Served Cold is a terrible mission

[vandal_vanir]

8 mechs + turrets + time limit? Fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

No one likes this.

[MortVent]

I see a lot of people complain about the missions, but ask them how much time they spent building up their mech garage with missions...

By the time I took the hit the argo mission I fielded all mediums, the next story mission had me in heavies+mediums... third all heavies... and fourth mostly assaults and after that just assaults.

Final missions were an all highlander or all atlas lance. With highlanders for those missions where you needed to hop around to take out key targets like the fire control installations

[Ichthyic]

just read the guide.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/205058-battletech/faqs/75901/walkthrough

[Vuud]

Does the AI cheat or not? Its supposed to be on a hot map and that Catapult that drops in can fire its PPC every. single. turn. and it's making me suspicious.

The only way to win the campaign is to hope you get good random contracts, then save scum until you can salvage the heaviest mechs.

[terrycpa1972]

The AI isn't cheating. The Catapult will eventually over heat but it's going to depend on how much it also moves and what else it fires. I know it's on a timer but you can usually stay at range and lure the enemy to you if you have mediums so they are separate a bit while two other mechs take out the turret generators that is closest to the fuel tank. You only need one turn to kill the fuel tank if you have your mechs near it when it comes time.

Also as I recall aren't the 1st mechs only partially armored? I seem to recall the wolverine being light on armor?

I'd suggest revisiting your mech designs and how you are approaching the mission. Are you using jump jets on your mechs? Rushing right in because of the timer? As for grinding if you have it set to just 3 parts it doesn't take that many missions to get some additional mechs once you've done Smithon. The general increase in skull ratings should make some additional mechs available. Also are you running stock or have you redesigned your mechs? Generally a good idea to specialize mechs (either long range or short/medium) until you are more comfortable with the tactics of the battles.

[dergefata]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Vuud:

The only way to win the campaign is to hope you get good random contracts, then save scum until you can salvage the heaviest mechs.

That's really not true. My last play through I rushed the story and got incredibly unlucky with salvage and only got the campaign 'Mechs, so I faced Victoria with Highlander, Crusader, and Vindicator supporting Kamea. I play Hard/Ironman/Po8 with stingy/stingy/very slow, so I guarantee you can beat the campaign without good luck or save scumming, whatever difficulty you prefer. I wouldn't have been able to do that my first time through of course, but if you'll take the time to learn the game and customize your 'Mechs and pilots to mutually reinforce each others strengths, you can get through the campaign.

Now, after the campaign, when the entire galaxy somehow is packed shoulder-to-shoulder with assaults and you're facing 8 or more 'Mechs per contract? Well, maybe then you hit a wall. I did. =)

Man, if Kerensky's heirs came back into the Inner Sphere we see after the campaign is over, they would have been sent packing by the first merchant caravan they met >.>

[ToJKa]

Served Cold? Was it the war crime mission?
If it is, then as said, start with taking out the turret generators, wipe out the garrison, and then let Lady whats-her-face constantly overheat her stupid K2

[Shinobi273]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από dergefata:

I play Hard/Ironman/Po8 with stingy/stingy/very slow, so I guarantee you can beat the campaign without good luck or save scumming, whatever difficulty you prefer.

It's still possible to savescum this game on ironman, just need to pick your battles (saves) well. If you Alt+F4, the game closes without saving and you can pickup after your last autosave.

Ex. on an assassination mission, quit to menu before engaing the target, load the save, and take your best shot at a headshot. If you get to the point their CT is getting really low, Alt+F4 for another shot.

It only keeps one save and the auto save engages often so it's not like you can be careless. It also requires restarting the game everytime so its not like it's easy but if you lose lostech or take an unlucky headshot instakill, it's better than being screwed and restarting the campaign or career.

[JC]

The only mission i couldn't beat on the first try was the late one with a ton of crawlers.. Turrets are not a big deal. LRM's take them down just fine. Smithton is hard if you try it with a lance of mediums and try to do all the objectives other wise if you have a heavy and don't worry about them all it's actually an easy mission.

If things are to hard for you lower the difficulty. If you are already on easy, then you should be playing more side missions to get better mechs. One reason why people have a hard time is they try to speed through the campaign before they are ready. By that i mean either skill wise, or before Mechs. Lower skill people need heavier mechs to beat the same mission which in turn makes the mission easier.

[Lord-Knight Fandragon]

I dont recall finding Served Cold all that hard.

THe Ammo crate mission was definitely more pressing. I played it like 3 different campaigns and never once could find an opening to go take the secondaries. I wound up blowing up a couple of the ammo cans to stop the huge flow of mechs.

The 2 hardest missions for me were the SLDF Bunker mission and the AMmo crate mission. All the rest were...manageable. The Starport mission was a little dicey for a bit but not to bad.

THen again, in all my playthroughs, I get waaayyyy over prepared. My pilots were at or nearing rank 10 when I moved to finish the campaign. I had my lance all sorted, the mechs I wanted, good gear, good guns......my guys were ready to party like it was 1776.

[JC]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Lord-Knight Fandragon:

THe Ammo crate mission was definitely more pressing. I played it like 3 different campaigns and never once could find an opening to go take the secondaries. I wound up blowing up a couple of the ammo cans to stop the huge flow of mechs.

.

If you farm 4 heavies it is an easy mission. You can also have an assault by the time you reach this mission if you buy some parts. I personally love getting a victor early. It is a very solid mech and really easy to piece together early game. (first 6 months with out a problem)

A Victor, thunderbolt, Treb and a commando for example the mission becomes pretty easy. :)

[Atalan]

For my second campaign run, I set the missions rewards in Settings to [Generous], and focused more on getting money than mech parts while being careful not to lower Pirate rep too much, then used the Black Market trigger and got access to purchasing SLDF mech parts within a relatively short amount of time. It was easy to build a very strong team and the mission was much, much easier than when I cleared it on my first run.

It's worth noting that Priority missions don't have to be taken right away since there's no timer. You can take your time to build up your lance and pilot stats so that you have the mechs and gear to handle any tough mission, and it's not all that much time needed if you adjust the mission rewards in the Settings menu.

[V4D4RS F1ST]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από JoeyJoJoJrShabadoo:

You can't kill the garrison in ~6 turns without extreme RNG luck or an OP lance via grinding. And no you can't take out the turrets before they fire, there's at least two super long range ones and one that can hit you almost from the start, if any mechs have line of sight to the players lance, the long range turrets can hit them from anywhere on the map.

Anyway, I'm not saying its impossible, i'm saying its not *fun.* I have better games to play than to sit and grind RNG and savescumming on this bloated, un-optimized garbage game.

Firstly, you can knock out the turrets before they become a major problem. There are guides on youtube proving that. This mission is far from hard.

It's actually super easy. I beat this mission in a clean sweep without trouble using 4 mediums set up for high mobility and damage.

The thing is to beat overwhelming odds you need to combine multiple forms of defense and offense. In my case my defense was based on 4 things 1. I was always in a prime position to get a good shot bc jumpjets 2. The high movement offered by jumpjets gives a large amount of evasion points. This makes a weaker mech a lot tougher overall since it only gets hit by a tiny fraction of incoming fire. 3. custom build focused on overwhelming firepower. Basically i wanted to cripple or kill any mech i faced within 1-2 moves/attacks. 4. Even when a mech is wounded badly i rotate out who is my lead guy.

I'm not saying you have to do it my way. What i am saying is, this mission is not hard by any means. I faced MUCH harder contracts outside of the campaign where i was hit by whole lances of assaults and heavies.

This mission in particular i scouted through mid. After spotting turrets i flanked hard left. IIRC one of the generators is within LRM range by the time you are within medium laser range of the far left turret. I killed the generator and the turret (that turret is on the other grid i believe) and push forward. The light lance was pretty trivial bc called torso shots vaporized those lights/mediums (all my mechs but one had about 200-250 DMG alpha)

The hardest part is as other people noted, when the elite lance comes in. Note the antagonist (the person speaking) is in the catapult and in my case my PC was in a mech on the field. She specifically targeted my PC even when the attack was sub-optimal (his griffon retreated via jumpjets and put me at a safeish range.) She agressively advanced to try and pursue which resulted in a prompt slaughter as she entered small laser range of both my other mediums and was so close i could just walk around of a rear torso shot. Keep in mind this isnt even RNG luck. AI just made a REALLY bad move based on the NPC's personal vendetta against my/our PC. Once her catapult was removed the rest of the fight was trivial as i had significantly more firepower at this point and mobility kept me from taking serious return fire.

On a second note, i second everyone else on the assessment that smithon is worse by a huge margin (to be specific i'm talking about smithon:Defense I am not talking about mission 8 Smithon: Liberation).

===Warning, spoiler ahead on mission 14 Smithon: Defense===

The fact that the enemy on smithon ignored your mechs and goes straight for the objective makes it VERY hard to protect them unless you have a mech with multi-target capabilities (which i did not. oof). This mission was particularly brutal for me because it forced me to make moves that put my mechs in clear and obvious danger in order to save the objective. If i did not do those moves then the objective would have fallen and i would have failed. There is no out for this. You Basically have to split your forces along 3 fronts and can't shoot to kill. You have to spread fire to keep your foes attention off of the objective and then survive the retaliation as well. After 2 tries (lost the first due to objective destruction) i managed to only save 2 of 3 objectives. I considered this acceptable and moved on.