Am I missing something about ground missions? (grind/difficulty)

[JonHarmon]

o7 Commanders. I'm coming back to the game after several months off and decided to try something I'd never done much with before, on-foot missions. I have a G3 Dominator suit (no engineering) and a G2 Maverick (damage resistance), G2 laser carbine and everything else is bone stock G1. I then rigged up a Federal Drop Brick with missile launchers as my on-foot ship. (Eventually I sold the Drop Pig and shifted to both a Vulture and a Chieftain that I had already bought, again fully fitted with dumbfires.) I am now typically running with the laser carbine and the plasma pistol, because it gives me Firefly vibes. Anyway.

So I think I've got the hang of the "get x from a wreck" missions. Fly to wreck, buzz it, if I get shot at, saturate the area with missiles until everything stops moving, get out, get stuff. But if another ship drops off more bad guys while I'm out looting, bad things happen. Five or six on one, I can barely do it. Maybe. Anything more than that, I am screwed.

I've done restore settlement missions, those are doable, but again, if a bunch of bad guys drop in, I have to do a panic Naruto run to my SRV or ship, get clear, and then take them down with superior firepower. I can't handle getting swarmed by that many people and their grenade fetishes. (Doesn't help that I'm not a great shot, and usually running my Maverick so I don't have anything but that Tormentor to take them out once I drop their shields.) But again, usually I can do those with suitable amounts of rocket spam from above.

For any other settlement mission, forget it. I've tried several of the "go to settlement, break/steal x, come back" missions. I go in all innocent via Apex, sneak around until I can find somebody's security profile to clone...except they're all inside buildings I can't get in without the security profile. And if I do get one, and I get near the security center to drop the alarms, some guard turns around and spots me, or I tase somebody and it doesn't work, and I'm deaded. And I haven't even thought about trying to murder an entire settlement to loot it later.

There's two other things that are making this even worse:

1. The payouts are terrible for the time involved. 150,000 cr for going halfway across a system, fighting off two waves of scavs, and playing fireman? It takes 30+ minutes. Now granted I do get a fair bit of money off of stripping the place of valuables, so that one's not so bad. The big problem is...

2. The engineering grind. As ever. I know how it works. The problem is, to do the simplest backpack capacity mod on my Maverick, I need 10 chemical inventories and 10 digital designs. In all the missions I've done, I have 0 and 1. They don't drop. That's not even thinking about weapon mods or upgrades or suit grade upgrades. This seems even worse than the ship engineering grind.

I actually like the concept here and I am going to keep trying them, but I had to gripe a bit about legging it. I'll probably just get told to "git gud" and eh, maybe I do. I can always load up my Phantom and head back out 10,000 ly into the black. At least then nobody'll be shooting at me. I hope.

 

[metatheurgist]

Nah, the mission threat levels have nothing to do with how hard the mission actually is to complete. I find that the size of the settlement is a better indicator of the amount of opposition you will face.

Nuking stuff with dumbfires is the right move. The majority of missions don't have more than 2 drops of scavs so just wait a while. If you're doing restorations/reactivate, scavs don't drop once the power is up so make that your priority and don't dally. You can take your sweet time after that.

This is counterintuitive to the ship game but you need to go do some ground CZs. Just get better at the ground combat game, dodging, taking cover, learning to hear snipers. Win a few and try combat again and feel the difference. There are some tricks you can use like, using your ship's shields for protection or just mowing stuff down with your SRV but just get better at the basics.

You just need to learn which settlements drop which mats, the ones you want aren't that hard to get. Let me save you some time though, increased backpack is a rubbish mod (lots will disagree ). The main source of mats is reactivation missions, as I said, once the power is up you can take your sweet time looting the place. What's a few more trips to your SRV or ship?

Lastly, go raid the caring and sharing thread, lots of good gear on offer.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

+1 on caring is sharing, a full set of G3 gear isn't that hard to acquire and makes things a lot easier.
Getting in;
Practice on a decent sized Ext settlement, the storage building and production building have skylights that you can grab an I'd through.
Once you're through the door no more scans.
Keep an eye on the radar and make sure you've passive scanned everyone in the building so they stay on radar.
You then know when they can see you and when the can't.
It's simple then to help yourself to anything not nailed down.
Next step up would be an Agri settlement, big glass roofs but more restricted areas.
Tailgating NPCs through doors also works, so keep an eye out for wandering technicians.

 

[SteveWW57]

I agree with the sentiment about the extra backpack not being worth it as a long term mod, as once you get beyond a certain point in the game you wish you have a different mod instead. You can have more than one suit. Learn to fight scavs using a Scarab SRV, fire and movement so you control the engagement. The scavs run to the sound of the guns to get shot mostly.

Larceny missions generate lots of cash for a newish CMDR. Take as many salvage, surface recovery and fetch/carry missions as you can. The ones offering good mats as rewards are especially useful. When doing the Ody fetch/deliver missions take the APEX. In many places the HAB is 0 security, so walk in and check the data port to down load data. Bars are similar. Avoid the alarmed data.

For the time being, avoid missions to steal stuff from active settlements. Look for restore etc power at settlements or kill scavs.

Caring/sharing thread is like the e-bay of 3307. Lots of really good stuff, including audio masked or noise suppressed weapons.

This is one source of help.

ED SUIT/WEP UPGRADES

COSTS/REQUIRED WEAPONS,TRADE?,TAK,MAN,KAR,TOTAL,TRADEABLE CHEMICALS,BUY,BARTER,REQUIRED?,AMOUNT TO ,TRADEABLE CIRCUITS,BUY,BARTER,REQUIRED?,AMOUNT TO ,TRADEABLE TECH ALL UPGRADE MATERIALS,ALL GUNS 1-5,UPGRADE ONLY (MODS IN RED),VALUE,VALUE,FOR MOD?,MAX ALL,VALUE,VALUE,FOR MOD?,MAX ALL WEAPON SCH...

docs.google.com

Steve

 

[alexzk]

So I think I've got the hang of the "get x from a wreck" missions. Fly to wreck, buzz it, if I get shot at, saturate the area with missiles until everything stops moving, get out, get stuff. But if another ship drops off more bad guys while I'm out looting, bad things happen. Five or six on one, I can barely do it. Maybe. Anything more than that, I am screwed.

Just wait 3-4 minutes before drop out and repeat missiles trick again. Or be quick gathering loot, once you see enemies - run into your ship back and repeat the trick .

 

[Skeitch]

I would recommend watching StealthBoy's and CMDR Buur's videos on YouTube. They helped me a LOT with getting started into the settlement looting game loop and it is truly a heck of a drug. Practice, practice and practice until you can get to a point where you can clear out an entire settlement without being seen.

Rely on your SRV when stealth isnt an option, like when you are going to crash sites and the like. The scarabs gun is SUPER effective. It hits hard. It's precise with gimballed targeting and has a much greater range than the scavs have. I would not recommend the scorpion. While it's neat, durable and fun for dealing with larger targets, it significantly lags behind when trying to shoot people that are on foot, moving or gathering anything.

I have a maverick suit with the extra backpack mod but honestly, I only switch to that once the settlement is turned into a ghost town and it's time to strip anything and everything of value.

This is of course a purely subjective take on it. Many CMDRs prefer a guns-blazing approach. Find what works for you and just keep practicing at it.

There are of course much easier and much more profitable ways to make credits outside of the on-foot stuff. Personally, I have been having more fun with that than the space-based stuff. So it is what I choose to do while trading on the side to supplement my addiction.

 

[idahosurge]

@ OP, my opinion.

Payout - yes it is low as far as the credit payout. Only worth doing these missions if, A- you enjoy doing them or B- you are doing them for the materials or data to use in an upgrade / mod.

Bad Guys - while on foot the absolute worse thing you can do is let them swarm you. Do not get into a fire fit with multiple bad guys (scavengers). You need to keep moving, let them chase you and get them separated then take them on one at a time. When you first start doing these it is difficult, but as with all things the more you do the easier fit gets. There is absolutely no substitute for experience. The more experience you have these get vastly easier to do.

It takes some effort, but I got a Maverick suit, Zenith and AR50 all upgraded to G5 before I started taking on scavengers. Better suits and weapons makes the job so much easier. Once I could take on scavengers easily then it was easier to take on more missions to get more materials and data. Keep taking the other types of missions. As you do them and gain experience they will get easier to do. Especially take the power restore missions because you can loot the settlement and get a lot of materials and data you need. Plus you can trade materials you looted for materials you need at the bartender.

I then upgraded my Maverick with four mods, bought a G3 Tormentor and Executioner then upgraded those to G5 and added four mods. Both weapons have noise supression and audio masking The Execution has a scope and head shot while the Tormentor has stability and greater range. Both are two shot weapons. One shot takes the shields down and the second shot is lights out (note in OF HI CZ's it is three shots, you need two for shields on most NPC's). Having a G5 suit and G5 weapons all with mods makes taking out scavengers so much easier than doing this with a G3 suit and G3 weapons that you bought off the rack as a station someplace.

I never used missiles to clear a settlement or a crash site, but that is because I like clearing scavengers while on foot and not from my ship. There is nothing wrong with using missiles, I just prefer not to. Once I got plenty of experience and what I consider a top of the line suit and weapons clearing scavengers is just plan fun and pretty easy. Now I do these types of missions all the time just because I enjoy it. I don't need the data or materials anymore and I certainly don't need anymore credits.

Settlement Security Levels - scavenger strength does depend on the security level of the settlement. Low security the scavengers are not to bad, think G2 equipment with no mods. High security settlements the scavengers are better equipped, think G5 with mods. Medium security settles are somewhere in between.

 

[Keloot]

I can clear any edo mission with a g1 tormento pistol.

 

[Pville_Piper]

The missiles aren't a bad call... I like to use the SRV. Kill the first bunch and at the first sound of a second bunch hit the SRV and move off a bit. Be careful of the terrain as you can get stuck.

For restore mission I do them two ways if scavs are present. If there is more than six, I generally will go with the SRV to cut down on the time. If there is 6 or less, I put the dominator on and sneak around, take on a couple of outliers, hit them move off. If the scavs don't see you, they will stop after a bit, and you can rinse and repeat. Rooftops are your friends... Run away from them, jump to the rooftops, get buildings in your way, get out of sight, repair, rearm, flank them and repeat. It's a lot of fun!

If using the SRV, switch to Dominator suit and be careful of the terrain and roadblocks. If all else fails, you can bail and abandon the SRV. I like to take a ship with 2 SRVs, that way I will always have one. If the second group comes while I'm in the building and takes out the SRV. Be careful of where you park it.

The SRV is important, gives you a place to toss the items from your backpack, it's a changeroom that allows you to switch suits and a mobile firebase. Always know your escape route, never just drive up and park it without knowing how you are going to leave. I will often park it facing the way I came in. Beware of the fact, particularly in larger settlements that good roads often lead to dead ends. The SRV gets stuck quite easily and if it gets swarmed, you're toast.

Some things to remember... If you've reactivated the base, and scavengers show up, be very careful at what you are shooting at. If you hit a base defense component like anti-personnel weapon, you will be hostile to that settlement. If you're doing an ax restore (the best kind for mats) there will be navy ships running cover for you and they will attack you once you are marked hostile... You'll get the full Custer treatment as the scavs, the base and the ships will all be wanting you dead. Neither the base nor the navy will not do anything about the scavs, so turn off the base defenses while you run around on your gathering materials.

The payouts are crap... But download an app by the name of EDHM Material Helper, EDHM Info Here

This the best App for you as it will help plan your upgrades, and tell you what to sell at the bartender. You can save time by seeing what you need when out collecting items, but I hoover up everything and sell my overage. Anything that you don't think you need, keep 20 of... If it's for a desired upgrade, keep enough for 2-3 upgrades. Here's the other thing, the payouts are crap, but if you hoover up everything, you can sell stuff at the bar and get 1 or so for all the useless crap and the app has a sort feature that shows you what to sell.

The best restore missions are the kind found in a "Post-Thargoid Recovery" system state. In the first week of recovery only, the second week will have the majority of settlements powered up and the mission board will send you to powered up stations and you will have to abort the mission. Check the settlement from the system map and if it doesn’t have the “X” above it (this is in recovery state missions only) do not take the mission. The recovery state restore missions have the best rewards and the settlements usually have really good drops as well.

Always open the lockers in command centers and power stations as these will usually have rare mats. I usually avoid the lockers scattered around the settlements, the unlocked have garbage in them and the locked take too much time running back to get ebreaches or codes from the panels.

I run several suits, ones with night vision and others that don’t. My favorite one is a mav with extra battery, backpack, sprint and jumping. This is my go to suit if I don’t need the night vision. Different suits for different jobs. I have one with everything silenced on it, fun to sit on rooftops and snipe the scavs.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

I found an executioner ideal for dealing with scavs initially. A guaranteed two hit kill and the effectiveness at range helped me out (might not suit everyone though). If you are finding yourself struggling under fire, don't forget to use cover and that you can duck (especially when reloading- that's something that's easily forgotten). Failing that, there's nothing wrong with a tactical withdrawal to get out of weapons range until shields recharge.

 

[photomankc]

Lots of good advise so far. Believe me, many of us have been there. I think FDev did a poor job letting people take on more challenge as they improve because the mission difficulty ratings are just lies. I'm now an angel of death to settlements on the other side of my contracts but it's been a long road to get there.

A few tips:

Setup different loadouts for different jobs:

• For infiltration and theft I use Executioner and Tormentor with Noise suppression and Audio masking on them. They are deadly tools that don't alert others at all.
• For scavenging missions I run Executioner and the balistic pistol. The Executioner to take down shield or snipe and the pistol to kill if they are close. Scavs are not hard threats mostly. The tormentor is a poor choice when you have people running all around you. Slow to reload, slow to fire, slow projectile.

Use the shield grenades. It's hard to remember sometimes, but use the shield grenade if you just need a couple seconds out of fire to knock out a few in pursuit. Thrown grenades are such a crapshoot in the ever changing number of G's you face that I generally don't bother unless I can bounce them into the location. The NPCs have perfect throwing. Yours will suck and FDev refuse to help out any with it.

Don't be afraid of a bounty if you need to get the alarms down. If I have to do anything illegal in a settlement the alarms are coming down, come hell or high water. If that means capping a gaurd in the face so be it. Even if it draws attention at least it will be just the locals and not the entire settlement worth of guards.

If you need to get an ID cloned, break into the power center. Usually it's not hard to get into in medium and large settlements and they are almost always level 3. Bring an E-Breach if you don't think you'll have time to cut your way in. With L3 ID the place is yours for the taking. You can access inventory from Apex as you disembark to snag an e-breach or two.

Focus on the silencing mods for your weapons and getting them to G3 first. Not getting the attention of everyone nearby when you shoot is a big help to getting missions done. Once you have those, you will find its a much different experience.

I like extra backpack capacity. By looting all the high-value goods from the place I can make over a million on settlement raids. Even if I don't kill everyone I still often break into the lockers to get drugs, samples, fossils and californium. Many of those are 75 to 100K each.

Check out the mission givers in the stations and always try to negotiate higher pay or materials. If it works GREAT. If not oh well, and head to the boards.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

The big step forward for me was when I found a G2 shotgun in a shop. That was enough to take on scavengers one-on-one. Once I managed to get the G3 upgrade they stopped being too much of a problem. Your plasma pistol will make a decent backup/finish off weapon to go with it.
(Sure, the noise alerts the rest of them and you have to flee, then come back when they think you've run off and take out the next one; with your G3 Dominator you can probably take two of them at once)

Seconding the advice to try low CZs (and then move up to medium and high when you find them too easy) - unlike the ship balance, the CZs are some of the easiest combat scenarios as you're not facing anything tougher than you'd find elsewhere, but you've got 11 vaguely useful soldiers on your side as well, plus if you do get killed there's no penalty, you just respawn and try again.

Restore power missions are often an easy way to get started - you won't find anything worse than scavengers, if you're both lucky and quick you can get the power back on line before even one set of them shows up. Pick "low security" bases if you can to start with - those also have the weakest scavengers.

Delivery missions are low-reward but entirely safe if you can stop when a guard says stop. You might find one with material rewards that you need, but it's also a good way to get used to where the buildings are in bases without pressure (you won't be going inside them)

Like the rest of the game, you start off completely outmatched, and can upgrade to the point where nothing is remotely a threat; there's a bit in the middle where things are nicely challenging but getting there can be tough.

 

[TobiasFuzz]

Like the rest of the game, you start off completely outmatched, and can upgrade to the point where nothing is remotely a threat; there's a bit in the middle where things are nicely challenging but getting there can be tough.

This is a minor issue for me. I grinded for a G5 Mav with larger Backpack, quieter footsteps, faster shield regeneration and night vision. Also a G5 Executioner and G5 Tormenter with Audio masking, noise surpressor and other mods... now every mission is almost too easy. There should be a sort of "high end" mission that still create some challenge.

 

[ImmerseMe]

Exact same position here, G3 Dominator, fine with ground FPS matches, get nuked on any infiltration. Can't scan through windows ever, either get spotted immediately (eyes back of head) or can't reach through ceiling. I usually CAN get in np but moment I do anything, clone or kill or hit a switch the whole base crawls out the floor panels.

S'okay, never was too into stealth, and I have managed assassinate missions by just booking it out after the point blank shotgun blasts.

Keep one thing in mind; half the payout is the loot. Just did a drug fetch mission, no scavs spawned. Pay was like 200k but loot was like another 200k in drugs etc. Even after I spent the code breaker things. You can sell loot to bartenders now. Straight.

 

[Ryox]

1. The payouts are terrible for the time involved.

For ground missions you want to choose the "Material Reward", not the CR payouts. It's actually the best way to get many of the "rare" Data (ex: 'Combatant Performance').

IMO, it's more efficient than searching them in Dataports and it's very important to do if you want to engineer to G5.

But unfortunately not all Data are available as mission reward, you must double-check first on Inara ("Location: Mission reward").

https://inara.cz/elite/componentitem/10380/

For ex. you cannot earn 'Settlement Defence Plan'.

 

[Screemonster]

I'm going to be the outlier and say that a maverick with the extended backpack is handy to have around, and useful for your first suit that you use to grab all the bits you need for your real missionrunner.

If you don't want to spend the mats then don't bother upgrading it past G2. You can probably get away with that if you can avoid combat, which a silenced weapon and learning the guard patrol routes will allow you to do.

 

[Dillon Fallon]

Regarding silent weapons as well - something I found is that noise is not a binary thing of silenced weapon= NPCs not alerted versus unsilenced weapon= NPCs alerted. What audio masking and noise suppressor do is dramatically reduce the distance where NPCs hear you.

In other words, if you're far away enough from the NPCs when you shoot, they still won't hear you. Worst case is they come and have a look, in which case you run off to your next hiding spot before they see you hanging around the place where suspicious noises came from.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Regarding silent weapons as well - something I found is that noise is not a binary thing of silenced weapon= NPCs not alerted versus unsilenced weapon= NPCs alerted. What audio masking and noise suppressor do is dramatically reduce the distance where NPCs hear you.

In other words, if you're far away enough from the NPCs when you shoot, they still won't hear you. Worst case is they come and have a look, in which case you run off to your next hiding spot before they see you hanging around the place where suspicious noises came from.

You do get occasional NPCs that seem able to determine the point of origin of a shot on discovery of a body and will flat out charge to that spot.
For this reason it's best to change positions following a kill.

 

[Ydiss]

I'm going to be the outlier and say that a maverick with the extended backpack is handy to have around, and useful for your first suit that you use to grab all the bits you need for your real missionrunner.

If you don't want to spend the mats then don't bother upgrading it past G2. You can probably get away with that if you can avoid combat, which a silenced weapon and learning the guard patrol routes will allow you to do.

Yeh, me too on this one.

Mods are really unimportant for combat related purposes, the only thing that really impacts your combat effectiveness is upgrades to the suit and weapons. Once you're G5, it's almost irrelevant what you decide to add into the slots and is just a matter of flavour; remember, we're talking specifically about the maverick suit here, not the dominator (as no one should be putting backpack on the dominator) so adding combat effectiveness beyond G5 for the mav has very limited mileage. G5 mav is enough. Being able to load up fully without returning to your ship (or SRV where appropriate/possible) is a big bonus in the long run and, if you get it early, will more than make up for the time it took to get that mod (very much so if you find a suit prebuilt with it).

And if you "no longer need it" then... it's moot. You no longer need it so just discard the suit for whatever other suit you built without it (and if you still need to build said suit then... you still need the mod )

Way I see it, I generally don't think discussion over suit/weapon mods matters very much. FD made this very much non cookie-cutter. So just do whatever you like and the only really useful information is around which mods are really lacklustre and probably not worth the effort and that's a pretty short list (like silencing mods on the L6, for example).

 

[Ryox]

Mods are really unimportant for combat related purposes

Except for PvP. But I know it's very much an edge-case in this game.