Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH Part Ten · 12:36am Jun 22nd, 2020
Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH, Part Ten:
Next job for the pirates - 1.5 skull convoy ambush, only with one of the convoy supposedly being a Shrek PPC carrier.
So, back into the Phoenix Hawk with Alarhan, and Lynessa would be taking out the Kintaro.
The defenders did not, in fact, have a Shrek PPC carrier; it was a Striker, a Bulldog, and LRM carrier, a Shadowhawk and a Locust.
BOOM! Headshot. (And without the need for Azurella's guidance for once...!)
Three parts of Shadowhawk and one of Locust, Not enough to make anything, but they were only one part away!
Pseekie could improve her piloting to 8 and thus get Ace Pilot. Mylassta increased her piloting to 4.
Next mission would be another 1.5 convoy ambush, but for the planetary government this time.
And the convoy was guarded by...
Oh, SNAP! Mylasssssstaaaaaaaaaa!
The Shadowhawk managed to immediately get a head hit on Lynessa. GREAT. And a head hit on Pseekie from one of the vehicles.
Yeah, Azurella would be giving some guidance on Mylassta's shooting, then.
(It did NOT want me to have the Marauder. At one point, I settled for two hits on the head and it IMMEDIATLEY went and shot Pseekie with everything and HIT with everything and knocked her down. Despite her being on three evade chevrons. Twice. NO, game.
Oh, it did NOT want me to have that Marauder at ALL. Notably, in about ten reloads, the large laser hit the head ONCE and the thing that hit it most in the head was the non-plus medium lasers. (Statistically, that was a third the number of LL hits than there should have been with two firing each time at 18%.) Bearing in mind it wasn't fully undamaged, so ANY TWO of the LL or +ML would have done it, and it consistently only hit with the ML. Right, We were at the "we will do this until you give me what I want RNG, because if you're cheating with numbers I will too.")
Mylassta, annoyed at this point, forwent her lasers and straight-up used her own magical beam attack, and then Azurella herself manifested in full divine war raiment and kicked the Marauder’s cockpit in personally .
(All that, about 12-13 reloads and STILL only once did one of the LL laser hit the head; statistically, there should have been FOUR. WOW.)
First shot.
(I should fracking think so!)
Mylassta shot the hapless Javelin.
(Oh hahaha, game, a random head shot, you're so funny.)
Sumire commented "that was a lot of metal on the field for 'not much opposition.'"
Darius noted that the paladin's employer might have had a leak.
Lynessa's quiet agreement was drowned out by Mylassta's "YA THINK?!"
Pseekie merely snarled and rather viciously stomped on the last Bulldog.
"That was so not a 1.5 skull mission," Alarhan commented bleakly. "Three heavy vehicles, a striker, a Marauder, a Shadowhawk and a Javelin. If we'd not got all the new mechs and sharpened our skills, we'd have been slaughtered."
Still the salvage was three Marauder parts, two Shadowhawk parts (enough for a new one), a Javelin part (enough to build one) and the ++AC/10 and ++LRM 10 which must clearly have been coming from the Galleon assault vehicles.
The Shadowhawk was still a bit bleh. It didn't really carry enough tonnage to be able to replace any of the existing line-up and the lack of hardpoints for missiles meant that it was inferior into the Kintaro in terms of being a missile platform. So it was put into storage (but not sold.)
Lynessa, grumbling, upped her Guts to 7 for another health point, hopefully reducing the time out for NEXT time she was hit in the head.
(I would just like to point out at this stage, that Alarhan has been on 55 deployments and been injured 4 times; Lynessa has been on 58 and Mylassta 59 and they have been injured 11 and 12 times respectively. In case you were wondering why they were getting fed-up with it.)
There was a MAD 3R part in the store for just under a million cbills, which would give them another mech.
Mylassta elected, then, the next mission, a simple 1.5 skull battle, would be for max cash (as it was only 2/11 salvage max anyway).
She moved the Decapitator up to the #1 lance slot, and had Scarlet take the Kintaro, while Summer took the Shadow Punch (Alarhan still being in the Phoenix Coil).
Two Shadowhawks, a Locust and a Hunchback. The heavens was up with these 1.5-skull missions all of a sudden?
Shame, but they wouldn't have gotten much salvage even at maximum.
The Hunchback took a good chunk out of the Shadow Punch, but a couple of precision fires from Mylassta ensured it couldn't do any more damage.
The next mission would be the final one for the Mandalas system; the 2-skull capture base for Capellans against the local government they could attempt, and the final mission was against the pirates, which Lynessa and Mylassta wanted to avoid.
Alarhan increased her gunnery to 10, and Mylassta (seeing as she was forever being HIT IN THE HEAD raised her guts to 7). Scarlet raised her tactics to 7.
With the Shadow Punch out, Summer transferred into the Raven Fair. Mylassta opted to go for one shy of max salvage, which would at least potentially guarantee them most of one mech.
(If, incidentally, I seem to be fighting with the RNG more than usual; it was brought home to me today how close to breaking point I am apparently am. I can't roleplay, I can't wargame, my 3D printer's down so I can't do any useful work, there's not going to be a pantomime this year (I've been doing that for thirty years too), Nanny's gone. During this mission my Mum came in; my sisters had been talking to the campsite where we booked to go away (as we do every year) in August; they're only opening it for caravans (which we have) and my sisters and their families are deferring their bookings to next year. The mere suggestion that I might not be able to go holiday to Abersoch in Wales, as I've done every year of my existence (before I was born, even) actually made me crack a little bit. Without warning. Intellectually, I've known we might not go (and we still might not be able to if the Welsh authorities elect to not let anyone from outside Wales in), but the actual looming finality? Was just too much. So, yeah, REALLY not taking any guff from the RNG today, I've got too precious little control over ANYTHING, so I'm really not prepared to have that dictate to me as well. Back to stompy robots.)
So, Alarhan was headcapping that Trebuchet, no matter how much help Azurella had to grant her.
The rest of the enemies were Locusts and Javelins. Then there were the turrets to deal with, and finally another lance consisting of a Locust, Jenner, Spider and Blackjack.
The damage to the lance was not insignificant, even with Azurella's direct aid.
Two parts of the 7K Trebuchet (the one with PPCs) and a 10A Javelin part were enough to make two new mechs (the latter of which could be sold). There was plenty of pennies to buy the last Marauder part.
The Enforcer, then, could be retired, as the Marauder (which improved called shots and reduced damage to the whole lance by 10%?!) would be taking that role over. The Fair Marauder would have four jump jets, the +Large Laser, two small lasers, a couple of heat sinks and Lynessa elected to try with the LB-X 10 AC (with two tons of ammo) and everything else on armour. Lynessa was sort of hoping that maybe the scatter of the LB-X AC would allow more head-hits with called shots; but it was experimentation, for the moment.
The next choice was whether to take the 1.5 skull travel contract for the pirates as an escort mission, or the 2-skull base defence mission with an enemy assault mech for the Capellans (both against the planetary government...) Lynessa thought hard, but the lure of an assault mech was too good to pass up.
Once the Trebuchet was repaired, Lynessa compared it to the new 7K Trebuchet and decided that, ultimately, the latter didn't really offer anything at the moment (she could have put and AC/20 and a couple of small lasers on it, but it didn't seem worthwhile on a relatively fragile chassis.) So to storage it went.
Adding improved automaton to the mech bays was the cheapest ship upgrade, and didn't significantly impact the funds, so Lynessa had Farah start on that on the way as well.
Lynessa was then quite annoyed to have to go down to the mech bay - still limping - because the MechTechs were rioting. Summer was actually restraining Scarlet, who was shaking, and in tears of anger. That alone was a sign to make Lynessa quite cross, to have upset Scarlet that much, let alone vandalisation the Shadow Punch with "No Techs, no Mechs" welded into the armour.
"We deserve respect," one the MechTechs was shouting, "and that means a raise!"
"MISTER SONNER!" she snapped, bringing the techs up short, since none of them had ever heard her raise her voice.
"If you think you are not getting enough pay, you should have come to me! But you do not, and instead pick a fight with a girl half your age! And welding graffiti into one of the Mechs? Potentially imperilling the mechwarriors? Literally a day after I spent funds to ensure you jobs would be easier and more comfortable?
"You say," she said, striding forward towards the tech who had spoken, whose eyes had frozen with sudden fear, "you deserve respect. Precisely what about your behaviour, Mister Sonner, indicates that you deserve respect?" She snatched the wrench he was holding out of his hand effortlessly and without looking, tossed it aside. The scrawny tech was suddenly VERY aware of how very FAR the wrench went, and even Yang went a bit grey as it struck the bulkhead and actually dug in sufficiently far it stuck there.
"You, MechTech Sonner, are not acting like respectable adult, but a petulant child. I will NOT tolerate such from a member of my crew, not now, not ever. This is Azurella's Paladins, and I expect ALL of you to hold to the high standard of a paladin, whether you are fighting on the front lines, or just cleaning the Argo.
"Don't think," she said, leaning forwards over the now visibly shocked and shrinking Sonner, "I am not aware of how you MechTechs treat Maintenance Operative McKinley, Mr Sonner. How he has to clean up after your messes - which you explicitly make more of for him, because you think it is funny. And how that he will not raise a WORD of complaint against you all. And I have allowed it to continue ONLY on his insistence, and against my better judgement.
"Perhaps, Mister Sonner, you should take his example and pull your head out of your posterior.
"Did you think you could get away with this, Mister Sonner? And the rest of you? It does not escape my notice that you picked on Scarlet, rather than Mylassta or Alarhan, who would not have tolerated your bullying, would they? But Scarlet? I'm sure you thought you could brow-beat her, didn't you? Perhaps you thought you might shove her into a locker, while you were at in, did you?"
(Lynessa quietly reflected that it was a shame they had not tried it on Poppy, as it would have been a rather nasty shock. Poppy was indeed quiet and shy, but unlike Scarlet, Poppy was not deeply self-conscious with it and beneath was made of solid steel. Sonner would have got more than just a black eye from Poppy, he would very likely have been party to an unfortunate sharp confluence between Poppy's staff and his genitalia.)
"Let me make myself clear, Mister Sonner. You are not irreplaceable. So if your behaviour and your attitude does not improve and is not EXEMPLARARY for the next month, you, Mister Sonner, will be leaving the Paladins on the next planet. Am I CLEAR?"
Sonner nodded, now absolutely white. Her expression seemed to suggest she would be escorting him off the ship personally and he was acutely aware that if she did, there was no way in hell he could do anything about it.
"As for the rest of you," Lynessa said, her gaze sweeping across the cringing and now ashamed looking MechTechs. "I'm VERY disappointed in you all. You should know better."
She turned on her heel, and indicated to Summer to take Scarlet away. Now the adrenaline was starting to wear off, she could see the shock setting in. Scarlet was the most sensitive of the girls, and this sort of nastiness was exactly the sort of thing that hit her worst.
Lynessa would look into the MechTech's pay all the same, and they would get a raise when they could afford it, but she was certainly not about to bend over backwards to that kind of behaviour.
Payday.
IF the MechTechs behaved themselves, Lynessa would consider improving the pay grade next month, now that they were starting to be capable of handling higher-level contracts.
A few days later, Lynessa found herself roped into playing a game of volleyball by Summer. Summer had persuaded Poppy and Scarlet to play (Scarlet was still down after the confrontation) and, showing the guile she usually hid, correctly predicted that being on Lynessa's team would do wonders for Scarlet's mood. The four had a delightful fun game. Lynessa and Scarlet lost horribly, but that was mostly because Summer was particularly good at volley ball. Partly it was her speed (even without magic) and partly she had a lot of practise, since Summer was the sort of person for whom playing volleyball at the beach was a form of attracting the gaze of interested parties...
The girls were in much better spirits.
The paladins arrived at Sacromonte. the contracts seemed mostly to be for the Capellan Confederation against the local government (bar a single one against the pirate) and one for the pirates.
The Marauder Fair was done.
Since they girls were in high spirits, Lynessa decided she would take the Decapitator, Scarlet the Marauder Fair, Summer the Phoenix Coil and Poppy the Shadow Punch. A 265 ton lance, rated to 3.5 skulls!
The enemy vanguard consisted of a Javelin, a Griffon and a Catapult - shortly joined by the assault mech, an 80-ton Awesome.
The Javelin was run down by Poppy and finished by Scarlet. Griffon was soon disarmed and then finished off by Poppy.
Lynessa managed to (without the aid of Azurella, for once) take out the Awesome with a couple of well-placed head shots from the Decapitator, though the lunar environment was NOT good for its heat dispersion.
The lance then ran around the confused Catapult, sniping at its head, until they finally took it down. A couple of the base buildings had taken damage, but nothing had been destroyed.
Three parts Awesome 8Q, three parts Catapult C1!
The next mission would a 1.5-skull recovery mission. Lynessa elected to have it be maximum cash (even though that was not a lot). The rest of the missions were 2.5 skulls, though to it seemed wise to do this one to cover the payday first.
Two Javelins, a Locust and a Jenner didn't cause the lance any problems, for once.
(At this point, just I after I think I saved post-mission, the computer abruptly shut off. Didn't immediately turn back on, but I unplugged and replugged it in and it booted up normally. No obvious reason (in a bit of a panic, because THAT would be ALL I need, I phoned my techie mate and looked at the Event Viewer and found no obvious issues... His professional opinion was it had basically just "crapped itself" for no readily apparent reason.
So, before I was so rudely interrupted...)
Summer increased her tactics to 9, giving her called shot mastery. Poppy increased hers to 7 and Scarlet to 8 (giving her Master Tactician).
Apparently, the planetary government weren't done with attacking bases with assault mechs - there was a second one to deal with, this time a 2.5 skull mission.
Oh, snap. This time, there were apparently TWO assault mechs Sumire was detecting. Great.
Vanguard was a Raven, a Hunchback (laser version), a Griffin and a Shadowhawk.
They were wiped (thanks to the favour of Azurella) just in time for the assaults to appear; a Banshee (could be worse) and... Something that was 100-tons!?
An Annihilator.
Fortunately, the lance was able to whether the fire, for once, until Lynessa managed to take its head out with a couple of sets of precise shots.
Summer, with the blessing of Azurella, was able to down the Banshee - a slow 3S with a LOT more guns than the 3M they'd faced last time - right at the time limit.
Salvage was three Annihilator parts, the first ++AC/10 (increased damage, FINALLY, a head-capping weapon...), two parts of the 4P Hunchback, allowing it to be completed, and two parts of the Banshee.
The -4P replaced the Panther in the line-up, and would be armed more or less as its stock version - eight medium lasers and thirteen heat sinks (but an extra half-ton of armour instead of a small laser). Lynessa wasn't going to start it yet, though, in case the needed anything repaired first.
Poppy increased her tactics to 8 and Lynessa her guts to 8.
Next mission was a recovery, getting a biological sample. Lynessa opted to take near-max salvage, but she also wanted some cash. The black market didn't have a lot in it (that they could remotely afford), but there was a nice large laser that was affordable if they ramped enough some pennies over the next payday.
Oh, this was bad. The enemy lances were just either side of the facility; one of with a Raven, a 1M Locust, a Firestarter and a Crab and the other of four mediums (a Kintaro, one of each of 4P and 4G Hunchbacks and a Vindicator).
Summer took the first one (a Kintaro) out with one shot.
The battle was tense, with the lance having to split up into two halves. The lunar environment caused them serious problems - Lynessa could manage a full salvo every third turn, and Summer could only fire twice before overheating, so it became a case of fire and run. Lynessa knocked out the 4G's AC/20, and then turned and sprinted away, while the Hunchbacks gave chase.
On the other side, Poppy and Scarlet fought with the lighter lance, quickly assisted by Summer sprinting back around.
The Vindicator only showed itself towards the end of the fight, when the lance had more or less reconvened.
Summer again took it out with an (unblessed!) head-shot.
Despite it all, the lance got away with fairly minimal damage, the worst being a head hit on Poppy.
There was LOTS of salvage, but they couldn't have a lot of it. Lynessa elected to take three parts of Kintaro to complete a mech for sale, rather than three parts of Vindicator.
That more than paid for the +++Large laser.
Summer increased her guts to 7, as the Phoenix Coil overheating in the lunar environment was a problem; that might buy her a little bit more of a breather.
Next was a two-and-a-half-skull mission for the pirates - yet another ambush convoy mission. Supposedly, this was "easy pickings," but somehow Lynessa doubted it...
(Yeah, no, we're not doing that mission. When the convoy consists of a Galleon, a Striker, a Bulldog and fracking Demolisher (with two AC/20s), guarded by a Commando, a Crab and Thunderbolt, in a lunar environment where I can only fire every other round... And when Summer missed the 91% chance of taking the Demolisher out and Pseekie missed hitting it in the right spot that might have killed it and it promptly blew both of Summer's arms off? No. Reload!)
It sounded so suspicious, in fact, Lynessa decided it was far too risky.
In fact, Lynessa looked over the other missions. A 2.5 skull destroy base mission, the verses-pirates mission she wasn't going to do and a 3-skull "target acquisition" mission.
No, Lynessa decided, she'd had more than enough of this lunar place. The two travel contracts would take her back to Appian. So she instead decided to head towards one-skull Tiverton, which was a water world, and close to the Tarragona flashpoint.
Lynessa had Farah start work on the last of the structural reinforcement; there was enough cash free (and they'd likely just take mostly money at Tiverton).
Refit time! The Marauder was going to have the LB-X AC replaced with the ++AC/10 (+10 damage). The shotgun effect was, as Lynessa had suspected, really not all that good in practise.
(I have never gotten why LB-X ACs are considered good with scatter ammunition, Sure, it helps with crit fishing, but otherwise you're just sandpapering the armour off. If in this version, like in TT, you could use either cluster rounds or solid shot, I might have a bit more time for them (I'd mostly use them as slightly better ACs, though.)
Installing the regular AC required removing the small lasers, but the added damage of the ++AC/10 and replacing the +large laser with the +++ version (+3 accuracy, +10 damage) went half way to help with the damage deficit, and also put that damage at a much more applicable range (and lowered the overall heat down, too). When not on a sodding moon, it might even be practical to jump occasionally again. (Even the Shadow Punch couldn't jump more than twice in the lunar environment without overheating that that did precious little else!)
Off to Tiverton!
A couple of weeks later, the Hunchback was finished.
Payday, shortly thereafter.
Lynessa had taken the MechTech's (properly worded, reasonably presented) concerns in hand, and raised the pay for everyone.
Darius practically had kittens at the prospect (and their funds had again dropped lower than Lynessa had expected), but Darius was forever having kittens, so no-one really cared.
There was really nothing special in the store. The contracts were almost all against the Taurian Concordat from the planetary government; but there were three battle, and a couple of destroy bases. (And an almost insultingly low pay half-skull recovery mission.)
First battle!
Poppy was healed, so she was given the Marauder Fair (Scarlet's high spirits had worn off by this point) and Pseekie had the Shadow Punch.
The enemy - pair of Javelins, a Commando and a Locust - were totally outclassed. Quite what the pilot of the already damaged 1M locust thought he would achieve running up to the Decapitator to kick it is an open question.
And we shall leave it there for today!
I think we're over the hump now. Funnily enough, getting some heavier mechs (and being able to consistently head cap) has allowed me to snowball, finally. Hitting that point, though, was such a GRIND. And, I think, the problem sort of it that now we'r more or less jumping past most of the medium and heavies and are straight into getting towards assaults.
Since fielding an entirely nonstock lance with extra armour, the IS damage has also dropped off a lot, finally, as well.
Speaking of assault mechs, I have to wonder whether it was intentional that the Highlander is specialized in decapitation. Sure, it's Death From Above instead of swords, but still...
Sorry for the disruption of your holiday tradition. Everything's shook up lately.
5290556
It gets better. Arbupt power shut-down re-occured this morning, for Dad, while just using Waterfox/Outlook. Took it in, but it is an intermittent problem which cannot be localised, all we can do is log the time between failures as it continues so the tech guy has an idea of how long to run it for; could be the power supply, could be the motherboard; outside chance it is the power cable itself, or possibly the CPU overheating.
Have requisitioned Nanny’s computer as an emergency back-up if it fails or has to go in, which at least allows me to use the internet; though it becomes a pain to check email, as I have to use Virgin online.
Did a critical document back-up the other day, did an back-up of the games I’ve been playing as soon as it booted in this time.
Have replaced the power lead with Nanny’s, as that potentially eliminates another issue.
Gave system a good blow out with compressed air. Noticed the heat sinks behind the CPU fan had a lot of crap in them, cleaned it out as best I could with cottonbuds and compressed air; could potentially have been an issue.
So now on top of everything else, I am in a perpetual state of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Going to take this coming week as “holiday,” since we won’t be having the normal June one (and Abersoch is still up in the air, but I’ll deal with that breakdown again when it happens) and there’s zero point me even trying to do the limited CAD work that I can do if I’m terrified the computer is going to crash out every minute.
(Also, if it’s running a lot of BATTLETECH, it might force the system error into being consistent enough to fix.)
On my very last straw.
5290378
Don't think so, lots of mech have Gauss rifles from the point they came in in the rules (around the Clan era, I think); the Highlancer just happened to be one that dated from the Star Laeague era as oppsoed to post Helm Core and so was the most obvious one to see in this game, as its set before then (I want to say something around the late 3020-3030s?)
5290576
From what I understand, it's not so much any of the guns as it is being a jump-capable assault mech in the first place. I would assume that (advanced movement capability) plus (heaviest class of mechs) is a relatively rare combination, just based on basic logic.