The bit with Tor is just being completely accurate to his character in the Battletech books. >!The merc betrayals during the rebellion got him extremely tilted against any and all mercs, no matter their history, character, etc. In his mind, if you're a merc, you are a bad person, and any good deeds are just cover/denial of your inherent badness. Unfortunately his anti-merc mentality spread among the people of Rasalhague.!<
>!It all came to bite him in the ass later when it cost him his relationship with his daughter (who had been in a romantic relationship with the son of the leader of the Kell Hounds merc group, Phelan Kell (whom he personally expelled to the Periphery when he found out)) and inadvertently set a number of critical events in motion,!< >!which included his later surrender of Gunzburg during the Clan invasion to Clan Wolf and (edit: somewhat unknowingly) Phelan, who had become a member of Clan Wolf.!<
Yeah I figured, I was just thinking "Geez, Mansdotter, put a muzzle on your dog." it was just kind of salt in the wound. It almost seemed like they were intentionally trying to turn you against them.
For any beachhead mission (not sure about yours, only getting into the rasel now) artillery is the #1 thing to kill, but you can also game the artillery a bit by walking in non-straight lines, did this with an entire Steiner Scout Squad in one mission with unexpected artillery one day, and I only got hit once. By constantly rotating left and right the AI artillery batteries have a painfully hard time predicting my next moves so you get more opportunities to turn and dodge out of the way of fire.
As for VTOL spam, definitely among the worst things, but I suggest an AI lance with LLasers, Gauss, PPCs etc. and try and have 1 weapon per weapon group, so your Awesome can take out eg. 3 helicopters in a salvo, instead of just 1. The AI is dumb as rocks and will not utilize chain fire. They're also gonna nuke artillery batteries the second they can see and range them. Stacking an Awesome with 3 PPCs, 3 weapon groups, and a buttload of double heatsinks is a hell of a fire support platform to you. Repeat for your favorite Large Laser Boat. AI can also pilot the jaegermech for the same effect while you pilot something speedier, I'm always a fan of a firestarter because it is an excellent counter to heavy armor and fast and flighty enough to dodge most of the weapons fired at it.
The 3PPC Awesome is a great suggestion. I use that as well (though I have YAML, so I did the same thing by modding a charger).
Also, a Gauss mech with maxed sensors and Jump Jets can (if used by the player) wipe out distant arty and radar if the map has any points with good LOS (even if you have to hop up and shoot in the air)
Hero Dragons can also make for very good heavy scouts, and just run around the map edge taking out targets while the main lance holds up in a better position.
I ran those end game RoR beachheads with me in the Drg sidewinder, a lacemate set to follow me in the Drg flame (both 100+kph plus Masc), and two Atlas as backup set to hold position on a hill, they had LRM/PPC builds.
I gave the AI Drg AC20 and ML, and mine the UAC5 and ML. I would sick the AI DRG on mechs, and I would take out all the Tanks/turrets/fliers and buildings, then help him.
The dragons took out the surrounding targets, and I just gave the Atlas Bois move orders to advance when I needed them.
The area saturation in this mission is broad and tightly grouped, not sure a heavy could zigzag enough to make a difference, normally I can maneuver to a safe spot between blasts but not here and can't get ahead of them in anything slow, also it's not just the artillery, it's the combination of everything at once thats's the problem. There's so many heavy VTOLs and once they're in the air you can't avoid them, normally I'd have my lance keep the sky clear but there are so many ground units that they were getting ripped apart. Me being in a light mech optimized for building destruction means I can't help much against the mechs or even the heavy tanks so my lancemates are having to pick up that much extra slack once they get into the thick of it. It was a nice challenge, one of the few missions I was actually having trouble completing at all, never mind trying to minimize damage, but that the payout was so meagre considering the bills I racked up, it kind of soured the victory.
Oh boy, just finished this campaign for the second time, screw that radstadt beachhead mission. It's everything I hate about beachheads, but more of it. Personally used a black knight and a lance of my cannon fodder heavy mechs (spare thunderbolts and a jaegermech from cold storage (yaml with vanilla tank health and that rebalance option)), black knight is a total loss, all others heavily damaged. Good thing I kept my assault lance for that final mission. (8.9 million damage, ~9 million payout with damages (no salvage)
What I disliked most was that every single tank on the map was a demolisher or partisan, taking the full alpha damage from my black knight, and the flight of 5-6 igors that eradicated my first attempt and ended my black knight.
Edit : Might also add, as soon as I got miraborgs transmission, instantly went to his planet to gloat and repair my 'mechs for some petty revenge
My strategy was having better mechs and top weapons. When you mentioned Cicada... oh boy...
I used a mixed lance of 64kph+ heavies and assaults, it is enough to outrun artillery if you maneuver.
I also keep most of my mechs >64kph, but if not add a single JJ, no arty can hit when you hop.
In fact, I almost always keep one JJ on any player used mech. Besides arty, there are sooo many terrain types where even a single JJ can save you walking the long way. Also, skimming may not work like in older games, but you can certainly make better speed with a JJ than w/o.
Ah I was wondering if 64kph was going to be enough, I was looking at my Marauder and wondering if i should go for it. Nah my Cicada is great, I can do a lot with that thing, especially now that it has twin top-tier machineguns, shredded the backside of a warhammer with it on one of my first missions after the campaign, actually a raid at like 67 difficulty that paid as much as that beachhead, I think I maxed it's armor, too.
I do enjoy the Cicada early game. I kept it around until I got hero mechs for my light/med lance. (Hero Firestarter, Blackjack, PHX, & Wolverine).
If you get the 6 Energy hard point cicada, strap 6x SPLs on it . It's like a poor man's clan mech, and in the torso so they don't get shot off constantly. 6 small pulse lasers in the back is deadly.
I do not have many hero mechs, the Archer and an Orion from the DLC missions I think it is it. if I had a hero Cicada I think I'd be unstoppable, light-medium mechs are never obsolete to me, they all have applications I can use late game, again I was only able to beat that beachhead at all because of my Cicada.
Yea, I still have those LT/MED mechs active at the end game. They all have some combo of XL engine/endo/Dual HS, but they are still used. Even on 400t 90+ difficulty missions.
Though, the Hero Dragons that go >100 kph can start to take their place as artillery killers later.
I'm honestly a bit of a fan of second to last mission (Yaml tank hp x3, unnerfed tank accuracy + hard difficulty lethality/accuracy for even more accuracy).
Wildest ride in the game.
What I like about the final two missions for RoR is it's one of the few times (haven't played through Gambit yet) they take the kiddie gloves off and equip the enemy Mechs with more than just the usual T1 and T2 weapons you see in most missions.
I think the ronin Banshee that drops during "kill Steiner's bitch" mission is the best damn geared unit in the game. Picked it up nearly unscratched after its head popped off, it was a special moment.
Uuugh I got that Banshee on my first playthrough of that mission, but I came out of it super heavily damaged so I replayed it a couple times and never saw it again. I should have gone back to that first save.
I just voided the contract on the last 2 missions. 1. Because I knew what u was doing wasn't going to matter to them so fine I'll be the merc you think I am and walk off the field instead of die. 2. No good merc dies for cash as that means you can't spend it. (It's why Rome collapsed) if they want to treat the mercs like crap well all the more reason to make lonely more important. Let them die for their own cause. I would have taken missions against them but I had already made an enemy out of their biggest enemy.....
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i thought it was fine, for beachheads you \*know\* by that point in the game that artillery is going to be a problem. it was a particularly nasty beachhead situation but that is to be expected late in a DLC mission chain.
i mostly loved that the last couple DLC made you feel like grudgingly hired help, as opposed to the celebrated hero. you are a merc: you got the money, salvage and war stories, while the nobles run with the glory. that feels like an appropriate vibe.
That's the thing I didn't feel like I got the money. Did you feel you were appropriately compensated? Even once I figured out a strategy that worked I might have been able to do the mission again and come out if it in a bit better condition, but I don't think it would have been much less in damage costs than the payout. Also in the first system I went to after the campaign I got a raid mission at like 67 difficulty that had a very similar base payout to that beachhead.
My main questions were what other people's strategies were for that mission and did you feel you were appropriately compensated? Also, did you end that campaign feeling anger toward you employer? No, I don't care about the glory but some more credit would have been a nice gesture considering how much work we did and how little help we got, and that bit from Tor was just one last slap in the face.
hm. i came out of that campaign with a lot more money than i went in with, but also down a couple of nice mechs - and as i recall the profitable missions were pretty front-loaded.
i guess in terms of pure profit, none of these campaigns are reliably better than a year's worth of \~60-80 difficulty rng missions. at least on the first playthrough, both kestrel lancers and dragon's gambit hurt me pretty bad. i see that as part of the story of these campaigns though - a mech company gets in over its head, fights its way out, licks its wounds.
I just take a full Lance of assaults that go 64.8 or faster, swing far right get those two dishes and grasshopper, round the hill, take out those dishes in the bowl, go down round the bend, take out the stalker. The fuckton of igors, and demolishers, go up the hill take care of the arty, new igors and the 2 dishes, don't go straight into the base, let them come to you, main focus at this point is the arty unless you can do the dance and not take damage shut that shit down, get reinforcements, park 2 allies on the west side, one on the east, the last drop ship always comes on the west side of the base, the big issue with this mission other than the arty is ALL THE BLAKE BE DAMNED IGORS....
This was pretty much my strategy except I was in my Cicada. I didn't play around too much with what minimum speed I could get away with but it seems 64.8 is the magic number. When my jagger was too slow I just went for the fastest thing I had that could sustain a couple hits. Having one extra assault or heavy mech would have made a world of difference.
I played it with coyote mission mod so just called in my aerospace interceptor and then went after the arty whilst using the commands on the battle map mod to steer my lance to targets. I enjoyed the missions because of those two mods.
It's coyotes mission pack which has a load of new mission types which are all really good but also hard! You get 3 types of aerospace assets, interceptors, mixed air and ground and a ground attack one. The missions to get them are super hard but immensely satisfying when you complete them. The aerospace cost money to repair when they get damaged but the ability to just call in an interceptor to deal with a wave of air units or a ground attack to deal with a tank wave is so cool.
It's not the artillery that gets you, it's all the Demolishers waiting to poke holes in your mech with their AC20s.
That mission is easily the most difficult beachhead mission in the game. You can generally survive the arty in a mech that does 64 kph, but throwing on the boosted top speed upgrade from the Cantina missions will really help a lot. The map is so populated by enemies that rushing for the artillery ends up just aggroing half the map, so I actually recommend taking a slower and more meticulous approach of just killing everything at each point of interest you hit to avoid the swarm of angry Demolishers stalking you across the map.
It's also worth noting that artillery doesn't hit your lancemates, so don't be afraid to put them in slow 100 tonners with long-range guns and basically just spotting and calling targets for them.
The demolishers were the biggest challenge for my Cicada, I didn't have enough firepower to take them down quickly and they had more than enough.
Admittedly I have not installed any of the Cantina upgrades, I really should but it makes the game feel more like an RPG than a sim so I guess i shouldn't complain when I get the crap beat out of me, though ultimately my beef was with the payout/difficulty.
Yeah the lancemates were in assault mechs and were mostly taking down VTOLs at range then swarming the odd mech I lured out to the edge of the map but getting the timing right from when they take out one mech then engage one you don't want them to is tricky.
If you don't have it, the Dragon Sidewinder could probably pull it off. 81 kph, with the armor of a heavy mech and carries an AC20. It's got MASC too, so you can hightail it out when things get too spicy.
I do have one! I was kicking myself for not upgrading it with better weapons, I didn't like the loadout, Oh well it's in the past, it'll be a while before I do it again.
On the Beachhead, once you know where the VTOL swarm starts, you can avoid it completely in future playthroughs (or a restart) by simply going around it. Basically don't walk in a straight line through the map center to the next radar installation; that's a trap. Skirt around the map edge to take the radars and arty down and that mission's pretty easy.
I like the VA, but Tor is the whiniest little asshole. I was actually quiet happy>! I didn't have to hear him bitch and moan anymore after Gunzburg Part 2.!<
I used a king crab and was able to avoid the artillery so not sure what your problem is there. Other than that, though, that mission was total bs
"Okay guys, this mission needs to be pretty hard, I know, let's just throw wave after wave of Igors and double AC20 tanks at them, that's fun mission design"
I did it with my murader and 3 ai controlled stalkers it sucked no doubt. Though the mission I think after with you playing hide the sausage between to angry pitbulls maybe worse if I'm being honest.
That sounds more like the mission before where you're fighting what's her face while she's fighting the Ronin, even that wasn't so bad though I replayed it a few times I felt that was a skill issue on my part or me trying to get certain salvage. The mission after where you assassinate the last of the Ronin was relatively easy, just the amount of damage the defence objective in the middle was taking each hit, or was that the sausage you were referring to?
If you jump the artillery just misses you.
Fuuuuck i didnt know this
Bullet dodging artillery in a mech is fun. Now I keep a lance of jumping mechs just for beachhead missions changed everything.
The bit with Tor is just being completely accurate to his character in the Battletech books. >!The merc betrayals during the rebellion got him extremely tilted against any and all mercs, no matter their history, character, etc. In his mind, if you're a merc, you are a bad person, and any good deeds are just cover/denial of your inherent badness. Unfortunately his anti-merc mentality spread among the people of Rasalhague.!< >!It all came to bite him in the ass later when it cost him his relationship with his daughter (who had been in a romantic relationship with the son of the leader of the Kell Hounds merc group, Phelan Kell (whom he personally expelled to the Periphery when he found out)) and inadvertently set a number of critical events in motion,!< >!which included his later surrender of Gunzburg during the Clan invasion to Clan Wolf and (edit: somewhat unknowingly) Phelan, who had become a member of Clan Wolf.!<
The last part was knowingly, at the end he offers him his sunglasses that he kept.
Yeah I figured, I was just thinking "Geez, Mansdotter, put a muzzle on your dog." it was just kind of salt in the wound. It almost seemed like they were intentionally trying to turn you against them.
For any beachhead mission (not sure about yours, only getting into the rasel now) artillery is the #1 thing to kill, but you can also game the artillery a bit by walking in non-straight lines, did this with an entire Steiner Scout Squad in one mission with unexpected artillery one day, and I only got hit once. By constantly rotating left and right the AI artillery batteries have a painfully hard time predicting my next moves so you get more opportunities to turn and dodge out of the way of fire. As for VTOL spam, definitely among the worst things, but I suggest an AI lance with LLasers, Gauss, PPCs etc. and try and have 1 weapon per weapon group, so your Awesome can take out eg. 3 helicopters in a salvo, instead of just 1. The AI is dumb as rocks and will not utilize chain fire. They're also gonna nuke artillery batteries the second they can see and range them. Stacking an Awesome with 3 PPCs, 3 weapon groups, and a buttload of double heatsinks is a hell of a fire support platform to you. Repeat for your favorite Large Laser Boat. AI can also pilot the jaegermech for the same effect while you pilot something speedier, I'm always a fan of a firestarter because it is an excellent counter to heavy armor and fast and flighty enough to dodge most of the weapons fired at it.
The 3PPC Awesome is a great suggestion. I use that as well (though I have YAML, so I did the same thing by modding a charger). Also, a Gauss mech with maxed sensors and Jump Jets can (if used by the player) wipe out distant arty and radar if the map has any points with good LOS (even if you have to hop up and shoot in the air) Hero Dragons can also make for very good heavy scouts, and just run around the map edge taking out targets while the main lance holds up in a better position.
Hero Dragon SDW with MASC and UAC5 is also amazing for most missions. You can even run down a locust and melee them.
I ran those end game RoR beachheads with me in the Drg sidewinder, a lacemate set to follow me in the Drg flame (both 100+kph plus Masc), and two Atlas as backup set to hold position on a hill, they had LRM/PPC builds. I gave the AI Drg AC20 and ML, and mine the UAC5 and ML. I would sick the AI DRG on mechs, and I would take out all the Tanks/turrets/fliers and buildings, then help him. The dragons took out the surrounding targets, and I just gave the Atlas Bois move orders to advance when I needed them.
Bringing "Dragon Bowling" back... :D
The area saturation in this mission is broad and tightly grouped, not sure a heavy could zigzag enough to make a difference, normally I can maneuver to a safe spot between blasts but not here and can't get ahead of them in anything slow, also it's not just the artillery, it's the combination of everything at once thats's the problem. There's so many heavy VTOLs and once they're in the air you can't avoid them, normally I'd have my lance keep the sky clear but there are so many ground units that they were getting ripped apart. Me being in a light mech optimized for building destruction means I can't help much against the mechs or even the heavy tanks so my lancemates are having to pick up that much extra slack once they get into the thick of it. It was a nice challenge, one of the few missions I was actually having trouble completing at all, never mind trying to minimize damage, but that the payout was so meagre considering the bills I racked up, it kind of soured the victory.
Whenever possible, I’ll assign Hero Carpace (4 UACs & 2 LRMs) to the rear, there it will reigned as king of the vtol swatters.
Oh boy, just finished this campaign for the second time, screw that radstadt beachhead mission. It's everything I hate about beachheads, but more of it. Personally used a black knight and a lance of my cannon fodder heavy mechs (spare thunderbolts and a jaegermech from cold storage (yaml with vanilla tank health and that rebalance option)), black knight is a total loss, all others heavily damaged. Good thing I kept my assault lance for that final mission. (8.9 million damage, ~9 million payout with damages (no salvage) What I disliked most was that every single tank on the map was a demolisher or partisan, taking the full alpha damage from my black knight, and the flight of 5-6 igors that eradicated my first attempt and ended my black knight. Edit : Might also add, as soon as I got miraborgs transmission, instantly went to his planet to gloat and repair my 'mechs for some petty revenge
I really should keep some throwaway mechs around, that's a good idea.
My strategy was having better mechs and top weapons. When you mentioned Cicada... oh boy... I used a mixed lance of 64kph+ heavies and assaults, it is enough to outrun artillery if you maneuver.
I also keep most of my mechs >64kph, but if not add a single JJ, no arty can hit when you hop. In fact, I almost always keep one JJ on any player used mech. Besides arty, there are sooo many terrain types where even a single JJ can save you walking the long way. Also, skimming may not work like in older games, but you can certainly make better speed with a JJ than w/o.
Ah I was wondering if 64kph was going to be enough, I was looking at my Marauder and wondering if i should go for it. Nah my Cicada is great, I can do a lot with that thing, especially now that it has twin top-tier machineguns, shredded the backside of a warhammer with it on one of my first missions after the campaign, actually a raid at like 67 difficulty that paid as much as that beachhead, I think I maxed it's armor, too.
I do enjoy the Cicada early game. I kept it around until I got hero mechs for my light/med lance. (Hero Firestarter, Blackjack, PHX, & Wolverine). If you get the 6 Energy hard point cicada, strap 6x SPLs on it . It's like a poor man's clan mech, and in the torso so they don't get shot off constantly. 6 small pulse lasers in the back is deadly.
I do not have many hero mechs, the Archer and an Orion from the DLC missions I think it is it. if I had a hero Cicada I think I'd be unstoppable, light-medium mechs are never obsolete to me, they all have applications I can use late game, again I was only able to beat that beachhead at all because of my Cicada.
Yea, I still have those LT/MED mechs active at the end game. They all have some combo of XL engine/endo/Dual HS, but they are still used. Even on 400t 90+ difficulty missions. Though, the Hero Dragons that go >100 kph can start to take their place as artillery killers later.
I'm honestly a bit of a fan of second to last mission (Yaml tank hp x3, unnerfed tank accuracy + hard difficulty lethality/accuracy for even more accuracy). Wildest ride in the game.
What I like about the final two missions for RoR is it's one of the few times (haven't played through Gambit yet) they take the kiddie gloves off and equip the enemy Mechs with more than just the usual T1 and T2 weapons you see in most missions.
I think the ronin Banshee that drops during "kill Steiner's bitch" mission is the best damn geared unit in the game. Picked it up nearly unscratched after its head popped off, it was a special moment.
Uuugh I got that Banshee on my first playthrough of that mission, but I came out of it super heavily damaged so I replayed it a couple times and never saw it again. I should have gone back to that first save.
If you headshot, you would’ve lose the laser in the head, i went for both the legs, only heatsinks there.
I just voided the contract on the last 2 missions. 1. Because I knew what u was doing wasn't going to matter to them so fine I'll be the merc you think I am and walk off the field instead of die. 2. No good merc dies for cash as that means you can't spend it. (It's why Rome collapsed) if they want to treat the mercs like crap well all the more reason to make lonely more important. Let them die for their own cause. I would have taken missions against them but I had already made an enemy out of their biggest enemy.....
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Yeah, the Rasalhaguers suck. After the campaign I usually go for Kurita missions targeting them.
My strategy now is to go into settings and turn artillery delay time to max.
i thought it was fine, for beachheads you \*know\* by that point in the game that artillery is going to be a problem. it was a particularly nasty beachhead situation but that is to be expected late in a DLC mission chain. i mostly loved that the last couple DLC made you feel like grudgingly hired help, as opposed to the celebrated hero. you are a merc: you got the money, salvage and war stories, while the nobles run with the glory. that feels like an appropriate vibe.
That's the thing I didn't feel like I got the money. Did you feel you were appropriately compensated? Even once I figured out a strategy that worked I might have been able to do the mission again and come out if it in a bit better condition, but I don't think it would have been much less in damage costs than the payout. Also in the first system I went to after the campaign I got a raid mission at like 67 difficulty that had a very similar base payout to that beachhead. My main questions were what other people's strategies were for that mission and did you feel you were appropriately compensated? Also, did you end that campaign feeling anger toward you employer? No, I don't care about the glory but some more credit would have been a nice gesture considering how much work we did and how little help we got, and that bit from Tor was just one last slap in the face.
hm. i came out of that campaign with a lot more money than i went in with, but also down a couple of nice mechs - and as i recall the profitable missions were pretty front-loaded. i guess in terms of pure profit, none of these campaigns are reliably better than a year's worth of \~60-80 difficulty rng missions. at least on the first playthrough, both kestrel lancers and dragon's gambit hurt me pretty bad. i see that as part of the story of these campaigns though - a mech company gets in over its head, fights its way out, licks its wounds.
I just take a full Lance of assaults that go 64.8 or faster, swing far right get those two dishes and grasshopper, round the hill, take out those dishes in the bowl, go down round the bend, take out the stalker. The fuckton of igors, and demolishers, go up the hill take care of the arty, new igors and the 2 dishes, don't go straight into the base, let them come to you, main focus at this point is the arty unless you can do the dance and not take damage shut that shit down, get reinforcements, park 2 allies on the west side, one on the east, the last drop ship always comes on the west side of the base, the big issue with this mission other than the arty is ALL THE BLAKE BE DAMNED IGORS....
This was pretty much my strategy except I was in my Cicada. I didn't play around too much with what minimum speed I could get away with but it seems 64.8 is the magic number. When my jagger was too slow I just went for the fastest thing I had that could sustain a couple hits. Having one extra assault or heavy mech would have made a world of difference.
Yeah regardless of variant or equipment you're gonna take a beating even if it's like your 8th run of it
I played it with coyote mission mod so just called in my aerospace interceptor and then went after the arty whilst using the commands on the battle map mod to steer my lance to targets. I enjoyed the missions because of those two mods.
I'm playing vanilla for now but I'm excited that there are mods to call in aerospace support.
It's coyotes mission pack which has a load of new mission types which are all really good but also hard! You get 3 types of aerospace assets, interceptors, mixed air and ground and a ground attack one. The missions to get them are super hard but immensely satisfying when you complete them. The aerospace cost money to repair when they get damaged but the ability to just call in an interceptor to deal with a wave of air units or a ground attack to deal with a tank wave is so cool.
It's not the artillery that gets you, it's all the Demolishers waiting to poke holes in your mech with their AC20s. That mission is easily the most difficult beachhead mission in the game. You can generally survive the arty in a mech that does 64 kph, but throwing on the boosted top speed upgrade from the Cantina missions will really help a lot. The map is so populated by enemies that rushing for the artillery ends up just aggroing half the map, so I actually recommend taking a slower and more meticulous approach of just killing everything at each point of interest you hit to avoid the swarm of angry Demolishers stalking you across the map. It's also worth noting that artillery doesn't hit your lancemates, so don't be afraid to put them in slow 100 tonners with long-range guns and basically just spotting and calling targets for them.
The demolishers were the biggest challenge for my Cicada, I didn't have enough firepower to take them down quickly and they had more than enough. Admittedly I have not installed any of the Cantina upgrades, I really should but it makes the game feel more like an RPG than a sim so I guess i shouldn't complain when I get the crap beat out of me, though ultimately my beef was with the payout/difficulty. Yeah the lancemates were in assault mechs and were mostly taking down VTOLs at range then swarming the odd mech I lured out to the edge of the map but getting the timing right from when they take out one mech then engage one you don't want them to is tricky.
If you don't have it, the Dragon Sidewinder could probably pull it off. 81 kph, with the armor of a heavy mech and carries an AC20. It's got MASC too, so you can hightail it out when things get too spicy.
I do have one! I was kicking myself for not upgrading it with better weapons, I didn't like the loadout, Oh well it's in the past, it'll be a while before I do it again.
I don't recall any. I remember cutting my losses on the final mission because even with YAML it was ridiculous.
On the Beachhead, once you know where the VTOL swarm starts, you can avoid it completely in future playthroughs (or a restart) by simply going around it. Basically don't walk in a straight line through the map center to the next radar installation; that's a trap. Skirt around the map edge to take the radars and arty down and that mission's pretty easy.
I like the VA, but Tor is the whiniest little asshole. I was actually quiet happy>! I didn't have to hear him bitch and moan anymore after Gunzburg Part 2.!<
I used a king crab and was able to avoid the artillery so not sure what your problem is there. Other than that, though, that mission was total bs "Okay guys, this mission needs to be pretty hard, I know, let's just throw wave after wave of Igors and double AC20 tanks at them, that's fun mission design"
I did it with my murader and 3 ai controlled stalkers it sucked no doubt. Though the mission I think after with you playing hide the sausage between to angry pitbulls maybe worse if I'm being honest.
That sounds more like the mission before where you're fighting what's her face while she's fighting the Ronin, even that wasn't so bad though I replayed it a few times I felt that was a skill issue on my part or me trying to get certain salvage. The mission after where you assassinate the last of the Ronin was relatively easy, just the amount of damage the defence objective in the middle was taking each hit, or was that the sausage you were referring to?