WIP: Spartakus' Campaign Walkthrough

[Spartakus]

Peace of Blake be with you. I'm currently going through all the priority missions and writing a walkthrough. By it's nature, this thread contains spoilers.

This thread will not contain a customization guide. I really don't like extensive customization and there already are a lot of useful sources if you want to optimize your forces even more. I have slight modiifications made to my mechs, none of them involving armor or jump jets. So this walkthrough is valid if you're trying to do a stock mech only run as well.

Of course there is no guarantee that you'll salvage the same mechs as I did in my campaign. But if a mission solution demands a certain role (like a fast Brawler) the text will say so. I gnerally did not a lot of side missions, so if you're having trouble doing a mission with my suggested loadout, go ahead and do some side missions until you have better equipment. I just note what I consider the minimum to do a mission without serious damage.

This is work in progress, I'm just at Liberation: Smithon and will continue with this project as I have time.

 

[Spartakus]

Three Years Later – Úr Cruinne

Tasks:

1. Destroy the turret generator
2. Destroy the corporate building
3. Destroy the Shadow Hawk
4. Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Summary: This is a bit of an odd starter mission. It is laughably easy if you have a solid grasp of the game mechanics, particularly reserving and initiative and punishingly hard if you don't. Your main objective is to destroy the turret generator. Do this as fast if you can.

Outfit:

• Blackjack (stock)
• Vindicator (stock)
• Shadow Hawk (stock)
• Spider (stock)

Walkthrough:

First head to the base to your right. Your medium mechs (Shadow Hawk, Blackjack, Vindicator) will sprint up the main road while your Spider flanks on the right. Ignore the small path and just run through the Valley. You should end round two in this pattern:

Now you have a bunch of enemies: A Spider, a Commando and half a dozen turrets. Those turrets will rip you apart if they get to fire on you but they will all get diasabled if you destroy the generator. They will all act in phase 1 while the enemy mechs act in phase 4. So reserve to phase 2 and let the mechs advance, they won't come close enough to hurt you. Now jump the Spider next to the generator and fire on it. Follow up with the Vindicator and tear the building down. If all of your shots hit it is destroyed and will make th erest of the mission much easier. If not, keep shooting with your other mechs on it. It has to be destroyed before phase 1.

Now mop up the remaining mechs. The Commando is the more dangerous enemy, kill it first. None of them will hold long under your concentrated fire. Just make sure you don't overheat. And don't waste your morale actions on them.

Tip: You'll notice how moving gives you evasive chevrons and how hard it is to kill an enemy with a shield next to the mech. Those are your most important means of defense. A moving mech is harder to hit but every salvo will make on chevron disappear. Guarded is powerful. It halves the damage you take. Normally you need to brace to gain guarded but Behemoth has a skill called „Bulwark“. It allows her to gain guarded while shooting as long as she remains stationary. Hands down the best skill in the game. I can recommend it for everyone but you scouts/skirmishers.

Soon the enemy will get reinforcements, a Shadow Hawk you need to kill and two Scorpions. All of those have an AC/5 as their main gun which can hurt quite a bit. The Scorpions are in poor condition however. They have such low armor that a single shot from your Vindicator's PPC or the Shadow Hawk's AC/5 will kill them. If you can't stay out of their field of vision (which is possible if they're taking the lower road as in the pic below) dispose of them quickly.

The Shadow Hawk is the perfect target for your precision show. Focus on it's CT and it will fall down quick. You can either reserve and let it come, then use precision shot (which lower sit's initiative so that everyone can shoot twice at it. If it is guarded, that might not kill it though, so it might be better to approach it and brace instead of shooting while it is still guarded.

After you killed the targets, destroy the Corpsec Tower and move back to your base. Where your employer decides that he wants your mechs. He'll regret this at the end of the round.
This looks like a dangerous situation as you're surrounded by 4 pretty nasty turrets. But baring some bad luck, you won't face more then a single Medium Laser fired on you if you handle the initiative right.

First, reserve to phase 3. An enemy Galleon will advance and shoot at you. Next would be the Scorpion from the left, so move your Shadow Hawk or Vindicator and kill it before it can act. Both the Striker and the turrets will activate after all of you have moved. An Alpha Strike from the Blackjack will get rid of the turret generator and the remaining medium destroys the Striker. Lastly kill the Galleon too and leave this hellhole of a planet.

 

[Spartakus]

Tip - Keeping Dekker alive:

you'll often face situations like this one:

It is the Spiders turn, the enemy will activate first in the next phase. The Shadow Hawk is damaged. It is tempting to use the Spider offensively and try to kill the Shadow Hawk. Don't do this. Not if you want to keep your light mechs. Even a badly damaged Shadow Hawk can kill most lights with a single punch. Or cripple them with an Alpha Strike.

Now in this special situation you could use the aforementioned precicion strike with the spider to lower the SHD's initiative and gang up on it. But if you can't kill it your Spider will pay the price. The smart move is to sprint or jump away into safety and let the better armored lancemates take the damage.

 

[Spartakus]

Benefactor – Axylus:

Tasks:

1. Destroy the radar towers
2. Defend against enemy reinforcements

Summary: Welcome to the lunar biome. You thought space was cold? Think again. Your mechs will run as hot as nowhere else as they can't dissipate heat into the nonexisting atmosphere. So use your jumpjets carefully. If you practice what you've learned about initiative, guarded, evasion and turret generators this mission will be a cakewalk though. Make sure that you have a Sensor Lcok pilot by now.

Outfit:

• Blackjack (swapped AC/2 + ML + heatsink for an AC/5)
• Vindicator (swapped PPC for a LL, ML and a heatsink)
• Shadow Hawk (removed all missiles for a LMR10)
• Spider (stock)

Walkthrough:

You start behind a big hill. You can send a sniper the left way around and the rest passes on the right. You'll have turrets on your radar very soon. Be careful not to make visual contact accidentally.

Move a Trooper mech close to the big hill with the radar antenna to your right so that it can destroy the turret generator there in one salvo.

There is still an active turret blocking your path. It has it's own generator located on the complex to your left. This is a trap. You need to get close to the generator to have a visual and that puts you in the middle of a bunch of vehicles. Instead take out the turret directly. The generator powers one more, but it is far behind and has only short range. If you stay out of it's range you can ignore it and deal with the vehicles instead. Two of them are Scorpions and your next primary targets. Using Reserve and Sensor Lock you should have no trouble dealing with them. Quite possibly you'll enter the second part of this mission unscratched.

In the inner circle you'll meet 3 light mechs and two vehicles. Jenner, Commando and Scorpion do have some punch and should be taklen care of first, just ignore the other two until you have time. If you enter the fight in a defensive position like in the pic below you'll have no trouble at all.

Since killing targets gives you morale you can savely spend a precision shot to leg the Jenner. Make sure your morale bar is full by the end of the fight though.

Enter the first boss fight.

A Shadow Hawk and a Quickdraw. The first heavy mech you encounter. Luckily it's in a sorry state and Quickdraws run hot, which is a huge drawback in lunar biome. Also, while it has a lot of weapons, none of them are good at ounching holes into your armor. Your mechs should be able to withstand a few salvos from it without getting internal damage. If you start as in the pic above you can do a neat trick:

First, move the spider and do a precision strike on the Shadow Hawks left torso. That moves it down to initiative 3 and your whole lance can gang up on it. And they're all striking from it's left side. If it dosn't go down from three Alphas it should at least lose the left torso side and thus it's main gun. Then you can normally deal with the two mechs. If you want you can try and salvage the Quickdraw by destroying both torso sides and doing a knockdown. Jenner is a valid choice too if you want to upgrade your Spider.

 

[Spartakus]

Frist Strike – Weldry:

Tasks:

1. Breach the prison gates
2. Eliminate the prison guards

Summary: Streightforward base assault. A couple turrets and vehicles for starters and a fully armored Jagermech as dessert. Playtime's over, now you're at war.

Outfit:

• Blackjack (swapped AC/2 + ML + heatsink for an AC/5)
• Centurion-A (stock)
• Shadow Hawk (removed all missiles for a LMR10)
• Jenner (F-Variant - trades SRMs for armor)

Walkthrough:

You're at a crossroad with a big hill behind. On the top of the Hill are two generators powering LRM turrets just behind. Get one or two jump-capable mechs up there, they can destroy the generators uncontested. Then get all of your forces on the right road.

Each gate is guarded by two turrets, a laser and a a sniper each, plus a Scorpion and a Bulldog. The left gate has an additional Striker which is why you attack the right gate. With careful advancing and Sensor Lock you can pick the Vehicles apart one by one. Make sure the enemy has no spotter left in phase 4 so the turrets can't shoot you. Notice that the turrets can use Sensor Lock on you but only if they are in sensor range.

There are 4 turret generators on the prison wall, one for each turret. The left ones power the left and the right ones the turrets on the right. They are a trap however. To get a visual on them you need to get close and you propably can't destroy all four generators in one turn. Get the right turrets down by focusign them directly during your advance using Sensor Lock and destroy the left generators when all vehicles are down.

When all opposition is gone, cool down and break through the right gate. Inside is a lance of mechs: Jenner, Trebuchet, Centurion and a fully armored JagerMech. JagerMechs have a lot of long range firepower but paper thin armor. Focus on the sides of it to destroy it's arms. Without them it's much less of a danger. After a while Kamea will come to help you. Destroy the remaining resistance. Congratulations, you're now at war.

 

[Spartakus]

Liberation Panzyr – Panzyr:

Tasks:

1. Destroy the garrison units
   
2. Destroy the dropship control center

Summary: Another base assault. This time, the turrets are on your side. Also an idroduction to SRM-carriers. You should bring at least one fast but heavyly armored medium and Bulwark-pilots. The Kintaro is well-equipped for this. The rest of your lance should be a fast skirmisher and long range snipers/LRM-boats. Bulwark and Multishot will come in handy.

Outfit:

• Blackjack (swapped AC/2 + ML + heatsink for an AC/5)
• Kintaro (stock)
• JagerMech (move the ammo from the CT – otherwise stock)
• Jenner (F-Variant - trades SRMs for armor)

Walkthrough:

You're at an odd starting position. Every enemy unit is just outside sensor range so you start in non-combat mode where you can move all your units at once. However, even your smallest unit will get visual on an enemy if it moves full speed towards the enemy base. This will immediately start the interleaved mode – even if you've only moved one unit. Move a slow long range mech into the wood to your right to get sensor contact. Then move the rest of your lance but don't get visuals (watch out for dotted white lines) before you move your last mech into position. Here's a good starting move:

The vehicles on the right clode to you are SRM-carriers. Those are absolute nightmares. Kill them immediately. Don't be afraid to use a precision strike or two. They have to go before they can act. Thankfully they don't act before phase 1 so all your mechs should be able to fire.

After the SRM-carriers deal with the rest of the garrison. Try to move toward the gate on your left while mopping up, especially with a heavy armored but fast unit.

When the garrison is gone the turrets in the main base will belong to you. You intercept a message from the enemy comander. An order to focus on the Battlemechs instead of the turrets. This is exactly what you want them to do, so give them a target. Yes, that's right. The usual careful approach is worong. If the AI hasn't got any mechs to target it will kill the turrets. Move one or two heavily armored units down the road and brace. You'll take some damage but nothing a braced medium can't handle. The enemy will be trapped between the turrets though and get it's rear taken apart. The most dangerous enemy is a Hunchback thats crawling it's way up through the wood on the right. It's why you bring a Jenner:

Take the defenders down. Don't worry about the turn limit, it's pretty generous. Especially if you have a Jenner.

 

[Spartakus]

Liberation Smithon – Smithon:

Tasks:

1. Destroy the Garrison Units
2. Save six ammo crates (optional)
3. Save three ammo crates (optional)
4. Destroy the ammunition transports (optional)

Summary: This is the first huge difficulty spike in the campaign. However, there are a few tricks to turn this mission into a peace of cake. Note that you can destroy two ammo crates without failing a secondary objective. Also, ignore the advice about the loadout. Bring brawlers. One of them fast (like a Kintaro) the second one with an LRM-10 (Centurion for example) and the third any medium. Your fourth mech is a jump-capable skirmisher with Sensor Lock and possibly Ace-Pilot.


Outfit:

• Kintaro (swapped LRM plus ammo for a SRM-2 and heatsink, +damage SRMS are king)
• Centurion-A (stock)
• Hunchback (stock)
• Firestarter (swap MGs for a medium Laser + heatsink)

Here's a cool trick for your first move. !!!DOES NO LONGER WORK AFTER THE LATEST UPDATE!!! You can shoot at ammo crates while in non-combat mode. And there is a juicy one. First move your Hunchback exactly on the ridge so it get's a visual on two crates but no enemy mech:

Next target the right ammo crate with a single LRM-10. It blows up and takes a Locust and two turrets with it and cripples a Firestarter almost into oblivion. Not bad for an opener. Your light mech moves along the right flank outside visual contact. The Kintaro sprints to the left.



In the second round you reserve for phase 3 and then immediately retreat the Hunchback. It's in a very dangerous position as the enemy has tons of long range sniping weapons. You don't want to advance into the base. Park 2 of your mechs just where you started the mission and let the enemy come towards you. It will come in small chuncks for you to destroy. Your skirmisher goes on the right flank (behind the ridge, don't get visuals!) and serves as a mobile sensor. Always delay it into the last phase unless some3thing threatens it. If something juicy runs into a ammo-crate-death-zone you can quickly get a visual, blow it up and retreat in phase 4 again. Your Kintaro handles the left flank on it's own. First blow up the turret:

Then kill the ammo convoys as soon as they are past the turrets ruins. Use precision shot if you're not sure that you'll kill them. After it destroyed the second truck your Kintaro can run back to the starting point and support your main force. Don't advance into the base until you've severely reduced the enemy forces.
Just destroy the enemy garrison one mech ata time and you'll have no trouble with this mission.

 

[Spartakus]

Tip: How to use a skirmisher:

It has reserved past all enemy mechs. Now it can jump behind the target, alpha in it's back and immediately jump back into safety before the enemy can react. Thanks to Ace Pilot it can even shoot twice although the Firestarter in this picture is too hot to do that. In a cooler environment and without previous heat that's a devestating maneuver.