Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH, Part Twenty-Two

Bleakbane Plays BATTLETECH, Part Twenty-Two:

Last night was quite short, but I finished late, so figured I might as well add it to today's, since that would be a bit shorter than usual, since I went out for the afternoon.

(On only the second try, it remarkably generated five Davion missions, two against pirates, three against Taurian. I tried a couple more reloads to see if being allied had changed anything, but got diddly-squat the next reload and nothing in the next couple, so it wouldn't seem being allied significantly changes the odds...)

The store at Merlin actually had some neat stuff, if not a lot of it. A +LB-X AC/20, a ++MG that had 0 tonnage, a + cockpit mod, +comm system and a ++heat exchanger (and two ++AC/5s which Lynessa wasn't so bothered about.)

Well, no time like the present to start on the Flashpoint...

The contact for this one was Justin Allard.

(Ooh! Ooh! I know him, he was in the first Clan invasion trilogy books that I read once!)

Basically, Mr Allard was trying to Do The Diplomacy with the people of Kittery, a contested world between the Federated Suns and Capellen Confederation. A group of mercs were basically making lots of demands on his time and he was, frankly, starting to get peeved.

This gentleman "Lord Commander" Mason Garilac needed to be dealt with. Allard wanted the lance to go and destroy the bar (a dive bar, frequently by pirates and other ne'er-do-wells) Garilac spent all his time at.

Seemed easy enough...

The place was located in an old desert military base, which was a den of vice, corruption and terrible music (apparently they had "take on me" by Aha on endless loop and for that crime alone the place deserved to be razed to the ground.)

Shelat would remain in the Decapitator, Pseekie in the Fair Marauder, Vey in the Stalker Barrage and Zuranna would take the BattleSmasher.

Sumire was less than happy about blowing a pub up, but more because of the loss of booze than the splortching of clientele.

Lynessa and the girls didn't really care one way or the other - the various divine and fiendish blood on top of paladins meant they were mostly or entirely immune to the effects of alcohol anyway, so it didn't have much traction with them.

That was SOME kind of pub, though.

The "belligerent drunks" included a Phoenix Hawk, what was almost certainly an Assassin by the quantity of LRM- fire and the tonnage and a 50-tonner, which turned out to be a 7K Trebuchet. With more "hostile inebriates" on the horizon.

The first turret went down. Pseekie failed twice to headcap the Trebuchet - she got it on the third try - as a second Phoenix Hawk came in. The first Phoenix Hawk got a punch for the Decapitator and then was totalled by one from the BattleSmasher.

One LRM salvo and a COL-L blast from the BattleSmasher put paid to the Assassin, and the Phoenix Hawk didn't last long after that.

The lance took out one building, and the finally the inebriate lance started to arrive, starting with an Orion.

A single shot from Pseekie wiped that out.

A Griffin was behind that, and an Archer not far behind. The Griffin was badly damaged by fire, but not taken out by the first salvo. Pseekie picked the Archer off with a head-shot the moment she saw it. Shelat sensor-locked the nearest enemy turret and Vey attempted to destroy it, but failed by one missile missing, which annoyed her. Zuranna, meanwhile, blew the Griffin's leg off and knocked it down. Shelat finished it off while Pseekie laser'd the turret.

The lance proceeded around the ring, looking for the last turret. When Shelat locked it, again to Vey's great annoyance, it survived by one missed missile, forcing Zuranna to finish it with a burst of LRM 10 fire.

There was one more turret (the lance had miscounted and only knobbled three, not four), but this time, the Stalker Barrage did the job. Zuranna might have done, but she accidently shot a building and didn't even managed to take it out completely.

The lance levelled the Stratford Narwhal bar completely, with a bit of divided fire meaning that Vey took out the last three building simultaneously.

Sadly, Garilac was not, in fact, inside it, and was on the horn...

Three parts Archer S (enough to finish one) and one part to finish a Phoenix Hawk.

Garilac's secret was that he was always drunk. He was, however, rather angry about being owed 250000 cbills by Allard, apparently.

Lynessa, given that Allard was giving them more money to get rid of the guy, was fairly sure that Garilac was mistaken, lying or dru... Garilac was drunk, wasn't he?

Well, Lynessa sure wasn't going to give what money he thought he was owed to a drunk man that willing listened to "take on me" on endless loop.

Still, the dude wanted to have a fair fight, and explicitly forbade Steiner Scout lances and, well, they WERE Paladins and it was a whole lance, so off they went to fight fair.

(Assuming the enemy lance didn't require, like, all lights or something or there was going to be a problem...)

Zuranna raised her tactics to 6.

Salvage for this was only 2/11 at max, so Lynessa debated going for max cash, but settled for max salvage in the end, mostly in case there was some shiny gear.

The lance was 230 tonnage, but no restriction on what could be taken. The Shadow Punch (Zuranna), the Trebuchet (first time it had been out in ages, piloted by Vey), and Phoenix Coil (Pseekie) and enough left for the Fair Marauder (Shelat). Lynessa realised that, if they replaced the Shadow Punch with the Raven, they could take the Bull Shark instead of the Fair Marauder...

But she felt that would maybe just a little bit be breaking the spirit of the agreement.

A Cameron "Talon" Coine hailed the lance, indicating he would be performing foot-based dentistry upon the girls.

The battle was going to be fought in a flooded crater, which would ease the heat issues.

The first enemy in sight was a 1N Griffin. A Catapult and Dragon showed soon after.

Zuranna charged up and made a beautiful punch-to-the-face, finishing the job Shelat's first aimed fire had started.

Shelat follow this up with a head shot taking out the Dragon (and it's ++PPC, ooh...)

The last enemy mech was a Centurion, the lance discovered, and they closed up on the Catapult. Zuranna managed a random head hit on the Catapult.

(And somehow the enemy managed to blow the Trebuchet's arm off. No, not losing the only decent PPC the lance had, reload...)

Vey, having a tickle in her head from her goddess, moved the Trebuchet back behind a rock and out of the line of fire from the Centurion, especially its ++AC/10. Her salvo damaged the Catapult's +LRM 15, which was annoying - but Shelat's shot decapitated and also destroyed that torso completely. Oh well...

The Centurion took some killing, and sadly died to CT destruction, which was a same since Lynessa would have liked to see what that ++AC 10 was...

Garilac decided that at this point, to GET what the sunk-cost fallacy meant and give up. (Seriously, 250K was less than most contracts gave out, he MUST have been permanently drunk...)

No mech salvage at all allowed (Garilac did say he would be "scraping what was left of his mechs up.") So Lynessa grabbed the ++PPC (only accuracy, unfortunately) and another Heat Exchanger; she also got a +LRM 15 (stability damage) and +small laser.

Allard was happy enough. The lance got a Black Knight part (enough to finish one!) a nice +++SRM 6, and +Heat Bank (NOW they were talking!) and some other sundry parts. Not bad, though!

Zuranna raised her tactics to 7 and her gunnery to 5. Pseekie raised her guts for 4 to 6; Shelat's guts went to 9 and Vey upped her gunnery to 9.

The next mission was a 4.5 skull hostage rescue. Taurians were holding a load of hostages from a crashed dropship.

Given the nature of this mission - especially in the harsh Martian environment, Lynessa decided that the most experienced pilots needed to be on this one. They'd need every edge.

Lynessa took the Decapitator, Mylassta the Fair Marauder, Alarhan the Bull Shark and Summer the Annihilator. It would be fast, but it would be steady and precise - and the Bull Shark's rangefinder would help them get some shots off before the enemy got into range, hopefully.

The greater sight distance p[roved instantly useful, as the lance spotted the whole enemy guard retinue at once - a Locust, Blackjack, Shadowhawk and Thunderbolt.

Once again, luck refused to have anything to do with the lance. While Alarhan took out the locust and damaged the Shadowhawk with the Thumper, Mylassta missed her head shots twice and the enemy managed to hit her in the head, because of course they did.

Fortunately, Alarhan managed to finish the job Mylassta had started and took out the Thunderbolt.

Summer blew the now-damaged blackjack apart, and once Lynessa punched the Shadowhawk onto its back, and Mylassta failed to head-shot again, Summer took that out too.

Mylassta was not in a good mood.

Lynessa had a good look around. It looked like the most obvious spot for the evac was a platform next to where they'd just been fighting - else it was a looong way away. This was good and bad news...

It was. And the hostages had commandeered only light vehicles and the enemy were practically on top of them. This wasn't good.

Griffin, Vulcan, JagerMech, Trebuchet. The latter two got to move to shoot at the APCs before the lance could do anything to get to shoot at them, badly damaging one of them.

(Nearly had a reload there and then.

Nearly did straight away after that, as the UI said "you can shoot the JagerMech from there, hah, no you can't!")

Lynessa thought that maybe ONE DAY, the damned large pulse laser would ACTUALLY hit on an aimed shot and be the Decapitator it was supposed to be.

Two rounds of generally useless fire later, Alarhan took out the Vulcan with the Thumper cannon.

The APCs had reached the exit zone, which likely meant another four mechs would be on the way, and the Blackjack and Griffin were still up, simple because luck refused to do anything but scatter the aimed shots everywhere.

Lynessa punched the Griffin to death (it had run up to her and swung and missed) and Mylassta abandoned headshot in favour of attempting to CT the Blackjack, but even THEN it required Summer to finish it off.

Alarhan turned and sprinted down the hill, bringing the third lance into sight. Enforcer, Thunderbolt, Quickdraw and another Griffin.

You knew it was bad when the Bull Shark fired a full salvo at the Thunderbolt's head and not ONE weapon hit it.

THREE of the girls shot at the head of the Thunderbolt, and there was not even a single glancing blow. This was getting really stupid.

The Thunderbolt was on its last legs in CT, so Lynessa fired at it normally AND IT STILL STAYED UP.

(Because the RNG said "hah, you only get on hit from your weakest weapon out of FIVE on the CT, neener neener neener!" Getting really tired of this crap RNG, there will be reloading in a fracking minute...)

Nope, another missed headshot from Mylassta, and that was all the firing the lance could EVEN DO this round, and the Bull Shark and Annihilator were risking overheating. No, wait Alarhan could just reach the ice, and if she fired just the LB-X ACs MAYBE THE THUNDERBOLT WOULD FRICKING DIE. (Which it finally did.)

Mylassta eventually took the Enforcer's head off.

Summer shot at the undamaged Griffon to headcap it and CT'd it instead.

Of course.

Alarhan at LAST managed to headcap the Quickdraw.

That was an extremely tedious mission.

Lynessa took an ++LRM 15, plus a couple of parts to finish a Blackjack and Griffin, and a couple of part from the other mechs, since she KNEW that the random would screw her (and she was right, out of the random salvage she got only a single mech part out of 21).

Next mission was a 3.5 skull battle against the pirates (and a 6/27 salvage like the last one - MAYBE they could actually get some gear out of it, even).

The mechs remained the same, but Shelat took the Decapitator, Velina the Fair Marauder, Vey the Bull Shark and Pseekie the Annihilator.

Big lance - a Stalker in sight, plus a 65, 70 and 75-tonner behind it.

The 65-tonner walked into sight - a Catapult - and Velina took a shot.

That was more like it.

The other mechs were a Grasshopper and an Orion 1V.

Pseekie took a normal shot at the Stalker and...

DEFINITELY more like it!

Shelat and Velina took the Grasshopper out with a headshot between them.

The lance held fire for a moment, manoeuvring, so Velina could take one more aimed shot...

Four mechs down, all by headshots.

THAT was much better!

For salvage, Lynessa picked a ++LRM 15 and a ++Gyro, three parts of the Stalker (they didn't see those very often) and one part of Grasshopper - and luck was with them, for while the only got one more mech part again, it was another Grasshopper part, which allowed them to finish it.

That made up a bit for the previous mission...

(And good job it autosaves after the mission, since I hit "scrap," not "storage" before it registered...(

Pseekie upped her guts to 7.

Next, another Martian battle against the pirates, but only 3-skull this time.

Same load-out; the next couple of missions would require a change, but while the iron was hot...

Reinforcements were expected this time.

The first enemies they spotted were a Wolverine and a Cicada (3C). A second Cicada (2A) and a Quickdraw.

The Wolverine was not headcapped, but knocked down and destroyed.

The Quickdraw managed to miss with almost all its weapons, except one of the two SRMs, which hit Velina in the head.

(RNG in a mood today...)

Reinforcements were now coming in...

Alarhan's Thumper destroyed one of the Cicada's outright, the blast just stopping short of a grinning Shelat, having run up to punch the other Cicada and lure them in. Targeting so the blast hit the enemy rear armour was definitely working nicely...

A second punch - this time from the rear - polished off the other Cicada.

Velina headcapped the Quickdraw.

The first of the reinforcements, a Vulcan ran into view.

A tiresome long-range shot damaged the Decapitator's leg internal structure.

(Hmm, but only by 2 points out of 95. Maybe not worth worrying about repairing before they put it back into the field, if they didn't hit it again. Really, I'd have though they'd have hit the rear torso armour more, but no...)

The lance exchanged long-rang desultory fire. Heat was a bit of a problem at this point, so Pseekie held fire and moved position to drop the Annihilator’s heat (and also compensate for the recoil...)

The third mech was a 1AA Vindicator.

Shelat took a run around the rock they were using as cover and fired a regular shot at the Vulcan, which destroyed it. She spotted the forth mech as it came into view - a Dragon.

Aimed fire from the Bull Shark took out the Quickdraw's head. (The Bull Shark did not like this heat, though, it would have to hold fire next round just to get it back under control...)

Velina scored a headshot kill on the Dragon.

Shelat destroyed the Vindicator's leg (she'd been aiming for the head, but whatever) and Pseekie quickly headcapped it while it was down.

Three parts Dragon (to finish and sell it) and one part of Cicada from the random that finished that too.

Pseekie raised her guts to 8, Velina hers to 9, and Shelat hers to 10.

The next mission was a 3-skull one to destroy a Taurian base.

Given the minor damage to the Decapitator, Lynessa elected to send it into the field (since to repair it, they'd have to stop work on the Highlander or wait even longer). Pseekie swapped to the Fair Marauder. Vey took the Stalker Barrage and Natasha grabbed the Archer this time. Again, this meant that the two mechs without LRMs had pilots with sensor lock for dealing with the inevitable turrets.

The first enemy in sight was a Phoenix Hawk and a 70-tonner that must have been a Cataphract, as it had ECM. The lance continued to skim around the ridges outside of the base - it was another crater facility, like the bar - and get to a better position.

Shelat locked onto the third mech, a Thunderbolt, and they could detect a vehicle a little ways back too.

Having found a nice copse of woods, the lance held positon. the Phoenix Hawk foolishly left ECM cover and Shelat and Pseekie headshotted it between them.

The Thunderbolt followed suit and Pseekie took a shot.

Now the Cataphract was within sensor lock range. Shelat locked it and the two missile mechs let fly. They knocked it down and the next round of salvos CT'd it.

The bad news was the vehicle actually got into sight distance and it turned out to be a Demolisher. Shelat took a hit, but she and Pseekie took no chances and destroyed it with two precise salvos.

Then it was simple a case of methodically moving around to destroy the turrets and then the buildings.

Three parts Thunderbolt (another one to sell), a +++Large laser and a piece of Cataphract would do.

Vey and Natasha both maxed-out their gunnery.

The last mission in the system was a 3-skull convoy ambush - once more in the desert - on a Taurian convoy.

Natasha swapped into the Fair Marauder and Pseekie instead took the Phoenix Coil.

Oh goody. Another one on the canyon road. Well, that was why they always brought the Phoenix Coil...

The enemy lane was in a bad positon, though. With Pseekie dashing up, and the enemy being within Shelat's sensor lock range, Natasha and Vey were able to take out a Bulldog and Manticore immediately.

The enemy lane itself consisted of two Quickdraws, a Shadowhawk and a Griffin.

The lead 70-ton vehicle was moving at an incredible pace. Unfortunately, the one behind it was a Demolisher. Pseekie and Vey's best effort failed to destroy it, but it's LB-X AC mostly missed Pseekie and she was able to rush up and stomp on it. The other mechs ignored her totally to focus on the lance, so she would have free reign IF she could catch the damn thing.

Natasha meanwhile, on the second try, headcapped one of the Quickdraws.

Vey moved forward - and then noticed that Pseekie had JUST gone far enough to spot the lead vehicle - a Galleon - and switched targets to bombard it with LRMs. It didn't die. Pseekie couldn't get close enough to get a shot off, but she could get close enough for Vey to have another try...

Meanwhile, Natasha and Shelat duelled the mechs. Shelat managed to one-hit-kill the Shadowhawk with a punch from behind.

Vey cursed. The Galleon was, in fact, out of range. Sprinting would make it unlikely she could reach it next time, so instead she switched fire to the other Quickdraw.

Pseekie dashed into range of the fleeing Galleon. Its rear around was not, in fact damaged by the LRM salvo, which made it a risky shot at the turret. But if she failed, she was in position to jump up to the escape point. But for once, luck was with her and she destroyed it.

The Quickdraw got its leg blown off and fell over, and died to pilot kill via torso destruction.

That just left finishing off the Griffin.

Salvage was a ++PPC and enough parts to finish 5A Quickdraw and most of another.

Pseekie raised her guts to 9, Shelat her piloting to 8.

That was it for Merlin. The Decapitator was put in for repairs. Further tweaking would wait mid-transit, when that and the Highlander were finished.

Next stop would be Shaunavon, which was the furthest up of the flashpoints - they'd catch the other one on the way back down towards Manthraka. (Also, Shaunavon was a black market, so might as well hit it while the pirates were only furious and not hated, since the other flash point was verses pirates.)

Lynessa had given up on keeping the pirates happy at this point. Digging out of the hole they were at -62! - thanks to the flashpoints as such would take a lot of low-skull mission spam, and frankly, there was not going to be enough time in the 398 days left to be arsing about with that sort of grind.

The work on the Decapitator and Highlander finished, so on to more refits. First off, the Stalker. The two remaining regular LRM 15s were swapped out with ++ versions - the Stalker Barrage now had an eclectic mix, no two being exactly the same properties, but whatever. Sadly, it also appeared that further heat exchangers wouldn't help it. 20% less heat generated still left a bigger rise in heat (36/30) versus the current 45/42.

It seemed as though it was only worth putting a heat exchanger on if the heat generated was 60 or more, else it was less helpful than the heat sinks.

+2 hit defence gyro on the Annihilator; +3 hit defence gyro on the Fair Marauder. (Lynessa could strictly remove two heats sinks, as the FM currently sunk 6 more heat than it generated BUT the FM didn't have heat problems in the bad heat environments (lunar/desert/Martian), so Lynessa felt it was wise to keep those on, just for those situations, where you could guarantee at least one mech could cheerfully fire every round.)

The Highlander currently generated 60/57 heat, so a heat exchanger (-10% heat, replacing two heat sinks in tonnage) would reduce it to... 54/51 and the ++ version (+-20%, for 4 heat sinks) to 48/45 and both to 39/43. Well, no point doing that, then, clearly it needed to be HIGHER than 60 heat for heat exchangers to be worth it. So, Lynessa just replaced one LRM 15 for the +LRM 15, and added the -10 stabilisation damage gyro (formerly on the Fair Marauder) and a ++cockpit mod, because she might as well.

Lynessa looked at the Laser Knight. Hmm... No, she'd been wrong. Heat exchangers didn't stack - at least not directly. The Laser Knight currently had a -20% and three -10% heat exchangers, which reduced 90 heat to 52.

Putting two -20% and one -10% reduced the heat to... 51. Hmm. After some experimentation, it appeared that the percentage reduction was multiplicative (and at the end, rounded down). Lynessa found that she could reduce the excess heat by 1, by either using two -20% and a -10% (instead of one -20% and three -10%) - 48/51. She found in addition that simply swapping one -10% for two heat sinks would mean the same increase in heat (from 48/52 to 54/58). Hmm. Okay, assume a 25% reduction in heat sink capacity... That only made a difference between the best (48=>36/51 and worst (54=>40.5/58) of +15 to +17.5 heat per round; and roughly +20 to +23 heat per round in the 35% reduction worst-case lunar environment. And in any environment that sunk MORE heat (jungle, starting at +10%) then sinkage exceeded generation regardless. And Lynessa only fielded the Laser Knight in cold environments anyway. In theory, then, it was possible to, say, put a pair of MGs (including the ++MG which was 0 tonnage) on with both -20% heat exchangers and add a heat sink, and the Laser Knight would only generate a couple of heat per round in the conditions Lynessa used it.

The problem was, these gains were all so minor, it wasn't really worth bothering with. And nothing the lance had really generated massive amounts of heat, aside from the Decapitator (no heat sinks to swap out) and the Bull Shark (only doubles to switch out - technically swapping two doubles for a heat exchanger would reduce the Bull Shark's overheat from 54 to 52 - still not enough to be significant, as it wasn't a salvo's worth or anything.)

So, the Atlas. The +LB-X 20 did the same damage and slightly more stability damage than the ++AC/20 (though it obviously scattered it more) and was a ton less. (Though the Atlas would have to be refitted with LB-X 20 ammo when Lynessa bought some, as she apparently did not have any LB-X 20 ammo (there hadn't been any on Merlin to buy). So, Lynessa had the LB-X AC replace the AC/20. She replaced one small laser with the ++MG and the half-ton of ammo (in the arm, out of the way) and upgraded the other small laser to a +++version. Juggling two jump jets from CT to legs, she also was able to put a +1 melee hit gyro in, and the last ton went on a +40 melee stability damage mod. (She could have spent that on armour, really, but elected to go for offense, the Atlas was pretty heavily armoured already).

Lynessa found Zuranna getting a bit too involved with "Mercenaries" the game and suggested she spend a little time in the training pods instead...

Payday...

And as I wrestly with the RNG on contracts, we shall leave it there for today!

And on what was the last try before I shut down for the night, I got four Davion missions, all battles, one each verses the pirates/Taurians/Kuritans/Capellans. That'll do nicely, ta!