Mansion Mission Reports (Please Contribute)

[ivandogovich]

New with 98C is a terryifing, mind-boggling, and possibly incredibly lucrative new mission called the Mansion Invasion. 

In the interests of Science (and to create substance for the Bootypedia Article) and the glory of impressive war stories, I'd like to hear some reports from any that have tackled these nightmares.

Please include:

1. Campaign or New Battle
2. Kill Counts (enemy & friendly KIA & WIA)
3. Loot Hauled
4. Duration of the mission (How many hours did it take you?)
5. Effective weapons
6. Other notes, i.e. effective armors, tactics, etc.


I'm looking forward to these tales of pain and glory!!

BootyPedia Entry:

Spoiler:

There are rich mansions around the world, waiting to be robbed! Yet them defenses are too strong for a frontal assault. We need to go sneaky by dressing up as servants, and then escape from the roof. Therefore only maid, nurse, dress, thieving, and highly magical outfits are allowed. If we send gals who are wearing something else, we'll scrounge up some maid outfits for them inside the mansion. Also only Infiltration-type items can be sneaked inside. For getaway, we need a fast enough and not too heavy a ship. Speaking of which, when preparing your vessel, better not to bring to the mansion anything the gals won't carry in their inventory, who knows where that extra stuff is going to end. Our informers will get onto gathering data and when they'll locate a suitable target, you'll be alerted, Cap'n!

Mission Briefing:

Spoiler:

"This place be holdin' many treasure! We will launch a sneaky attack. Any non-Infiltration equipment we're carrying will be sent to the Hideout now. To abort and escape, go to the extraction zones on the roof (all of them will be immediately visible). Otherwise defeat them all, but this can take a lot of time!"

[Cristao]

I have one of my geoscape but I am unable to tackle it. Anytime I try I get a CTD. I might try sending my gals in naked.

[legionof1]

I will share some thoughts. Ghost armor is king of kill em all attempts but completely useless if your not killing every dude. Bring a dedicated medic outfit or 3. Being stuck with base 20 armor means wounds aplenty. Having several Ripper 1 handed chainsaws makes getting around much easier. Wall breaking is needed for full clears. Slave armor deserves a mention for its hp regen, even at only 10 armor the high resists makes anything you face survivable. Deal with wounds and you have the best scout and front-liner for the mansion prior to ghost armor. You can meet foes with up to 50 front armor. Most 2x1 weapons can't deal with that. These are very long missions where you can go several turns without killing anything. Be mindful of combat stress and gal bravery. Foe weapons while not super high quality can include smgs and lower grade shotguns. use them if you find them. Check the ground good loot can be visually obscured by the sheer clutter and the viewpoint.

[Meridian]

I have one of my geoscape but I am unable to tackle it. Anytime I try I get a CTD. I might try sending my gals in naked.

Can you share a save please?

[greattuna]

Trying it out in new battle mode, because can't wait for it to show up in the main campaign. Turns out that either I did something dumb or the mission fields terror units.

The best armor for doing this kind of missions is Ragnarok. 50 armor all-around, resists, can fly and has decent inventory. Ghost is good too: invisible, 30 armor, and built-in weapons ignore armor, which is handy. And Slave, being the Bio Suit-lite allows for tanking a lot of damage with resists and regen (can gals wear it though?). Thief has brutal penalties, so I'd advice against using it. Others are up to you.

Equipment: you can bring parrots, 2x1 melee weapons (and force blades, for some reason), pistols, smasher\sawn-off, and SMGs. Also any medi-kits, alcohol, 1x1 grenades and other minor stuff.
Given the amount of armor you can face, you should go for highest damage possible, like:
-Handcannon\HE acts like poor's man grenade launcher, with 50 dmg and bad accuracy;
-Eagle\MAG with 50 dmg;
-Magnum\Chem with 44 acid dmg;
-Gauss with impressive 70 dmg!

There's also other pistols, but these ones are relatively abundant.
Also bring small medikits, smoke grenades and explosive grenades just in case. Getting hit is inevitable, and healing is required.

[legionof1]

Counter point to the Ragnarok armor. In campaign it now requires 50 demon essence and one each of multiple gems which are only available from the mansions themselves. These are not gona be common.

[sambojin]

Haven't tried out the mission yet, but does SMGs include the Linux SMG? 38 damage and autofire standard (along with most things being relatively close) might make it a good fallback weapon that you're likely to be able to produce regardless of when the mission pops. Reasonable clip size too. As an early weapon, it seems to be good for if you're short of good pistols, or small/hitty mêlée weapons.


If I'm looking at the right weapon, the PPSH in the ruleset, it has STR_BAT_CAT_CARBINE on it, so it might be able to be taken for the mission.

[legionof1]

only the mini cougar smg is allowed. All other smgs are 3x1 and blocked.

[sambojin]

Ok, cool. 2x1 or 1x1 it is then. I'll do my research properly next time (like, actually play the mission rather than ruleset trawling).


edit: still a damn good gun. 50% stun damage chance might make it my ranged-hurty-baton of choice for a while. Like a spiked mace, but longer. I don't even remember it doing stun damage before. That's awesome. Kind of weird that the Linux SMG doesn't ever get PS rounds, but a stun chance makes it a great, cheap all-rounder. It looks as though virtually all cheap weapons do that now, but the Linux does it with 38 damage backing it to deal with armour/resistances. I guess my mind got set on what's "useful" too many versions ago, and I have to update my thoughts with what I've learnt since then.

[legionof1]

There is one notable exception to the 2x1 rule and that is the force blade.

[Cristao]

@Meridian

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,4058.msg62808.html#msg62808

See above post. The save is there.

[Arthanor]

The mansion mission looks quite intimidating. But I guess it is unlocked by research? The tip of using the small chainsaw to get through walls is a great one! I haven't tried it yet, or even done research for it, but with the tech I have right now, it sounds like small melee weapons that have decent STR scaling would be the way to go until you find quite some powerful pistols. It is much easier to get damage in melee, and since the rooms are small, it sounds like a melee type environment too.

edit: still a damn good gun. 50% stun damage chance might make it my ranged-hurty-baton of choice for a while. Like a spiked mace, but longer. I don't even remember it doing stun damage before. That's awesome. Kind of weird that the Linux SMG doesn't ever get PS rounds, but a stun chance makes it a great, cheap all-rounder. It looks as though virtually all cheap weapons do that now, but the Linux does it with 38 damage backing it to deal with armour/resistances. I guess my mind got set on what's "useful" too many versions ago, and I have to update my thoughts with what I've learnt since then.

Starting ballistic weapons were buffed with extra stun damage, to represent the painfulness of the wounds taking you out. I think bows were similarly buffed now that they require arrows. It has gone a long way helping the starting weapons compared to melee and bombs.

[Dioxine]

Every Plasma and Piercing weapon inflicts double normal stun now (bow and xbow - triple, meaning up to 0.75x of lethal damage), but indeed, it helped mostly the early weapons.

[greattuna]

Uh, I DID something dumb, namely selected The Church as the enemy type instead of STR_SNAKEMEN_MANSION. As a result, instead of bunch of weak enemies I got 2 cardinals, 6 reverends, few exalts, dozens of beastmasters\zealots, ~10 chryssalids and 5 celatids.

I still won, but it definitely wasn't walk in the park. I was planning on splitting gals into small groups of 3-4 to search and kill enemies, but no plan survives contact with the enemy. Splitting turned into trying to regroup in face of 2 groups of chryssalids, who started to rapidly become 5 groups of chryssalids.
Then regrouping turned into trying to salvage the situation: one of two ragnarok wielders got a celatid burn, and one of two saviours got bitten. Witches, nurses, seductress and plain maids, all save one (who's unconscious) dead. I cleaned the starting square (where most of the fighting took place) with ragnarok, then went on to clean last dozen of enemies.

[Cristao]

Did I just see 111 enemies killed?