These Target Practice Side Ops Are Awful

Are you guys having as much trouble with the target practice missions as I am? I don't know if I simply waited too long and now my Mother Base layout is too developed and complicated, or if my eyeballs aren't functioning correctly, but I am having one heck of a time trying to find these targets to shoot them.

Anyone know of a method of highlighting them or detecting them somehow?

Yea, I've done like 2 of them but they suck

I like most of them. The R&D or whatever is just awful though. You can use nightvision to semi-highlight them.

For most of them you shouldn't be moving more than a few meters from the starting point. R&D is the only one where you need to move around the platform to find them. If you have trouble spotting them try using NVGs.

It's not Target Practice, it's more like Target Hunt. I could shoot the damn things if I could find them! Such a poorly designed event, it could have actually been fun if they had put a little more thought and time into it. I would almost rather they didn't exist as is, and we just had a shooting range to go to to test out weapons and what not. Now THAT seems like the most egregious oversight...a military installation without any kind of range? And they're on the SEA? Why aren't there buoys or fake boats to shoot at like the US Navy has? "Hey guys, time for some target practice. However, we have to fly 2,000 NM to Afghanistan from our base in the Seychelles in order to shoot anything except non-lethal weapons. Everybody, get to the choppa!" I mean really...there is a fucking ZOO but no firing range?

I know it's nitpicky, but I definitely thought of this too as I was doing the target practice.

@Mike: Its kind of weird too, because Peace Walker had such an installation at MSF.

@ketta: I never played Peace Walker, but man...that makes me wish Phantom Pain had one even more! Oh well, it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I don't mind dropping into the desert somewhere and using rocks as target practice.

Your night vision goggles help, but it's still a pain in the ass to run around R&D looking for these things.

Most of them seem okay but I just really wanna round up the team that designed my R&D strut and throw them all overboard.

I actually enjoyed all of them apart from the R&D one, it's awful. I ended up following a YouTube guide after attempting it about 10 times.

Yeah, the R&D one is the only one that gave me trouble. Other than that I really liked them. Let you explore the many ways you can traverse Mother Base. Hopefully once people start setting up more complex FOBs, I'll be able to engage in that more thoroughly.

Yeah R&D and Command Platforms are the only two I've tried, and Command was a bit easier. Tried R&D twice before saying screw it.

I haven't had trouble with any of them except the R&D platform. I can find about 30 of those things then I hit a wall. Tried a few times and eventually gave up on it and haven't gone back. Didn't think to try NVG, but even then the thought of doing it doesn't appeal to me.

I've done all the ones I can (I don't have a Security unit yet), but they've all felt incredibly easy for me except the R&D one. I died three times because corners and air ducts are fun (though one time I let go of a ledge thinking I could grab something below me) and failed it at least three more from running out of time trying to hunt down the last 5~. Respawning at the Command platform without the diamonds or morale boosts I got along the way plus having to fast travel back was quite annoying. I ended up resorting to watching a video on my phone and pausing the game every 5-10 targets.

Most of the others seemed like you could just stand in place and complete them (or move around a few feet of the start), or they were relatively straight forward paths.

I'll just join the chorus of fuck R&D.

The rest seemed doable enough.

Put me in the "fun but fuck R&D" column

Made the R&D platform first, so I had a bad first impression on all of the target practice ops.

Turns out all the other platforms are more straightforward and easier than that labyrinthine hellhole that is the R&D platform.

They're all super easy except for R&D which was way more difficult for some reason. Got em all done though.

I haven't tried since I got the sonar arm. I bet that helps.

Since the targets are not alive, they don't pick up on the sonar (unless there's an upgrade which allows it to pick up non-living things that I don't have). That's one of the first things I tried.

@spitznock: All of them have a rough path to go along if they require you to move, R&D you'll need to look up a video most likely, because holy hell that is annoying.

@shiro2809: Yeah that's currently the only one I haven't finished, because I like fun and that side op is gravely lacking in fun.

That R&D one is fucking tough, but all of the other ones ive done so far have been super easy.
Like others said, use NVG and you should be golden.

@zenmastah: yah just did R&D the other day and it was a challenge. Took me like 5 tries to find them all and I did it with 10 seconds to spare.

The upside is that I know the layout of the R&D platform now like the back of my hand, and I think that's the whole point, to teach you the layouts.

I realize I'll be in the minority here, but I actually like the target practice side ops. What's more, the R&D one is probably my favorite one. From my point of view, it was the most interesting one because it was a puzzle.

Also, these side ops give me something productive to do every time I visit MB: you redo them and they give 30K GMP every time. That's around 200K total? A bit more if you count the rough diamonds you can find along the way.

I tried the R&D one and after getting like 22/33 of them I was like "Oh! Well i'm never doing one of those again!"

But some comments here lead me to believe the R&D one is the worst one? so maybe i'll try a different platform.

Is there any benefit to completing all of them other than hard cashola? I managed to slug my way through all of them after resorting to a guide for R+D. Seriously - fuck R+D.

All of them but one are really, really easy and I do them all the time for a quick 270k gmp. The R&D one is just terrible, though. I completed that one once and never bothered with it again.

I've been able to complete all of them except R&D and the main platform ones. Missing about 7 targets in each.

Except for R&D they are relatively easy (it helps to do them with a non-lethal rifle)....but yes, they suck either way. Boring distractions that only serve to give you the illusion that exploring the MB is worthwhile (outside of finding diamonds).

And it must be said, not only the R&D Challenge, but the whole Strut kinda sucks. Who built that crap? I did? Oh.

Awful no, would you rather they not exist at all? Not enough for MB activity, absolutely. Were there more things planned that got scrapped after Konami let him know he'd get booted and he decided to hurry the project along, no doubt.

I've got the big hardcover guide, it's got maps, but it's just one angled screenshot of each platfom with circles of target positions that do not help at all. Still boned on Command, R&D, Combat target practice. No longer counting how many attempts I make, working on a stun-grenade launcher to brute force it.

They're super dumb. You spend most of the time running around in circles wondering where the hell the targets are.

I was able to get all but 2 on R&D in the first run. After failing 5 more times I finally found a video.. they were in the dumbest spot possible.

The tricky thing about the R&D platform's challenge is that unlike other platforms that have a specific path of targets, R&D's path has a few branches that lead to dead ends (but still have targets). So if you just take the main path, you'll get to the end with maybe 28/35. If you take a branch but think it's a main path, you'll just get lost. You have to know where the branches are and perhaps more importantly, where they end (so you can turn around and go back to the main path).

Ok, the R&D one was the second one I tried and then just decided to forget about them after that mess. Good to know it's the bad one and the rest are fine.

I hope somebody just maps out the path. None of this YouTube video garbage, just a simple, easy to reference map.

Most are easy enough. They lead you along a path or are pretty much all shootable from the start. I have one I have failed a couple times with some target I'm just missing which is annoying.

I guess it must be R&D that's giving me trouble.

Same boat. The first one I did was pretty easy and I thought it was gonna be a simple way to farm some GMP without leaving Mother Base, but then I hit the R&D one and it wasn't worth it.

That said, I've been known to get addicted to this sort of challenge. It reminds me of a kind of less fun version of the challenges in TimeSplitters. Maybe I'll give the other platforms a try and go back to R&D later.

Just watch a video guide for R&D. I have no idea what they were thinking with these side ops.

Just attempted the R&D one today for the first and last time. Nope.

Yeah these suck but they are like 1/100 of the side content in the game so I think we can let it slide. Also, they were in Peace Walker and they sucked there too.

I look at them as an easy way to get gmp if you are broke. Plus no deployment cost.

So only the R&D one is poop? Glad to hear it. Isn't that like the first one on the list? I tried it twice and then went "eff this" - and haven't touched any of them since. I'll try the others later while listening to the bombcast or something. But yeah, the R&D one was some hot garbage.

The R&D one is terrible because the building is a mess and they hide a bunch of the targets. The rest are all pretty simple to do, basically just a time waster.

I loved the R&D one. Wish they were all that difficult.

R&D was the first one that I did, and it was so painful that it turned me off of the idea of even trying any of the others for a while. When I eventually did, the others were all pretty painless but still nothing that really adds to the game.

Hey I thought of this last night but did not test...

... is it possible the R and D target mission wants you to use D-Dog to spot them? Does that work?

The R&D one is made worse by being the first platform most people unlock.

@bork: Even if DD is following you around at Mother Base, he's not in "buddy" mode and doesn't spot anyone for you.

The first one was really troublesome for me and after like 10 tries I decided to watch a youtube video of it and do it at the same time. It was slightly easier but still a pain in the backside.

I watched a youtube video to do the R&D one. So needlessly complicated with no straight forward path, just back and forth. The way the platforms are designed, especially that one, make it so hard to remember where you've been.