Battle workings (key things to know)

Here are some key things you need to be aware of for getting the most out of the megabattle.

• Freeing restricted covies
• Shaping enemy attacks

It's important to realize that initially, some of the covies have territorial restrictions which could prevent them from joining in with the main battling (depending on where you fight), reducing the intensity and duration of the covie attack. But the good news is, it's mostly possible to free them of those restrictions; to 'release' them, as I sometimes say. That's what I want to cover here, so you can get the most out of the megabattle.

Firstly there are the dropship 3 troops, which on Heroic comprise an Elite and five Grunts. They arrive in the 'far area' (far away from the Marine plateau that is) and sometimes they hang around a bit, stalling, but ultimately they head over to the lifeboat area which becomes their territory, where I've often referred to them as the 'lifeboat group'.

Secondly there are the dropship 4 troops, which on Heroic comprise two Elites and five Jackals. They arrive near the lifeboat but then trek off to lurk within a large area well away from the Marine plateau.

With the sole exception of the dropship 4 Elite (or two Elites on Legendary), all these troops get freed of these territorial restrictions once you've entered a certain area, which I think is actually just the dropship trigger zone being reused. Accordingly, for cases where you're going to be defending somewhere outside that zone, you'll probably want to make sure to enter that zone on the way there, which may mean taking a bit of a detour. That's something you can see me doing in many of my movies, such as the ones focused on far area defence. For that case I'll often thread through what I call the island plateau gap (see pic), but that's not the only possibility. You can get to learn what works.

Dropship 4 Elites

The dropship 4 Elite (or two Elites on Legendary) is a special case. As far as I'm aware, there's nothing you can do to free him of his restriction, aside from making him mad enough to chase you. Because of this, he'll often be a sort of leftover for you to potentially seek out after the main battling, if you care to do that. It can be good fun though, e.g. surprising him in various ways (see pic). Sometimes you might find that a few enemies have latched onto him for support.

An alternative approach would be to kill him in advance on your way to your battle location. That's if you can identify him of course. If he's just disembarked, he'll be galloping across the battlefield and rather easy to identify, and it can be fairly easy to splatter him.

Actually there's also the option of eliminating him during set-up work, so he's never even present in your battles. In both cases though, an advantage of his absence is that when you've killed all the other troops in battle, you'll get an intercom message, effectively confirming that you're done (no enemies hiding just around the corner or whatever). You otherwise wouldn't know for sure, unless you'd carefully counted enemy deaths along the way.

I've already covered the issue of maybe needing to free restricted covies, but there's another aspect of your initial driving to consider (well, driving or running, that is). Namely, the route you take to a defence location can affect how the covies eventually arrive there; and as such, it can affect the enemy attack dynamic.

To some extent, covies may tend to follow your path, chasing after you; and thus you can encourage them to approach from a particular direction, though there may also be covies who approach from other directions. Try different routes to your defence location, and see how things turn out.

Another aspect is that with some particular battle plan, maybe you're finding that some covies are failing to get sucked into the fighting at all. Perhaps they're hanging around with the dropship 4 Elite for example. In such cases, try driving through or near them to get their attention, or pause somewhere along your way. Give them more chance to pick up and follow the scent, so to speak. Again, it's a matter of experimenting to see what works.

Also, have fun driving!

Aside from these functional issues, obviously you can also have fun with your driving. The hog handles wonderfully and there are various places you can squeeze through a gap (see pic, featuring the plateau base gap). You'll see many examples in my movies, often involving a bit of finesse, but you can also enjoy exploring the possibilities for yourself of course. There's a real pleasure to be had, weaving around this battlefield. Check out my 'Routes into the rockslide' page for a rundown of some possibilities.