Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH Part Seven

Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH, Part Seven:

First thing, Lynessa had to cancel and re-do a couple of the work orders, so that the Blackjack could be repaired first, then wait a day before taking the next contract.

While they were waiting, Lynessa and Darius ran across a trio of young nobles in a bar, whom were desperately impressed to see real mechwarriors. Lynessa invited them along to see a meeting with the clients, so give them a little taste of what it was like, so show them it wasn't as fun as they thought it was. Two of them were a bit shaken, but the third? The third was clearly going to become a mechwarrior.

The next contract was a straight-forward 1-skull desert battle, which the target being vehicles and a lance of mechs. The line-up would be the same: Lynessa in the Enforce, Mylassta in the Blackjack, Alarhan in the Panther and Summer in the Raven Fair.

Off to a good start, as the lance marched up a mesa, only find that there was no way down for the jump jet-less mechs, and had to backtrack.

As they got back to where they started... the first enemy mech showed up, a 55-ton mech...

But it turned out to be a Kintaro, only supported by an UrbanMech. the lance dealt with them quite easily, though the vehicles made a solid effort to Sensor Lock then LRM the Raven.

Salvage included a ++AC/10 (stability damage again), another ++LRM 10 (same) and another +50% crit ++SRM 2, plus a part each for the Kintaro and UrbanMech (actually, the first UrbanMech part the lance had recovered.)

Summer could finally improve her piloting to 8 and gain Ace Pilot, allowing her to move after firing instead of before.

The next contract was to capture a base for eh Free Worlds League from the planetary government (another 1-skull) mission.

The lance slipped forward and started taking out the base's turrets. A Hunchback 2P (with lasers, rather than AC/20) and a Javelin showed up - but a little too slow, since the lance now had plenty of morale for precision fire, and the shot both legs out from under the Hunchback before it ever got a shot off.

Little light damage to the Blackbeam...

... but half a hunchback wasn't bad.

Still, it put them out for a few days until the Trebuchet was in operation, as Lynessa wasn't willing to risk a one-skull mission with the Enforcer and the light mechs, even if one was the Raven.

Payday:

Two days later (day 242), the Trebuchet was online!

Now, Lynessa had a problem. If she took the next 1-skull contract, the pirates would stop being indifferent and start to dislike the paladins; if she took their 1.5 skull contract, they'd have to either wait three days or do it without the Blackjack and basically with only one jump-capable mech to do a defend base mission.

Lynessa sighed - better wait the extra three days...

She then set out, with Alarhan in the Trebuchet instead of the Panther and Summer swapping to the Assassin, making this the heaviest lance they'd fielded yet! All of 185 tons...

The first batch of enemies was a trio of light mechs. With precision fire, the damaged mechs were dispatched easily. The main thrust of the enemy came from the other direction, but this time, the lance was close enough to intercept them.

This group was led by a wolverine, the first one that lance had seen.

With some significant effort, the lance managed to leg-cap it.

The other enemies - a Jenner, a Blackjack and a Javelin - went down easily enough. The Assassin's melee attack was becoming quite potent, at this point!

Not a building lost, plus half a wolverine in salvage, plus enough parts to complete a Firestarter and Javelin to be sold.

Still, the Enforcer paid for it with more structure damage.

Some of the cash was sufficient to start on a library (it was quick to build, and the lance needed more morale!)

Mylassta increased her tactics to 8 and Lynessa her gunnery to 9.

Next contract - for the Canopians, taking out a (1-skull) "heavy lance."

This turned out to be a lie - it was six light mechs. Which the lance ran into all at once.

The damaged was extensive - one of the Locusts even managed a fluke critical hit to take out Lynessa's ++AC/10, and something else killed the Assassin's other FA damage boost. (Not, as that had proved, been worthwhile.)

(And here clearly demonstrated, is the big problem with light mechs in this game. In YOUR lance, they struggle to be useful - but in the hands of the OpFor - where they can have more than four at once - they are DEVASTATING. Notice that the times I've got most banged up were dealing with mostly light mechs when there were lots of them? Because their high evasion means you can't kill them fast enough not for them to run around and cause havoc. It doesn't work nearly so well with your own lance, since you a) have to worry about next battle and b) can't have more than four units. Swarms of light mechs do work, but the swarm has to be BIG enough - more than the enemy - to work.

Because of the evasion stuff, you can't even fight them at range.

Also, the RNG decided to throw a right mard-on there. "Haha, you lose two of your bits!" If I hadn't just got another ++AC 10, that would have been a reload.

AND it definitely didn't want me to have any decent salvage, either.

I also don't understand why the AI has a particular hard-on for the Enforcer....

So. That was it for missions for a WEEK.

As the lance stewed, Lynessa came across Vey fiddling with a medium laser. (Clearly trying to impress Pseekie.) Lynessa told her to do her best; it wasn't like they didn't have tons of the blessed things lying around. Vey didn't manage to improve the laser, but because she'd thought to very carefully take pictures of it as she disassembled it, she put it back together fine.

(Lesson for everyone girls and boys - it you have to dismantle a piece of machinery or electronics you're not familiar with, take pictures at every step so you know how to put it back. Seriously, it's a trivial thing to do these days.)

So, that left a 1.5 skull escort mission. Hopefully that wouldn't go as badly... Summer traded the Assassin for the Raven Fair, on the basis it might help the escorts.

As it turned out, it was pointless. While the ECM did indeed affect them, the convoy charged suicidally towards the escape point DIRECTLY TOWARDS the enemy mechs at flat-out (the lance could barely keep up with them) to point blank range, where if the enemy had been even slightly canny, they would have been stepped on.

The crowning glory was - OF COURSE - a STRAY SHOT hitting Mylassta in the head. (If it wasn't targeting the Enforcer, it was shooting Mylassta in the head.)

(Oh, and for good measure, the music didn't happen, and this mission was delated a long time, because reality required about three other things to be a massive pain in my arse at the same time.)

There was no salvage worth a damn, either - not EVEN enough mech parts to fill the selected salvage.

Lynessa abandoned the idea of trying the 2-skull mission in the system, and there was no way in frack she was going to take the transit contracts to destroy a base or do another escort mission in the desert at 2-skulls. Time to look elsewhere.

Lynessa was heading back towards the Tarragona flashpoint (another decent mech or two and they might stand a chance of doing a 2-skull mission...)

She elected to spend a couple of extra days in transit to reach the half-skull world of Arn, which was back on the way. It was also an arctic world, because the lance were tired of fighting desert battles...

The library completed, and Lynessa calculated there was just enough to scrape over the next payday if she started work on the gymnasium (she DID feel an urgent need to be punching something...)

For such a tiny world, Arn's store was very surprising: + AC/5s and 20s, an Ultra and a LB-X AC 5...

There were two training missions, but Mylassta was currently ill... So instead, Lynessa picked convoy attack mission with the highest pay out for maximum cash.

As this seemed like a good point to do so, she took out Poppy in the Blackbeam, Scarlet in the Trebuchet and Pseekie in the Assassin.

The convoy consisted of nothing more than 10-ton wheeled APCs, but the escort of a Panther and a Blackjack 2B (which appeared to have more or less the same set-up as the Blackbeam) was a surprise.

This is what should have happened that previous convoy.

Naturally, as this was a mission where the paladins had gone for cash only, they did not get a piece of the newly encountered mech (their salvage was an all-time low - two MGs and small jump jet).

Still, it made them a solid half a million cbills.

The Enforcer was out, too, for a day, due to that once again uncanny accuracy of always hitting Lynessa's torso.

One day's repairs meant...

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Shrieked Mylassta. "WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME?"

Training mission one. Of two.

Mylassta, eye now permanently twitching, was greeted by Burger Time, Guano and Pontoon. Mylassta couldn't decide whether they were following her, they were some sort of ever present Officer Jenny/Nurse Joy or they were so stupid they kept getting kicked out of every militia.

Gauno commented he loved the smell of coolant in the morning. Sumire pointed out that Would Be A Bad Thing if you could smell coolant, because it was toxic. Pontoon immediately started asking what coolant smelt like, because it smelt like onions in here...

So, the last one, then.

(Lynessa wondered why Yang kept having to repair dents in the Enforcer's console after every one of these missions...)

The enemy "lance" was a single Panther, easily dealt with.

As the idiots celebrated, a new threat was dropped in.

A 45-ton mech.

Well, that was PROBALBY a Blackjack, but Mylassta was fairly sure they could handle it, even with two UrbanMechs and a Commando...

No, it was a fully undamaged Phoenix Hawk. It didn't make a lot of difference, it never got close enough to shoot four-to-one.

No useful salvage, of course...

(Lynessa was decidedly put out. Why was it, when they did these half-skull missions for cash NOW they suddenly started finding medium mechs?)

Training mission two - with Stubble, Flapjacks and Pontoon, this time and the same set of mechs.

Stubble again heard that ever present banging over the comms...

The enemy proved to be a single 1V Marik locust. As the lance tore the hapless fool apart, a Davion dropship dropped off a single... 1M Locust. This one didn't even make half the lance, as Flapjacks OHKO'd it.

Slightly better salvage this time, not that there was a lot for it to be selected from - but it allowed a Locust 1M to be completed and promptly sold, along with the excess medium lasers, SRM ammo and small jump jets.

Next mission. Mylassta could go and rest her sore forehead, while Lynessa took out Poppy, Scarlet and Pseekie in the Trebuchet, Blackbeam and Assassin respectively on a quick half-skull polar battle.

Two Locusts and a Jenner. And they STILL managed to do internal structure damage to the Blackbeam...

The Jenner only fired twice...

Before the next mission (which would take a day for repairs...) the paladins did some training. Alarhan increased her tactics to 9, so she too could take better called shots. Poppy increased her to 6, so she got the first bonus to called shots. Summer upped her gunnery to 6 and her tactics to 7.

Next mission was one for the pirates - supposedly only half a skull but with a big (5/23) salvage. Lynessa elected to take Mylassta, Alarhan and Summer along for this one, the better to see if they could disable enemy mechs.

ONE Commando and ONE Javelin.

Despite the lance's best efforts, there wasn't EVEN enough salvage to fill the selected 5 picks.

It would have been a complete waste, were it not for the Com-2B being the last piece to make a sellable mech.

There was a fair of assassination missions up next, both one skull, one for the Free Worlds against the local government and vice-versa.

The Marik propagandist was protected by a Locust and a Shadowhawk, both of which the lance were able to take down by pilot kill (NOW of course, Lynessa wished she'd got max salvage instead of almost max...)

Sadly, the propagandist herself - in and Enforcer - got taken out by CT destruction, so not a lot of salvage there.

Annoyingly, there was still only one piece of Shadowhawk salvage (three pieces of Locust, none of which were randomly assigned...), so Lynessa settled for that and the one piece of Enforcer.

Next mission, assassinate a diplomat.

(And the guard turned out to be a Trebuchet 7K with a PPC that immediately hit Lynessa in the head.

You know what game? No. From the mission start save point, thank you. You've had all the cheap shots you're going to be allowed today, I'm fed up of it.

And even then, it manged to "miss" with the PPC and hit the mech behind it, because the RNG is just being a little [witch] today...

That's better, blow off both torsos and Lynessa takes the leg off.)

That was much more like it. The enemy came to the lance in the lake one by one, and were easily picked off.

The diplomat target was in a trebuchet 7K too.

Lynessa cursed that THIS hadn't been the damn 5/23 salvage mission.

(Game was just mocking me at this point.)

She picked two trebuchet 7K parts and of COURSE received no mech parts by random allotment.

*sigh*

Still... One more look at the store. there was a single piece of 2H Shadowhawk, enough to finally get something over 55 tons. Lynessa considered it and then looked at the ACs available and at the 2.9 million in the kitty...

Screw it, they could afford it!

After a GREAT deal of thought as to what to do with it. Lynessa decided to strip the Assassin and place it into storage, and the Shadowhawk would take over its job. The Shadowhawk was fitted with all the arm mods (including the one that the Assassin had not been) and a newly-bought Ultra AC 5 and two tons of ammo, five jump jets and everything else on armour. Its job would be to run/jump up to the enemy and give them a good punching (since Shadowhawks were quite good at that) and thence to hopefully do some tanking.

Lynessa bought the second of the two Ultra AC/5s as a backup, as well as a +AC/20 (damage).

There was a recovery mission - 1.5 skulls - to a nice arctic world that was in the right direction on travel contract, so that would be the next stop, while the Shadow Hawk - now called the Shadow Punch - was outfitted. Off to Liu's Memory!

The gymnasium completed and after payday:

There were enough funds to start on repairing the mech bay's automation systems, which would help Yang a lot.

The funds, however, was going to see a very sharp dip, because the pirate offered entry to the Black Market for half a million cbills. Lynessa wasn't pleased with the amount, but if the pirate grew to hate the, it could be five times as much, so... She paid.

Another 10k had to be spent on replacing the ventilation fans on the ship, which were failing. Farah wasn't sure this was a great solution, but without a complete rebuild (which they could have afforded just, but were not at a manufacturing world), it would have to do...

Two days out from Liu's Memory, the Shadow Punch was ready!

They arrived at Liu's Memory. Because the universe hated everyone, there was an Archer part in the store... for a 2S, not 2R Archer.

Oh, well, Lynessa thought, they might as well get on with the contract...

Summer had the great honour of having the heaviest mech (at 55 tons) the paladins had managed to acquire. Lynessa stuck with the enforcer, Mylassta with the Blackbeam and Alarhan with the Trebuchet. But the lance, at least, had now finally hit 200 tons!

(First try on the mission, two head on Lynassa IN A ROW. Frack off, game, I said before, you aren't allowed any more cheap shots today. Reload.

Note, I have had MAYBE one head hit today.)

The opponents were a Flea, Panther and Javelin, but this time supported by a Raven (why was anyone concerned about that one prototype getting loose?)

Punch Raven. After Sensor Locking, since apparently you can't melee a cloaked target, that's annoying.

The Flea managed to hit Lynessa in the head.

(ARE. YOU. KIDDING. ME.)

And OF COURSE the Blackbeam got internal structure damage again...

Salvage at least managed to complete a Panther for sale.

Mylassta at least could increase her tactics to 9, so she could properly sub for Lynessa (who had just max out her gunnery and was quite peeved).

Mylassta elected to do a 1.5 skull battle next, for maximum cash (it was only 2/11 salvage anyway). She took the Enforcer, leaving the Blackbeam to Scarlet.

The enemy was a lance consisting of a Flea, a Javelin, a Blackjack laser version and an Enforcer.

The lance managed to de-leg the Enforcer, but they got no mech parts as salvage.

(Notice ONCE AGAIN that the enemy precision fired to IS damage the Shadow Punch, where as I frequently miss doing that when I'm using precision fire. Pretty convinced at this point the AI has been altered to cheat clustered shots.)

Alarhan increased her gunnery to 9. Summer increase her guts to 5 (the Ultra AC had a HORRIBLE recoil penalty) and gunnery to 7. Scarlet increased her tactics to 6 for the first called shot bonus.

Mylassta bought three new arm and leg mods, and rather than just repair the Shadow Punch, elected to spend three days upgrading it as well, replacing one of the +5 melee damage mods for a +10 and adding a -10 self DFA damage to one of the legs.

There were no 1.5 skull missions left, so Mylassta decided to risk it and try fighting a 2-skull battle for the planetary government.

That went... Somewhat poorly.

The lance consisted of two light mechs, which went down easily enough, but also a Wolverine and a 70-ton Jagermech. The OpFor, for some reason, focussed fired repeatedly on the Blackbeam, even though it pulled right back and blew the right torso off. (Again, mercifully, the heatbank was in the LT, so there was nothing irreplaceable.) Scarlet ejected, since it became clear that she couldn't move out of the Wolverine’s line of sight and it wasn't worth the risk.

The only good news was that the lance managed to de-leg the Jagermech, so at least they had salvaged two parts of that.

But it meant another nine day's wait the Blackbeam and the Trebuchet were repaired.

There were only 2-skull missions left at Liu's Memory - a defend base (with a very high cash reward or a lot of salvage, which made Mylassta very suspicious it was actually a 2-skull mission) and a destroy base mission. Perhaps it would be better to head out elsewhere? There was a 1.5 skull travel contract, and that would absorb the repair time and the kitty had enough to float over the next pay day...?

We shall leave Mylassta to consider her options for today!

Comments

[Skywriter]

I hear you about the "light mechs" issue; it's a bit like the Goblin Problem. When they're just scrubs who exist to murder themselves in a single random encounter against the persistent heroes, they have (artificially) far more freedom to act, to use resources, and to take risks than heroes do. It makes them far more dangerous than they would be if they (more realistically) behaved as though they're also worrying about what tomorrow looks like, and the day after that...

[Aotrs Commander]

5288197

It's less that, I think, that the facet of BATTLETECH being limited to four unit for the p;layer. On the TT, where it's by points cost, light mechs work much better for you. The ramification of HBS chosing to limit it to one lance (I don't necesarily disagree with their decision entirely, but it has knock-on effects) is that it automatically encourages you to go for the biggest mechs for maximum concentration of force. Despite their efforts to try and make smaller mechs viabale against that hard limit, ultimately, it just doesn't work well for the player where it does for the OpFor, who are not limited.

Something my wargames have taught me is that there is a certain level of hard-limit, where no matter how superior your forces are, you need a certain NUMBER of elements to be able to work properly to fight. There have been games of Maneuovre Group where I have been playing a high-tech force against a lower one and ultimately stalemated simply because I didn't have enough units on the board to be able to advance. I think that light mechs are one of the area where this is true - but, yeah, you'd have the same problems trying to use typical fodder-goblins (or even Tucker' s Kobolds) when you only had an adventuring party of four of them.

I think for single-digit units, the sweet spot is about 6-ish - funnily enough, the balance-point most CRRPGs especailly worked out a long time ago. I think BT shot itself a little bit in the foot lore-wise with four all those years ago. While it makes sense from an armoured vehicle platoon-size limitation, you usually have more than one platoon in an operation. BT is stuck in a weird sort of place where it wants to be a full combined arms military operation simulatory and feudal knights duelling at the same time and the latter doesn't really fit. Plus, BT is at its best about all the nuts and bolts (I'm far more interested in the Technical Readouts than I will ever be about the politics of the IS), so the more abstracted mass combat rules sort of defeat their own point, since if you're abtracting above BT's very specific level, there's just better rules.

Last time I played this and was in a BT mood, I started having a go and fusing BT with Maneouvre Group, basically just pasting the shooting and damage system onto MG's activation sequence. We got a few games i and it turned it almost more into an X-Com sort of game, where you'd be setting up for the other guy to trigger your reaction/overwatch. We still couldn't quite manage two lance in an evening, but we hadn't quite got to the point of rote yet as we had been when I'd being playing BT more regularly (and fusing it with MG dramatically increased the tactical thinking time!)

We managed two or three games, but then my mate basically stopped being able to come down to the club on Thursday for most of a year (though at least he makes it to most Mobndays where we roleplay instead), then we had to shut the Thursday down officially, and just as we were about in a position to start going down unofficially on a night when the venue wasn't in use for something else, the lockdown happened...