Liberate Smithson - Tips?

[TheLuckyAce]

Yes I know... blabla wait behind the hill and ignore the Trucks.

BUT I'm at 3 Heavys and a Medium... when I wait they just outswarm me and luckyheadshots me to death due to massiv LRM amounts over the turns...

At Turn 6 - My two Quickdraw Pilots are at 2 or 3 Injurys and the Mechs halfdead
My Catapult is dead
My Centurion is halfdead with 2 Injurys

and guess how many of the Enemys are dead.
Correct... only the lightmechs. Remaining all the Turrets AND the Medium/Heavys they have.


Sorry but I dont find ANY way to solve this.

[kensw]

Lots of threads on this already - here is one try it

https://steamcommunity.com/app/637090/discussions/0/1729828401668133991/?ctp=2

[TheLuckyAce]

I've read this one, another 9 pages long and another one.

So... what? All tips are "grind more heavy mechs" - I have.
"Rush left and wait" I have. Sensorlock-LURM-to-death.
"gitgud" - thanks, I'm not a professional strategie player, spending weeks on games like this, just want to have some fun...

Just to beat a 2-Skull-Story mission do a 40+hour of grind? Thats a way to make your Game longer... welcome to JRPG?

[wesnef]

Couple thoughts - Quickdraws, while Heavies, aren't particularly good ones. Any of the 55-ton mechs can be just as good - yeah, they're 5 tons lighter, but their Jump Jets are lighter as well, and they are an initiative phase faster. Not a lot of advantage for the 60-ton mechs (QD and Dragon).

Also, what are your mech builds and pilot skills?

(I have to admit that I haven't done Smithon since like 1.1. And the skill & weapon balance has changed a bit since then. But I would say that holding back sounds like inviting the LRM turrets to hit you lots - taking them out seems like a good first step. Perhaps by blowing up a crate?)

[TheLuckyAce]

Quicks are - 6 Med-Laser the other 4 Meds LRM10 and SRM (if I recall correctly... ragequite for today after several trys)
Centurion is fullout SRM with a Med and a Small
Catapult is full out 2x20LRM

Pilots are Gun 8 Tac 7 in the Quicks and Cata the Centurion is Gun 7 and the Health thing 7

other skills are all at 4 or higher

Until this mission I've easy won everything. Even missions with "swarming lights" like fighing against 3 lances of lights at once... sure they luckyheadshots me alot and I had 40+ days of Medbay afterwards but thats fine... just in this mission I straight up LOSE everything without winning the mission...

[TheLuckyAce]

Also I'm around Day 336 at this point... so I grinded REALLY for this and I found ONE +++ SRM6... the rest of my gear is straight up basic gear as I found nothing... not even for sale.
Just the MedLaser Quick has a TTC (TTL?) +2 Acc. thingy...

Also I have not much other Mechs at spare, just the starting Blackjack and a Vindicator (and a Firestarter... for I dont know what) so nothing to go back to, without putting another week of grind into the Game (which would result in plain drop it again at this mission... as last time I played BT I grinded for more than 500 ingame days to beat this mission, even had 2 Assaults and still got crushed over and over again...

Even RT is far easier than this mission...

[terrycpa1972]

Send a couple of mechs the other way. There are 3 turrets in clustered in one area to the top right. You can destroy one ammo crate and remove 3 of the turrets and then retreat from that side and reunite your mechs. That eliminates a lot of the LRMs if I recall correctly. To the bottom left there is the hill which has a spider and a turret you can have your two other mechs kill that turret and fall back as well which will put you farther away from the base.

At that point you can kill the light mechs as they come around the hills a couple at a time. Feel free to fall back farther if you need to do so.

A few other points:

For pilot skills there isn't a lot of cover as I recall so bulwark isn't so good for that mission. Surefooting for extra evasion might help you. Sensor lock will definitely help in removing those evasions from the light mechs.

What are you using for armor? Close to maxing it out on your mechs? That tends to help with this mission.

Once you've eliminated some of the enemy feel free to run away from the enemy mechs and back into the base. Be careful you aren't standing in an ammo crate explosion zone since they may be set off by stray shots. If you maneuver carefully you might be able to get the heavier enemy mechs in a zone and detonate an ammo crate to help you remove them.

[TheLuckyAce]

Armor wise my Centurion is maxed as a Tank, the rest is more medicore.

I have 0 Sensorlock at my Lance, as I plan to use the Raven later after the Story I figured that I dont need it.

Also I cannot "change" my chosen Skills at this points, as I will not restart from strach or build up a new Mechwarrior just for this mission...

Overall the Mission feels like REAL bad Gamedesign to me... up to this point the closest I was to "losing" something on a mission was a missplay be me, nothing was a challange.

From this Skyrocket to "Oh you got the wrong Mech? Wrong Skill? Get back to Start and go over from 0 to here after 20+ hours of Playtime." feels really like lacking skill on the Dev's side...

Either the rest of the Game was plain up to easy to prepare for this mission, with showing what you need for Skills and Mechs due to missions before, or this mission is straigh up designed bad.


____

I will try your Tips now... after some time play other games I feel like giving it another try.

[TheLuckyAce]

Nope. Not working.

I get the two towers (its not three) and prevent the sensor lock...

BUT the Lights just wait out if my sight at the hill and than rush above it with the both heavys the med and all 4 or 5 lights at once and kill 1 Mech per turn of my side.

[wesnef]

Hmm. With the LRMs on your Cat, Sensor Lock would be handy. I usually have several with that available, just because I like Master Tactician. As for armor, 99% of the time I have maxed armor. Because avoiding internal damage is really important.


(I also tend to keep multiple backup pilots in case of injury or death. Which makes having different skill mixes easier to do.)

Overall the Mission feels like REAL bad Gamedesign to me... up to this point the closest I was to "losing" something on a mission was a missplay be me, nothing was a challange.

From this Skyrocket to "Oh you got the wrong Mech? Wrong Skill? Get back to Start and go over from 0 to here after 20+ hours of Playtime." feels really like lacking skill on the Dev's side...

I've never run into this, because it's part of managing the unit - I have multiple backup pilots, multiple backup mechs. So there's a mix of available skillsets to field, different mixes of guns. Just seems sensible (it's annoying to have an all-10's pilot killed, and have no one trained up to replace them)

Of course, I also enjoy playing the side missions - I think I was over 1000 days before Liberate Panzyr in the Campaigns I've played. My first playthrough was 110 hours. /shrug

[TheLuckyAce]

Now the mission is over (of course I'm dead) and the enemy has a nearly full Dragon left, a untouched Locust which MGed me to death with 5 Headshots, untouched Panther and two unarmed other Lights...

As said the above tactic seems to no longer work. AI is smart enough to not send the Mechs in "one by one" they wait and rush in all at one turn... resultet in Glitch getting double legged in the initial turn... through fullarmor legs on a Quickdraw...

EDIT:
As I said - through I know that I will use the Raven with build-in Sensorlock later, I've chosen not to bother with sensor lock until than (watched lots of gameplay for people without sensor lock, playing on much harder settings but without story...)

In the end everything leads me to just poorly designed Game at this single point. As if the Dev's did not thing about player who NOT want to go back 20+ hours and refarm all the gear and mechwarriors just because THIS one mission needs a complete different setup than the rest of the Game (of course, if you INITIAL use the Setup needed for this mission everything is different, but if you are not aware of this from the START and you chose a different route, you hardstuck on this mission... which as several times said is POORLY designed)

I'll drop the game most likely again, frustratred that I bought the DLCs for the second attempt and drop this developer complete... at last they took my money... maybe it helps for other players.

[wesnef]

Yeah, dunno what to say. I never ran into any issues like that in any of my playthroughs. Did Smithon the first time just fine, using the same general lance setup that I used the entire game. (two mixed-range mechs, one long-range support, one lighter/faster scout/assassin; could be 3 Meds & a Light, 3 Heavies & a Med, 3 Assaults & a Heavy. . .) Outside of a Flashpoint or two, I've never really had to customize a specific lance for any mission.

I honestly have no idea how this mission is such a problem. Or how you're playing that you're locked in to a particular set of mechs & pilots so that you'd have to "go back 20 hours and refarm".

(and no, I'm not some strategy game god. I can't stand RTS's, didn't like XCom, almost never turn the difficulty up on games to play them 'harder' - heck, I turned Dragon Age:Origins down to Easy because the combats were just tedious and annoying.)

[kensw]

Did that mission on first in Ironman mode without tips - It is not that hard

[TheLuckyAce]

Originally posted by kennethsw:

Did that mission on first in Ironman mode without tips - It is not that hard

THATS exactly whats helped me to win! - oh wait - NOT. Thanks for beeing useless on this Thread.

Originally posted by wesnef:

Yeah, dunno what to say. I never ran into any issues like that in any of my playthroughs. Did Smithon the first time just fine, using the same general lance setup that I used the entire game. (two mixed-range mechs, one long-range support, one lighter/faster scout/assassin; could be 3 Meds & a Light, 3 Heavies & a Med, 3 Assaults & a Heavy. . .) Outside of a Flashpoint or two, I've never really had to customize a specific lance for any mission.

I honestly have no idea how this mission is such a problem. Or how you're playing that you're locked in to a particular set of mechs & pilots so that you'd have to "go back 20 hours and refarm".

(and no, I'm not some strategy game god. I can't stand RTS's, didn't like XCom, almost never turn the difficulty up on games to play them 'harder' - heck, I turned Dragon Age:Origins down to Easy because the combats were just tedious and annoying.)

I've 6 Mechs ready and sold everything else. This worked for me fine until this mission.
Also as I said, I've watched many Let's Plays for this (and RogueTech) and NONE of them hase more than 1 or 2 sparemechs... and its fine (but non of them plays the Story... seems that there is a reason behind it...)

Also I've my "set" of Mechwarriors, with 2 spare's which are rather trained (4-5 Skillpoints behind the rest) but as replacements so they are skilled the same route as the others to replace them.


THATS worked so there was never an indicator that this will lead into an unbeatable mission.

Also all tips I find for this seems to be on older builds where the AI blindly charges onto you after the sensor lock is gone... which seems to no longer be the case for me.

My setup with a Tank (Centurion at the moment due no better Mech) a long-range LRM fighter and two Firesupports which can do Precision Strikes as well worked perfectly fine as well. I won every mission up to this single handedly without problems, just Dekker got double headshots with MG Locus-Swarming once... that was the most "critical" issue in this playthrough in over 20 hours. No indicator that this Strategie will not work at a certain point.


On the other hand I played hundreds of hours in XCom and similar Games (since the basic UFO way back in the past) and NEVER reached this point in a Game where I simply to frustrated to stick because the Gamedesign breaks my fun.

I can deal with RNG just ♥♥♥♥♥ on my Desk over and over again... or with Dark Souls bosses beeing anoying dic.... until you learned the pattern... but this Game really drops my Fun-Counter to 0 in a single mission... while I really loved it until than (also play MWO because of this and ordered the new SP MWO Game thingy.... )

[Top Hat Zealot]

@ Kenneth - Watcha doin' in dis' 'ere topic then, buddy? You clearly don't need the advice on offer and your post is devoid of any tactics the topic starter can try out to better his own odds. So what gives? If y'gonna brag about your tactical genius to a guy asking for help, at least do it in the form of sharin' that tactical genius, eh? Otherwise it's nothin' more than a puff of hot air that may be a fart or not - no-one knows.

Anyway, moving on. Perhaps you want to have a look at the basics? Maybe we can score some improvements there. Let's start with evasion: are you standing still and having a slugmatch with the AI? Because if so, don't. I believe one of the loading screen tips says: if you stop moving, you die. So stay mobile. Evasion pips matter; 1 pip = 10% less chance for the enemy to hit you until they remove it. Quickdraws are fast enough to build up 2-3 pips no problems by just walking. So try to plan your moves with that in mind. Those avoidance pips add up in avoided damage as turns drag on.

[wesnef]

I've got to say that not having Sensor Lock because you'll get it free on the Raven seems a bit odd to me. One, because the Raven only unlocks with Flashpoints, which are only after the whole story in Campaign mode, so that's a long time to not have Sensor Lock (plus, you'll be in Assaults by then); and two, because you just end up with Sensor Lock even if you're not going to use it much because it's a pre-req for Master Tactician, which is a great skill.


(of course, I may be biased because I love Master Tac. Before the skill revamp, all my pilots had Sensor Lock/Master Tac and then one of the other low-level skills; After the skill revamp, all my pilots have Bulwark, and then about half of them end up with SL/MT, 1/4 are Multi/Breach, and 1/4 are Sure Foot/Ace Pilot. I haven't used Coolant yet.)