Tips for second part of grave robbing

[Sabi The Worst Player Ever]

And more like how to deal with those three assaults. If I only could bring my own mechs, I wouldnt need my own assaults, I could even do this with mediums. But the main problem comes from SLDF mechs being surpisingly ♥♥♥♥♥♥, with at least half of firepower less than they could be. And thats without jumpjets. Kamea cant carry this whole thing alone.

And shut up, Reynard, I know about your internal damage, not my fault that light mechs started next to you and your Griffin is only viable as walking target. No need to remind me all the time.

[airbornemongo]

[quote=Sabi

And shut up, Reynard, I know about your internal damage, not my fault that light mechs started next to you and your Griffin is only viable as walking target. No need to remind me all the time. [/quote]

LMFAO!!

[Lack of Stuff]

If you can't fight through the mission then just exploit the mission triggers. Kill the first wave until you get the objective to go to the first Leopard. Instead take Kamea to the final extraction zone and trigger the artillery. Eject all other mechs. You win.

[Pherdnut]

Did you have a hard time getting this far? I'm not judging. I'm just trying to understand why so many people have trouble with this mission. The highlander is amazing. Huge damage output with very little heat. The Atlas 2 is less heat tolerant but It's a freaking Atlas 2. The rest you have to be even more careful about heat but they aren't weak mechs.

My best general advice is, use reserve a lot. Don't move your lighter mechs in before the enemy assaults have moved if it doesn't put your mechs at serious risk to wait on their move. Any time there is no risk to a reserve RESERVE. If a mech waltzes into a sensor view and braces, it didn't attack you on its first combat turn.

Are you checking parts in the mech diagram when you select to see what weapons are where? Try calling shots on Right and Left Torsos to eliminate their primary weapons at both the torso and the arm locations.

Also learn to take advantage of stability damage and knockdowns.

[Sabi The Worst Player Ever]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Did you have a hard time getting this far? I'm not judging. I'm just trying to understand why so many people have trouble with this mission. The highlander is amazing. Huge damage output with very little heat. The Atlas 2 is less heat tolerant but It's a freaking Atlas 2. The rest you have to be even more careful about heat but they aren't weak mechs.

They are very ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Black Knight cant alpha without melting and even when standing still, cant use any of L Lasers in row due to heat. Meanwhile using only mediums means wasting cooling potential. Griffin is weak armored, have useless skillset for his weapons and all of them are located at right part of the body - once its blown up (and it will), he cant do anything besides melee damage.

Highlander and Atlas are okay but just okay. In fact, Highlander is the only bright spot here, Atlas cant even make use of L lasers due to heat problems and Arano couldnt pick worse skillset. Seriously, Sensor Lock with gunnery skill line? Why not Bulwark, so it could be, you know, useful for slow moving bipedal bunker? On the bring side, it have enough armor to bear the fire barrage. If the AI will be stupid enough to target it while there are more interesting targets out there. The reason why Griffin had to stay behind all the time, he is just too cute to NOT shoot at him.

Beaten it in the meantime but only because of lucky leg destroying while shooting, which took down two assaults in two turns. I found out precision shot to be wasting morale here, vigilance was much more useful since tactic skill is obliviously low in case of those pilots.

About the question if I found it hard getting here - not really, I had missions with, for example, 8 mechs in close proximity and 2 assaults with them before, with lance of heavy mechs. But I had trained pilots with good skillsets and mechs suited for my playstyle instead of two okay ones and two turds.

[L37]

As you might have guessed this is not the last time you see this atlas too, so may as well get used to it now :)
As for highlander... IMO it is not just ok, it is really good and hard to improve in any meaningfull way. Decent high-range damage, close-range alpha strike capable of one hit killing things up to lighter assaults, almost heat neutral, and with jump jets... The only thing it needs (and lacks in this mission) is good pilot with high enough tactics to be able to fire gauss rifle and lrm-s at close range effectively.
Black knight... i used as dedicated punching bag - run forward and brace, because it cannot shoot without overheating anyway.

[mlangsdorf]

The first time I did that mission, I made the mistake of meleeing the light mechs at start. Star League assault mechs hit hard with their metal fists, but their huge guns are better. I still succeeded, but the Griffin didn't have any armor left and was missing a few body parts.

The Griffin isn't great, but it has jump jets, a lot of armor, and you don't need to preserve it. Jump toward your enemies and brace; let them blow off armor chunks off the Griffin while the Atlas II, Highlander, and Black Knight blow stuff up.

The Black Knight can't alpha strike without overheating, but you don't have to alpha strike. You can select the weapons you want to use. It contributes just fine to the carnage.

[Ryujin]

In the last part of the encounter I swing the Griffin south of that rocky outcropping at the bottom to hide him and just popped him up with JJs to tip over mechs which the others made unsteady. Occasionally hell get attention which he could survive due to JJ evasion. That helped relieve some pressure from the other 3

My assaults did a kind of rotating shuffle that spread the damage between them. It was ok enough that by the end I still was strong enough to have the luxury of which 1 or 2 assaults I wanted to salvage.

[Jon | Maso]

This mission is designed specifically to be a close call. And of course you could cheese it with mediums because the pace is designed for assaults. If I had to guess, you are just too used to playing your own lance. This mission isn't that difficult unless you get ♥♥♥♥ on by RNGesus. First time I made it through all four pilots survived with low armor and just one blown arm on the Griffin.

The first part is a cakewalk. Blow the bajebus out of the recon lance. Your LosTech equipped 'Mechs have an obscene amount of firepower and the enemy is point blank.

Next, take a good look at your lance composition. Play to their strengths. Make sure the guys with Bulwark are in front. Make sure your jumpers are always jumping for that evade bonus. Especially the Griffin. Even SLDF tech doesn't save it from being such a meh design. Use Vigilance liberally to double your HP while moving and get your assaults out of the crappy 1 initiative phase. Use your Highlander to delete center torsos: That Gauss Rifle is the strongest and scariest weapon in the game. The Highlander is going to be your MvP quite frankly. It's got enormous firepower and is extremely heat-efficient on top of you being in an arctic biome, and it can jump.

Kamea's 'Mech is slooooow and runs so hot that you can forget about almost ever alpha striking. Don't make the mistake of relying on the Atlas. Keep your much faster lance in the frontlines while she soaks up some stray hits, which is about the best role the brick ♥♥♥♥-house that is the Atlas can accomplish. I spent much of this mission just having her sprint just to keep up with the lance and get that much more mileage out of the Atlas's HP with evade.

Lastly, if things are getting hairy remember: You got three lancemates who are expendable. Sacrifice them if you have to.

[Bonzai101]

I honestly couldn't be bothered reading through everything on here because if you are having trouble then there is a very easy thing to do.

King of the hill it, basically camping your starting area, killing everything then sending your griffin to trigger the last part of the level then jumping / sprinting back to the hill to draw in the assaults and face them almost one at a time.

[Dorok]

Originally posted by Pherdnut:

Did you have a hard time getting this far? I'm not judging. I'm just trying to understand why so many people have trouble with this mission. The highlander is amazing. Huge damage output with very little heat. The Atlas 2 is less heat tolerant but It's a freaking Atlas 2. The rest you have to be even more careful about heat but they aren't weak mechs.

My best general advice is, use reserve a lot. Don't move your lighter mechs in before the enemy assaults have moved if it doesn't put your mechs at serious risk to wait on their move. Any time there is no risk to a reserve RESERVE. If a mech waltzes into a sensor view and braces, it didn't attack you on its first combat turn.

Are you checking parts in the mech diagram when you select to see what weapons are where? Try calling shots on Right and Left Torsos to eliminate their primary weapons at both the torso and the arm locations.

Also learn to take advantage of stability damage and knockdowns.

Sigh so it's not an infinite spawn like in first part? Those missions are so badly designed. But it's good to read it is easy to beat, I'll try.

[ImHelping]

It's your mediocre pilots as well as bad luck as much as anything. As well as if or when the AI prioritizes targeting plot princess over say, the griffon shooting them in the back three times in a row. (Compare first half of the mission "Oh my god every single indirect fire missile is being shot at the griffon" luck)

The suggestion to let the first batches of non assaults come to you is a strong one. Atlas in particular is slow as hell, but it still has the strongest raw melee in the game, so take advantage of that if you are in punch range and want to save your strained 10 shots of AC20 ammo.

Though being forced to plot trigger the assault squad makes it more tricky to plan for that one. Even if you wanna try wacky things like running three mechs to behind where the enemy will spawn in, then finally trigger the dropship destruction.

I made it through with everyone alive and with no destroyed parts, that's WITH killing every single enemy at the end too. But yeesh. It was clear there was not so hot QA.

Particularly when the scripted event explosions happened BACKWARDS for me. The base blew up, then they started talking about the airstrike, and right as the conversation finishes with Yang saying he blew up the base, THERE we go with the airstrike on your leopard.

Comedy admission. I did reload to the end of the previous mission a couple times to sit through loading screens and argo conversations.

During my first turn that is. Because the game doesn't autosave until after the enemy gets to go first. And two headshots on the plot princess before you even go? Yeah, no. (Took me 5 reloads before the team only suffered one rando headshot instead of multiple. Thanks RNG).

It's clear the intentions (particularly with the dialogue) is for you to roll through this mission showing off how badass your lostech mechs are. But that loses it's, how the kids these days say "immersion" when you've taken rando headshot dings from light mechs before the enemy can finish screaming IT'S A GUNDAM!

After that it's as usual, luck mattering as much or more than skill. "I missed three 95% shots in a row with my gauss rifle, and I still won by killing everything without any destroyed internals!" isn't exactly something I should be getting bragging rights over.

[Dorok]

In my opinion it's all the fault of first part which is a serious crap, and the bad idea to force chain those two missions.

Ha well at least I could skip it and continue, will play it if I replay the campaign.

EDIT: But the biggest disappointment is quote that it's already Assault time, most chance I won't like the gameplay with Assault.

[Jon | Maso]

For me personally, I'd think I wouldn't deserve bragging rights over 5 savescums rather than missing shots.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

Let's be real though: We all had at least one story mission we were forced to savescum on due to RNGesus being in a bad mood. Where is your Withdraw-God now? I had to REALLY stop myself from doing it at the end of a very long mission that went flawlessly, 0 damage, until a 0-weapon crippled 'Mech CAVED MY COMMANDER'S COCKPIT IN WITH A HEADBUTT IN THE LAST ROUND. I hadn't been so salty in a game in a long time.

[Jexvrok]

almost all the mechs in the second part have great ranged weaponry. abuse it to the hilt and make sure to keep ocnstant with brave bulwark and vigilance to keep shifting forward. i had a hard time with the first part of the mission, second part i breezed through it and demolished everyhting in my path.

[Dorok]

Thanks for the tips, but well I was tired, two chained missions was too much for me. I picked the easy trick, and I'll see that if I replay the campaign. :-)

Thanks for those who quoted the easy tricks, for now it's the only mission I really disliked, except some raging about bad intel, but then replay was ok.