Mech Commander Gold Showcase: Operation 5 Mission 5, Part 1 of 3

All videos demonstrate gameplay at Hard difficulty.

This is the penultimate mission, the one before the decisive battle for the Starport of Port Arthur. Knock out the power plants. Problem is, elite Clan warriors guard the plants.

And those Clan warriors include EIGHT Masakaris and three Thor-As. Mech Commanders who have gotten this far have learnt to respect a single Masakari's durability and firepower; the Masakaris here love to stick together in twos or threes, and that means a painful battle for your forces every time you encounter them.

Fortunately, there are ways to weaken the enemy Masakaris and make the fights winnable without losing your own Battlemechs and pilots. This video shows how to do that, whilst salvaging most of the Masakaris at the same time!

The opening shows my choice of Battlemechs and their weapons loadouts, once more configured to maximize salvage chances (i.e. lots of Light Ultra Autocannons and weapons that pick enemy Mechs apart slowly); important here since the Masakaris carry lots of Clan-tech weapons, including the all-too-rare C/ER-PPCs which are the best weapons in the game. Having said that, it's vital to have some heavy-hitters in your weapons to punch holes in enemy armor so your light weapons can do the job; carrying only light weapons for this mission, against the Masakaris' thick armor, is a sure way to lose Battlemechs. As usual, I'm taking advantage of the Mech Repair Bays on this map to bring along badly-damaged Mechs to repair at no cost to myself; the trick here is to keep them away from enemy fire until they reach the repair bays.

Note also that I've already amassed almost 1,000,000 RPs! I've trained my pilots to the point that most of their skill bars are full, and most importantly, all of them have full gunnery skill!

The mission start sees my forces racing down the path, dealing with the tanks and lone Thor that tries to stop them. Then the light Mechs race down towards the centre of the map as the sensor array is captured, revealing a concentration of enemy Mechs in the maps centre; and the radar shows two of those blips moving up to meet my Mechs. I pull the light Mechs back, having exposed enough of the area around the fuel tanks for my plan, and wait.
Soon, two Masakaris come lumbering up. Hitman blows the tanks, damaging the first one, and then my Mechs attack, swiftly defeating both Masakaris. They capture the resources in the area, then hug the coastline as they make their way towards Objective (2), so as to avoid alerting the next cluster of Masakaris to their presence.

I have my least-damaged Mechs rush across the bridge. The trick here is to quickly destroy the Mechwarrior Barracks, so as to deny the ten Ullers the chance to power up; and the LRM carriers, capturing the Turret Control tower. Leaving the Barracks intact means fighting all ten Ullers, the benefit being getting the chance to salvage them (you can't salvage the powered-down Ullers if you destroy the barracks)...but also risking taking heavy damage. In this case, I don't need any more Uller-Ws' or their light weapons as salvage, so I just destroy the barracks outright.

The bridge is then demolished as my Mechs move to the Repair Bays; this forces the trio of Masakari-Ws' to take the long way around to the north, right into a field of Missile Turrets.

I swiftly repair all my Mechs, then capture the control towers for the Missile Turrets. The turrets destroy the Shrek tanks that approach, then heavily weaken the Masakaris when they arrive. I position my Mechs just beyond the turrets, ready to attack once the time is right. I also drop a Large airstrike (video time 08:11) to weaken the Masakaris further.

By the time I do attack, the Masakaris are all badly damaged. Victory is easy. Video time 09:11 shows my salvage thus far, including three Masakaris and their weapons.

See Part 2 for the next segment of this mission!

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Mech
• Commander
• Gold
• Showcase
• Salvage
• Walkthrough
• Masakari

[deliriouscouture]

i always took one group of assault mechs - usually armoured atlases, you really can't touch their armour rating - with a refit truck. as long as you kept the truck out of harms way and were strategic in your fights (for example, approaching the main base with the masakaris on this level) then the atlases would usually cream anything in their alpha strike.

[Carsomyr80]

@deliriouscouture I agree Atlases are the best-armored. But I favor speed and flexibility over slow and sturdy. "Speed is life", as they say - especially if you're adept at keeping your Mechs moving so no one takes too much of a beating. As for firepower, the total tonnage of weapons I could bring to bear with Clan Mechs is far greater than if I'd brought along Atlases.

[KiDxen]

you really2 take great risk bringing those badly damaged mechs

[Carsomyr80]

That's why I made sure I kept them out of harm's way, until I reached the repair bay. Of course, the mission would've been easier if I'd repaired them before bringing them along.

[darkdill]

@Carsomyr80 The thing is, you had over 1 million RP, so your repairs shouldn't have cost much to you. Why not spend on repairs?

Also, you use a lot of long-range weapons, but why not CLRMs? Ammo issues? Being able to shoot over obstacles can be a big help, you know.

[Carsomyr80]

@darkdill ...because I wanted to see how much RP I could accumulate. As for weapon choices, I made them based on damage output over time. CLRMs', for their weight, are the weakest Clan weapons around.

[bored1ca]

I found the use of a minelayer on this mission was a real boost - it took a bit longer but it was effective as my mechs made less contact with enemy mechs PLUS mines will lead enemy mechs into doing some crazy ass stuff...

[Plissken07]

I just came back from a mathematics conference where, Frank Savage, one of the people who worked on this game told a story about how it took them about a month to debug a problem where one side of the mechs arms and legs would flop in the opposite direction when moving...the problem was that they didn't realize that the cross product of two vectors was not commutative.

[deliriouscouture]

yeah, i see your point about speed and firepower over armour. it just pisses me off when i lose stuff like Clan Weapons (especially ER PPCs), pilots get badly injured or the mech loses a leg mid-battle. and of course, the opponent always goes for the most heavily armed and inevitably the most lightly armoured mech.

[dizzleblackizzle]

my stratagy: bring heavy and assult mechs Have them loaded with mostly LRMS and then throw in some PPCs and LPLs. Have them assault the central base directly! Use a fast mech to draw out the mechs one lance at a time. Fire at them from behind trees there is a perfect position in the lower tree line on the approach to the base. Once all mechs are defeated use the base and its many repair bays to launch attacks at the other locations. really like your moves, may try them next time

[gribae]

@Carsomyr80 It was always better to repair the 'Mech in-field wherever possible, so as to save money on repairs and refit later. At least, I always tapped out the repair bays towards the end of the missions whenever possible.