General information
There are 6 phases in the mission with various waves on them:
- 1st phase, various waves of different ants, followed by a pause (the pause between the same phases varies on each run and that can be crappy as hell)
- 2nd phase, various waves of different spiders, followed by a pause
- 3rd phase, various waves of pillbugs, with a giant blue Pillbug (these are the joke enemies of the mission they can't hit anything, but are fun to watch), followed by a pause
- 4th phase, continuous waves of different ants, with a Queen Ant in the end, and a very small pause or none
- 5th phase, continuous waves of different spiders
- 6th phase, 3 pylons dropping
- 7th phase, 2 King Spiders and another extremely dangerous on this mission giant blue Pillbug
Ranger video
The main differences using Goliath and Grant are the following:
- during the first phase Grant will not one-shot gold ants (3rd ants drop) and blue ants (4th ants drop)
- during the second phase neither Grant nor Goliath can one-shot silver spiders (2nd and 5th drop) and Grant can't do that either to blue Spiders too (4th drop)
During the 4th and 5th phases, it's obvious that Grant is better. Although it will one-shot less enemies, Golitah rebuild time will make it worse as you can't use it as many times as Grant.
Buster Shot is the fastest high damage weapon Ranger has and it's REALLY needed here. If it's already good for the Queen Ant, it's absolutely essential for the pylons. If you don't waste the pylon dropping in front of you before its spawn happens, the appearing silver spiders will instantly kill you; a pylon will likely require 5 Buster shots to be destroyed, so 2 reloads of 8 shots will be enough to waste all pylons (but yes the other 2 will have spawns). ZE Blaster may hit pylons and they will require fewer Buster Shot hits to blow up.
It will also be useful to kill stray gold ants and spiders at the end. Do expect to die a lot at this time.
And wasting both King Spiders at the very end.
On ZE Blaster is tricky to be sure, but I think it works better if you rebuild it halfway, that if you have reasonable star count of the rebuild time on yours.
The first problem is deploying them, because many times the cave bottom is filled with corpses or they're in the worst possible positions.
The phases that need ZE Blaster turrets are the 2nd and the 5th / 6th. Installing turret (s) for the 2nd phase is manageable, but for the 5th it's tricky because you may not have time to do it quietly before the 5th, or worse in the case you rebuilt them they may not be ready.
If you opt not to rebuild them, install one between the 1st and 2nd phases, and the other 2 either before the 5th phase, or if necessary before the 4th (although you'll waste ZE Blaster up time dealing with the ants and Queen Ant).
ZE Blasters should be installed at the bottom of the cave, as 90%+ of the nastiest and more armored enemies (silvers) will likely fall there.
If opting for rebuild during mission install all turrets you have between 1st and 2nd phases and force rebuild when the last silver of the 2nd phase is alive. Stall during 4th phase as Pillbugs are the least troublesome enemy in the mission. Totally ignore the giant blue Pillbug, the longer it takes to die, the better.
Depending on ZE Blaster rebuild time you may have time to install them more quietly before the Queen Ant shows up, but it's seldom this will be possible. So it's better to install them while the Queen Ant is alive. If not possible do it when you can, and just hope the bottom isn't filled with corpses.
Mission flow is simple.
Walk back and hit the middle of the upper path when enemies are near it (Grant and Goliath have different speeds...).
Going up the path is more dangerous, it's more difficult to have a good aim to the upper path.
Going to the bottom is suicide, everything that is bad and takes a long time to die will get there easily and you're toast. It's a really dumb idea, but feel free to try (I did waste some time around this theory...).
You should hit the upper path on the middle to try to avoid damage to NPCs. During silver spiders drops, you can also shoot at the second path from the top (see the last video).
Since goldies don't die with Grant and are blown upwards you can shoot at the upper walls to kill some (see the last video).
Shooting rockets down the cave bottom is a really bad and dumb idea I did a few times on the first videos. Be smarter than me, don't do it.
Thanks Sandlot for the 3 Caliban Armored Rescue Vehicles. They're really useful, particularly on single-player...
And on multiplayer surely as well, really fast and awesome way to recover health, as there will be no crates around...
Oh boy...
Conclusion
This is a fabulous idea. Pity it wasn't a successful one. Hopefully, Sandlot will make a much better mission from this base idea. That would be awesome.
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