Thoughts during the start of a Heavy Freighter mission

[stvip]

Alright, let's do this!  I'll just end turn, then deploy.
Hmm, enemy turn is taking quite a while.
Quite a long while.
Ah, it must've crashed and is playing the door opening sound on loop.
...
Yep, that must be it.
Oh.
Oh no.

[legionof1]

My first Secure freight was something along the lines of,

Land, look out ramp to see 5!! tanks, all looking right at me, Press evacuate.

Aside from the tanks and clearing the 2nd level(big open cross full of aforementioned tanks) it's actually a reasonably easy vessel configuration to assault. 4 Engines on the ground floor almost guarantees an alternative access point, and pretty much only right angle corridors so abundant cover unlike a craft with diagonal walls impinging on the floor plan. Also if you can manage to secure the 2nd floor there is only one access to the remainder of the ship so you can camp behind the cargo doors and pick off stuff coming down to thin numbers.       

[Mechanique]

Just had my first successful attempt at it. It was like some WW2 scenario, especially after 20-ish turns, with tanks assaulting my positions, medics carrying off wounded while dedicated ammo bearers running back and forth bringing up bullets and rockets to frontline so I could shoot all those marscec dead. Somehow, between plasma subrifles, heavy lasers and raliguns I also managed to not lose anyone. Also, nice 1910 score, guild rep + marsec bodyguard prisoners and millions worth of loot, I guess I can ignore few missions for the rest of the month.

[Ethereal_Medic]

With good deployment RNG you can set up a smoke-screen firesquad to thin out the top level of the freigther.
Dying soldier in the small bedrooms continue to be fueled with more stuff to shot.
It's not the worst idea to go for a huge amount of dead meat quickly to cause the squishies to drop guns.

Bodyguards are tough to panic with that strat but it's easier to focus-fire these with unarmed securities posing no threat.
Also more time to prep the tanks (if not dealt with anyway by pinpoint bombardment).

[stvip]

How that mission actually went:
I've been splashing freighters and raiding the many frigates of a newly constructed Traders' Secret Base just prior to this mission, so didn't think much of having yet another round.  This despite accumulating some minor wounds during those missions, so I could only fit 5 gals and a Gatling Lascannon Cyberdisk on board the El Fuego. 
I pass turn 1 without movement, and my previous post unfolds.  But I will not be deterred.  I will not be swayed.  I've been riding a string of successes against these Trader Joes, enabling me to finally manufacture two Harbingers.  The Gold Codex is not completely useless - going on early space missions increases one's chances of finding Syns, one of which is amongst our stalwart crew.  A maxed-statted veteran in an Assassin suit and a newbie Revenant complete the roster.  Stir and mix with burgeoning Death SMGs, a Recoiless Rifle and an Arena Fireball Launcher, and you have the recipe for the elixir of immortality, surely.

The Cyberdisk steps out, rises in the air, and takes a look around.  Except, it actually doesn't, because each right-click attempting to have it swivel around causes it to pause as new enemies are seen, a red tower of rising numbers forms to the lower-right of my screen.  This timid hesitancy of the Cyberdisk could have given me pause, as if it was saying 'dude... dude... look, there are even more... let's just go home.  Oh, tanks.  We've never even fought these before, excluding that time we high-tailed it from Happy Hovering Plasma-Spewing Death Machines.  Remember, the concept of high-tailing?  Survival is fun.  Please consider partaking in it".

A gal steps up the roof and throws a Crate of Violence at the tank.  That should take care of that.  I imagine it just sadly shook its turret side-to-side at her, marveling at the naivete.

[KiriKaneko]

Haha, I had my first secure freighter today!

I saw heavy freighter and thought (surely it cant be much stronger than a normal freighter, statwise). Well it went down without much of a fight and I splashed it in the arctic

So we got there and my shadowthingy landed on the opposite side of the tundra plane from it. It was mostly flat with a small hill in the middle, and we had a clear sight of the craft from our doors. Anyway we just kept opening the doors or climbing he ladders and shooting with our 37mm rifles. We took return fire but fortunately no damage. Saw quite a mix of damage types. There were plasmas but only in the hands of engineers, and gauss or laser in the hands of marsec operatives and bodyguards. Gauss can hurt us but luckily didn't and lasers can only hurt us on a big roll it seems so we were pretty safe. There were tanks too but they never reaction fired, I think they couldve hurt us quite badly if they did and I always fired down on them from above so their shells would be more likely to hit the hull of the ship or sail off into the distance than land close by, unless it was a direct hit anyway

So all in all it wasn't too bad, don't be scared of this mission if you have powered armor. The marsec bodyguards and tanks are beefy as usual but not all that tough really and go down fast to high tier ballistic weapons, 37mm rifle or recoilless rifle (latter vaporizes like gauss and gives no power armor parts)

It was well worth it, we got the flight plan and documentation, and the full range of laser and gauss weapons, rail guns and both plasma pistols and ordinary plasma rifles (as I have a heavy plasma already this means I have a full set now!). Very well worth doing and really not hard since 90% of the enemies are squishy and go down to basic ballistic fire, and there's only 8 or so power armour bodyguards and 4-5 tanks. About 40% of the crew were carapace armor guys and they drop fast to top ballistic weapons like light cannons, CAWS, LACC etc but 50% of the crew were engineers, team leaders, GOs, team leaders and reps who basically die if you fart in their general direction and used a mixture of mid tier ballistics and laser/gauss pistols except the engineers who had plasma rifles, plasma pistols and rail rifles

[KateMicucci]

The only hard part the first time I had a freighter was that it went down in the jungle, and trying to deal with heat stun on such a long mission is very frustrating. The tanks aren't a big deal- bardiches, RPGs and panzerfausts kill them fine.

My strategy for breaching them is to crack open a hole with a barrel bomb on the thin walls of the 3rd floor and keep sending in a swiftsuit gal to chop people up and drop bombs. After a few turns of that they'll be willing to surrender if all the tanks are dead.

[RSSwizard]

Posted my experience in the main xpiratez thread.
I was diverted from raiding a crashed cutter by this "heavy freighter" beast. But I figured it was alot like the regular freighter so I went after it and shot it down... didn't want to risk it disappearing off the map since I didn't know if it was going to land anywhere.

So yeah, mission starts - oh its like a battleship, its got those windows for people to shoot out of. So I spent about 2 turns shooting at them to try to thin them out before I just ran for it.

I get over there to the ship, and look down the hollow area through the middle of it.
2 Tanks (W T F).
Thankfully the other side of the ship had a hole blown in it from the ship engine overloading, so I wiggled my way in there as fast as I could and started taking people out as I encountered them. The meeting area on the 2nd floor just between the two lifts was prime rib slaughterhouse and the only tiptoeing I had to do there was because of 2 Bodyguards (somehow one of my ladies in chromeback took a pellet to the Back from his Boom Gun but took absolutely no damage from it)

Remember I was going after a Cutter, and my hands were armed light and fast just because I dont like hassling with inventory much. Pistols, Hover, etc. The only two heavy duty weapons I had were Hellerium Grenades and Shock-A-Fist (uhh... tanks are resistant against electric damage, I use the fisty to take down power armor).

There was Another Tank up on the 3rd Floor of the ship, along with a Guild Rep and a Bodyguard standing right behind it. So there was definitely some juggling going on up there - popped several rounds of assault laser into the back of the tank, tried blowing some holes in the back of it with K.Handcannon(slugs) - took a shot with the boom gun I picked up and that broke the tank.

After finishing off the rest of the crew I had to play with the tanks outside by tossing them as many HellGrenades as I could. Do you know how many hellerium grenades it takes to blow these things up... especially when you don't land all of them right under the treads...

This mission took me 2 hours to finish.