MW5 Question. Do I have to play some "tutorial" missions before I can get access to the Multiplayer? I thought that I remembered someone saying this when it first went live, but not sure if this memory is correct.
Yeah...it's about 4-5 missions in.
Also, you mentioned the other day about wondering if your MWO practice would transfer over to MW5. I've found the hardest habit to break is to actually put more than single-digit armor values on my rear. The spawns are so wonky, and you're guaranteed to get flanked, that you're absolutely going to want double-digit armor covering your butt.
Yeah that's one thing that kept making my eye twitch while watching TTB's playthrough of the campaign.
He'd start pontificating about not needing that much back armor, and then later in the same episode he'd start complaining about the AI pilots getting cored out in the back and losing expensive equipment because he swapped mechs and didn't want to wait for the techs to swap it out for cheaper stuff.
Using the extended mod so panic makes things a tad easier. No advanced skills yet (<5 in all for all pilots)... and the Lyran lance entirely wiped the floor with the pirates. 100 to 0. Had to kill them myself.
+6
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H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
Better spawns is shit. It drops things through terrain and rebalances tonnage that totally fucks certain types of missions. The thing that it was designed to fix “enemies spawning in vision of your rear” has been fixed for four months anyway
Re: the archer. Iolo
You didnt follow the AI fitting advice!
The archer has 4x ML on it by default. These have a max range of 270m and an optimal range of 180m. This means that your archer will attempt to move to 180 range.
Take the ML off and replace with more ammo and so long as you dont run in he will not run in.
Correction:
At least with MW5, tier 0 medium lasers have an optimal range of 216m and a max of 324...which still seems awfully short range for medium lasers (but that could just be my Clan brain talking). But yeah, I've generally found AI pilots to be pretty suicidal and are not to be trusted with good/semi-good equipment.
Also, on the topic of mods: the folks just now getting around to playing the game are playing the Xbox GamePass version. Y'know...the version that doesn't have mod support for the time being.
IIRC hexes are supposed to represent ~30 meters in tabletop, and the Inner Sphere Medium Laser has 3/6/9 hex range brackets, so 180/270 is canonical. Anything more than that is the game devs tinkering to try to improve the experience.
Using the extended mod so panic makes things a tad easier. No advanced skills yet (<5 in all for all pilots)... and the Lyran lance entirely wiped the floor with the pirates. 100 to 0. Had to kill them myself.
Using the extended mod so panic makes things a tad easier. No advanced skills yet (<5 in all for all pilots)... and the Lyran lance entirely wiped the floor with the pirates. 100 to 0. Had to kill them myself.
I have played quite a bit of this game, and I cannot comprehend getting enough contracts while racing around to every star system and managing faction rep so you that you can both take enough contracts per system and end up with the right level of min/max relationship scores.
Yeah, that's a common one. Although, the more common scenario is having a max salvage of 10, and getting multiple mechs that need 11 salvage shares to get >.<
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
That's true but only if only take one or two shots. Take 3 from there and bulwark is overall better. Yes you can move after being shot at, but what if they just keep shooting at that mech? Plus you're quite often outnumbered in the campaign
If they keep shooting at the mech you have refreshed your evasion pips... and so you're back in the good quality zone...
I suppose the irony here is that by taking +1 initiative (and using it instead of just gaining stability) you've negated your ability to refresh your evasion pips in the middle of an enemy turn and have significantly decreased your ability to absorb hits. You've got an entire set of pilots whose skills make it easier for them to be killed. If 10 mech activation are doing 50% less damage then that is 5 mech activations worth of damage.
In general a lance for me is going to be
1-2: Pilot/Guts
1-2: Breaching/Sure Footed
1: Ace Pilot/Sensor Lock (usually in a lighter mech)
Its not all breaching shot like your "entire lance of +1 init". Its just that breaching shot is very useful on the 1-2 guys that have it compared to the other options on the guys that don't.
This is, quite literally, super low variance. Like, hilariously low variance. You don't even usually take 6 mech activations worth of damage to kill four mechs and when you do you usually take it into a high evasion high DR unit. The breaching shot guys get to be a bit further back so as to take less attacks. They also will tend to have higher range weapons so as a bonus they can head hunt if they don't get a good multi-breach.
Ace pilot popping in and out of los doesn't seem to work that amazingly. So long as there is a target to shoot at they will shoot. Jumping in and out of los you would seem to maybe burn some AI activations if they have more mechs? If you can activate first from being lighter then you can only get shot at every other round, sure. I suppose you could build stupidly hot mechs, jump in, shoot, shoot, jump out and wait to cool off. If you just jump one mech in to sight for LRM/PPC/Gauss you will still get focused and can only jump out as the last action no? Plus if you are out of los and waiting they will definitely all have max evasion/guard
battlefields tend not to be featureless planes. But as an example of how a lighter mech takes ZERO attacks with ace pilot.
Turn 1. Mechs are hidden from view and/or out of range. Player moves into view of one mech and shoots. That mech goes and shoots. Player moves mech 2 into view of the mech that just went and shoots. Positioning so that he is closer to the next likely activation. AI mech 2 goes. repeat till AI mech 3. Now the LIGHTER mech goes and moves to a position where it cannot easily be engaged by AI MECH 4. (or if it has enough evasion pips it might not even care). It shoots. AI Mech 4 shoots one of the other three mechs. Lighter mech goes, shoots, and then jumps away.
if you go SECOND then this is guaranteed. You get the last activation on the first turn(because you went second) and the first activation on the next turn.(because you're faster)
edit: Heat exchangers are in the base game yes.
Okay but I'm not usually concerned with making one lighter mech take zero damage? That doesn't seem relevant in any way because all your other mechs are still getting shot at and you had to take a lighter mech to begin with, that doesn't seem like a win
Battlefields aren't featureless planes no, but you're not fighting immobile enemies in a caldera either. What do you do if they just keep shooting at the first mech instead of obliging and shooting at the harder to hit new target each time? They don't consistently focus fire but they will usually take the easier shot and they can move too. If you consistently have two up front and two in back - or worse, one up front, two in the back and a lighter mech using ace pilot to take nothing - then the up front ones are bearing the entire brunt of the attack, no wonder you think you need bulwark + sure footing + gyros + jumpjets to tank the incoming damage
Yes I give up the ability to refresh evasion mid-turn, but I always refresh it all before their heaviest mechs go and I've very likely removed the ability of one of their mechs to significantly attack me, that's at least as good as using sure footing's extra evasion pip to soak it, and this is why I take bulwark over sure footing because if I do get focus fired it's so much better and if I don't it's only a tiny bit worse
And seriously, why do you think you can multiply just one of those numbers by 50%, and just declare it lower than the other unmodified one? Think, an activation was just that, a mech getting a chance to move but since you want to bring in your super high damage reduction sure
+1 init / bulwark. Takes attacks as 0.6 * 0.323 -> 0.1938 (60% evasion + bulwark)
Turn 1: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 3 attacks -> 0.5814 "activations"
Turn 2: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 2 attacks -> 0.3876
Turn 3: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 1 attack -> 0.1938
Turn 4: attack x4. Kill a mech
Total: 1.1628 activations worth of damage
Ace pilot + bulwark + some breaching shots that never get attacked. Takes attacks as 0.6 * 0.205 -> 0.123 (70% evasion + bulwark). Note that you're taking a third less damage per attack here. You're not focusing nearly as much but I'll grant you more total damage so you kill 1 round 2 and 3 round 3
Turn 1: attack x4 interleaved. Take 4 attacks -> 0.492
Turn 2: attack x4 interleaved. Take 4 attacks, one is dead but assume it gets its shot off, it usually will -> 0.492
Turn 3: attack, take attack, attack, take attack, attack say you kill the unactivated mech here, attack -> 0.246
Total: 1.23 activations worth of damage. Assuming that only your maximum defense mechs get shot at, and always at maximum defense and that you have significantly higher effective dps to kill 4 mechs in 12 attacks vs 16 you still take more incoming damage, and it's concentrated on fewer mechs
It might be that the PA Discord channel would be a good place to send out a call to arms for co-op pilots. Since the game doesn't have an easy way to have people join games (and EGS doesn't exactly show when somebody is actually in a game), it's difficult to tell when people are playing and are wanting help or the company of real pilots who are ostensibly more aware and less suicidal than the AI pilots.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Using the extended mod so panic makes things a tad easier. No advanced skills yet (<5 in all for all pilots)... and the Lyran lance entirely wiped the floor with the pirates. 100 to 0. Had to kill them myself.
It was 2 wasps, a griffin, and the stalker. The stalker was damaged but nothing internal. I was lucky that it was wasps. Theyre fast enough to get ahead of the griffin and stalker and slow enough that its easy enough to shed their evasion pips. AND they don't have a lot of high probability weapons or high damage weapons. If it was MG locusts it could have been a real issue. Plus, because combat had been “going on” for like 15 rounds i was capped in morale. So once pips were shed i could clobber them with a SRM 10 CT precision shot
Once they were down it was down to pick apart the stalker and griffin. The griffin almost killed my locust... it missed its DFA. And i took a few hard/unlucky hits. But it was badlands so the stalker could not alpha a lot.
And when he did he was at long range into 3+ evasion pips (assuming the griffin and him shot the same target) which for a commando (+1 def quirk, +3 from light) is -70%. Even a good pilot has trouble there. And usually it was 4+ evasion pips
Once the griffin was down it was easy sailing as the stalker had suffered a bunch of back hits and was reduced to fireing a single medium laser at my 4-5 evasion team as we chewed it apart.
But they arent getting shot at more than you are.. managing engagement is easy and easier when initiative is mixed. If you kill 1 mech/round you dont take 1 extra attack/round unless the mech you would have killed went first every turn
Like... you keep talking about getting shot at as if it matters in the late game. I dont care about getting shot at because attacks deal functionality zero damage.
That doesn't seem relevant in any way because all your other mechs are still getting shot at and you had to take a lighter mech to begin with, that doesn't seem like a win
You don't "have" to take a lighter mech. You get to take a lighter mech. A Griffin 1N, Shadowhawk 2h, and wolverine 6R all have room for 3 SRM6 and a Small laser. That is ~246 damage to the enemies rear CT. And then you have ace pilot so if they somehow did survive that they don't survive the next one. The Royal Griffin is even better. A Kintaro-18 can fit 5 SRM6 and 5 jumps! *ok space limitations but 4 SRM6 is still 288/244.8(avg) dmg to the rear CT. The lighter mech kills an assault every other round almost guaranteed. A firestarter can fit 180 damage in Small Laser++'s. Aint nobody has ~306 rear CT health. Its a bit tough to do this entirely with ace pilot firestarters because you still have to interweave on initiative 1. But if you have a nice dedicated tank its pretty easy to do this with one ace pilot firestarters/medium. Like... when i was in the thread earlier explaining how i was chain DFA'ing my firestarter it was both not a joke and was in was in 4-5 skull missions. 270 damage per DFA plus another 180 on the way out usually all to the rear. Now... this isn't breaching shot sure. But ace pilot is the other advanced skill i thought was still really useful(so i am not being inconsistent here).
I think that's probably the worst design mistake in the game. Due to the sheer attrition factor of you facing wave after wave of enemies in most missions, your progress is heavily gated by the size of mechs you can bring. However, in general the contracts that are "reasonable" to take for any given drop tonnage also do not actually provide enough salvage to get higher tonnage mechs. And with no partial salvage, there is no way to work your way up over time to get one either. I gave up hope for any mech salvage fairly early and just had to start buying all my mechs off the market so I could progress at a reasonable rate. Which just doesn't feel right.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I think that's probably the worst design mistake in the game. Due to the sheer attrition factor of you facing wave after wave of enemies in most missions, your progress is heavily gated by the size of mechs you can bring. However, in general the contracts that are "reasonable" to take for any given drop tonnage also do not actually provide enough salvage to get higher tonnage mechs. And with no partial salvage, there is no way to work your way up over time to get one either. I gave up hope for any mech salvage fairly early and just had to start buying all my mechs off the market so I could progress at a reasonable rate. Which just doesn't feel right.
Mech salvage is by far the fastest way to progress besides buying better weapons. Buying mechs off the market is good (especially rare* and hero mechs!) but salvage is almost always net positive on taking money even if you sell the mechs. That jenner is worth about 1.5m for sale and took 4 points worth of salvage rights (2 rights per point). For a net benefit of 1 million credits on taking cash
*so long as theyre actually rare. Sometimes a rare mech is a normal mech in good condition and sometimes its a SLDF mech with doubles, endo, and lostech
Edit: i have found progress is mainly based on AI and player pilot skill. Bigger mechs can help but like... 2 AC5 and 2 srm6 will carry you through the majority of the game alone.
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
I think that's probably the worst design mistake in the game. Due to the sheer attrition factor of you facing wave after wave of enemies in most missions, your progress is heavily gated by the size of mechs you can bring. However, in general the contracts that are "reasonable" to take for any given drop tonnage also do not actually provide enough salvage to get higher tonnage mechs. And with no partial salvage, there is no way to work your way up over time to get one either. I gave up hope for any mech salvage fairly early and just had to start buying all my mechs off the market so I could progress at a reasonable rate. Which just doesn't feel right.
Mech salvage is by far the fastest way to progress. Buying mechs off the market is good (especially rare* and hero mechs!) but salvage is almost always net positive on taking money even if you sell the mechs.
*so long as theyre actually rare. Sometimes a rare mech is a normal mech in good condition and sometimes its a SLDF mech with doubles, endo, and lostech
Which is another really dumb design mistake. The store provides no way to see the equipment to tell them apart, so you have to buy the mech sight unseen, back out and go into your mechbay to look at the equipment, go back to the store, sell the first mech, repeat the process for the second mech, hope you remember all the gear that was on the first one to compare, and possibly repeat a 3rd time if the first mech was the better choice of the two.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I think that's probably the worst design mistake in the game. Due to the sheer attrition factor of you facing wave after wave of enemies in most missions, your progress is heavily gated by the size of mechs you can bring. However, in general the contracts that are "reasonable" to take for any given drop tonnage also do not actually provide enough salvage to get higher tonnage mechs. And with no partial salvage, there is no way to work your way up over time to get one either. I gave up hope for any mech salvage fairly early and just had to start buying all my mechs off the market so I could progress at a reasonable rate. Which just doesn't feel right.
Mech salvage is by far the fastest way to progress. Buying mechs off the market is good (especially rare* and hero mechs!) but salvage is almost always net positive on taking money even if you sell the mechs.
*so long as theyre actually rare. Sometimes a rare mech is a normal mech in good condition and sometimes its a SLDF mech with doubles, endo, and lostech
Which is another really dumb design mistake. The store provides no way to see the equipment to tell them apart, so you have to buy the mech sight unseen, back out and go into your mechbay to look at the equipment, go back to the store, sell the first mech, repeat the process for the second mech, hope you remember all the gear that was on the first one to compare, and possibly repeat a 3rd time if the first mech was the better choice of the two.
What I tend to do is hit up https://mech.nav-alpha.com/ and load the mech variant's stock loadout. That usually gives a good indication of what's going to come on it (if it shows XL engines and DHS, you've found one of the actual 'rare' mechs!)
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
edit: there is a mod that lets you see equipment in the store.
edit: There is also a mod that gives mechs with internal doubles proper heat sinking. Just in case you wanted your SLDF highlander to be good.
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
edit: there is a mod that lets you see equipment in the store.
edit: There is also a mod that gives mechs with internal doubles proper heat sinking. Just in case you wanted your SLDF highlander to be good.
Yeah, and the fact it was one of the first mods to be done just highlights how obvious a problem it is to everyone but PGI apparently.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
I have played quite a bit of this game, and I cannot comprehend getting enough contracts while racing around to every star system and managing faction rep so you that you can both take enough contracts per system and end up with the right level of min/max relationship scores.
Any tips? And did you play Ironman?
Always ironman!
You need to plan for the achievement from the very beginning as you need to maximise the number of systems you visit every time you move. It always takes 3 days to jump between systems when you're on the jump ship so you need to minimise the extra time that gets wasted between jump ship and planet.
I finished up 170 systems with about 250 days left, I then spent around 100 days up around Marik space as I could get contracts for the 4 I wanted to boost against 2/4 of the ones I wanted to tank then spent the last 150ish days in Restoration space after I'd maxed out the factions because Restoration rep doesn't count for anything and they always have heaps of contracts in each system. Restoration contracts are usually either against the pirates or Taurians so I could tank the last 2 there.
You need to do a minimum of 140 5 star contracts so all up I'd estimate I did around 200-220 contracts always taking full salvage as mech parts are worth ~10k per ton (3 parts per mech) - The thing I found was you need to destroy as many side torsos as possible before taking out the head so that the amount of trash salvage (weapons, heats sinks, anything that isn't a mech part) is reduced in the salvage table. Less trash salvage = more mech parts on average from the random salvage assignment. One contract near the end (the one I posted a shot of with the 16 destroyed mechs) netted me something like 110mil in salvage
If you see a contract offering 9/X salvage that's a fucking lie. I seemed to only ever get 8 priority salvage max.
I ran 4 Annihilators with 4x UAC/10 for 90% of the game, I had something like 10 Annihilators by the end, if 1 got a bit of structure damage I just rotated in the next one, I probably took a couple of points of structure damage every 20-25 contracts.
Most contracts took around 9 turns including the first 2 turns which were just sprinting towards the objective so the Annihilators had 8 full alpha strikes worth of ammo.
The 4 Pilots always had Bulwark, Multi Shot, and Coolant Vent.
Urban planets can fuck right off.
Escort missions can also fuck off.
Attack and Defend missions are the best sources of salvage.
I'd rather do twice as many 2.5 skull missions than 5 skull missions.
I actually had enough liquid cash at the end to probably max out the c-bills but I was not going to buy 200mil worth of jump jets one at a time to sell back to the store. I did make a backup of the save with 6 days left - maybe I'll go back and do it one day.
I reckon I spent 40-50 hours on this and I won't be doing it again.
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
True. Ballistic weapons have no damage drop off. But this mainly makes AC/20/10/5 hilarious in player hands(my record is 1100 meters to hit a VTOL) since their DPS/Tonne is so high compared to gauss
But for me its mainly about how fast you kill things with MLAS since they all hit at the exact same spot for supreme focus damage
Yeah, for me, gauss is the cheater's ballistic weapon: zero ballistic drop and really high muzzle velocity makes for easy sniping. The longest range helo kill I've gotten was the 1.4km thing that spawned in and didn't get the trigger to start moving...felt so good.
The funny part is that I'm kind of an extremes kinda guy. I can do extreme range ballistics (AC2 or gauss) or all close-combat brawling (SRMs, machine guns, etc...)
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
True. Ballistic weapons have no damage drop off. But this mainly makes AC/20/10/5 hilarious in player hands(my record is 1100 meters to hit a VTOL) since their DPS/Tonne is so high compared to gauss
But for me its mainly about how fast you kill things with MLAS since they all hit at the exact same spot for supreme focus damage
I'd agree with that. Definitely got work done with LBX/U/AC10s, but by far my most often used workhorse was a Battlemaster with 6ML, SRM6, and LL with enough heatsinks to basically fire continuously. That LL being critical to pick off VTOLs since your lancemates are garbage at dealing with them quickly, but the MLs doing the bulk of the mech work with the SRM for extra kick.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
True. Ballistic weapons have no damage drop off. But this mainly makes AC/20/10/5 hilarious in player hands(my record is 1100 meters to hit a VTOL) since their DPS/Tonne is so high compared to gauss
But for me its mainly about how fast you kill things with MLAS since they all hit at the exact same spot for supreme focus damage
I'd agree with that. Definitely got work done with LBX/U/AC10s, but by far my most often used workhorse was a Battlemaster with 6ML, SRM6, and LL with enough heatsinks to basically fire continuously. That LL being critical to pick off VTOLs since your lancemates are garbage at dealing with them quickly, but the MLs doing the bulk of the mech work with the SRM for extra kick.
Yea i was refering specifically to the MLAS (or SRM/mlas) version of the hunchback over the hero with the gauss.
My favorite mech is the quickdraw Hero. 2x AC/5, 2x SRM6. And like... 8 tonnes of ammo and jumps. The AC/5 one shot basic tanks, and kill all VTOL in one hit. They cycle fast enough that you can shoot as fast as you can target and are accurate enough to head hunt to a reasonable distance. The SRM-12 flattens anything that got through your AC/5 barrage
Speaking of hero mechs, a buddy of mine who's mostly only playing in co-op with me has got the devil's own luck. Before we've even left Davion space, he's already picked up a Javelin-High There (he's quite fond of this one), Firestarter-Ember (he's also fond of this one, too), and a Hunchback-Grid Iron (which I talked him into buying for me, because holy crap, gauss rifles in 3018!).
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
True. Ballistic weapons have no damage drop off. But this mainly makes AC/20/10/5 hilarious in player hands(my record is 1100 meters to hit a VTOL) since their DPS/Tonne is so high compared to gauss
But for me its mainly about how fast you kill things with MLAS since they all hit at the exact same spot for supreme focus damage
I'd agree with that. Definitely got work done with LBX/U/AC10s, but by far my most often used workhorse was a Battlemaster with 6ML, SRM6, and LL with enough heatsinks to basically fire continuously. That LL being critical to pick off VTOLs since your lancemates are garbage at dealing with them quickly, but the MLs doing the bulk of the mech work with the SRM for extra kick.
Yea i was refering specifically to the MLAS (or SRM/mlas) version of the hunchback over the hero with the gauss.
My favorite mech is the quickdraw Hero. 2x AC/5, 2x SRM6. And like... 8 tonnes of ammo and jumps. The AC/5 one shot basic tanks, and kill all VTOL in one hit. They cycle fast enough that you can shoot as fast as you can target and are accurate enough to head hunt to a reasonable distance. The SRM-12 flattens anything that got through your AC/5 barrage
It's also kinda funny. For a couple missions when the game first launched, I was playing with a streamer's community. One of them absolutely needed a Catapult. So, I found them a Catapult hero mech. Specifically, the Butterbee and put 4xSRM6+4xML. The person was horrified that I took off the LRMs and had to relearn how to Catapult, but they eventually got the hang of it and was shocked at how much face it wrecked.
It's also why I strip out all LRMs from my mechs and replace them with SRMs.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
A single LRM-ST(10 to 15) can be very useful for killing turrets. Since LRM's can fire without locks you can just point at the turrets and kill them from 1km or so without having to worry about ballistic aiming
A single LRM-ST(10 to 15) can be very useful for killing turrets. Since LRM's can fire without locks you can just point at the turrets and kill them from 1km or so without having to worry about ballistic aiming
Yeah...turrets are also why I keep at least one mech around with an ERPPC (in my mid-game, that was a Blackjack-Arrow).
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
Trying to do the math on salvage. 10k per tonne per part means a 100 tonne mech sells for 3 million? Shouldnt it sell for like 1?
In general, especially if you are doing missions with potential bonuses for killing extra stuff the money seems like a better option most of the time. Even if you can get a 10m payout from a few missions by getting a hilarious number of parts
The only time the money is worth it is if you get unlucky and come up against vehicles instead of mechs. Or if you're playing with more parts per mech in which case the value of individual mech parts is less.
Handsome CostanzaAsk me about 8bitdoRIP Iwata-sanRegistered Userregular
edited May 2020
I'm having trouble with a story mission.
It's a story mission where you have to defend a settlement and then go destroy 3 fuel dumps. It starts off with a bunch of VTOLs UACs and tanks, easy enough. Then you face like 6 more UACs and a Vindicator while traveling to the fuel dumps, which whittle your health down. THEN an enemy squadron of 4 mechs, including a Thunderbolt land on top of you. If you manage to survive that another dropship lands behind it with a veteran Warhammer and a Panther with a PPC. By the time I face these guys my unit has been shot to pieces and there's absolutely no way I can beat them. It's friggin impossible with the AI they give you.
Did you have a system for which systems you visited?
I think about that wretched corner of Taurian space with all 4-5 skull planets and Martian/Lunar environments.
I passed through most of Taurian space without stopping, their space is annoying because it has a whole bunch of systems that are really close together so they get skipped over when plotting a long route.
Idea was to plot a route that hit as many unvisited systems as possible and aiming to land at a 3.5+ star system at the end. The most important part was maximising the unvisited systems each time I set off.
It's a story mission where you have to defend a settlement and then go destroy 3 fuel dumps. It starts off with a bunch of VTOLs UACs and tanks, easy enough. Then you face like 6 more UACs and a Vindicator while traveling to the fuel dumps, which whittle your health down. THEN an enemy squadron of 4 mechs, including a Thunderbolt land on top of you. If you manage to survive that another dropship lands behind it with a veteran Warhammer and a Panther with a PPC. By the time I face these guys my unit has been shot to pieces and there's absolutely no way I can beat them. It's friggin impossible with the AI they give you.
Yeah, that mission is when things start going sideways if you're not getting human pilots to fill in for your lancemates. I think the only way I got through it was mostly down to having my Blackjack-Arrow (6xMG, 2xML, 1xERPPC) alongside enough meatier mediums that they could soak up the damage done by the surprise Warhammer.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der Erlkönig (the umlaut is important) |
It's a story mission where you have to defend a settlement and then go destroy 3 fuel dumps. It starts off with a bunch of VTOLs UACs and tanks, easy enough. Then you face like 6 more UACs and a Vindicator while traveling to the fuel dumps, which whittle your health down. THEN an enemy squadron of 4 mechs, including a Thunderbolt land on top of you. If you manage to survive that another dropship lands behind it with a veteran Warhammer and a Panther with a PPC. By the time I face these guys my unit has been shot to pieces and there's absolutely no way I can beat them. It's friggin impossible with the AI they give you.
Target priority for me is Igor's (shooting one of their side engines makes them easy to one shot kill before they ever get in range to shoot. Shooting the center fuselage is a waste of ammo.), VTOLs (again easy to kill before they can even get in range), tanks, mechs. And those first 3 are always my job to clear, I don't rely on the AI to do it fast enough (unless it's well out of my range where I might order a lancemate to shoot LRMs at it). That tends to get me to the last part of the mission with relatively little damage.
But once you get to the final area of that mission, my advice is to not just go straight in and slug it out in the open area. I tried that at first and got wrecked repeatedly. Use your lancemates as distraction bait while you use the buildings for cover to circle around behind the enemies to shoot them in the back. When the second group drops, do not charge ahead at them. Pull back and let them come to you, again using building cover to protect yourself from long open sightlines and their ranged firepower. The Panther is faster and will get to you first which should allow your lance to focus it down before the Warhammer can arrive to assist. Switch back to circling cover to attack the Warhammer from the sides or rear while it attacks the rest of your lance, probably focusing on it's arms first to reduce damage to your lancemates.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
It's a story mission where you have to defend a settlement and then go destroy 3 fuel dumps. It starts off with a bunch of VTOLs UACs and tanks, easy enough. Then you face like 6 more UACs and a Vindicator while traveling to the fuel dumps, which whittle your health down. THEN an enemy squadron of 4 mechs, including a Thunderbolt land on top of you. If you manage to survive that another dropship lands behind it with a veteran Warhammer and a Panther with a PPC. By the time I face these guys my unit has been shot to pieces and there's absolutely no way I can beat them. It's friggin impossible with the AI they give you.
Angle your walk towards the first base such that you have a good angle on the VTOL. Take them out from longer range to reduce the damage they do to you because they will be shooting the base. The lance of heavies at the end should be NBD if you keep your speed up and use cover. Given that you didnt take a lot of damage from the VTOL
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SummaryJudgmentGrab the hottest iron you can find, stride in the Tower’s front doorRegistered Userregular
edited May 2020
Hey, so everything is on sale and I haven't played since launch
1. what DLC is worth it, or better than others? Does Flashpoint really mean that much of an improvement over the normal non-campaign career mode? HM has a ton of content, Urban seems skippable?
2. Buying the package that includes the base game and all DLC is cheaper than just the DLC - anyone know if I'll get a gift able copy since I already own?
SummaryJudgment on
Some days Blue wonders why anyone ever bothered making numbers so small; other days she supposes even infinity needs to start somewhere.
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Yeah that's one thing that kept making my eye twitch while watching TTB's playthrough of the campaign.
He'd start pontificating about not needing that much back armor, and then later in the same episode he'd start complaining about the AI pilots getting cored out in the back and losing expensive equipment because he swapped mechs and didn't want to wait for the techs to swap it out for cheaper stuff.
Using the extended mod so panic makes things a tad easier. No advanced skills yet (<5 in all for all pilots)... and the Lyran lance entirely wiped the floor with the pirates. 100 to 0. Had to kill them myself.
IIRC hexes are supposed to represent ~30 meters in tabletop, and the Inner Sphere Medium Laser has 3/6/9 hex range brackets, so 180/270 is canonical. Anything more than that is the game devs tinkering to try to improve the experience.
Good gravy!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Now I can play other games for a while.
But you didn't max out the c-bills score. Gonna have to start another playthrough! :P
Get outta here!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
Congrats!
I have played quite a bit of this game, and I cannot comprehend getting enough contracts while racing around to every star system and managing faction rep so you that you can both take enough contracts per system and end up with the right level of min/max relationship scores.
Any tips? And did you play Ironman?
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Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Okay but I'm not usually concerned with making one lighter mech take zero damage? That doesn't seem relevant in any way because all your other mechs are still getting shot at and you had to take a lighter mech to begin with, that doesn't seem like a win
Battlefields aren't featureless planes no, but you're not fighting immobile enemies in a caldera either. What do you do if they just keep shooting at the first mech instead of obliging and shooting at the harder to hit new target each time? They don't consistently focus fire but they will usually take the easier shot and they can move too. If you consistently have two up front and two in back - or worse, one up front, two in the back and a lighter mech using ace pilot to take nothing - then the up front ones are bearing the entire brunt of the attack, no wonder you think you need bulwark + sure footing + gyros + jumpjets to tank the incoming damage
Yes I give up the ability to refresh evasion mid-turn, but I always refresh it all before their heaviest mechs go and I've very likely removed the ability of one of their mechs to significantly attack me, that's at least as good as using sure footing's extra evasion pip to soak it, and this is why I take bulwark over sure footing because if I do get focus fired it's so much better and if I don't it's only a tiny bit worse
And seriously, why do you think you can multiply just one of those numbers by 50%, and just declare it lower than the other unmodified one? Think, an activation was just that, a mech getting a chance to move but since you want to bring in your super high damage reduction sure
+1 init / bulwark. Takes attacks as 0.6 * 0.323 -> 0.1938 (60% evasion + bulwark)
Turn 1: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 3 attacks -> 0.5814 "activations"
Turn 2: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 2 attacks -> 0.3876
Turn 3: attack x4. Kill a mech. Take 1 attack -> 0.1938
Turn 4: attack x4. Kill a mech
Total: 1.1628 activations worth of damage
Ace pilot + bulwark + some breaching shots that never get attacked. Takes attacks as 0.6 * 0.205 -> 0.123 (70% evasion + bulwark). Note that you're taking a third less damage per attack here. You're not focusing nearly as much but I'll grant you more total damage so you kill 1 round 2 and 3 round 3
Turn 1: attack x4 interleaved. Take 4 attacks -> 0.492
Turn 2: attack x4 interleaved. Take 4 attacks, one is dead but assume it gets its shot off, it usually will -> 0.492
Turn 3: attack, take attack, attack, take attack, attack say you kill the unactivated mech here, attack -> 0.246
Total: 1.23 activations worth of damage. Assuming that only your maximum defense mechs get shot at, and always at maximum defense and that you have significantly higher effective dps to kill 4 mechs in 12 attacks vs 16 you still take more incoming damage, and it's concentrated on fewer mechs
It might be that the PA Discord channel would be a good place to send out a call to arms for co-op pilots. Since the game doesn't have an easy way to have people join games (and EGS doesn't exactly show when somebody is actually in a game), it's difficult to tell when people are playing and are wanting help or the company of real pilots who are ostensibly more aware and less suicidal than the AI pilots.
It was 2 wasps, a griffin, and the stalker. The stalker was damaged but nothing internal. I was lucky that it was wasps. Theyre fast enough to get ahead of the griffin and stalker and slow enough that its easy enough to shed their evasion pips. AND they don't have a lot of high probability weapons or high damage weapons. If it was MG locusts it could have been a real issue. Plus, because combat had been “going on” for like 15 rounds i was capped in morale. So once pips were shed i could clobber them with a SRM 10 CT precision shot
Once they were down it was down to pick apart the stalker and griffin. The griffin almost killed my locust... it missed its DFA. And i took a few hard/unlucky hits. But it was badlands so the stalker could not alpha a lot.
And when he did he was at long range into 3+ evasion pips (assuming the griffin and him shot the same target) which for a commando (+1 def quirk, +3 from light) is -70%. Even a good pilot has trouble there. And usually it was 4+ evasion pips
Once the griffin was down it was easy sailing as the stalker had suffered a bunch of back hits and was reduced to fireing a single medium laser at my 4-5 evasion team as we chewed it apart.
@Phyphor
But they arent getting shot at more than you are.. managing engagement is easy and easier when initiative is mixed. If you kill 1 mech/round you dont take 1 extra attack/round unless the mech you would have killed went first every turn
Like... you keep talking about getting shot at as if it matters in the late game. I dont care about getting shot at because attacks deal functionality zero damage.
You don't "have" to take a lighter mech. You get to take a lighter mech. A Griffin 1N, Shadowhawk 2h, and wolverine 6R all have room for 3 SRM6 and a Small laser. That is ~246 damage to the enemies rear CT. And then you have ace pilot so if they somehow did survive that they don't survive the next one. The Royal Griffin is even better. A Kintaro-18 can fit 5 SRM6 and 5 jumps! *ok space limitations but 4 SRM6 is still 288/244.8(avg) dmg to the rear CT. The lighter mech kills an assault every other round almost guaranteed. A firestarter can fit 180 damage in Small Laser++'s. Aint nobody has ~306 rear CT health. Its a bit tough to do this entirely with ace pilot firestarters because you still have to interweave on initiative 1. But if you have a nice dedicated tank its pretty easy to do this with one ace pilot firestarters/medium. Like... when i was in the thread earlier explaining how i was chain DFA'ing my firestarter it was both not a joke and was in was in 4-5 skull missions. 270 damage per DFA plus another 180 on the way out usually all to the rear. Now... this isn't breaching shot sure. But ace pilot is the other advanced skill i thought was still really useful(so i am not being inconsistent here).
I think that's probably the worst design mistake in the game. Due to the sheer attrition factor of you facing wave after wave of enemies in most missions, your progress is heavily gated by the size of mechs you can bring. However, in general the contracts that are "reasonable" to take for any given drop tonnage also do not actually provide enough salvage to get higher tonnage mechs. And with no partial salvage, there is no way to work your way up over time to get one either. I gave up hope for any mech salvage fairly early and just had to start buying all my mechs off the market so I could progress at a reasonable rate. Which just doesn't feel right.
Mech salvage is by far the fastest way to progress besides buying better weapons. Buying mechs off the market is good (especially rare* and hero mechs!) but salvage is almost always net positive on taking money even if you sell the mechs. That jenner is worth about 1.5m for sale and took 4 points worth of salvage rights (2 rights per point). For a net benefit of 1 million credits on taking cash
*so long as theyre actually rare. Sometimes a rare mech is a normal mech in good condition and sometimes its a SLDF mech with doubles, endo, and lostech
Edit: i have found progress is mainly based on AI and player pilot skill. Bigger mechs can help but like... 2 AC5 and 2 srm6 will carry you through the majority of the game alone.
Oh, and we've also already picked up a tier 4 LB10X-SLD. Like, seriously, wtf is up with that kind of luck???
Which is another really dumb design mistake. The store provides no way to see the equipment to tell them apart, so you have to buy the mech sight unseen, back out and go into your mechbay to look at the equipment, go back to the store, sell the first mech, repeat the process for the second mech, hope you remember all the gear that was on the first one to compare, and possibly repeat a 3rd time if the first mech was the better choice of the two.
What I tend to do is hit up https://mech.nav-alpha.com/ and load the mech variant's stock loadout. That usually gives a good indication of what's going to come on it (if it shows XL engines and DHS, you've found one of the actual 'rare' mechs!)
Ironically the SRM and MLAS and/or MLAS Hunchback is just... better.
edit: there is a mod that lets you see equipment in the store.
edit: There is also a mod that gives mechs with internal doubles proper heat sinking. Just in case you wanted your SLDF highlander to be good.
Not if you're trying to avoid taking damage at this point in the game. Because of the damage dropoff being weird with ballistic weapons, I've been coring out lights/mediums before they even get into LRM range.
Yeah, and the fact it was one of the first mods to be done just highlights how obvious a problem it is to everyone but PGI apparently.
Always ironman!
You need to plan for the achievement from the very beginning as you need to maximise the number of systems you visit every time you move. It always takes 3 days to jump between systems when you're on the jump ship so you need to minimise the extra time that gets wasted between jump ship and planet.
I finished up 170 systems with about 250 days left, I then spent around 100 days up around Marik space as I could get contracts for the 4 I wanted to boost against 2/4 of the ones I wanted to tank then spent the last 150ish days in Restoration space after I'd maxed out the factions because Restoration rep doesn't count for anything and they always have heaps of contracts in each system. Restoration contracts are usually either against the pirates or Taurians so I could tank the last 2 there.
You need to do a minimum of 140 5 star contracts so all up I'd estimate I did around 200-220 contracts always taking full salvage as mech parts are worth ~10k per ton (3 parts per mech) - The thing I found was you need to destroy as many side torsos as possible before taking out the head so that the amount of trash salvage (weapons, heats sinks, anything that isn't a mech part) is reduced in the salvage table. Less trash salvage = more mech parts on average from the random salvage assignment. One contract near the end (the one I posted a shot of with the 16 destroyed mechs) netted me something like 110mil in salvage
If you see a contract offering 9/X salvage that's a fucking lie. I seemed to only ever get 8 priority salvage max.
I ran 4 Annihilators with 4x UAC/10 for 90% of the game, I had something like 10 Annihilators by the end, if 1 got a bit of structure damage I just rotated in the next one, I probably took a couple of points of structure damage every 20-25 contracts.
Most contracts took around 9 turns including the first 2 turns which were just sprinting towards the objective so the Annihilators had 8 full alpha strikes worth of ammo.
The 4 Pilots always had Bulwark, Multi Shot, and Coolant Vent.
Urban planets can fuck right off.
Escort missions can also fuck off.
Attack and Defend missions are the best sources of salvage.
I'd rather do twice as many 2.5 skull missions than 5 skull missions.
I actually had enough liquid cash at the end to probably max out the c-bills but I was not going to buy 200mil worth of jump jets one at a time to sell back to the store. I did make a backup of the save with 6 days left - maybe I'll go back and do it one day.
I reckon I spent 40-50 hours on this and I won't be doing it again.
True. Ballistic weapons have no damage drop off. But this mainly makes AC/20/10/5 hilarious in player hands(my record is 1100 meters to hit a VTOL) since their DPS/Tonne is so high compared to gauss
But for me its mainly about how fast you kill things with MLAS since they all hit at the exact same spot for supreme focus damage
The funny part is that I'm kind of an extremes kinda guy. I can do extreme range ballistics (AC2 or gauss) or all close-combat brawling (SRMs, machine guns, etc...)
I'd agree with that. Definitely got work done with LBX/U/AC10s, but by far my most often used workhorse was a Battlemaster with 6ML, SRM6, and LL with enough heatsinks to basically fire continuously. That LL being critical to pick off VTOLs since your lancemates are garbage at dealing with them quickly, but the MLs doing the bulk of the mech work with the SRM for extra kick.
Yea i was refering specifically to the MLAS (or SRM/mlas) version of the hunchback over the hero with the gauss.
My favorite mech is the quickdraw Hero. 2x AC/5, 2x SRM6. And like... 8 tonnes of ammo and jumps. The AC/5 one shot basic tanks, and kill all VTOL in one hit. They cycle fast enough that you can shoot as fast as you can target and are accurate enough to head hunt to a reasonable distance. The SRM-12 flattens anything that got through your AC/5 barrage
It's also kinda funny. For a couple missions when the game first launched, I was playing with a streamer's community. One of them absolutely needed a Catapult. So, I found them a Catapult hero mech. Specifically, the Butterbee and put 4xSRM6+4xML. The person was horrified that I took off the LRMs and had to relearn how to Catapult, but they eventually got the hang of it and was shocked at how much face it wrecked.
It's also why I strip out all LRMs from my mechs and replace them with SRMs.
Yeah...turrets are also why I keep at least one mech around with an ERPPC (in my mid-game, that was a Blackjack-Arrow).
Trying to do the math on salvage. 10k per tonne per part means a 100 tonne mech sells for 3 million? Shouldnt it sell for like 1?
In general, especially if you are doing missions with potential bonuses for killing extra stuff the money seems like a better option most of the time. Even if you can get a 10m payout from a few missions by getting a hilarious number of parts
The only time the money is worth it is if you get unlucky and come up against vehicles instead of mechs. Or if you're playing with more parts per mech in which case the value of individual mech parts is less.
I think about that wretched corner of Taurian space with all 4-5 skull planets and Martian/Lunar environments.
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
It's a story mission where you have to defend a settlement and then go destroy 3 fuel dumps. It starts off with a bunch of VTOLs UACs and tanks, easy enough. Then you face like 6 more UACs and a Vindicator while traveling to the fuel dumps, which whittle your health down. THEN an enemy squadron of 4 mechs, including a Thunderbolt land on top of you. If you manage to survive that another dropship lands behind it with a veteran Warhammer and a Panther with a PPC. By the time I face these guys my unit has been shot to pieces and there's absolutely no way I can beat them. It's friggin impossible with the AI they give you.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
I passed through most of Taurian space without stopping, their space is annoying because it has a whole bunch of systems that are really close together so they get skipped over when plotting a long route.
Idea was to plot a route that hit as many unvisited systems as possible and aiming to land at a 3.5+ star system at the end. The most important part was maximising the unvisited systems each time I set off.
Yeah, that mission is when things start going sideways if you're not getting human pilots to fill in for your lancemates. I think the only way I got through it was mostly down to having my Blackjack-Arrow (6xMG, 2xML, 1xERPPC) alongside enough meatier mediums that they could soak up the damage done by the surprise Warhammer.
Target priority for me is Igor's (shooting one of their side engines makes them easy to one shot kill before they ever get in range to shoot. Shooting the center fuselage is a waste of ammo.), VTOLs (again easy to kill before they can even get in range), tanks, mechs. And those first 3 are always my job to clear, I don't rely on the AI to do it fast enough (unless it's well out of my range where I might order a lancemate to shoot LRMs at it). That tends to get me to the last part of the mission with relatively little damage.
But once you get to the final area of that mission, my advice is to not just go straight in and slug it out in the open area. I tried that at first and got wrecked repeatedly. Use your lancemates as distraction bait while you use the buildings for cover to circle around behind the enemies to shoot them in the back. When the second group drops, do not charge ahead at them. Pull back and let them come to you, again using building cover to protect yourself from long open sightlines and their ranged firepower. The Panther is faster and will get to you first which should allow your lance to focus it down before the Warhammer can arrive to assist. Switch back to circling cover to attack the Warhammer from the sides or rear while it attacks the rest of your lance, probably focusing on it's arms first to reduce damage to your lancemates.
@Handsome Costanza
Angle your walk towards the first base such that you have a good angle on the VTOL. Take them out from longer range to reduce the damage they do to you because they will be shooting the base. The lance of heavies at the end should be NBD if you keep your speed up and use cover. Given that you didnt take a lot of damage from the VTOL
1. what DLC is worth it, or better than others? Does Flashpoint really mean that much of an improvement over the normal non-campaign career mode? HM has a ton of content, Urban seems skippable?
2. Buying the package that includes the base game and all DLC is cheaper than just the DLC - anyone know if I'll get a gift able copy since I already own?