Ok, here's my first Mansion Report.
1. Campaign - July of 2062 (1.5 years into the game)
2. Kill Counts: Enemy: 51 (This was a Trader's Guild mansion)
3. Loot Hauled: Cleared the entire map for all the loot.
4. Duration of the mission: about 1.5 hours (played in a few different sessions)
5. Effective weapons: As others have specified, pipes are great. I'd recommend them for all Mansion missions as an perfect melee weapon. As my tech was quite advanced my favorite weapon is the Cougar SMG. Large magazine and quite deadly. I brought spare magazines but never needed one. Spike Bombs. Great for wall breaches, but I got some wounded gals from tossing too close. XD. Ripper, again for walls worked well. My Cougars with their 5 shot burst often breached walls too.
6. Other notes, i.e. effective armors, tactics, etc.:
I tried the TK projector on one of my voodoo gals but found its "terrain destruction" underwhelming (yeah, busted up some furniture but didn't take out the wall I wanted gone).
Armors: 1 Ghost, 1 Witch, 1 Saviour, the rest Maid outfits.
The lack of good armor made the mission tense, ended up with 3 WIA, but no one dead. Ghost performed great as expected. The Witch suit allowed me to gain my first combat possessions in this campaign. The ability to work through walls, was nice because it didn't matter what floor the voodoo gal was on. She could grab anyone on any level. I did not manufacture thief armor for the mission so I planned to clear the entire map. Overall, inventory space is quite limited, so plan carefully. With maid suits only, you will not be able to haul all the loot or even decent amounts of loot.
Terrain: I think part of the key is learning where to expect enemy deployments. I found two general locations:
Spoiler:
Occult towers: These towers hold nice loot, and can be a challenge with entrances on only 1 ? level. I found that some of the higher ranking enemy (Guild Engineers) start in the top level. (I spotted them in the first turns from the gal that spawned in the penthouse on the roof early). They tended to work their way down, as I found and eliminated them on lower levels of the towers or very near by. These foes are least liable to panic, so be careful approaching them. As has been mentioned earlier, breaching into the towers with rippers or grenades is a great tactic. These towers are rich with loot, so should be exploited for certain on snatch and grabs.
Kitchens: The kitchens were where I found my first group of enemy, with a cluster of 4 assorted security types (Team Leader, Guild Security, Pest Control Manager, & G.O.). This was consistent with the two other kitchen blocks I found, as well. Many of the other enemy spawned in this same block.
Generally, I was impressed by the amount of equipment scattered in the mansion. Some decent melee tools like cutlasses and ball bats were readily available. Enemy equipment would have been effective at dealing with most of them as well, so early campaign scavenging would be viable.
Ayephones are terrific in these environments. I play with panic notifications on, and keep count with the number of foes as the turns wind down. Once I was down to the last two enemy, I had everyone that could pull out an ayephone and spread out. It took a few turns, but once movement was spotted, it was only a matter of checking the floors to locate and placate the baddies. If possible, I'd recommend teams where everyone has an ayephone to help with those final enemy.
One final key to tackling these mansions is the mouse wheel. Because there is so much verticallitiy in this map, its good to roll up and down to understand the terrain. Consider which blocks you have found enemy spawned in, and it is likely to find more in these same vertical spaces.
Overall, the map was quite interesting. Finding maid outfits as loot was a cool touch as it made it feel immersive, like the gals just snuck in and donned the clothes they found. Fortunately the bedroom mazes do not seem to be major enemy locations so the tedium is avoided. Because these maps are such good sources of gems that have become more important for manufacturing, I think these missions are unavoidable. I don't look forward to the constant equipment swapping, so having a "mansion exploitation team" like Cristao's Delta Force makes sense.
