"Start the Radio" Side Mission Mortar in Caimanes / Ingani - tactics / suggestions? | Forums

[MewmewGirl]

Hello.

I'm having a tough time on one of the "Start the Radio" Side missions (Side Mission MORTAR). This isn't about Start the Radio in general, but about this one specific area and town, this one certain Start the Radio quest here in this spot.

It's the one that is in the region of Caimanes and the town of Ingani - it's in an area that's otherwise only a 3 difficulty rating.

I've gone through later parts of the game, going into the difficulty 5 areas and picking up weapons and parts and did some Start the Radio side missions in higher difficulty areas that were nowhere near as hard as this one in Ingani, Caimanes is.

I've brought in the APC Tanks and still haven't been able to complete this one. The radio is out on this open bump, and yet the way the trees, buildings and terrain are around it the enemies are able to have cover and sneak up on the Radio pretty well. Not to mention the Radio seems to be made of paper mache so my own guys blow it up half the time, and sometimes it just insta blows up when I try it here when it was just showing full health and I didn't see anything big hit it.

This pain in the butt dip hole right behind it and tree near it and the building placement make it really difficult to get in a good position to get the stuff approaching.

I've tried putting vehicles near it to protect it, but they blow up and blow it up in the process so that hasn't worked. I can't space the vehicles out to give some room between them for the explosion because of the way the terrain is behind the radio, they sit too low and the enemies just shoot over them.

I've tried bringing in an APC Tank, both using the main gun myself which doesn't work because the vehicle needs to move to hit everything coming in. Maybe if I tried to drive the tank directly on top of the radio it would work :P Sort of funny but if I can get on it maybe it really would, I'll have to see if I can.

One main thing I haven't tried yet is getting a big copter with multiple mini guns and trying to let an NPC team take care of it for me - and maybe that's the answer right there.

If any of you have done this exact one solo with an NPC team, let me know. I'm not going to lower the difficulty to do it though, there's no reason why I can't get past this when I'm doing supposedly much more difficult areas without issue.

I can't state enough how it's this specific one area for this mission here, not the Radio quests in general. I've done lots of them other places and been okay.

I've got a horrible flu right now and so am playing solo and haven't tried doing this with other real players only alone with my NPC team, and now that it's become an issue this is the way I'd like to try to overcome it (in a solo game without lowering the difficulty).

I know I can just skip it and will max out the skill anyway doing this same type of side mission in other areas of the game that aren't so hard to get it done, but I'm a completionist when it comes to missions and really would like to get it done.

[MewmewGirl]

I just went in game and actually the Helicopter with multiple mini guns on it almost did get me through, but the radio still was destroyed on me before I could finish and I was too frustrated to try again. I'm guessing that using the Helicopter here is going to be my best bet.

I still say that this specific one spot for this mission is far too hard to be intentionally this way for what is supposed to be a 3rd difficulty tier area. I left the area and went around into others and did multiple Radio missions in 4-5 tier difficulty areas with no problems at all. They took a bit of getting serious and putting in effort yeah, but I still did them in one try. Don't get me wrong, I do like the challenge, it's just that I think it's ridiculous that this one is so much harder and it's back in a difficulty 3 area.

Considering the difficulty of the rest of these missions elsewhere in the game in what are supposed to be harder areas, it seems like this isn't working out the way they planned it to be because of the unique terrain around it. Anyway I won't complain about it again, and really was looking for advice more than complaining. I don't even really want to see it change, it's sort of interesting that this uniquely hard challenge happened unintentionally at an earlier stage of the game.

[battlebrother13]

I'm glad to see it's not just me who's been having an utter nightmare with this one. I've tried it over a dozen times with varying degrees of failure. It's a perfect storm of infurating factors.
I'm going to try blockading the roads and approaches with vehicles (might blow them up myself beforehand before pulling the switch to prevent them damaging the emitter when they blow, combined with my previous hijacking of turreted vehicles / mining the **** out of the place (just a shame you can't manually save before the mission so all the prep has to be done each attempt).
If that doesn't work I may have to leave this one until I've upgraded more and/or until I resort to actually playing the game as intended with some competent help (I get interrupted so often by the wife and kids I've just been soloing it so far).

[ridgebackGOOFY]

Glad to see that I wasn't crazy thinking this particular side mission was a total monster. If only the enemies didn't auto spawn wherever they dang pleased. Both of your dedication has inspired me to not give up. Please give an update if you find success. I will do the same. God Bless

update:

Was able to pass this, and it ended up feeling a lot easier than any close call before.
I think the main things that helped were ordering my squad to stay put near the radio and called in
hired guns from the rebels, which I did before starting the radio and once again when the cooldown
allowed. Also, I set mines beforehand and made use of the grenade attachment for oncoming vehicles.
I stayed just inside the warehouse type building near the radio inside the large garage door.
I play on advanced difficulty, I think a notch down from the hardest, and mini map off, which takes a bit to
get used to, but then the game gets way more immersive.

Good luck

[battlebrother13]

Well I eventually managed to crack it too, though more by luck than judgement.

I went off and collected a few skill points and upgraded squad efficiency (only the first tier mind). I also hijacked an APC to bring to the emitter, then proceeded to spend about 10 minutes grabbing vehicles and blockading roads and approaches best I could, cleared out all the enemies in the Ingani, and called in some guns for hire before hitting the swtich.

I failed. Didn't help that it was my first time using the APC turret and I hadn't realised how the turret had such limited depression - I had to hop out halfway through and I didn't have time to reposition it (the vehicle entry / exit animation seems to last hours in situations like this). In the end though, it came down to the same old problem, enemies seemingly appearing out of nowhere to hit the emitter through several layers of cover.

Frustrated but still alive, I grabbed a helicopter and looped around until the mission respawned, then I just packed an SUV and the chopper either side of the emitter - literally touching it. This protected it from the worst of the fire, but my success was due to a combination of events and pure chance. The main factor I think was a double edged sword - UNIDAD rocked up. This meant that the combat suddenly became very difficult, but the amount of UNIDAD troops and vehicles coming after me seemed to slow down the Sicarios trying to take out the generator. Additionally, I got lucky with my underbarrel, and managed to detonate a few vehicles in just the right spot that they took out enemies around them and managed to block off the roads. It was a hell of a fight, but the generator came through it largely unscathed.

After completing the mission I was still fighting for a good 5 minutes trying to get out of UNIDAD's sights, but I ended up KIA due to the sheer numbers that were being thrown at me (the number being "2" and the thing being missiles, in the end).

So it's not exactly a sure fire solution or one I could really recommend but it worked for me and I have no desire to go back and try it again! It was the last thing on my to-do list in Caimanes and I'll be glad to see the back of the place for now.

[CaptainSpurks]

I just beat it i have tried 12 times and i wanted to throw my controller against the wall. What i did was i went back and upgraded the other rebel commands which allowed me to pass I also put vehicles around the radio and if you want to get rid of the cars that come with the bad guys get grenades easy kills.