Horizons Stay away from Murray Keep in Sosolingati/ Please change security rating to [++++++]

[Cybindis]

I got a mission to Murray Keep in Sosolingati.

I've been based around Sol and have been working up rep for a faction in a system with a tourist economy because naturally I wanted to get into the big leages of Toruism. Not that it matters that much now as right when I was actually getting allied and friendly with the factions, an update comes out and scuppers my plans.

That's not all bad though, because the area within 20LY is quite busy and I've gotten a lot of really good assassination and assault/massacre missions so I've been making some decent money outside of tourism.

However.

Today has just been terrible.

I've done base assaults on +++ large bases before; and yes they have been a struggle, one time I spent almost the entire time hiding from a Viper and only poking out whenever a sentry drone flew into my field of view.

Then I made a mad dash out and the viper eventually peeled off. That was back in 2.1, before I went out to beagle.

Murray Keep however.............

If you are ever near the SOL area and get a mission to assault this place, good luck........

Here's why you should avoid it:

• It's in a crater so the ground is bumpy.
• The base itself is at the top of a hill/
• It's got 0.12g, not the worst gravity, but still a pain to drive on especially when it's bumpy.
• There's a 2.5km exclusion zone ringed with heavy AA turrets.
• It's constantly patrolled by at least 2 Dangerous + Dropships, and a Conda/ASP usually shows up after you get a bounty for a while
• They are all stuffed with rails/seeker
• If you manage to survive the 2KM of hell to actually make it to the same ground the actual base is on, there are ~2 Goliaths already hovering around.
• I didn't even get to see how many turrets/skimmers there were because I never made it that far.
• It's 6KLS from the nearest large pad base which leaves you to either trek 12KLS for another go, or jump to another system.
• You kill the NPCs and they wait just long enough for you to get 1KM to send in another railgun ASP.

All in all just stay away.

I'm going to keep trying to get it because there's 2M riding on the mission and seeing as I'm trying to maintain rep I don't want to take the disproportionate hit from failure.

Not only is it a pain to actually drive up to, but whilst you're getting annoyed at drifts and spins you have no control over because of the low gravity, you're getting seekered and railed by 95% accurate NPCs (5% only miss because of hardpoint convergence at short ranges) and if you do manage to somehow get lucky enough to survive the 3 NPC ships who can somehow see you perfectly and can track even the most unexpected losses of control, you're going to get your shields stripped in a milisecond by the goliaths.

I'm sure if I can make it to some sort of cover it'd be grand, but from the attempts I've made at it I only got to within Goliath range once, and even though I have a well outfitted corvette, I don't want to deal with that many AA turrets. 1 or 2 I can handle easy, but about 6 with 2 Dangerous dropships packing rails..... Yeah no thanks.

So yes.

FD, please up this base to [++++++] because I can't see anything short of 2 squads split between both air cover and SRVs could make it to the inner sanctum in one piece. They certainly picked a good spot for their hideout that's for sure.


UPDATES:

Round 4: 1 Dangerous Anaconda, 1 Elite Gunship, 1 Master Viper MKIV, 1 Master Cobra Mk III........ This is going to hurt.....

Round 5: This is pretty much impossible. There are rocks just large enough to flip the SRV everywhere, I got within 1km of the base but got stuck because I kept spinning out, took longer for my shields to go down this time, but I still died to 2 hits that I couldn't evade. That's 4 SRVs spent on 1 base now....

Round 6: The exclusion zone is skewed; 2.5km on one side, 3km on the other. It's a choice between 2.5km bumpy uphill, or 3km across bumpy terrain.

Round 7: Made it inside the base perimeter. Was going so fast I couldn't slow down in time crashed into a wall, got killed in 2 seconds. Managed to find 1 lone skimmer in a POI outside the base. 7 SRVs down, 1/6 skimmers....

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

yeah there are some hell missions alright out there. I track the killer bases in my bookmarks so i know not to go back.
some thoughts:
1. I like the fact that some missions are to hard for me.
2. Some missions are made for wings of huge ships
3. I quite like dying in a blaze of glory, well a blaze anyway, if i am in the right mood.
4. Fight on Commander!

 

[Cybindis]

yeah there are some hell missions alright out there. I track the killer bases in my bookmarks so i know not to go back.
some thoughts:
1. I like the fact that some missions are to hard for me.
2. Some missions are made for wings of huge ships
3. I quite like dying in a blaze of glory, well a blaze anyway, if i am in the right mood.
4. Fight on Commander!

I do like the hard stuff. It feels great when I go up against triple deadly Gunship wings and I crawl away on 60% hp with no chaff.
I also play dark souls so I know what it's like throwing myself against a brick wall.

But unlike Dark Souls I can throw myself at this many times and see no noticeable signs of improvement.

Also the ship shouldn't really matter to me to be honest. I'm in a Corvette that is only missing an A rated PP and Eng 5 shield mods. I can get away with most things, but a wing of 4 ships and about 6 base turrets, I'm going to steer clear and hope I can slip an SRV in.

What I ended up doing was POI searching about 15km from the base.

Which is cheating in a way. I mean I got the skimmers and they were mission targets. It just felt bad because I was using a technicality to complete a mission, instead of using skill or tactics, or good timing of ship systems.

It's a shame, because a lot of stuff in this game could be challenging, but instead of making it challenging they made it a tad too unfair. (NPCs not playing by the SRV detection rules for instance)

 

[Marcus Machiavelli]

hey dude, "What I ended up doing was POI searching about 15km from the base." is just being clever not cheating IMO. The mission was to kill a certain factions skimmers and you did that, you cannot help it if you are clever. In real life it is like a military mission to kill soldiers, you could go to their barracks (the hard way) or go and ambush them on the road. (much easier) so i believe you were using tactics and skill.

 

[Cybindis]

hey dude, "What I ended up doing was POI searching about 15km from the base." is just being clever not cheating IMO. The mission was to kill a certain factions skimmers and you did that, you cannot help it if you are clever. In real life it is like a military mission to kill soldiers, you could go to their barracks (the hard way) or go and ambush them on the road. (much easier) so i believe you were using tactics and skill.

I suppose, it's a technicality, it just feels wrong to have to do it because of no other option. Similar to Skyrim on maximum difficulty, the only way you actually kill things is to sit in sneak and pepper the enemy with arrows and abusing aggro resets and waiting for them between shots.

I suppose it doesn't feel organic, it just feels contrived, like I'm not playing the game, but taking advantage of technical features other than intended just to get the outcome instead of achieving the outcome as intended.