Mass Effect 2, Eclipse Smuggling Depot Tips

Here's some tips for the side mission, "Eclipse Smuggling Depot" for Mass Effect 2. You get this mission one of two ways. You can scan the planet Daratar, in the Faryar system of the Hourglass Nebula. Or you get this mission as a reward for recovering a datapad to Aria recovered during the Archangel mission. The datapad details a conspiracy against her.

The first tip I'm going to give you is to save this mission for after the Endgame or attack on the Collector base mission. Why? Because I suggest you take Tali and Legion on this mission. After you recover Legion, you will get only two missions before you have to go through the Omega 4 relay to save the crew which gets kidnapped by the Collectors. That's assuming you want to save the crew. This side mission can wait till you save the galaxy.

Okay, this mission is about recovering the contents of crates. There are twenty. But the problem is that YMIR mechs are destroying them. The more crates left over the more credits you earn. My heavy weapon is the rocket launcher. It's fast and you should have enough to destroy one mech and damage another.

Now take Tali and Legion for this mission. Yes, they're the best against synthetic enemies but it's not the AI hacking that works here. It's the combat drone power. When you enter the circular area, direct Legion to throw a drone to the mech to your left. Then have Tali spawn a mech to the mech in front of you. The drones will keep the mechs busy. Busy enough to delay their quest to destroy crates. Destroy the mech closest to you. Then proceed to destroy the mech fighting with the other drone. There's one more mech on the plateau. Destroy it. You should have saved between fifteen and sixteen crates. Mission over.

Update: Mass Effect Wikipedia has a plan to save all twenty crates. Here it is.