Wimpy trucks

[Jafet]

It is often impossible to complete a trucking mission; the mission depends so much on luck that the enemy mecha hiding nearby will not decide to attack the truck first. Sometimes, the truck is destroyed even before I can do any action, since the enemy gets to move first.

The truck armour and driver skills should scale with the raiders' PV, I would think...

[Burzmali]

This is a common complaint.  Skill alone won't be enough to dodge a nuke, and upgrading the truck is fairly complicated.  Maybe adding more trucks and rewarding the player if 50% or more make it to the finish would work better.

[macksting]

I tend to just keep a very high initiative, very large weaponry, drone launchers (always, always, always on these missions) and smoke launchers.

[Jafet]

Hmm, my entire broadside tends to consist of laser cannon...

Or, dispense with the wimpy truck altogether, and load your mecha down with five dozen tons of truck fodder you have to safely bring across the map.

You could assume it's sixty tons, of, say, chocolate bars, which would inflate your (and raider) PV by about 30,000,000. Also, your MV, TR and dpr drop a lot so it wouldn't be wise to do this job in an aerofighter. Well, whoever heard of a five-floor mecha dogfighter delivering chocolate bars anyway?

[Onisuzume]

Good initiative and good mecha speed should usually be able to do it.
Initiative so you get to move first, then the speed to be the first target in reach of the raider's weapons.

Empty your broadsides, and repeat on the remaining raiders.

[Erathoniel]

Quoting: Jafet

Hmm, my entire broadside tends to consist of laser cannon...

Same here.

Quoting: Jafet

Or, dispense with the wimpy truck altogether, and load your mecha down with five dozen tons of truck fodder you have to safely bring across the map.

I've always wondered why I can't just carry the darn escorted crap myself.

Quoting: Jafet

Also, your MV, TR and dpr drop a lot so it wouldn't be wise to do this job in an aerofighter. Well, whoever heard of a five-floor mecha dogfighter delivering chocolate bars anyway?

GH is an Anime inspired game. The strange happens often enough.

[macksting]

On the whole, though, I agree that the mission gets rather unbalanced as your opposing forces become more dangerous and more numerous. An upgrade to the truck does seem in order, even if all the tactics mentioned really would be advisable even given an upgrade.

[Aquillion]

I think this came up before.  My conclusion was this:

There are some missions that just need to have a 'cap' on how high they can scale up in difficulty (and rewards).  The truck mission is one of those.

Think about it.  Random post-apocalyptic bikers (well, space-bikers, now) and scum bandits in Buru-Burus raiding trucks makes sense.  Maybe even some moderately well-funded rival corp raiding the truck makes sense.

A Monstrous using nuclear weapons, though?  Last time I checked, a Monstrous cost several million dollars, and you're paying a decent chunk of that with every single shot when you use those nukes.  What on earth is in that truck?  What cargo could possibly be worth lobbing nuclear weapons around like that?  And how much of it is going to be left after they nuke the entire area the truck was travelling through into a smoldering crater?  And if it's really that valuable, wouldn't the people sending the truck send the cargo in a Monstrous of their own?

Scaling up war-style missions to match the player's reputation makes sense.  Scaling up the truck escort missions, not so much.  Some missions should really be specific to a certain reputation / difficulty level...  high-level pilots aren't going to get much for saving puppies stuck in trees, or escorting cheap trucks of cargo, or things like that.

[Erathoniel]

Quoting: Aquillion

A Monstrous using nuclear weapons, though? Last time I checked, a Monstrous cost several million dollars, and you're paying a decent chunk of that with every single shot when you use those nukes. What on earth is in that truck? What cargo could possibly be worth lobbing nuclear weapons around like that? And how much of it is going to be left after they nuke the entire area the truck was travelling through into a smoldering crater? And if it's really that valuable, wouldn't the people sending the truck send the cargo in a Monstrous of their own?

But what if it's carrying weaponry, and not stuff that the other side needs. Just denial of assets, not transfer of assets.

Either way, though, it does need a cap.

[macksting]

Strictly speaking (please forgive Mr. Devil's Advocate), I regularly complete this mission at maximum reputation by using far less PV than a fully equipped Monstrous.
Mind, my favorite means is a Monstrous, but it's my heavily modified wheeled Iapetus model, much better suited to dense combat than the sparse and easily wrecked original Monstrous model. The configuration emphasizes smoke, long-range missiles and drones. The smoke to keep the truck safe, the drones to keep the enemies occupied (best to fire them in front of enemies, so they can't deprioritize them), and the missiles to capitalize on late-game sensor packages and to eliminate opponents at extreme distances (very necessary when you're in the Iapetus. It's slow.)
What I'm getting at is that my Iapetus, while arguably superior even against a competent opponent, is actually not as well-armed as the Monstrous and doesn't cost as much to reload. Even at top difficulty, this mission isn't so difficult that you can't take it on with less than an Aegis.

[Aquillion]

Quoting: macksting

What I'm getting at is that my Iapetus, while arguably superior even against a competent opponent, is actually not as well-armed as the Monstrous and doesn't cost as much to reload. Even at top difficulty, this mission isn't so difficult that you can't take it on with less than an Aegis.

I meant the attackers using a Monstrous, not the player (I agree that an out-of-the-box Monstrous is overpriced and too easy to kill.)  It just seems odd to have people lobbing nuclear weapons at cargo in a rickety truck whose only defense is one guy they hired off the street.

Perhaps there could be seperate high-level escort missions where you're escorting valuable research prototypes or something, but I'd expect that to have a different structure from the truck-escort missions overall...  if something is valuable enough for the other side to use nuclear weapons against (and the PC's reputation is high enough for them to be taking that sort of mission in the first place), it's probably valuable enough for them to just put the cargo inside the PCs mech and have done with it.

[macksting]

Or keep secret. Or level a city to get.

[Erathoniel]

Now I'm reminded of the MW4: Mercs defend mech-factory/research mission, where the Davion mechs get launched mid battle and save your hide, but it's probably not applicable.

It would be a good plot component, though.