Prototype Flashpoint - final mission

[Jonathan8883]

It may be rated at 1.5 skulls by opposition difficulty (2 trebuchets, 2 LRM carriers, 3-4 turrets), but in actual "play" difficulty it's a 4-star.

I'm not sure I understand how ECM works right now. My Raven got sensor locked at extreme out of visual range of everything range on round 2 of combat, then immediately LRM'd before I could act to the point where it lost its entire left side (leg, torso, arm, ECM). At that point, with the anti-optimized lance of pilots we're forced to work with, the mission is a TPK due to LRMs.

Either ECM needs a re-work, or this mission needs a re-work. Maybe both.

Yes, I've patched to 1.7.

 

[Jonathan8883]

Things that make me quit the game in disgust: In 2019, we have a game that deliberately is designed to NOT SAVE before what is probably the toughest pre-built mission outside of the alliance-capstone flashpoints! No, I'm not stealing your stupid Raven a second time.

Time to play something else for a few days.

If I tell the Prototype flashpoint to take a hike forever, and ignore it, will Ravens and stuff eventually pop up somewhere else? Or are they gated content?

 

[DarkSpade]

Sadly the raven's are gated. You have to complete the flashpoint to see them. Same with the hatchetman. If you saw them before the flash point it's because you played before the patch that fixed that "bug". Again, same with the hatchetman.

I beat the mission by hugging the southern edge of the map and heading west. Once I had the last building down I just ditched the rest of the squad as I sprinted to the extraction point. Not an enjoyable victory.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

Sadly the raven's are gated. You have to complete the flashpoint to see them. Same with the hatchetman. If you saw them before the flash point it's because you played before the patch that fixed that "bug". Again, same with the hatchetman.

I beat the mission by hugging the southern edge of the map and heading west. Once I had the last building down I just ditched the rest of the squad as I sprinted to the extraction point. Not an enjoyable victory.

Good tactic. :bow:

It is always a good lesson to relearn - whereas I default to brute force tactics, destroying CT’s as quickly and as efficiently as I can, having a mission where the odds and circumstance are stacked against that option, reminds me that there are more ways to Victory than just the one.

For this Mission, I approached the edge of Enemy troops and drew therm out, bit by bit, fading back into and behind buildings as I needed too. It took longer than was the norm for a match for me, but by learning to incorporate and benefit from the Raven, it worked. Destroying the odd building to clear a firing lane or to spill an Enemy Mech from its roof, helped too. : )

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

You need to stay away from the LRM turrets at first. Fall back when the enemy pops up as a red shadow and let them come to you. If you stay out of direct line of sight then the ECM still works pretty well against indirect fire.

Kill off some buildings to give yourself some cover. Reserve past the turrets turns (although if you are far enough way they won't sensor lock). I traded fire with the 1st treb for a bit which went ok. Then when the LRM carriers got close enough I made sure to kill them before they could direct fire on me.

Clean sweep of the board (eventually). Thing is the line of sight thing is tough to tell (well for me anyway) so I ended up falling pretty far back to keep the enemy firing at me with indirect fire. Once you kill the 2 Trebs and 2 LRM carriers you just make sure you don't reveal yourself to the turrets till you can kill them in one round. The reinforcement lance eventually shows up but if you aren't mostly dead already you shouldn't have much problems with them if you killed off most or all of the turrets.

 

[Jade_Rook]

I believe there is also a time gated option. If the campaign lasts long enough they will unlock without the Flashpoints being complete. Not 100% sure of that.

I would need to try Prototype again to see how hard it is with the new anti-ECM AI. My best guess is that you need to stay out of sensor range of the turrets until the other units are dealt with.

 

[xtfoster]

Same, hug the southen edge of the map until the base is to your north, then kill the LRM Carriers and Turrets ASAP and the base itself then run to the evac point. I didn't lose anyone but every mech was near scrap (which doesn't matter since you don't keep them...even the raven you get is miraculously at 100%)

 

[Jonathan8883]

Yeah, I was all the way back at basically the edge of the map... I'm not even sure what sensor locked me, since I was not in sensor range of the LRM carriers, etc. until after the Raven was BBQ'd.

I'm going to look through the game files to see if there is a variable I can edit to bypass this, or some other "cheat code" type method. I don't want to spend the better part of an hour re-running someone else's bad design decisions repeatedly.

 

[wolfhoundtoo]

Well one of the enemy vehicles or one of the trebs has sensor lock. I did get sensor locked once and it wasn't by a turret as I was way back. Since I ended up killing 1 carrier and 1 Treb in the same round I'm not sure which had it.

 

[Jonathan8883]

I think it was a turret... IDK. The only thing I had on sensors was a lone trebuchet, and it had already moved....or maybe it reserved?

Anyway, the worst part is the failure to save between missions before dropping me into a mission with a pretty bad pre-made lance. I'm not even sure if it's possible to save in a mission.

 

[Jade_Rook]

You can save mid-mission. Normally I think a mission auto-saves before you launch, but that may not work on consecutive deployments. Might be worth dropping a recommendation in the Suggestions subforum.

It is possible to enable the debug mode and auto-win a scenario if you just want to bypass it. I don't remember what line you need to switch in the JSONs, but it isn't hard. You could ask in the modding subforum how to do it.

 

[Lighthorseman]

ECM is dubious at best now and it’s effectiveness really depends on what the composition of the AI lance is, which you never know in advance. Sometimes it’s a great thing to have, other times it’s almost a hinderance. I just finished Braying of the Hounds again and I almost wish I hadn’t bought the ECM, total waste of time. The AI use of Sensor lock is what I don’t understand at the moment. Fortunately in the last mission of Braying of the Hounds I always play it the same way. Do a Kai Allard Liao, run away and string everyone out and then hide to limit LOS. You still have to put up with a rain of sensor lock LRMs but you can limit direct fire.

 

[KhazadDhum]

I played this flashpoint early on, and just had to do it this run for a second time.....it was a LOT harder than I remember it being the first time.
I'm also pretty sure the map was shrunk a bit, as I recall the first time I did it, I ended up way up to the northeast section of the map trying to draw out all the reinforcements the first time, and that made things a lot easier. This time you seem to be practically on top of the first treb and can't get past that one without being within visual distance, and subject to sensor locks, and I could swear some indirect fire.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

Don't forget that you can destroy buildings to make cover. An option may be to destroy a couple of buildings out of range of the LRM turrets and then try to bait out enemies. Cover, evasion and the ECM bonus should mean you'll take close to no damage no matter how many missiles they fire.

 

[DarkSpade]

I believe there is also a time gated option. If the campaign lasts long enough they will unlock without the Flashpoints being complete. Not 100% sure of that.

I would need to try Prototype again to see how hard it is with the new anti-ECM AI. My best guess is that you need to stay out of sensor range of the turrets until the other units are dealt with.

The problem in general is staying out of LRM range and almost everything you're fighting has LRMs. If one enemy can see you, 90% of the enemy has an attack they can hit you with.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

The problem in general is staying out of LRM range and almost everything you're fighting has LRMs. If one enemy can see you, 90% of the enemy has an attack they can hit you with.

At a 20%ish increased difficulty to hit if you stay in ECM range on top your evasion bonus and the standard indirect fire penalty. The OpFor is facing at best 45% hit rates with those LRMs and even then only after they've stripped your evasion pips. There are also plenty of buildings to destroy for cover which should give you 40% DR (because you *are* taking Bulwark aren't you?). You could even send a spotter in braced which would increase your DR to 60% meaning you're taking 1 point of damage per LRM (I can't remember for sure if damage rounds up or down with DR calculations) with no damage concentration (a lucky LRM20 hit will deal as much damage as an Slas spread across all your locations) and that's assuming more than a handful hit.

In fact your biggest threat at that point is going to be stability so remembering to brace with whichever 'mech appears to be the biggest target to clear stability and get entrenched would probably also help.

 

[Juodas Varnas]

At a 20%ish increased difficulty to hit if you stay in ECM range on top your evasion bonus and the standard indirect fire penalty. The OpFor is facing at best 45% hit rates with those LRMs and even then only after they've stripped your evasion pips. There are also plenty of buildings to destroy for cover which should give you 40% DR (because you *are* taking Bulwark aren't you?). You could even send a spotter in braced which would increase your DR to 60% meaning you're taking 1 point of damage per LRM (I can't remember for sure if damage rounds up or down with DR calculations) with no damage concentration (a lucky LRM20 hit will deal as much damage as an Slas spread across all your locations) and that's assuming more than a handful hit.

In fact your biggest threat at that point is going to be stability so remembering to brace with whichever 'mech appears to be the biggest target to clear stability and get entrenched would probably also help.

Doesn't sensor lock remove the ECM aim penalty + 2 evasion pips?

Cause i had a lot of problems with enemies constantly reserving to force me to move one of my mechs, then once it's moved, sensor locking it and raining fiery armageddon on top of it. Pretty sure a few of my mechwarriors died just through random head-hits from the sheer amount of LRMs.

It's a really obnoxious mission, did manage to complete it through skirting the map's edge and picking off the enemy through my own sensor lock into LRMs, by first taking out the LRM carriers (due to vehicles being so much easier to hit and the Carriers being so lightly armored)

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

Doesn't sensor lock remove the ECM aim penalty + 2 evasion pips?

Cause i had a lot of problems with enemies constantly reserving to force me to move one of my mechs, then once it's moved, sensor locking it and raining fiery armageddon on top of it. Pretty sure a few of my mechwarriors died just through random head-hits from the sheer amount of LRMs.

It's a really obnoxious mission, did manage to complete it through skirting the map's edge and picking off the enemy through my own sensor lock into LRMs, by first taking out the LRM carriers (due to vehicles being so much easier to hit and the Carriers being so lightly armored)

Dammit, my main computer is down at the moment so I can't really test it and I can't remember for sure. If it strips the indirect fire penalty that would make things decidedly dicey.

Does the indirect penalty reapply if you bring the Raven's bubble back over a 'mech? If so, one alternative may be to bait out some direct fire, charge in afterwards with the extra ECM defences and hope that a later target doesn't choose to strip the indirect fire penalty.

That said your hit and run strategy sounds like good strategy (it's how I usually play my brawlers), so it sounds at least like good strategy still works.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I need to test if the Raven has an extra rule in its ECM bubble that protects from indirect fire or if the ECM mods that you can byuy later only give invisibility.
Because right now, even if I don't get sensor locked and attack with one of my mechs, they can be hit back with LRM.
This happens for both an Atlas and a Banshee that I put some ECM equipment to force point blank range on enemy mechs and just go Saitama on them.

 

[smurfopax]

The mission is relativly easy when you found the sweet spot. From your starting point on the right side of the map is a little forest at the map edge. Turret LRM can't reach there and with the cover you can stand to take some hits while taking out the Mechs and Carriers. In most cases only one mech will be sensor locked and you can eat up the enemies one by one.
Only the Raven got his Armor breached, forgot once to move and shot with it as last one.