can you do mission 16 without aleting the skulls?

[roadrunner0177]

^^^

[Vin362]

The moment you get near the target truck the Skulls will pop out, now I am not sure you can avoid getting supported by them you can however still get the total steal bonus if you were never spotted by anyone other than the Skulls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-hV66yAsEo

[!RJ_Truth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxNMmhCBQvk

When you say "alerting the skulls" do you mean without them coming out of the truck or without them chasing you and trying to kill you? See video. That's the best you could expect.

[Stormin' Norman]

Yes you can. Deploy the D-Walker with the F-Ballista, and fulton it out from a safe distance.

[!RJ_Truth]

Originally posted by Stormin' Norman:

Yes you can. Deploy the D-Walker with the F-Ballista, and fulton it out from a safe distance.

Interesting, never tried that, but I don't particularly care for D-Walker. I'll do it just for giggles though.

[ImHelping]

It's been ages and I'm out of practice. But I think I did some absurd things like specifically wait out in the wild down their known travel route (No mines. Those are a lot more attention getting). Set up decoys, and crawl around so I triggered the skulls while still not properly visible, and spam decoys to distract them until after several stubborn mission restarts I fultoned the truck and got away with an S rank.

D-horse was my good pal for that one. I didn't want to use D-walker out of being stubborn ("Sure I'll probably get only an B rank tops, but I don't want a penalty!-oh cool I got S), and the Fulton launcher did not exist back then.

But if your goal is to just straight up beat the mission in the first place use anything that works.

I THINK, that the Fulton launcher they added to the game since, does not have the "You get A rank max" trait like cloaking devices and the D-walker fulton launcher does?

EDIT: Hmm. Looking back. I wonder how swiping the truck from under the skulls noses still has "extraced the truck driver" unchecked for me. I guess it ejects them from the truck when the skulls show up.

[F430]

Fulton ballista limits your rank to A but the skulls will never spawn.
You can crawl towards the truck to trigger their appearance, then crawl away from them. No sudden movements or you'll be spotted immediately, same for hitting them with any projectile-based weapons. Sleep grenades/mines can work wonders here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N10FCCzKdXg

[MADG]

Yeah. When I was going through that mission and they popped out I was absolutely not expecting it to happen.
So while my jaw dropped to the floor, they did not spot me straight away - I don't know how this went down in your game, but as soon as I noticed that the cutscene didn't come with an alert state change, I crawled my way away from there.

The Skulls always kinda know where you are. They go moving towards you like zombies, stumbling about in your direction, even if you did not alert them. I had noticed that in the rescue Kazuhira Miller mission. If you do alert them, they become anime ninjas.

So I simply lured them away from the truck, circled around the Braga airport moving at a pace I knew was enough so that they wouldn't be able to catch up to me and fultoned the truck, only needing to avoid the transformed soldiers, which turns out isn't all that difficult.

I remember that once I got on the helicopter for extraction though, I took a shot up with the six-shooter I was carrying as secondary weapon - immediately, I saw Skulls coming at me, but it was too late. So firing guns apparently isn't a good idea if you want to avoid them, even from very far away.

[Dfactor]

Yes. Use decoys to lure them away.

[privatodato]

Not sure if this will help anyone, but here is how I did it (just from completing this). I had found one of the (tanks?) at the airport, then trailed it and the target to the next stop (north of the airport, I assume just following them will suffice). There I crawled to the target and got shocked by the skulls, immediately equipped my Grom-11 Rocket Launcher (the lowest tier one, no upgrades or customisations), took out two of them and died (ran out of ammo; 7 + 1 in the chamber). However, my next run through was very successful (S Rank) and the steps are below.

STEPS TO TAKE
1) Make sure you have some sort of rocket launcher (I was still using the basic Grom-11)
2) Before you approach the target vehicle, order an ammo resupply, preferably in the "woods" where no one is (I did mine a little bit past the Zero Risk Soldiers, and use that as a pseudo-marker for where you should end up at) and wait for it to land
3) Get to the vehicle (crawling is worked perfectly in case you are going the super stealthy route) and start the cutscene
4) After the cutscene, throw a decoy in the "woods" where your ammo resupply is and activate it, that should attract at least one of the skulls
5) Get spotted by the skulls, and cut and run towards your resupply
6) Whilst moving, make sure all the 4 skulls are in the same location, aim, and blow them boys up, run and repeat (If they do not end up in the same place at a favourable time, it's fine, that's what the resupply is for, just attack either way)
7) If you did everything correctly, you should have been able to defeat all 4 skulls, I managed it with taking only 2 hits, and 0 rockets left (without using the resupply)

BONUS
8) After the skulls fight, everyone is stunned. Fulton the Zero Risk Soldiers real quick, you'll notice them because they are dressed differently compared to the rest
9) Dash over and Fulton the tanks, target vehicle, and the driver (he should be easy to spot too as he is dressed differently from the rest, or at least he was for me, I was able to extract him and the tanks because my fight with the skulls was in the woods away from any PF soldier)
10) If you did this quickly, most everyone should still be stunned, feel free to make your escape, or stick around to analyse other soldiers and Fulton whoever you think is worth it

EXTRA INFORMATION (not sure if this is important, but it might make a difference)
- I deployed at 6 AM with D-Dog (Naked), the open Jeep type car, and the sneaking suit (⭐2)
- I dropped next to the military checkpoint where the transfer team was supposed to be and that's where I collected the intel file
- I drove over to the airfield real quick and ID'd one of the tanks and then they started to move immediately after
- I tailed them in the car until they stopped at another military checkpoint, at which point my game made a checkpoint
- I ID'd the other tank and the target vehicle as I was tailing them to the military checkpoint
- With my steps, I got an S-Rank, and completed 6/7 of the objectives
- Extract the Zero Risk Security guys
- Defeat the Skulls
- ID (analyser I guess, forgot the exact word) the transport
- Extract the driver
- Extract the target vehicle (This should be the main objective)
- Obtain the intel file
- Listen in on the transport (driver maybe) conversations *I did not complete this one*