This mission is just silly.
The description doesn't prepare you for the extent that extreme speed is crucial for the secondary objective. It sort of hints at the benefit of bringing a light 'mech, but you have to have played the mission at least once already to gain the meta-knowledge of having to over-extend and move right past the 'mechs on the left flank in order to have a chance at saving the barracks. When you get the radio message, it's already too late. That just isn't good design.
To make matters worse, the roads speed up the vehicles' movement so much that the way-too-heavily-armored APCs can break through your lines way to easily. You know something is borked when Kamea's warning that "an APC is approaching the base" signals instant failure as the vehicle won't stop until it's on the base hex.
I finally managed to do complete the mission by immediately committing a Jenner to the left flank to push past all opposition, backed by a Trebuchet for support, plus to take care of the other vehicles approaching the left gate. The main gate was blocked by an Orion, which prevented the APCs from getting through, whilst my Highlander advanced toward the central fields to take out the Taurian 'mechs.
The stupidest thing is that the APCs approaching the front gate actually formed a queue, waiting for my Orion to crush them in melee attacks. Which .. I didn't do, instead having the Orion lend long range fire support. After all, why bother? The APCs are trapped.
I took out the entire enemy force before the turrets went back online.
Something just isn't right with this mission. The primary objective of preventing all APCs to break through feels unimportant, because those turrets aren't actually necessary for defending the spaceport at all, and the secondary objective of saving the barracks has zero margin for error and requires having failed it at least once in order to approach it with a good plan.
I propose the following changes:
I generally really liked the story missions I got thus far, which makes this one stick out all the more. I can definitely see what the designers tried to go for, and it's a neat idea, but the execution itself feels like it fails on account of not having paid attention to details such as the roads providing such a huge speed boost to vehicles.
The description doesn't prepare you for the extent that extreme speed is crucial for the secondary objective. It sort of hints at the benefit of bringing a light 'mech, but you have to have played the mission at least once already to gain the meta-knowledge of having to over-extend and move right past the 'mechs on the left flank in order to have a chance at saving the barracks. When you get the radio message, it's already too late. That just isn't good design.
To make matters worse, the roads speed up the vehicles' movement so much that the way-too-heavily-armored APCs can break through your lines way to easily. You know something is borked when Kamea's warning that "an APC is approaching the base" signals instant failure as the vehicle won't stop until it's on the base hex.
I finally managed to do complete the mission by immediately committing a Jenner to the left flank to push past all opposition, backed by a Trebuchet for support, plus to take care of the other vehicles approaching the left gate. The main gate was blocked by an Orion, which prevented the APCs from getting through, whilst my Highlander advanced toward the central fields to take out the Taurian 'mechs.
The stupidest thing is that the APCs approaching the front gate actually formed a queue, waiting for my Orion to crush them in melee attacks. Which .. I didn't do, instead having the Orion lend long range fire support. After all, why bother? The APCs are trapped.
I took out the entire enemy force before the turrets went back online.
Something just isn't right with this mission. The primary objective of preventing all APCs to break through feels unimportant, because those turrets aren't actually necessary for defending the spaceport at all, and the secondary objective of saving the barracks has zero margin for error and requires having failed it at least once in order to approach it with a good plan.
I propose the following changes:
- Delay the APC moving in on the barracks by 1-2 turns. Ideally grant the player sight in the area (using allied local buildings) to allow tracking the vehicle.
- Actually make activating the turrets a secondary objective, as is hinted in the mission. The primary objective should just be the defense of the spaceport, for which it could suffice to prevent say, half the APCs from breaking through, so that the troops can't fully occupy the port.
- Base turret activation on a timed trigger, having you hold off the APCs for only X turns. Why don't the engineers get to work immediately when they're already on-site? Are they hoping to not get executed by the Taurians if they don't do anything?
- Reduce the number of APCs by half, or just reduce their armor/HP to match the vehicle moving in on the barracks, so that they can be killed off with one shot.
- Place obstacles (
CzechMarik hedgehogs?) on the roads in order to mitigate the APCs speed somewhat.
I generally really liked the story missions I got thus far, which makes this one stick out all the more. I can definitely see what the designers tried to go for, and it's a neat idea, but the execution itself feels like it fails on account of not having paid attention to details such as the roads providing such a huge speed boost to vehicles.
