Gallian Crossfire - Showdown at Naggiar (2) (A Rank Full Clear)

Описание: In which our own intercepting Snipers have a chance to shine! Also in which Alicia is a very valuable asset to full-clearing this mission. Also in which Hector is MVP for pulling out so many Extra Shots that I was still able to clear the stage despite making several screw-ups. Also in which there is ~15 minutes of preparation before getting to the difficult/luck-based/trial-and-error part. Also in which -- this level sucked.

It took a few attempts before realizing the Dromedariuses just have way too much HP to have enough CP sitting around to easily clean up all the infantry units before finishing the mission. It then became a question of how to soften up/kill as many enemies as possible when the usually catastrophic Enemy Phase 3 rolled in. If given free reign, the southern infantry division spreads all over the bottom half of the stage, and efficiently dispatching them -- and so full-clearing the stage with an A rank -- becomes impossible. After some thinking and realizing that most interception fire were not going to stop the Lancer from blowing friendly units away, I realized it was time to use the Intercept-X series, with 1100 Range (well above the 575 Range of the enemy Lancer) and the ACCURACY DOWN effect in case they got too close (the debuff didn't really help Emile unfortunately...) It took a few attempts to realize that I absolutely needed two interception Snipers to have any semblance of reliability with this strategy, as it was not uncommon for one Sniper to miss the interception shot, and have an enemy or two way in front of the rest of the infantry units. This not only screws up the Sniper's interception arc, allowing many of the other units to disperse and make a mess of things, but one of these units would usually get close enough to fire at and almost invariably kill the Sniper. Both of which happened to Emile in this run. So having two Snipers was very important.
(Looking back on it now, replacing one of the Snipers with a Socut equipped with the Gallian-S10, which has 400 Range, might have been good, outranging the Shocks and Scouts a bit. But this may have messed with the enemy alignment at the end of the turn if some enemies were stopped farther back by the Sniper and others closer up by the Scout.)
But even if the Snipers kept all those ducks in a row, there wasn't enough CP to clean up all the enemies. At first, I had been sending in Largo to get rid of the Heavy AT Cannon and capture the base. He also had enough HP to tank the four sniper shots that otherwise would hit and either kill or turn around one or both of the intercepting Snipers, making them useless. There was also the question of how to dispatch the infantry units in the north -- the original plan was to have Knute run around and do it all himself. But he simply doesn't have enough firepower to deal with the crawling enemies in one turn, and he also was supposed to combine each kill with a restock of our Lancer's ammunition.
Then I finally realized -- the Shocktrooper royal weapons have superior Range, and it turns out have enough Range to attack the Snipers on the cliff. They had very small vsPers ratings and so couldn't be used to take out any crawling enemies, but the VB FW 2(g) flamethrower obtained from Rosie's Report had a vsPers rating of 500, enough to safely take care of any infantry unit who wasn't dodging. The Shocktrooper class was leveled up just enough so that Rosie could survive the four sniper shots and the strategy was attempted.
There are clearly some big screw-ups (not using Undercover Fire to shoot down the standing Lancer with Rosie -- it was my first time getting to this point using this strategy, and I thought I could get close enough to use the flamethrower. Also, Knute nearly getting shot at by the Shocktrooper -- even one second of interception fire from that machine gun and everything would have been over), some unlucky dice rolls (not killing the second Sniper on the cliff with Rosie's return-fire), and some amazingly lucky dice rolls (Hector proc'd Extra Shot more than once -- with the extra shot gained from a turn passing, this made it so he only had to be restocked by Knute once. Which is good, because at some point I realized that Knute was not going to be able to run back and restock him again).

I'm just glad I'm done with this hell of a mission.