I've attempted to take a few Elite ranked base assault missions against high security +++ settlements. To this day, even with a fully A rated and engineered Corvette, I have yet to complete one.
The Story
Today, I was given the task of scanning a comms terminal at a settlement to find a terrorist leader, and assassinate him. Knowing how futile my past attempts at these missions had been, I was a little hesitant at first. However, I was also feeling lucky today, so I decided to go for it anyway. I hopped into my Corvette, and headed out.
When I reached the settlement, there were three security ships circling in the sky, and a trespass zone the size of Hell's Kitchen. I figured that maybe if I got my SRV to the base fast enough, I could find cover and pick off the skimmers and turrets from there. I know from experience that it's impossible to target SRVs in ships, so I wasn't overly worried about the three security ships circling overhead.
Boy was I wrong. Moments after entering the trespass zone, I got a bounty. The three security ships rushed over to me, and the lead Eagle promptly sent me to a spinning SRV screen with a single well placed railgun shot.
"Well s***," I said to myself, "guess those ships are more dangerous than I thought. Well I have one more SRV in my bay, which means one more attempt."
This time, I decided to attempt taking out as much security as I could from the sky before landing. Lucky for me, there was only a single vulture circling this time. I quickly took it out, and then started working on the ground turrets that were stripping my shields with alarming speed. The annoying part here is that they were not targetable unless I was right on top of them, and even then, my gimbals wouldn't lock on.
I did manage to destroy one though, just in time for a wing of 3 security ships to drop in from the sky. I began fighting them, and as I did, more and more started to come in. Eventually I was fighting off two Federal Corvettes in addition to 4 other ships at once. Took me about 10 minutes of solid fighting to realize it was worthless because they would just keep spawning in, so I just said **** it and landed inside the base. Annoyingly, I also noticed on my way back down that the turret I destroyed had magically repaired itself to 100%, and was shooting at me again.
Finally landing with a little under 50% shield health, I deployed my SRV, dismissed my ship, and looked for shelter. I got no more than 50 ft before I was destroyed by about 20 different things. That was it, I just said **** it and abandoned the mission.
How to fix it
As it stands right now, these missions are impossible to do on your own. However, this could be worked around by introducing a stealth mechanic to the game.
Here's an idea for how that could work. Drive up to a few trespass zone sensors at the border of the settlement, and use your data link scanner to disable them, creating a hole in the detection grid you could sneak through. This would of course alert station security, who would rush out to the hole in an attempt to repair it and search the area for possible intruders. Since it's so far out from the settlement though, it would take them awhile to get there, so you would have ample time to sneak in. You would then have to avoid getting too close to skimmers, and stay out of their line of sight. If you do get spotted though, you could break line of sight to escape them à la CQC. They'd search your last known location for a bit while you sneak around finding your mission objective.
Of course, if you get spotted by a skimmer, this would put the base on full alert and they would start to search for you. You could counter this by destroying generators or hacking terminals around the settlement to disable the skimmers (assuming you can't already do that).
This is also where a silent running mechanic for the SRV could come in handy. Much like in a ship, it would drop your shields and hold in heat to reduce your visibility to sensors. This would make it possible to get closer to skimmers while avoiding detection.
Of course, headlights would also need to be turned off if you wanted to remain hidden very well. Regardless of if a skimmer can see you on their sensors or not, 4 high beams pointed right at them would be a bit of a dead giveaway.
The Co-op Approach
Of course, it is possible to do these missions right now if you have a buddy to distract the security ships while you take on the ground forces. However, they would stand to gain nothing from this except for a bounty, because there is not a co-op mission system in the game.
For this approach to work as more than a novelty to your buddy, a co-op mission system would need to be developed so they can share in the rewards. This is especially relevant now more than ever anyway, with Multicrew coming up.
tl;dr
High security base assault missions are currently impossible to do solo. Furthermore, if you bring a buddy to help you, they gain nothing from it. These issues need fixed.
The Story
Today, I was given the task of scanning a comms terminal at a settlement to find a terrorist leader, and assassinate him. Knowing how futile my past attempts at these missions had been, I was a little hesitant at first. However, I was also feeling lucky today, so I decided to go for it anyway. I hopped into my Corvette, and headed out.
When I reached the settlement, there were three security ships circling in the sky, and a trespass zone the size of Hell's Kitchen. I figured that maybe if I got my SRV to the base fast enough, I could find cover and pick off the skimmers and turrets from there. I know from experience that it's impossible to target SRVs in ships, so I wasn't overly worried about the three security ships circling overhead.
Boy was I wrong. Moments after entering the trespass zone, I got a bounty. The three security ships rushed over to me, and the lead Eagle promptly sent me to a spinning SRV screen with a single well placed railgun shot.
"Well s***," I said to myself, "guess those ships are more dangerous than I thought. Well I have one more SRV in my bay, which means one more attempt."
This time, I decided to attempt taking out as much security as I could from the sky before landing. Lucky for me, there was only a single vulture circling this time. I quickly took it out, and then started working on the ground turrets that were stripping my shields with alarming speed. The annoying part here is that they were not targetable unless I was right on top of them, and even then, my gimbals wouldn't lock on.
I did manage to destroy one though, just in time for a wing of 3 security ships to drop in from the sky. I began fighting them, and as I did, more and more started to come in. Eventually I was fighting off two Federal Corvettes in addition to 4 other ships at once. Took me about 10 minutes of solid fighting to realize it was worthless because they would just keep spawning in, so I just said **** it and landed inside the base. Annoyingly, I also noticed on my way back down that the turret I destroyed had magically repaired itself to 100%, and was shooting at me again.
Finally landing with a little under 50% shield health, I deployed my SRV, dismissed my ship, and looked for shelter. I got no more than 50 ft before I was destroyed by about 20 different things. That was it, I just said **** it and abandoned the mission.
How to fix it
As it stands right now, these missions are impossible to do on your own. However, this could be worked around by introducing a stealth mechanic to the game.
Here's an idea for how that could work. Drive up to a few trespass zone sensors at the border of the settlement, and use your data link scanner to disable them, creating a hole in the detection grid you could sneak through. This would of course alert station security, who would rush out to the hole in an attempt to repair it and search the area for possible intruders. Since it's so far out from the settlement though, it would take them awhile to get there, so you would have ample time to sneak in. You would then have to avoid getting too close to skimmers, and stay out of their line of sight. If you do get spotted though, you could break line of sight to escape them à la CQC. They'd search your last known location for a bit while you sneak around finding your mission objective.
Of course, if you get spotted by a skimmer, this would put the base on full alert and they would start to search for you. You could counter this by destroying generators or hacking terminals around the settlement to disable the skimmers (assuming you can't already do that).
This is also where a silent running mechanic for the SRV could come in handy. Much like in a ship, it would drop your shields and hold in heat to reduce your visibility to sensors. This would make it possible to get closer to skimmers while avoiding detection.
Of course, headlights would also need to be turned off if you wanted to remain hidden very well. Regardless of if a skimmer can see you on their sensors or not, 4 high beams pointed right at them would be a bit of a dead giveaway.
The Co-op Approach
Of course, it is possible to do these missions right now if you have a buddy to distract the security ships while you take on the ground forces. However, they would stand to gain nothing from this except for a bounty, because there is not a co-op mission system in the game.
For this approach to work as more than a novelty to your buddy, a co-op mission system would need to be developed so they can share in the rewards. This is especially relevant now more than ever anyway, with Multicrew coming up.
tl;dr
High security base assault missions are currently impossible to do solo. Furthermore, if you bring a buddy to help you, they gain nothing from it. These issues need fixed.
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