Campaign side mission "High tide" 2 skulls level pits you against 24 mechs

[Tatan]

Hello,
first and foremost, i love this game, i love all about battletech.

I play battletech casually. Recently i started a new campaign and i am right at start, at part where i liberated that dropship of that Pirate Moon..

So i started to do 'side missions' for extra cash and mech parts etc., just as the Arano chick suggested.

So i get to a 2 skull difficulty mission called "High tide", 5/22 and 1.1M creds. So i was giddy to jump in, as i'm still short on cash.

Mission was to defend friendly base and at the same - destroy enemy base. Interesting scenario.

I decided that my strategy will be to keep around friendly base, to utilize its turrets and defend its buildings (no brainer)..

Before i finished 1st enemy wave, there arrived next wave from the enemy base nearby.
Then enemy regular reinforcements started to drop on top of my head in 2 round cadence, being 4 waves of reinforcements altogether.

I had 3x 55ton and 1x 50 ton mechs.
So I faced altogether 24 mechs ranging from light to heavy, 75t being the top, annoying scary Hunchbacks with 20AC etc..
One time i had like 12 mechs fighting against me at one time, maybe more ... it got really messy. Planet was desert, so heatsing hog ..

I managed to win with last mech standing being Medusa in Wolverine with no arms, last leg and 1 medium laser.
Behemoth and Glitch died, i'm 110 day in medbay, Medusa 40 day in medbay, all my mechs are writeoffs ..

Question comes to my mind - does the game takes in account which mechs you use in the mission, or it does not care.

Apparently, the number of skulls can be very deceiving in difficulty assessment?

I'm now torn if to take a 'hard road' and try survive without mechs and skilled mech pilots, or start a new game ...

[Boomer_8086]

Originally posted by Tatan:

So i get to a 2 skull difficulty mission called "High tide", 5/22 and 1.1M creds. So i was giddy to jump in, as i'm still short on cash.

Mission was to defend friendly base and at the same - destroy enemy base. Interesting scenario.

I decided that my strategy will be to keep around friendly base, to utilize its turrets and defend its buildings (no brainer)..

Question comes to my mind - does the game takes in account which mechs you use in the mission, or it does not care.

Apparently, the number of skulls can be very deceiving in difficulty assessment?

Use mission payout in conjunction with the skull rating. There is a skull variance of +/-1. And what you faced, each lance was ~2 skull rating. But you faced multiple ~2 skull lances.

Attack and defend. Not base defense. Your strategy was purely defense, and when you realized reinforcements were dropping in, you should have sent one or two of your mechs towards the base to destroy it. Back up keeps arriving up to 5 waves until their base is destroyed. As you found out the hard way.

You mech choice doesn't matter. It tells you the difficulty rating. You choose your force based on that. Some people take ½ to 2 skulls over when they can. Some people take 1 to ½ skull less because of their playstyle. Others just try to keep it on par with what is recommended. And some of us vary that just based on information or what mechs we have available.

[JC]

What i did is once you get the argo just forget about the campaign and have fun.. I didn't continue it till i had 2 heavies. Then i dropped 2 heavies a med and 1 light for a bunch of the story missions.


Quickdraws while not the best heavies the one with 6 ML's+2 SL's is a pretty solid one.. I also like running 2 Large lasers and i forget what else in the other. They are semi tanky fast mechs. I strip all the JJ's out of um to add heatsinks and extra armor too. a bit less mobile but better with damage.


You didn't say what your mechs are or what your load outs are, or how your pilots are set up so i can't really give you more help on that side of things.

[Tatan]

Thank you guys!
@seawolf86:
Thanks for heads up. I tried to attack the enemy base, but right from start i had to tangle with 8 enemy mechs and then reinforcements..
Problem was, that after some time, they drop agro and attack the friendly base (which had 6 buildings to defend), so i had all my mechs tied on defense.
And yes, i will keep lower cash missions from now on, no sense to get more of this kinda 'Pyrrhic' victories..

@JC:
Thanks, all my mechwarriors were 6656, Behemoth 7656. All with spec in piloting and guts to get maximum defense abilities, exception is Glitch who had spec in gunnery/guts.

My mechs were (the best i could field):
Centurion, 50t, 2xML, 1xSRM6,1xSRM2, 1xAC5 (pilot myself)
Shadow Hawk 2H, 55t, 1xML, 1xSL, 1xSRM6, 1xAC5 (Behemoth)
Wolverine, 55t, 1xML, 1x SRM6, 1xAC5 (Medusa)
Shadow Hawk 2h, 55t, 1xML, 1xSRM2, 1xSRM4, 1xAC5 (Glitch)

All had jump jets, also i tend to put on more armor, compared to default setting, to complement defense specs of my mechwarriors..
Terrain was desert with irradiated spots, so moving around was difficult, so i had to use jumpjets to move around, which made things even worse ..

As i said, it was hard to keep aggro, because of sheer number of enemies, they tend to drop aggro if not attacked for some time.
And i think i misused the 'campaign' term, when i should use the 'mission' term. This is just a side mission during the campaign to defeat Directorate, so i dont have much experienced crew, or any kind of good hardware ...
cheers!

[Boomer_8086]

Originally posted by Tatan:

Thank you guys!
@seawolf86:
Thanks for heads up. I tried to attack the enemy base, but right from start i had to tangle with 8 enemy mechs and then reinforcements..
Problem was, that after some time, they drop agro and attack the friendly base (which had 6 buildings to defend), so i had all my mechs tied on defense.
And yes, i will keep lower cash missions from now on, no sense to get more of this kinda 'Pyrrhic' victories..

cheers!

Multi shot becomes your friend. You shoot at an enemy mech, up to 3 mechs with multi shot, and they will stop attacking buildings for 2 turns after being shot at.

Also, as you learn the game, you'll figure out what needs to be targeted first.

Easy kills are a good one to start with so it is one less enemy. Light mechs like the Locust, Commando and Spider, and vehicles.

SRM/LRM Carriers, Strikers, Galleons (some more dangerous than others, all easy kills)

Left torso of the Hunchback 4G. That stores tha AC20 ammo and a critical hit blows up not only the ammo but the whole left side.

Right arm of the Panther.

Right torso of the Griffin 1N.

Left torso of the Thunderbolt. Or the CT for an ammo explosion.

And so on. That way you can defang some of the more dangerous mechs without spending too many mechs shooting at one and not bringing it down like you need to.

[Tatan]

@seawolf86
Thanks, yes, the multishots could help, i'll keep this in mind.
Btw. i loved this mission. It was complex, thrilling and like a chess game. Spent almost 3 hours on it :-) ..
cheers!

[terrycpa1972]

Attack and defend pretty much forces you to work on a clock if you don't want to be facing that many enemies. Pretty impressive you won even if just barely. As a general rule I take attack and defend for fun not for profit. Kind of high risk as you noted.

I take it you are playing ironman?

[Tatan]

@terrycpa1972
Yes, exactly, you are on a timer. But it is doable. I don't play Ironman, i just checked in game options 'more enemies' or something like that.

Because of that i gave it a thought and reloaded that game save.
And on second go i did it with all my mechwarriors alive, thrilling game again till the end!!
OFC first time, it was better (apparently) because you don't know what to expect :-)

I did
- play close to base, so turrets done some work for me
- went almost purely for melee with small harassers, stripping them of evasion and letting my heatsinks do the job
- attacked only rear of bigger mechs as they were approaching my base - i did not aggro them, until they passed me on the way to attack my base ..
- i crippled enemy mechs' legs anytime i could, so turrets hit them more often ..
- kept my mechs in whirlwinds (dmg decrease) as much as i could
- had more luck this time for 2 headshots ..



Thanks guys for all the advise!