hard no less… jumping into the middle doing headshot after headshot while the enemies were basically facing the wrong direction.
The early mechs I found to be the best performers: Javelin, Jenner, Blackjack, Phoenix Hawk
In all cases it’s worth sacrificing firepower to max armour them. Also note that the AI is very limited in its jump jet use (especially early on at low skill) so for lancemates stripping off the JJs can save some tons.
I dislike the Javelin for no discernable reason. It just bugs me.
The Jenner is good with AI pilots, but holy crap they break all the damned time.
LOOOOVE the hero firestarter. So irritating.
Blackjack hero mech is what I’ve been driving. It’s a hoot. The Jagermech with dual ac/2 bf’s and dual ac/5 bf’s, backed by 2 mlasers is just mean. I love using it, but the ammo capacity is a touch too low.
Centurion just seems dumb to me. The griffin I have has 2 weapons, which is a recipe for disaster, so I sold that. Got a grasshopper super decked out with lasers/heatsinks and it’s fun to drive.
I tend to drive the mediums/heavies. I slap one pilot in a locust and they run around causing trouble, one in the Jenner which they inevitably break, and one in a firestarter that I’ve got lying around.
AI never gets hero mechs because they aren’t trustworthy with double heatsinks or pulse lasers. And once they break the one-tick weapon, they get no-tick weapons until they can prove they are more responsible.
I loved Javelins, my AI pilots were driving them on and off for a very long time. Jenners are good on paper but AI always breaks them. Same story about Blackjack (regular).
After Javelin, AI pilots seem to handle the Hunchback pretty well, especially the no-LRM variant.
Centurion never worked good for AI, not terrible but would always get more wrecked and less damage than Javelins in the same mission.
I found that giving the AI mechs with lots of cheap weapons works better than with a few powerful but expensive weapons because AI loses weapons all the time and replacing PPCs gets really expensive really fast.
Myself, I just drive the heaviest mech I’ve got :) My latest favorite is the Warhammer - it’s 2 PPCs can mess up an enemy really quickly.
Pilot skill really does make a difference. Your early pilots (except for the mission reward ones) have very low skill caps and you will need to replace them. I would not consider a pilot with less than 40 skill cap at rep 12+.
I have had AI pilots put up over 1000 damage in the right mech… and their ability to tank incoming damage really improves dramatically.
The pilot you rescue early on is my AWS-8Q Awesome pilot. He’s got 4 star PPCs in all mounts because he’s never lost that right arm in I dont know how many missions now…
Fighting against elite units is a challenge; I came within a hair of losing a mission because of one elite marauder who consistently and accurately targeted my center torso while effectively rolling damage between shots.
I had to turn away and shield while my lamcemates pounded him to scrap. I can only imagine if there had been 4 of them.
As a big fan of Battletech since the '90’s I was looking forward to this one. So far it has been an exercise in frustration, unfortunately. I’ve had to replay mission 3 three times so far, and guys, I just don’t have that kind of time to replay missions any more. They give me a 50-ton mech to dispatch countless tanks and copters that whittle you down, and they also thought it would be “cool” to make you spend 10 minutes blowing up a base in the middle of the mission, only to die at the end(?) because lol, let’s throw a fast light mech at you now that you’re missing all of your armor and some of your weapons. So I spent 60 minutes trying to complete this godforsaken mission and I’m not any closer to finishing it. Why is it so hard to put in mid-mission checkpoints this day and age? Seriously, is it difficult to code that in or something, or are they forcing me to experience their vision of the game, which so far consists of me having to vent on a PC gaming forum?
Once I cool down I’ll give it a fourth attempt, and then hopefully be able to select easy missions or at least get an AI wingman. Holy crap, where’s the Tylenol?
I sucked at this mission too until I realized, from what folks wrote here, that the bad guys spawn in at specific places according to specific cues, generally where you are on the map I think, or perhaps timing. So, I kept pausing every so often, waiting for the enemy to show up on the radar. If they didn’t after fifteen to twenty seconds, I moved on a bit, then paused. This way, though slow, allowed me to end up with the light 'mech opponent with my AC/10 intact, and that was that.
That mission took me three times. Once I stopped playing like I was an immortal death god but cautious and careful, like a lone and outgunned tank commander, it became trivial.
Sweet and sour chicken, sixth time was the charm. I had been taking things slowly as you all suggested but the dog gone tanks and choppers loved to sneak spawn on me. I was able to take on the Spider with my AC10 intact and it made the difference. After it went down I did a victory dance but kept my eyes peeled. Sure enough, two more tanks spawned in on the way to the dropship. My CT was armor-less and in the red, and my other parts weren’t much better off. I got so nervous trying to take out two light tanks that I almost bought the farm 100 meters from my ship. Me and the Major are going to have a discussion about what constitutes “all” ground forces being eliminated.
I was able to do the next mission on the first try thanks to the repair bay conveniently located within the mining base. The game has opened up now and I’m at a loss of where to go. The Major suggests going off and recruiting pilots, but there are some contracts available… what do you guys suggest?
Definitely grab some pilots, assuming you have any mechs for them to use—they are a big help.
As for where to go, up to you, but pay attention to the recommended level for the regions. You can get into trouble if you move too far out of the low level zones.
It goes to show that tuning difficulty in a single player game is pretty challenging. I’m going to go out on a limb and say MW5 is easier than MW4 and 3 and even 2; but maybe harder in a different way. The previous game had big difficulty spikes; I remember having to replay missions five six times or more. MW5 I think I have had to restart missions a handful of times in 50+ hours of game but the game does keep me on my toes more consistently than previous ones.
I’m finally on a role as AI lance mates help a lot. I picked up two more pilots and I’m fielding 1 medium and 3 lights. I just hate it when I take down a juicy medium mech but can’t scrape together the 9 or so shares I need to get it, but I’m slowly building up my weapons stockpile and reputation. Everyone here is a big fan of the Federated Suns, right? Right?
If I run out of high-rep missions for Davion I’ll probably hop over to Steiner space.
Still humming along. I’m at rep level 6 and still doing missions in FS space. I was able to buy my first hero mech… a gauss rile, pulse-laser packing hunchback. In 3018. This thing can put a real hurting on other mechs, but the cockpit view is going to take a lot of getting used to since half of the view is obscured by the gauss rifle mount.
Can someone tell me the benefit of pulse lasers over regular lasers? How about burst fire auto cannons vs. regular auto cannons?
