Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH Part Nineteen · 10:43pm Jul 6th, 2020
Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH, Part Nineteen:
So, Titan Attack part Two, this time a 2-skull version in the Tundra as oppose to the Jungle! Same team as previously - Scarlet in the Decapitator, Poppy in the Fair Marauder, Velina in the Bull Shark and Pseekie in the Catapult Hammer.
This time, there were TWO Assault mech signatures!
Vanguard - a Jenner, a Spider (both of which ran RIGHT up next to the Fair Marauder and... stopped...) and a Hatchetman (wow, didn't take long for those to get out from under wraps, did it, the planetary government has one on the SAME DAY!)
One punch from Scarlet and an LRM salvo put paid to the Jenner.
Two tries, but they'd be having that, ta...
The Spider was punched to death and Poppy one-shotted the Wolverine's head. Meanwhile, the enemy reinforcements had arrived - Pseekie went to have a look-see.
Ooh, a 90-ton Highlander (HGN-733...)
(DEAR FRAG, the Bull Shark is INSANE. That was even without the lasers!)
(I revise my opinion on LB-X ACs. ONE is not much cop, but two, plus two Ultra ACs, is a lot of head damage. Not sure these were all at max armour, but even so! So far the Bull Shark has headcapped everything but one mech it has tried to headshot.)
The second assault mech was an 80-ton Victor.
Briefly.
Well, damn it there wasn't going to be more salvage than they could possibly use!
Lynessa selected three parts Highlander, and one each of Hatchetman and Victor (on the basis they'd need at least one more encounter anyway), but got an extra part from each for random assignment. Not too shabby!
Next up - 2-skull Clash of the Titans, for the Canopians, in the poles!
Pseekie opted to swap the Catapult Hammer for the Laser Knight in its first outing. (The Fair Marauder was just too good with the -10% lance damage and + called shot to replace, plus it had the other +++comms mod current, and the Decapitator's +1 lance initiative was also stupid good.)
Cheat! Swiz! The Capellan "assault mech" was a Shrek PPC Carrier!
(The government one was an 8T Awesome.)
The lance decided at that point, frack it, they'd just let them fight amongst themselves for a bit.
But, y'know, okay, if they all wanted to attack the lance instead of each other, fine, then.
Lynessa wondered if the fools regretted it as the lance mopped up all but the Awesome (and the one government Flea the Capellans had killed) in the space of two salvos...
The Awesome got its head shot at three times - predictably, the killing hit was from the Bull Shark...
Enough parts for a new Javelin, plus three Awesome parts.
2.5 skull battle in the badlands for the Capellans against the Canopians... Pseekie swapped back to the Catapult Hammer.
Two Panthers, a Jenner and a Commando. Which clustered up.
Needless to say, the hapless fools went down fast, and just as they did, a second lance showed up... And, as they approached (Natasha was eager to let them get with Thumper range) a THIRD lance showed up.
The second lance JUST got themselves in the wrong place. Three of them were behind a big rock crop, with a spider (which Poppy had failed to CT-cap!) spotting for them - but in radius for the Thumper. The Spider died, and the two Javelins that staggered around the corner were not in a good place, with the first an arm missing and the second with BOTH torsos missing...! Finally, the last mech, a Wolverine lumbered into view - right in front of the Bull Shark. You can imagine what happened next...!
The third lance's foolish Firestarter and Flea appeared, to be immediately headcapped a shot a piece by Natasha and Poppy.
Sadly, the UrbanMech (HAH!) that followed THAT, the Bull Shark filled to headcap (so that’s only twice!) and Poppy failed too, and it died. The last mech was ALSO and UrbanMech and it did get its head blown off.
Annoyingly, the first UrbanMech was one they hadn't got yet. There were only bits and pieces to salvage, the only other thing of note was a bit of Jenner to complete one for sale and a Wolverine from random parts.
Poppy maxed her guts. Scarlet increased hers to 8. Natasha upped her guts to 7, having elected to change tack and get Coolant Vent instead of Breaching Shot (since the lance had more "laser head to death" than "single-shot kill" mechs).
Next, polar recovery mission for the Canopians against the Capellans. Pseekie swapped back to the Laser Knight.
The lance ran up around a narrow pass to get to the secondary site first. That was guarded by a Locust and Trebuchet, which Poppy immediately decapitated. A Flea followed, and it lasted only long enough to show there was something with LRMs near the primary target. The Fair Marauder and the Decapitator jump down to get the secondary target - the Canopian operatives, but annoyingly, the other two were stuck on the mountain, as what had appeared to be a passable way down wasn't. So they marched up high to provide long-ranged fire, instead.
Three vehicles and an Orion. Poppy and Scarlet dealt with the Orion and the Bull Shark, when provided with sensor locks, easily took out the vehicles.
Enough salvage for a K Orion, a 7K Trebuchet (both to be sold!) and a ++AC/10 (though only a 50% crit version).
Poopy raised her piloting to 8. Natasha got guts 8 and Cooling Vent and raised her piloting from 2 to 4 for good measure. Pseekie maxed her tactics.
There was a Target Acquisition mission left, but it was against the pirates, and the lance was well in money at the moment, so it was time to move on!
Lynessa had work started on the BattleSmasher.
ALL four of the current flashpoints were all the way up or near Davion space now.
Lynessa elected to head for Vard, in the middle of Capellan space. It was 23 days away (a little over half the time to the nearest flashpoint expired, but they might just make it in time, and at least be near the others) and they lance was not short of money. Plus, 3-skull Vard was a black market and also they MIGHT get some damn Davion missions there, too...
Farah finished the arcade, to much joy (all the girls immediately decamped to play) and Lynessa had Farah work on upgrading the lounge next.
The BattleSmasher was done!
After some debate, Lynessa elected to store the Awesome. They had several laserboats already, and the PPCs they had weren't good enough to warrant a three-PPC design, and without stripping some heat devices off their mechs, there just wasn't much they could DO with the Awesome at the moment.
Pseekie managed to finagle an official broadcast of the latest Solaris VII championship and cajoled everyone into coming and watching. Everyone had a great time (possibly even Darius), even with Farah having to clear the space for them to watch it, since she was still trying to upgrade it. Lynessa suggested this was the last hurrah for the original lounge.
(Funny, isn't it, that I struggled to ever get three missions for Davion in Davion space, but the first three tries here gave me three Capellan and one Davion. Yeah, it’s AMAZING that now it generates 3-4 Capellan missions every time, when it would barely generate two Davion missions in Davion space. I think the game is a Liao supporter, or it really HATES Hanse Davion...
Eventually, I settled with about the forth try, since in more reloads than I counted, it only gave me three Davion missions thrice and the mission mix was worse on the very last try.
Apparently, the game just REALLY doesn't want me to be allies with Davion.)
Payday:
450 days left to go.
Well, first things first, there were two parts each of the two UrbanMech variants the lance didn't have, and as they were things hard to encounter, Lynessa would make sure they picked them up before they left. (Not now, just in CASE they found any on the missions down here.
There was a COIL-L in the store. Hmmmm...
In the black market, there was an Annihilator piece (they could complete one...) for about 1.4 million. Three million (the paladins currently had 11 million) could get a ++ Large Pulse Laser - notable for +10 damage, making it 65 damage and thus a head capper. VERY tempting.
408K would get a ++TAG (Target Acquisition Gear), +20% damage from ballistic and energy weapons painted by the TAG - that was nice.
+++LRM 20 and +++ Medium laser.
So, there was potentially QUITE a lot the lance could spend those pennies on here.
First though, as applying any of that would require refits, time to deal with the contracts.
To for pirates (locked), three for Davion (one 2.5 skull was against the pirates) and two for Marik all of which were against the Capellans.
Okay. Lynessa elected to do the lowest-rated two missions first (to hunt for UrbanMech parts) as after that, the Capellans would start to dislike the lance and those parts in the store would get more expensive!
2.5 skull capture polar base for Marik, then.
A bit of a change round. Capture base likely meant turrets, so LRMs would be favourite. But also potential UrbanMech captures... After some debate, Poppy and Scarlet swapped spots, Poppy replacing the Decapitator with the Stalker Barrage and Scarlet taking the Fair Marauder (and ensuring it, at least, kept phase 3 initiative). Pseekie took the Bull Shark (the two mechs without LRMs both had a sensor-locker) and Vey the Catapult Hammer. (Had LIGHT mech sniping not be a possibility, the Bull Shark would have replaced the Fair Marauder, but the Bull shark DID have a bit of a tendency to scrap lights at the same time as headcapping them... And it was too useful if they ran into something that wasn't lights...!)
First enemies - a Locust, a Trebuchet and a 4D Rifleman (the PPC version).
And the LRM turrets simultaneously hit both Scarlet and Pseekie in the head. Because of course they did.
That was one piece of salvage, then...
The lance took a little fire from the turrets until the Rifleman went down. They then proceeded to move up and wipe them one by one, killing the last one just as reinforcements - a Blackjack, Kintaro and Phoenix Hawk - wandered into sight.
Luck refused to be with the lance - the Bull Shark failed to headcap the Kintaro twice, and the enemy lance combined fire came close to blowing the Marauder's arm off.
(Throwing a mardy I'm not on the Capellan's side, clearly.)
Enough salvage to get a 4D Rifleman and a Kintaro for sale.
Scarlet increased her guts to 9 and Vey her gunnery to 7.
Lynessa opted not to fix the Fair Marauder yet; she felt that the 3-skull assassination for Marik could be accomplished without it.
Natasha took the Decapitator, Poppy the Bull Shark, Vey the Atlas and Zuranna the BattleSmasher on its trial run. At 370 tons this was the heaviest lance yet fielded.
Naturally, the enemy lance was entirely composed of vehicles. The enemy target was a Thunderbolt SE, which didn't get close enough for Zuranna to punch before Poppy headcapped it.
Well, at least the completed the Thunderbolt...
Vey upper her gust to 7 and Zuranna her gut to 7 and tactics to 5.
Lynessa bought the COIL-L (and a COIL-S too), plus the four parts of the two UrbanMech versions (R90 and R60L), as the next mission would upset the Capellans...
Next up a Test Drive for Davion. They had a captured Cataphract 1X they wanted to try out, and needed an escort. Fun...
Well, for a change, they let one of the paladins pilot it; Natasha got the honour. Poppy stayed in the Bull Shark, and Vey took the Decapitator, with Shelat swapping in for the Catapult Hammer.
The first enemy lance included a couple vehicles and a 65-tonner. But as they closed, Sumire picked another blip coming in.
Well, that was an unfriendly place for the pirates to drop in.
A C4 Catapult, Marauder and a Hatchetman (REALLY guys? That fast, huh?)
Fortunately, they were stupid enough to spend their first turn moving and entrenching, not shooting.
The Marauder got Poppy'd. Or Bull Shark'd. Really, it didn't have much of a chance either way.
Because the Hatchetman had dodged about three or four head hits and got two turns in a go, it managed to IS the Bull Shark. So downtime was now inevitable, since it was down both of their sniper mechs.
Natasha FINALLY headcapped it with the Cataphract. (Which, considering it didn't have any ++ weapons, with six weapon systems, wasn’t actually too bad at it.)
To round out the day, once Poppy had headcapped the pirate Catapult, leaving only two enemy vehicles, the Demolisher (LB-X version) appeared and the scatter hit Vey in the head.
The problem with that, from the Demolisher's point of view, was it was in melee range of an angry 90-ton mech, piloting by a young lady noted for hitting thing very hard with an axe.
It was probably sort of as well for the Demolished that the Hatchetman wasn't in reach, but scant concern when Vey - enhancing the mech with her own natural magic - did unto the Demolisher what a small cartoon sad dog and a large green fellow were noted to do to people.
The Hatchetman was even a different variant (so at least they got three parts of that) there were enough parts to make a C4 Catapult to sell.
Poppy upper her piloting to 9. Vey increased her guts to 8 and, like Natasha, took Coolant Vent.
Two days later, the lance was ready again.
A 3.5 tundra assassination next, killing a Capellan war criminal. Velina took the Decapitator, Poppy the Marauder Fair, Shelat the Bull Shark and Natasha the Laser Knight.
And first off, head hit non Poppy from the first salvo from the enemy's Centurion.
Poppy's first two headshots - one on the Centurion, the other on an approaching Orion failed to connect, but then Shelat showed the Bull Shark was capable of a decapitating shot even WITHOUT the benefit of precise fire and the Centurion was down.
That enabled Natasha to headcap the Orion with the Laser Knight. The last enemy mech of this lane (there was another somewhere to the east) appeared a Griffin.
It took several rounds to eliminate the Cicada (finally punched to death on the third hit) and the Griffin (finally headcapped on about the forth attempt).
The lance redeployed, and waited for the enemy to come to them
The first enemy mech - a 7K Trebuchet hove into sight. It took all four of them to kill it (fully four precise shots - two first that knocked it down, and two more s it lay prone).
The next pair of mechs were a Phoenix Hawk and Assassin. Two precise CT torso hits failed to take them out...But the Thumper cannon did!
Two 65-tonners left - the target and the last of the ambushers. Both were milling around at the base of a cliff, so the lance had plenty of time to move to position.
The target was in a Thunderbolt 5SS and the other was a Catapult.
For what little it was worth. Again, despite FOUR precise shots DOWN, the enemy target refused to be head hit and the random shots scattered everywhere, damaging nothing. The Catapult managed to damage the Laser Knight's internal structure, just to add injury to insult.
FINALLY Shelat managed to headcap the war criminal - which just left the Catapult to deal with. After pulling back from the ridge and moving position, they lured it close enough for Poppy to (FINALLY) headcap something this mission.
And a whole mess of "not really anything," as the last salvo of the Bull Shark had clearly CT'd the Thunderbolt, because it's armour had been so reduced by all the missed attempts.
That was it for missions here, though. There was just the vrs pirates mission, but Lynessa wasn't going to tackle that. Also, there had four pilots down currently, all due to head-hits, in the course of three missions.
Velina upped her piloting to 6. Shelat topped out her gunnery and Natasha raised her guts to 9.
In the hiring hall, Lynessa spotted one mechwarrior Ronin, Anja "Wildfire" Bray, who sort of seemed a perfect fit for the paladins, on account of her being painfully honest.
Lynessa bought the +++LRM 20, the +++Medium Laser, the ++ Large Pulse Laser, the ++TAG and a couple of leg mods.
After some thought, she bought an Annihilator part. It came with a BSC system, which made it more stable, and pertinently, gave it 20% ballistic damage, which would so help with the headcapping! Really, they could do with some better Autocannons for it, but there was enough to make it worthwhile - three ++AC/10s with extra stability damage, plus the LB-X AC, all with two tons of ammunition, the ++TTS (ballistic) and a quartet of heat sinks so it ran almost cool, plus everything else on armour. It wasn't a Bull Shark by any means, but it was a start.
Lynessa had intended to replace the ++large laser on the Fair Marauder with the Large Pulse laser, thinking that the Fair Marauder actually ran a bit cooler than it needed to anyway (it actually probably didn't strictly need two heat sinks, but it kept it cool even in those Martian and lunar missions). Unfortunately, the pulse laser was also a ton heavier and generated 67% more heat, so doing so would have require removing a heat sink and drastically dropping the Fair Marauder's cool running. A big loss when most of the lance ran quite hot.
However, she though, if she dropped one of the Decapitator's medium lasers, and the replaced the ++large laser with the pulse laser, the heat would remain the same. Total damage output would reduce by 10 (65 instead of 45+30),but 65 was head-capping level.
(It was at this point, Lynessa remembered she had two +AC/10s that were +5 Damage and thus even better headcappers and re-did the Annihilator so that it had two of those ACs instead.
Finally, the BattleSmasher's laser were stripped out, as that left just enough room to fit in the COIL-L, which would definitely give it a solid longer ranged punch and three medium and two small lasers.
Yuris was the next point of call. They might JUST reach it at the point the flashpoint expired (thanks damage to the mech's IS), but it was an unvisited 3.5 skull world, so it ought to be good ground for contracts anyway.
Off they set.
The improved lounge was finished, time to upgrade the library!
The Annihilator was ready to go!
Lynessa proved to have been wise to have recruited Wildfire, who was on the point of a PST-related breakdown. Lynessa scheduled her counselling and medical appointments, and she soon improved and stabilised - especially with input from the girls - and became more dependable.
And while I wrestle with the uncooperative RNG about getting some contracts 1, we shall leave it there for today; we will be back with the paladins on Thursday, assuming the sun doesn't explode or something.
1There's only Davion, the pirates and Liao active in this system, since ComStar is not a faction, SURELY the chances are higher...? HA, immediately after I typed that, it generated seven contracts split between pirates and Liao that were all locked. Funny, RNG, funny.
Yeah, the world is gonna roll you. (Seriously, that's just the perfect name for this, and I doubt the movie had even come out yet when it was named)
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Oh, it hadn't; the Shrek is in my (second-hand) first edition of the 3026 Technical Readout (according to Sarna, that was published in 1987).
In other fun news, you know how the computer has been stable without those shutdowns? New surge supressor came in yesterday, tried to put it on last night, two middle plug sockets didn't allow the plugs to fit properly, so I had to pout the other one back. This morning - JUST as I was speaking to the customer support chap of the manufacturers about whether to send it back via Amazon or wait up to two weeks for them to send one, it cut out. I THOUGHT I'd put the plug back in the socket that seemed to work, but I'm not entirely sure, but it seems increasingly likely that's the issue. I have now got an interim one from Nanny's house of dubious virtue (though not as dubious as the one I'm 99% is failing) and I'm hoping to go out with my Dad later and get one from the shops, especially as Amazon would only refund not replace and the point it cut out was the point I wasn't willing to waste another week.
Oh, and WHILE I was trying to get hold of the surhe supressor compoany last night, I found Smugmug- my image hoster, that I use for work and that I play a small fortune for - didn't have the share image button in the gallery anymore, meaning you could only get the links by going into the sldie show. To their credit, they got back to me this morning to say this was a bug and they're working on it, which is fine (it's not some stupid decidion by some numpty.)
Oh, and just to kick hard in the shin, just before I phoned the surge suppressotr company, I had a call from the wargames club venue to say that they liscening people had not understood what wargaming was, but now they did, it was like card and dice gamaes and there was not permitted, so the club is off again for at least three weeks.
The ONLY POSSIBLE saving grace is that the new reel on the 3D printer at least looks credible, unlike the previous two. Tthis being the thrid try, since the filament we normally get is apparently on 2000kg of order in Europe and not likely to get there before August. So MAYBE it will work, we'll see how the first print comes out...
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Holy crap, it even predates the original book! (1990, according to Wikipedia)