It's interesting to read how much trouble some of you have had with the story missions, while I seem to just breeze through them without much damage. ???
I'll use the last one I did so far, the Smithon Defense where you have to protect the 3 dropships, as example. I have often read that it's really hard to almost impossible to defend all dropships, so I went for a mixture of heavy firepower/melee ability, armor and jumpjets to basically build a moving wall of guns and fists/feet.
I rolled in with the starting crew, like I tend to do on most story missions.
Player Character 10/7/6/9 with Multi-Target, Sensor Lock and Master Tactician
- Battlemaster with more armor, Morale++, 4JJ's, 4SHS swapped for 2 DHS, 1 PPC++(+4acc), 4 ML+/++(2x +5dmg 2x +1acc&50%crit), 1 Flamer and a Holly SRM6++
By the way, the Holly SRM6's(and only the 6 tube) not only do the shown +2/+4dmg for + and ++ versions per missile but also have a hidden +1/+5 accuracy bonus(+5 almost makes it a Streak SRM!!) which you can only see when you mouse over the weapon in battle... or look through the weapon files. ;)
Behemoth 7/10/10/5 with Evasive Movement, Bulwark and Juggernaut
- LosTech Highlander with Morale+ and 2 DHS swapped out for more armor... I assume everyone knows the loadout of that one. ::)
Glitch 10/10/6/8 with Multi-Target, Breaching Shot and Evasive Movement
- Thunderbolt 5SE with a bit more armor, Morale+, PPC++(+4acc), LRM10+++(+2stb dmg/+50%crit) and 3 ML's
And last but not least, everyone's favourite Dekker... 8/9/7/10 with Sensor Lock, Master Tactician and Evasive Movement
- Grasshopper with more armor, less heatsinks(yep, you read that right), LL++(+10dmg), 1 SRM4++(+4dmg), 4 ML(2x +50%crit) and 4 SL(2x +50%crit)... sure, it has just enough heatsinks to keep up a 4ML and SRM4 barrage without heat gain, but it doesn't need to fire every turn because of Sensor Lock and the great melee/DFA potential.
So, that's the lineup. Initially, all 4 moved up to get in the way(with weapons and fists) of the main push and focused on knocking down and killing one Mech at a time. Kamea Arano's lines said to put pressure on the enemy, heavily hinting that Mechs which take enough damage will fire back on the damage source instead of the dropships/fuel tanks, and that indeed seemed to be the case. Only a few Mechs did not turn to engage when fired at, and all of those had the "Pilot" tag... indicating that they had Evasive Movement and were probably meant to rush through the defense and rely on evasion stacks. So, those guys got either a fist or a foot put into them ASAP, to knock them down and prevent them from doing just that.
When the flanking Spider and Commando appeared, Dekker started jumping over there while taking potshots with the LL, and proceeded to tear the Spider in half with an almost Alpha Strike from point blank range, only leaving out the LL, and then put his foot firmly into what was once the Commando's head and torso via DFA... he also fired the small lasers at the wreck of the would be civilian killer for good measure.
When the left side flankers appeared, my PC proceeded to jump and run over there while firing the PPC and then doing the same thing to them that Dekker did to the other guys, only in reverse order... first smash, then fire the short range arsenal.
Meanwhile in the center, Behemoth did her by now usual thing and went for full overkill, Alpha Striking Heavies, Mediums and even Lights regardless of minimum range, because with her gut skill, she gives no two craps about heat, especially not in a Highlander with a cool running Gauss Rifle. And when the Highlander(nicknamed Goethes Faust :)) ) finally got a bit too hot, she started doing melee attacks on everything that came too close. It was almost funny how the enemy AI basically ignored her Mech and just tried to run away from it, forgoing even rear arc shots! Too bad for them that the Highlander is also a part time undertaker. :D
The final enemy Mech, the left side Jenner, died just as the last dropship lifted off. Didn't lose a single tank, or had a single scratch on any of the dropships, we only lost 2-3 base turrets and some armor on my Mechs.
It also helped that I had a lot of morale to spend for the entire battle, and not only because of 3 morale boosting cockpit mods... the base morale of the crew is already at 50 thanks to some events and having prioritized the Argo's upgrades on crew morale, the Argo's speed(the faster you get to contracts, the more potential income you have), medical facilities(none of my Mechwarriors was in the medbay for longer than 22 days) and Mech repairs/refits, in that order. The main income bottleneck is still the repairs and refits... mostly refits actually, because ++ weapons, cockpit and gyro mods are just too good to not refit immediately. Despite the above battle report indicating a tendency towards melee combat, not one of my Mechs has any arm or leg mods... I feel that the boni they give aren't worth the weight. I'd much rather have another heatsink or ton of armor. The only tonnage eating mod I use is a targeting system on my Catapult C1 for increased missile accuracy, dropping 2 of the medium lasers for it and a ton of LRM ammo.
On other topics, my least seen Mechs so far are all of the Assault Mech's except for the Battlemaster and the Stalker(the only two I've seen outside of story missions so far), and for heavies, the Catapult C1 and Cataphract which I've only seen once each. The Catapult is the same one I mentioned above, I salvaged it entirely after it promptly took a Gauss round to the head. And lately the Jagermech is not appearing anymore... I saw quite a few of those earlier on, but they have become really rare. The complete opposite is the Quickdraw, which I only saw in the story mission early on, and then none of them appeared until after the I got the Highlander. Most heavies I meet are Orions(by far, I could have had almost two lances worth of them from salvage by now), Thunderbolts and, lately, Quickdraws. I also encountered a few Catapult K2's, enough to build one from 3 different wrecks. Also, so far I have met 3 or 4 Grasshoppers, which seems to be more than most other players have met.
Lastly, a question... how much rear armor do guys usually have put on? On my Mechs, I follow a rule of thumb... 20/25/20 for lights and some mediums, 30/35/30 for heavies and some mediums and 35-40/40-50/35-40 for Assaults, depending on their speed. I know that this seems really light, especially for the heavies, but so far I have only taken internal damage through the rear torso 2 times, a PPC went through the Battlemasters rear CT and a 6 ML salvo into the Grasshoppers rear where 3 of them hit the rear CT.
