3-4 star battle mission disguised as a 1.5 star mission?

[Xplosive]

so i just had a 1.5 star mission of the battle type mission spawn in 6 mediums and 3 lights. my lance consisted of 1 heavy, 2 mediums and 1 light. managed to take out 3 before i lost my heavy.

are 1.5 star missions meant to be that hard? cause i just did a 2 star mission that was easier than that. OR are we meant to bring all heavies to this fight?

[Isha]

Difficulty increases as you progress the story - a 1.5 skull mission at the start will be oodles easier than the same rating later in the plot.

Kiva made a twitter post about it a week or two ago.

[Ryncage]

I think its more of "Skulls are your merc unit;s best estiamte as to how difficult the operation will be, not how difficult it may end up".

Sometimes things go wrong, Sometimes there are more big bads than you anticipated there would be, and sometimes its better to run from the mission than fight it out and suffer 20-30 day repairs and injuries across your whole unit.

Iv seen difficulty across 1.5 and 2 skull missions vary quite a bit. Sometimes they get reinforced by an entire lance of mediums, othertimes it's just run of the mill vehical fodder.

[Isha]

Ratings mean different things on different planets too I'm told - a 2 skull on a 2 skull planet is much easier than a 2 skull on a 5 skull planet.

[Xplosive]

i see. well then... i guess ill retreat next time lol. i gotta say though it seems a kind of unbalanced.

[Xplosive]

so i just redid the mission and didnt get enemy reinforcements... its now 4v4... wtf game

[xstrych9x]

this actually explains a lot as i wrote up a post earlier this morning after having my butt handed to me several times on one 1.5 mission that was impossible. LRM's blasting me left and right before i could even get into range, tanks with never miss head shots, beyond frustrating, started to think it was a bug with the random mission generator as way to tough for 240k 1/4 pay mission.

never lost a pilot up to that point but in this mission 'goodbye lance' everytime...

[pit-s]

I've read that the "randomizer" work sometimes a bit odd.
Save before the mission and if you get such an "overkill reinforcement"-situation reload and start it again, which mean "roll the dice again".

[Xplosive]

yep the reinforcement rng is a bit overkill sometimes. i just finished the same mission and only got some enemy reinforcements this time.

[Bannon]

I actually see this as a strong feature in favor of the game. I view the skulls as what your contractor is expecting the mission to rate as. However, people can be wrong, or it could be a trap for whatever unit gets sent.

One of my favorite missions so far was an ambush rated at 2 stars, that put my four medium mechs up against one heavy, six mediums, and a light.

It forced me to complete the objective kills, and then retreat before I got overwhelmed. I like that I can't go into a mission with the expectation that my lance of mechs can destroy everything on mission.

[saice]

Originally posted by Jason:

Difficulty increases as you progress the story - a 1.5 skull mission at the start will be oodles easier than the same rating later in the plot.

Kiva made a twitter post about it a week or two ago.

Really that short of info NEEDS to be more clear in game. Here I was thinking skulls were an estamate based on mission type and enemy load out. Not some sliding scale linked to story progression.

This completely changes my view on things. At least now I'm not as mad about restarting my game.

[xstrych9x]

Originally posted by Bannon:

I actually see this as a strong feature in favor of the game.

hmm, not sure how strong a 'feature' it is when your 'one story mission in' new lance is getting whopped by LRM's, 3 tanks that never seem to miss and land a heck of a lot of head shots(were talking 3- 4 reloads and retries and every time, good bye 2 pilots to head shots), that for some odd reason don't go down with one alpha strike but require two different mechs to blast one tank, like they did a mission before.

then it gets really fun with 4 mechs escorting the convoy, so no trying to pick off and retreat, cover and evasion are suddenly point less since they dont seem to have the same RNG gods backing them as you do and seem to have no problem hitting my in cover 4 tick evaded mechs.

yeah, has to be a bug, unless the actual goal is to just make a player take an impossible mission just to make you retreat. Ok sure ill buy that, but then whats the point?