You can shoot them all? We got stuck on the planet and stood as long as we could but they just kept getting dropped off by scouts.
On my first try, yes (and then the mission bugged and didn't progress past the power reg
) but on the next try I saw the interceptor drop off more and thought "yeh, I'm not doing that any more" and that's when I immediately adopted full stealth mode and it became pretty clear that this was the intended design. This obviously made me very happy
As a stepping stone towards full on Thargoid on foot content (and I hope this is that), it's a really good effort from ED and I'm looking forward to trying out the various military settlement types. They also pay very well for on foot missions (still a big annoyance of mine from EDO is how poorly on foot missions pay across the board). I don't need the money but I still think missions should pay a good amount and most on foot missions pay trash. The material rewards for AX missions are also really good (always 5 of everything it seems).
I was using a G5 Exe which would two shot them (sometimes one shot though, maybe if you hit their core it's like a head shot?) but it's a bit faffy as they are difficult to hit once they start moving about; you absolutely can use cover to strafe and shoot and it did work OK for me (ignoring the reinforcements, can't keep up with that if it's infinite). As they have no shields, I was going to try out a G5 AR-50 to see how that worked and maybe even the Karma L-6 for fun to see if that would actually one shot them
Ammo is never an issue as there's infinte available around these settlements, so it might actually be quite fun. But yeh, as they keep dropping more and they only pay 25k per kill, it's really not worth the effort if you just want to finish the mission.
So I will probably just stick to full on stealth and they're surprisingly blind when you're on foot. In theory, in a team you could have 1-3 dominators running about keeping them busy while one mav did the work and that might be fun?
So I tried one of these... I overflew the settlement and got shot at by the revs. So I flew off a bit and it was hard to find a place to land as the settlement was on the side of a mountain.
After I disembarked with the scorpion, I had a frameshift anomaly and then spotted a flower, I immediately sent the ship off and as it left, I got EMP'd. Recovered and watched the flower circle for a bit, it seemed to be ignoring me so I closed on the settlement.
Another frameshift anomaly... Thought I saw a scout flying around but it was high so I wasn't sure. I snuck up on a rev, targeted it and took it out with a missile. Nobody seemed to notice. Okay, I worked my way in and about 3 revs went red and headed after me. I took out another with the missiles, but couldn't seem to hit them with the missiles even though I had a lock. Tried to hit them with the blaster thing, seemed to do no good, all of them were swarming after me so I did the brave sir robin and ran over the side of the hill. They stopped chasing me and I reloaded and crept back. This time the scout came near me, I tried to hit it with the missiles and it ignored me and flew away. Then another frameshift anomaly. Another scout.
Closed with the revs knocked out a couple more, got them chasing me, this time they seemed to keep coming. The revs don't seem to do much damage, but they did get my shields down. They were spitting some kind of caustic goo at me but were not very accurate. Then one of the scouts attacked me I in got a couple of hits with the missiles, sprayed it with the gun and had no effect that I could see.
Then I blew up.
Nice.
An NPC scavenger shoots my ship a few times and the shields drop and does major damage. I hit the scout with 2 missiles and spray it pretty good (with the most inaccurate weapon since a fart in a windstorm)... Nothing.
I really am not sure I want to try anymore of these. Revents, scouts, flowers... Not sure how a solo player is supposed to survive. I would likely have to forget the srv... But even if I kill all the revs, I still have to run the gauntlet of scouts and interceptors when I leave.
Do they attack my ship if I leave it on the ground?
Yeh, generally speaking I don't think these missions are intended for combat, at least not solo. It's just way too much effort.
The mountain settlements, for me, are just a hard pass now. I won't be attempting them any more and will just abandon them on sight, take the 100k hit (and pocket the power reg) and never return to that settlement again (time to get Excel out again to make another list
). This mission type just doesn't work well at all with bad terrain.
On another settlement, the terrain was great. Plenty of landing space just outside of 900m and down a slight slope, so the defelade protected my ship on ingress and egress. The settlement was the high-walled type so I could approach in my SRV and remain undetected right up to the walls, to leave it there and then finish the mission without getting seen once by the revenants (they are very blind to on foot players, you need to be pretty close and in their cone of vision for them to see you).
I get the impression this is the game loop FD intended with this mission. It's a shame proc gen terrain can ruin it frequently. Ideally, you want one of those planets which is mostly flat and you can just plan your SRV approach so it's unseen, or just leave it 800m out and approach on foot. It realy does come down to the terrain; if you cannot land your ship without it getting shot at then I don't think you're going to be able to get back onto it when the mission is done as it just sits there, hovering above you while it gets destroyed by the revenants.
You know what we really need? Recalled ships that cannot land should still be boardable and you can get underneath the hovering ship. At least then you can do a hot ingress and egress and it'd actually be pretty fun, I think.
