One man’s opinion on what you need to better survive an ARC mission on Veteran diffiulty.
ARC Strategy Thoughts
All credit goes to ScootyDoo11 !
So, before I start I want to draw attention to the whole point of the mission type: to build up a base -> to defend the ARC beacon once activated -> to survive the endless bug rave. You want to survive that, right? Because I sure do. This ain’t no walk in the park either, the game is done holding your hand like the previous AAS mission. There is a reason the game made you hit level 5 before allowing you to go on these missions. Which brings me to the main point I want to make….
Resources. Gas and Ore. Gas is important…but practically worthless in helping us get out alive. Ore is literally gold. It’s the currency we spend on our structures and ammunition. Those Ore canisters are the backbone of the success of our mission.
If hustle is made and ore is aplenty, defending the base and acquiring gas go so so much more smoothly. Imagine the base is fully ready, 2 full squads can sit on gas and nothing needs to be worried about.
Without a solid, defensible base from which to engage the enemy, we all get turned into bug food…sometimes before the ARC has even had a chance to fire up. Chances are you’ve experienced that already yourselves. So here’s the part that you’re not gonna like…work. All those fancy base parts ain’t cheap, and each of the ore extraction points gets ‘overheated’, which means we need to do a lot of juggling and teamwork to get this done as soon as possible.
Important Note: Your whole team shares a wallet here on Ore…so don’t frivolously build structures or delete them unless you’re assigned that role…your squaddies may be upset with you…
Each Ore extractor provides up to 4 canisters worth 2,000 Ore each every 30 seconds. After 4 canisters, up to 8,000 ore, it has a 180 second cooldown. If the button is pressed as *soon* as possible after each cycle, that brings our minimum time to about 2 minutes for resource out, and 5 minutes for completed cooldown. In all honesty…that’s not a lot of time.
I realize that running and fighting are not instantly completed, but being boots on the ground for over an hour and only getting 2 full cycles of ore in….there’s no wonder it seems so difficult to prevail. At that pace, things are bound to get out of control.
The Beachhead
When the HQ is first built, we get 3,000 credits for free. While yes, they count for something, for safety, I think it’s better to have too much than not enough. That said, when you first get settled in, I recommend building; a bunker directly adjacent to the ARC. A tower somewhere attached to that, an ammo crate on the ground at the entrance to the bunker (so it doesn’t get deleted if the bugs break the bunker), and whatever else you might think is necessary based on location.
This isn’t really intended to be a build guide, but I do want to address that ‘first one’s free’ we get, because it is there and I can already hear the arguments. XD Anyways, I’m not your momma and I ain’t gonna do it for you, so do what you want to and see how it works. Maybe it’ll work better. I’m not an expert by any means, just a scientist of sorts.
Simple Table
The Part After the Table
Ok so I just made that table right, and it’s got me to realize I think we’re secretly in the warhammer universe…illuminati…but I digress.
As you can see, If you want a fully decked out base, we’re going to need around 40k in Ore resources alone. Provided that zero ore cans are lost, and zero buildings are frivolously deleted…(>:[ I won’t name names, but I can recall specific incidents of this occurring) fireteams are going to want to mine Ore resources 5 times. Yes that’s right, 5. I myself groaned aloud when I did the math. So…Ore A x3 and Ore B x2, whichever one is further away. Unfortunately, it probably is just that simple.
As far as squad setup and ore retrieval/escort procedure goes, I’ll leave that up to you.
If you want my advice, personally I like to have a bastion sit on point and man that button, as well as repairing the extractor. 2 operators for support, provide ammunition to bastion as it may end up being wiser to simply camp out that cooldown. The 4th member’s class is not super important IMO, but what is important is to have another squad move to assist escorting the operators back to base with those Ore cans.
I have a feeling the meta will shift in the near future as the game continues to develop and new features are added to the game.
Good luck down there troopers!
Be the first to comment