Let's Play: Battletech via MegaMek (G2)

[$iljanus]

[] Disengage, leave the salvage, Zephyr's crew fends for itself
[X] Keep fighting, rout the hostiles

Situation seems good enough to keep going for a least a little while longer. If things start to go south we can bug out then.

Agreed.

Yeah, and much better for morale to at least attempt to rescue the crew.

[El Guapo]

We definitely don't want them there when the nukes hit, at least.

[NickAragua]

Vote Results:

Spoiler:

Keep the fight going - unanimous

Round 9:

Spoiler:

"Delta-Sweep, what's your status?" Leraje asks, moving his Black Knight east towards the main body of the enemy force, letting the heat sinks do their work after the workout they got from the large lasers and PPC being fired. A brief glance to the north shows Xwraith and the Catapult exchanging fire with a Pike support vehicle and a Wyvern, LRMs, autocannon rounds and an extended-range laser blast going back and forth. The Pike takes a few LRM hits but everything else whiffs.

"Engaging light mechs, still."

"Can you, uh, disengage and high-tail it over here?"

"We can try, but we're a few minutes away."

"Right." Leraje responds, closing the channel.

Round 10:

Spoiler:

Xwraith is the first to get pincered - as our mechwarrior continues engaging the Pike, scoring hits with the extended-range laser and LRMs to blow treads off, a Griffin jumps up a cliff to the west and opens up on our Thunderbolt with its PPC and LRM rack. Luckily, both shots go wide.

Our Catapult engages a Firestarter in a small mountain lake, the two mechs exchanging laser and machine gun fire. Our Catapult avoids an underwater kick from the Firestarter, raising a leg to block it just in time, and the lighter mech winds up having to take a knee. Not the best position to be in.

Round 11:

Spoiler:

Xwraith is forced out of the comfortable camping spot by the Griffin walking up right behind his mech. Firing the Thunderbolt's short-range weapons scores some armor damage and disrupts the Griffin's aim long enough that it misses with its PPC.

Our Catapult reports that its LRM ammo bins are dry.

Round 12:

Spoiler:

Leraje finally brings the Black Knight into range of the crowd of enemy Mechs to the east, opening up with large lasers and the PPC on a Wyvern - a single laser hits, removing most of the armor from the Wyvern's right arm. Our Catapult jumps in, engaging the Firestarter with its lasers and removing a healthy amount of armor, but the return fire from the other mechs inflicts some damage as well, while Xwraith continues dueling the Griffin, taking off more armor than losing. The Catapult delivers a strong kick to the front of the Javelin - the mech raises its right arm to block, but the limb is simply shattered, the kick following through to the right torso, knocking out a pair of heat sinks and the SRM launcher there.

Round 13:

Spoiler:

A Packrat emerges from behind a rock to fire its SRMs at Leraje's Black Knight, but is taken apart by our mech's lasers.

Xwraith, meanwhile, continues pounding the Griffin, the Thunderbolt's superior firepower telling on the 55-ton mech as it drops to a knee after losing a considerable amount of armor. Our Thunderbolt does take a PPC to the right torso, but armor holds.

Round 14:

Spoiler:

Xwraith's target gets up, but the reduced mobility lets our mechwarrior carve its right side armor up with lasers, frying the right shoulder joint - the PPC arm makes an alarming creaking sound as it moves, and although the Griffin blasts another chunk of armor off our Thunderbolt with said PPC, its effectiveness is greatly reduced. And winding up flat on the ground face down probably doesn't help, either.

Round 15:

Spoiler:

The lighter mechs scatter as Leraje's Black Knight makes its presence known, although an SRM Carrier in the back can't move quite as quickly and is sliced in half by the clan-spec large lasers.

The Griffin loses its left torso an arm to sustained fire from Xwraith's Thunderbolt.

Our Rifleman stays still, serving as bait for a Firestarter - the two mechs exchange ineffectual fire, half of it going wide, half of it hitting the rocks in between the two, then our Catapult jumps around the back of the 35-tonner and breaks its right leg.

Round 16:

Spoiler:

Leraje is still unable to land any shots on the lighter mechs hiding in the canyons below the Catapult and Rifleman, but gets in a good PPC blast on a Vedette, melting its treads. With some amusement, our mechwarrior watches our Catapult hop down into a canyon where it blasts the right arm off a Wasp (a fancy upgraded variant with a pulse laser in said right arm), while our Rifleman blows the right arm off the approaching Wyvern, wrecking the limb with rounds from the twin LBX autocannons.

At this point, the hostiles begin pulling back, leaving their Firestarter buddy behind on the ground.

"Cease fire, lance. Good work." Leraje transmits. "Salvage teams, get in here and recover our equipment."

Other than our hovertank, we also scoop up the Galleon, aiming to strip ferro-fibrous armor and the pulse laser off of it, and the Firestarter, because intact mech cockpits are expensive and tend to get wrecked when mechwarriors punch out (unless they're in a Wolfhound or Hatchetman, what with that full head ejection system).

Our units walk back to base and we get to work fixing the mostly minor damage. We do have to scrap one of our Dervishes for parts, but we got a Quickdraw and a Phoenix Hawk 3S in salvage, so overall we came out ahead. We can also trade one of our standard Zephyrs for a royal one that we captured. El Guapo's heavy lance is a little beat up, with the Marauder having a damaged arm actuator while the Hunchback is missing an arm, not to mention two mechwarrior injuries. Other than that and a few lost hovertanks, we're in good shape.

Leraje and Xwraith both report being pretty impressed with the Zephyr and Chaparral's performance this time around, those Arrow IVs really did a number on the bad guys. We'll be seeing more of that stuff in action for sure, maybe try to bring in more TAG units for a little redundancy.

We've salvaged a Crusader CRD-4K - twin LRM/10s, twin SRM/6s, twin medium pulse lasers. With 14 heat sinks, it can't really handle firing all those guns at once and the only fancy toys it has are the pulse lasers, so unless somebody's burning to drive it, we'll pull the pulse lasers off then keep the rest around for spare parts for our other 65-tonners.

With the artillery base still intact, we recommend to our employer that they focus their magnetic anomaly scanning and other excavation-related activities elsewhere for the time being. Meanwhile, a couple of our mechwarriors come up with the idea of, instead of doing all the scanning work ourselves, collaborating with the other parties on world.

"Collaborating?" El Guapo asks.

"Well, they'll be doing the collaborating." Moley says with a smirk. "We'll be taking the data they've gathered and analyzed. Look - " our mechwarrior points to several places on the map. "They've got these sensor Pegasus hovertanks and other units bristling with antennae and radio dishes constantly zipping back and forth to these two places."

"You don't think they're just re-fueling depots?"

"Well." our employers' liaison asks. "Why don't we take some mechs and capture one and ask?"

El Guapo humphs. It might not be a bad idea. And we do need to get a leg up on this surveying stuff.

[] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

[Zenn7]

[X] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

Unless we really think we can take the artillery out this time (that didn't go so well last time).

[El Guapo]

[] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[X] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

Revenge!

[Leraje]

[X] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

Unless we really think we can take the artillery out this time (that didn't go so well last time).

Unless we have good intel on the bases - agreed.

[gbasden]

[X] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

Unless we really think we can take the artillery out this time (that didn't go so well last time).

Unless we have good intel on the bases - agreed.

Agreed as well.

[El Guapo]

Listen, I've got a great plan for the artillery base, and it definitely doesn't violate the Ares Convention.

[Isgrimnur]

Artillery barrels can not be repurposed as dirigible docking masts.

[El Guapo]

Look, I've read through the Ares Convention, and it says nothing about dirigible-based nuclear weapons.

[$iljanus]

[X] Send one of our mech lances to capture one of the enemy units skittering around like ants.
[] We don't need confirmation, just send mechs to seize these facilities.
[] Hold up, one of those facilities, and the capture target, are in range of the artillery base. Better try to take it out again, first.
[] Forget it, focus on areas away from the artillery base for now.

Unless we really think we can take the artillery out this time (that didn't go so well last time).

Unless we have good intel on the bases - agreed.

Agreed as well.

I’m all for a snatch and grab operation. And break out the good booze to help loosen some tongues.

[NickAragua]

Vote Results:

Spoiler:

Send a mech lance to capture one of the enemy units - almost unanimous
Focus on artillery base for now - ||

"We'll take the artillery base if we need to." Zenn7 repeats, overriding El Guapo's objections. "Let's see if the cost is even worth the effort first."

Gamma-Probe lance gets the capture job. Coming along is a Scorpion. Thankfully, not the light tank - the quad mech. The target is a tiny group of hovertanks and a pair of light wheeled tanks - we drop in on them as they visit some kind of observation post. Since we are in range of the hostile artillery, we've got our Chaparrals along, loaded with a mix of regular Arrow IVs for counter-battery fire and homing ones, plus a TAG Scimitar along for the ride.

Round 1:

Spoiler:

"Ok, careful with those harassers." Akalon states as we surround the small group and move in.

Bass jumps north, his Phoenix Hawk's AMS system whining as one of said Harassers opens up with SRMs, which are promptly knocked down by the rapid fire automatic system. Our mechwarrior tries blasting the little vehicle with a pulse laser, which slices it in half. "Whoops." our mechwarrior intones, before turning his attention to a nearby platoon of motorized infantry blasting away at our other Phoenix Hawk with small arms, frying a couple of their light APCs with the mech's other pulse laser.

Akalon doesn't have too much more luck with his target, accidentally melting it to slag with a single laser blast.

"Ugh. Hope there's enough left of those stupid things to piece together what we need."

Round 2:

Spoiler:

A group of rifle infantry huddles inside a building as it's hammered by our homing Arrow IVs and manages to use their rifles to disable our Scimitar as it unloads SRMs into the building.

To the north, Bass uses the Phoenix Hawk's machine gun and pulse laser to mow down a group of individuals trying to set up their crew-served ultra autocannon 5, while the other Phoenix Hawk knocks the turret off the top of a Galleon tank.

AWS has a little trouble chasing down a Drillson hovertank, as the vehicle unloads a prodigious amount of SRMs, forcing our mechwarrior to juke and avoid, rather than concentrate on aiming.

Round 3:

Spoiler:

As AWS and Akalon criss-cross lasers and destroy a Darter scout car, Bass mows down the infantry that just disabled our Scimitar. The Drillson simply turns around and zips off, AWS giving it one last kick to the rear compartment to send it on its way as the remaining turret powers down and the other infantry platoon scatters.

A few loose artillery rounds land near our position but with nobody to report our location and our artillery unloading a little counterbattery fire, that ceases as well.

"Really, guys?" The liaison asks, surveying the wreckage. "You couldn't dial it down a notch?"

"You're one to talk." Bass smirks. "Mr. Four Legs with a PPC."

"Hey, I've got an SRM launcher, too." the liaison retorts.

"Yeah, I'm sure it'll be just as good at not blowing apart those little pieces of tissue paper." Our mechwarrior sighs. "Stupid plan anyway." he mumbles with the comms off.

Unfortunately, there's not enough left of the Harassers for us to figure out what they were doing. That just leaves the two rally points we've identified. One of them is in range of the artillery base, so we'll probably want to take that out if we want to capture the rally point. The other is not. Seems pretty straightforward, but we will need to operate in that area at some point eventually. Or not, who knows.

[] Capture the rally point that's not in range of artillery
[] Try to take out the artillery base
[] Hard Mode: Capture the rally point that's in range of artillery without taking the artillery base out
[] Forget these recon craft rally points, focus on what we're doing.

[Leraje]

[x] Capture the rally point that's not in range of artillery
[] Try to take out the artillery base
[] Hard Mode: Capture the rally point that's in range of artillery without taking the artillery base out
[] Forget these recon craft rally points, focus on what we're doing.

Capturing units is definitely not our forte... Let's get the rally point incited as we do need the info. And hopefully not level it to the ground in the process...

[TheMix]

[x] Capture the rally point that's not in range of artillery
[] Try to take out the artillery base
[] Hard Mode: Capture the rally point that's in range of artillery without taking the artillery base out
[] Forget these recon craft rally points, focus on what we're doing.

Capturing units is definitely not our forte... Let's get the rally point incited as we do need the info. And hopefully not level it to the ground in the process...

Agree

[El Guapo]

[] Capture the rally point that's not in range of artillery
[X] Try to take out the artillery base
[] Hard Mode: Capture the rally point that's in range of artillery without taking the artillery base out
[] Forget these recon craft rally points, focus on what we're doing.

[El Guapo]

But the rally point option is also fine I suppose.

[$iljanus]

But the rally point option is also fine I suppose.

Yes we should capture the rally point…with nukes!

[NickAragua]

"See? It's not that hard." One of our techs explains to a more junior member. "First, you have to take the armor off. Twenty five minutes. Disconnect and dismount the heat sinks. Fifty minutes. Disconnect and dismount these actuators over here. Thirty six minutes. Now you can disconnect the hip joint and call the forklift guys over, then go hang out with the engine room guys for the rest of the day."

"Damn, you're a freaking machine! That stuff takes me a whole work day for sure!" The younger tech responds.

"What, are you still disconnecting the individual myomer bundles manually?" The older tech scoffs. "Just fire up the mech in software diagnostics mode mode, then send a disconnect command through the neurohelmet." She smirks, looking up at the Ostsol being taken apart for spare parts. "Just uh, make sure you set the filters correct."

"What if you don't?" The younger tech asks, fiddling with a wrench and looking up at the mech nervously.

"Well, you ever see a jellyfish?"

"What's a jellyfish?"

"You know what, never mind. Anyway, mechwarriors don't really like it when all the myomer bundles in their mechs slide down to the hangar floor. That was a lot of picking up I had to do."

Vote Results:

Spoiler:

Capture the rally point that's not in range of artillery

August 31, 3051
Grid H-8, Southern Continent
Graham IV, Federated Commonwealth

Siljanus briefs his team once more. "Once again. If you can avoid it, keep the structures intact. You too, Hunter-Five."

The liaison, driving one of our Guillotines (the Scorpion developed a couple of mechanical faults) chuckles. "I'm not the one who blew those Harassers up."

"Right. Hunter-six, designate targets for seven. Whatever you can hit, it's just light armor from the looks of it. And watch your step, it's dark.

Round 1:

Spoiler:

"I don't get it." Hunter Three, says, driving his Grasshopper into the air on jump jets then coming down. "Why do three four-barrel SRM launchers instead of two six-barrel SRM launchers? Seems like you'd be wasting a lot of space on fire control stuff."

"Sure, but if you want to manage your ammo supply more granularly, the four-barrels are the way to go." Hunter-Two responds, following behind in his Guillotine.

"It's a fixed weapon emplacement. It's not going to last long enough for that to matter." Hunter-Three counters.

"What did I just say about blowing up the fixed weapon emplacements?" Siljanus cuts in.

This is punctuated by an explosion from within a turret.

"Seriously?" Siljanus asks, so distracted by the explosion that he misses the gauss shot on a Skulker scout tank. The two PPCs hit, but don't breach armor.

"Hey, that wasn't any of us boss, they must have had an ammo feed jam or something!" Hunter Two replies.

Our three jump-capable units to the north, plus the Thunderbolt, engage the light tanks and turrets, absorbing a little light unguided missile fire.

Round 2:

Spoiler:

Our Thunderbolt swings its clan-spec PPC around to the right, zapping a Warrior attack helicopter out of existence, exploding it spectacularly as it zips by, firing its SRMs. Our TAG Scimitar has trouble actually designating targets, so the Arrow IVs keep whiffing.

Round 3:

Spoiler:

Our Guillotine surgically removes a quad laser turret from the top of a building without taking the entire building down, which is a pretty good job given the flimsy nature of these buildings and that the removal was done with an SRM salvo. The rest of its lasers and the Grasshopper's laser array are dedicated to taking down a Scorpion tank that pings SRMs off our Grasshopper's armor.

Our Thunderbolt zaps the Skulker that's been studiously avoiding Siljanus' PPC and gauss fire. "You need a hand with that little tank, boss?"

"Shut it, Hunter-Four." Siljanus retorts with a smirk.

"I can help, too!" The liaison interrupts, squashing a Harasser with his borrowed Guillotine's foot.

Round 4:

Spoiler:

The liaison zaps another Harasser, this time with one of the Guillotine's lasers slicing off the rear part of the armored skirt and letting all the air out. "That's how you disable a light hovertank, guys!"

"Bite me, slaghead." Our Guillotine's mechwarrior responds. "You gonna tell me you missed all those other shots on purpose?"

Our Thunderbolt crushes a Hunter while the Grasshopper goes for a soccer kick on a Saladin, smashing it to bits instead.

"Hate to interrupt the party, but a chopper dropped some infantry on us. A little help here?" our Chapparal reports.

Round 5:

Spoiler:

"Got you covered, seven." Siljanus responds, sending a gauss slug at an infantry squad trying to scale our artillery tank. The slug hits exceptionally well, scattering the squad as they move to avoid an SRM salvo from the Chaparral.

Our mechs in the base continue gently picking turrets off of buildings, with our Guillotine whiffing laser shots against a Galleon tank but landing six SRMs on a turret, taking it out. Our Thunderbolt melts a Vedette's treads with a not-so-quick squirt from the flamer.

Round 6:

Spoiler:

Siljanus briefly watches the flashes of light and explosions from the rally point facility. No screaming on our end over the comms, so our mechwarrior breaks north and tries to swat the Ferret choppers and infantry swarming our artillery piece.

Round 7:

Spoiler:

Another couple of tanks go down with no appreciable damage to our mechs.

Round 8:

Spoiler:

"Cease fire." Siljanus orders, finally frying an annoying little Ferret with a blast from the Mackie's right-arm PPC.

Only two Scorpion tanks and a couple of infantry guys wearing sneak suits (based on the bodies we did recover) get away. The rest of the vehicles and buildings are captured as the remaining SRM turret powers down. Damage to our mechs is minor, with only a few bruises for one mechwarrior. The Chapparal got immobilized by the infantry but they couldn't finish the job, so the damage is repairable in a couple of hours. Our salvage crews get to work hauling this stuff back to our landing zone (our employer will get all the crap, although we're keeping a Galleon to strip armor and a pulse laser off of). More importantly, we've got a trove of survey data for the sector, while Siljanus gets some rhetorical ammo with which to needle Akalon.

A subsequent recon of the other rally point reveals that it's been abandoned. Either they figured out what we were up to, or they were done there as well. However, the good news is that we've got a good read on everything this particular treasure hunt competitor is doing in that sector. We don't know their exact force lineup, but they've got an airstrip with at least a flight of aerospace fighters and a staging area for artillery (a different one) that are defending a dig site.

Our current plan is to launch a simultaneous assault on the two locations so they don't have an opportunity to help each other. That being said, which one do we want to see first?
[] Airstrip
[] Artillery Staging Area

And also, what's our approach? Do we just blow down the relevant buildings and units and leave or do we want to try to capture things more or less intact? The first option isn't necessarily reliant upon fast units, it just means that we won't make much of an effort to preserve whatever infrastructure is present.
[] Hit and run
[] Capture and hold

[TheMix]

Our current plan is to launch a simultaneous assault on the two locations so they don't have an opportunity to help each other. That being said, which one do we want to see first?
[X] Airstrip
[] Artillery Staging Area

And also, what's our approach? Do we just blow down the relevant buildings and units and leave or do we want to try to capture things more or less intact? The first option isn't necessarily reliant upon fast units, it just means that we won't make much of an effort to preserve whatever infrastructure is present.
[X] Hit and run
[] Capture and hold

Airstrip... Um. Because it was first in the list.

If my understanding is correct, we likely have any useful intel, there likely isn't any salvage of note in the locations, and we have our own digs to support. So bothering to hold the locations seems pointless when they aren't strategic. We just want them shut down so they don't bother us, right?

[El Guapo]

Our current plan is to launch a simultaneous assault on the two locations so they don't have an opportunity to help each other. That being said, which one do we want to see first?
[X] Airstrip
[] Artillery Staging Area

And also, what's our approach? Do we just blow down the relevant buildings and units and leave or do we want to try to capture things more or less intact? The first option isn't necessarily reliant upon fast units, it just means that we won't make much of an effort to preserve whatever infrastructure is present.
[X] Hit and run
[] Capture and hold

Airstrip... Um. Because it was first in the list.

If my understanding is correct, we likely have any useful intel, there likely isn't any salvage of note in the locations, and we have our own digs to support. So bothering to hold the locations seems pointless when they aren't strategic. We just want them shut down so they don't bother us, right?

I agree with that. Unless we capture either with minimal damage and it looks like there's something unusually valuable to salvage.

[Leraje]

[x] Airstrip
[] Artillery Staging Area

First on the list, so go in order.

[] Hit and run
[] Capture and hold

[x]Burn and pillage.

[NickAragua]

Vote Results:

Spoiler:

airstrip - unanimous

hit+run (or burn and pillage) - ||||
capture and hold - |

The airstrip is surrounded by some none-too-sturdy structures on flat ground. Perfect for hovertanks, which is why, when El Guapo brings his Heavy Lance in, he also brings the two Falcon hovertanks - the Hooch n' Scooch, and a recent replacement.

The defenders are a doozy though, reinforced lance of six heavy mechs, plus a Griffin and a tank lance. And a random Brutus assault tank equipped with LRMs. In addition to the two Falcons, El Guapo has the Marauder, Isgrimnur has the Thug, Thud just got out of the medbay and has a replacement Hunchback, and we've replaced the lost mech with a Lancelot.

Two aerospace fighters are able to launch, a Hellcat and a Sparrowhawk. The Lancelot's anti-air targeting system should be helpful in dealing with those.

Round 1:

Spoiler:

"Careful that Warhammer." El Guapo notes. "Sensor readings on it are all over the place."

"Yeah, I can tell." Thud says, frowning, as a pair of pulse laser blasts from said Warhammer's arms, where the PPCs are supposed to be, flay armor from the Hunchback. Our mechwarrior, on the plus side, manages to avoid a strafing run from the Hellcat and a significant number of LRMs from a distant turret. Pointing the autocannon skyward, our mechwarrior squeezes out a quick burst, scoring a hit on the fighter's left wing, while the Lancelot whips around and sends two lairs towards the tailpipe. The aircraft bucks but stays in the air.

Round 2:

Spoiler:

Our hovertanks sweep around the north side, hoping to do a pass through the facility and take out a few turrets. The Warhammer lets rip with pulse lasers, immobilizing one, so that plan is already 50% failed. At least it immobilizes the Drillson hovertank as it zips by.

El Guapo concentrates, blasting the customized Warhammer in the left side with the Marauder's PPCs and taking a good chunk of armor off the left leg. With an extra PPC shot from the Lancelot, the 70-ton machine falls over. It looks like whoever upgraded the weapons on it forgot to add extra armor, as it's already looking mighty thin on the left side.

Isgrimnur, meanwhile, picks a laser turret off the top of a building in the southwest corner of the base. It's a quad medium turret, so that's a good amount of firepower gone.

Round 3:

Spoiler:

Whoever's driving the souped-up Warhammer is apparently not a very good pilot, as he fails the basic task of getting a slightly overheated mech up off the ground. This gives Thud the chance to get up close and engage with the Hunchback's weapons, although the heavy mech twitches just at the last second to avoid the AC/20 fire.

Our second Falcon zips around the far side of the base, picking LRM launchers off a turret, while Isgrimnur and the Lancelot engage mechs to the southwest at medium ranges, scoring some armor hits but doing little else.

Round 4:

Spoiler:

Our Falcon comes around for another pass, destroying the triple LRM turret.

Then the action starts - Isgrimnur brings the Thug into melee range of the Crusader, firing some PPCs at the other Warhammer to the southeast to keep it suppressed while SRMs pound and/or fly around the Crusader - although one does land on the dome. Our Lancelot fires with its large lasers and a medium, the armor damage causing the mechwarrior to overbalance and fall over, leaving him wide open for a Thug-administered curb stomp, which Isgrimnur delivers with gusto, taking nearly all the armor off the Crusader's right leg.

El Guapo blasts the other LRM turret, meaning we've now removed a total of sixty LRM tubes from play. A gauss shot from the Marauder disables the downed upgraded Warhammer's left arm, which will make it harder for it to fire without standing up.

Round 5:

Spoiler:

The Hooch n' Scooch swings around the north, disabling the Hetzer the two hovertanks previously missed with a few SRMs to the treads.

"Tsk." El Guapo laments as the gauss rifle shot goes less than a meter to the left of the Warhammer's cockpit, taking off a significant amount of armor but failing to penetrate. Thud's Hunchback takes some hits from LRMs and a strafing run from the Hellcat that's come back, but delivers an AC/20 burst to the custom Warhammer's right leg, removing armor, while avoiding its impressive weapons array.

The Lancelot engages the standard Warhammer to the south, blasting away with just the large lasers to cool off while the enemy mech is unable to bring its weapons to bear effectively, frying the surrounding ground with lasers and machine gun blasts and only hitting our mech with SRMs. Our mech ducks under a PPC swung overhead and delivers a kick to the left leg, bursting a heat sink open.

Isgrimnur chases after the Crusader, his aim disrupted somewhat by the enemy mech's laser getting a little close to the cockpit. This doesn't apply to a kick to the right leg, though as the Crusader's other leg is now as low on armor as the left.

Round 6:

Spoiler:

The Hooch n' Scooch's crew quite underestimates the strength of the bridge they cross over and take a dive. Somehow, the crew compartment remains un-breached, but the hovertank is basically out of action at this point.

"Heavy Four, what are you doing over there? You've got every bad guy in the base on you!" El Guapo transmits to Thud, who takes an armor breach from the souped-up Warhammer as the mechwarrior in there finally recovers and brings his weapons to bear. Our mechwarrior punches a nearby Griffin in the back of the head in response.

Isgrimnur "finishes off" the Crusader he's been engaging - with a destroyed leg thanks to another kick and an unconscious mechwarrior, that mech isn't going anywhere. "Three, hang on. I'm on the way to help with that Warhammer." He transmits to the Lancelot, which is getting lasered a little bit by its Warhammer opponent.

Round 7:

Spoiler:

Thud takes El Guapo's advice and books it to the southeast, putting some buildings between the Hunchback and the hostile mechs.

Isgrimnur moves to help the Lancelot, but it turns out it doesn't need any help - it uses its PPC to blast the nearby laser turret building, finishing off all the turrets, while the large laser wrecks the Warhammer's damaged left leg, putting it down to the ground.

Round 8:

Spoiler:

Our Lancelot moves north, immobilizing the Brutus that's been slinging LRMs our way the whole time, fusing its treas with a couple of laser blasts. El Guapo continues sniping away at the Warhammer, with limited success - a PPC finds its mark, but only takes armor off the right arm.

Thud, meanwhile, absorbs some of said Brutus' LRMs and SRMs, then trips the nearby Grasshopper as it lands, sending the bigger mech to the ground before looking with some concern at the ammo indicator on the AC/20.

Round 9:

Spoiler:

Isgrimnur blasts a Vedette with PPCs, causing the tank to shudder and trundle to a stop.

El Guapo holds still, causing the enemy Warhammer to get a bead on him with one of its pulse lasers and take some armor off the right arm, but this allows our mechwarrior to line up a shot with the gauss rifle and shatter the Warhammer's right leg, dropping it to the ground.

Our Lancelot is strafed by the Hellcat, taking some arm actuator damage, but blasts it with a large laser and a PPC as it passes overhead, the laser slicing off a bit of the right wing while the PPC hits the tailpipe, causing the aerospace fighter to belch out black smoke before corkscrewing into a small lake far to the southwest.

This leaves a heavy mech lance in pretty good shape. Which they demonstrate by blasting away at Isgrimnur's Thug and damaging the upper arm actuator.

El Guapo considers his options for a moment as he throttles the Marauder forward - which are basically to stick around and fight it out or to leave, since the job is done.

We're facing a Flashman and a Crusader, both pristine other than a little ammo usage, along with a Griffin that's taken a headshot and some armor damage, and a Grasshopper that's lost some armor off one of its legs. And a Vedette with a pair of intact SRM tubes (its autocannon appears to have malfunctioned at some point). The Sparrowhawk is circling around for another pass, but all it has is a medium laser and a pair of SRM tubes, so it doesn't matter too much.

El Guapo's Marauder is basically untouched, while the three other mechs have armor breaches. Our two Falcons have been disabled (with the Hooch n' Scooch being underwater). The other hovertank's crew is well on their way to clearing the battlefield, but the Hooch n' Scooch will require some help to get them out. So the main reason to stick around is to recover our hovertanks and a trapped crew. The other reason to stick around is to see if we can recover that "C" variant Warhammer, with its (now one remaining) unexpectedly long-range pulse laser.

If we fight it out, we'll likely have our mechs rally on the undamaged Marauder, using said mech's superior range to put a major dent in any mechs that come our way. But we are going to risk heavy damage to our mechs if we do so.

[] Pull back and retreat, doing our best to preserve our mechs
[] Pull back and engage at maximum range

[TheMix]

Since I don't have an actual butt in a seat for this fight, I'm going to defer to those that do.

[Leraje]

[] Pull back and retreat, doing our best to preserve our mechs
[x] Pull back and engage at maximum range

Once recovered, "Hooch n' Scooch" is to be renamed (and repainted) into "Yellow Submarine"

[Freyland]

Fight for the speedy drunkards!

[$iljanus]

[x] Pull back and engage at maximum range

Sigh, I suppose it’s best to not leave crews underwater. Although, is fighting to possibly snag a Warhammer C really worth the risk or should we just call for a ceasefire to pull out our crew since the job is done?

[Zarathud]

[x] Maximum Effort.

I kid, but I’ve been patched up before and still have some ammo.

[Zenn7]

Fight for the speedy drunkards!

Well said!

[El Guapo]

Is there a plausible way to save the Hooch n' Scooch crew while pulling back? Maybe sending a scuba team? If there is then I'd say pull back since the job is done.

[Freyland]

The scuba team will deploy via blimp, of course.

[El Guapo]

The scuba team will deploy via blimp, of course.

[NickAragua]

Vote Results:

Spoiler:

See if we can bail the crew out - almost unanimous

El Guapo sighs. "One of these days, I'll draw an easy job." Turning on the comms, he orders the lance to pull back and rally on him. Thud reports being unable to do so, but will disengage to the east.

Round 10:

Spoiler:

The other Crusader chases after Isgrimnur's Thug as our mechwarrior hops over a building for cover. Still better than getting shot at by said Crusader AND a Flashman AND a Grasshopper. The Crusader doesn't wind up shooting at all at the end, unable to lock on with its streak SRMs - Isgrimnur figures it's saving the LRMs because it's been long enough that the bins must be nearly dry by now.

Our anti-aircraft fire doesn't deter the strafing Sparrowhawk from pinging a couple of SRMs off the Lancelot's armor, but we do ok otherwise.

Round 11:

Spoiler:

The Crusader makes a "minor" tactical mistake and steps into El Guapo's line of sight, eating two PPC shots and a gauss slug - the PPC blasts gouge out a large chunk of left torso armor while the gauss slug shatters most of the left leg armor, which our Lancelot exploits by melting some internal structure with its own PPC. The Crusader's mechwarrior is unable to keep the mech upright and is grounded.

Round 12:

Spoiler:

The Crusader stumbles to the east into the wreckage of a building where it barely remains upright. El Guapo switches targets, engaging the Grasshopper. Two PPC blasts to the center of mass bring the 70-ton mech to the ground, although the Marauder starts protesting under the heavy heat load.

Round 13:

Spoiler:

The Grasshopper is a 5N model, so it's got some long range firepower in the form of a PPC, which it fires in El Guapo's general direction before our mechwarrior ducks the Marauder down and unloads his own weapons, nearly taking the Grasshopper's head off with a PPC shot while a gauss slug digs through a hole in the right torso made by the other PPC and disables the Grasshopper's main weapon.

Round 14:

Spoiler:

El Guapo nods with admiration as the guy driving the Grasshopper struggles the mech up once more, then squeezes the trigger on all three of the Marauder's main guns. With heat climbing up to the point where the targeting reticle is "swimming" due math errors and the gauss rifle ammo bin reading three shots left, the fight needs to end soon.

The Grasshopper goes down again, its right arm flying off, while the gauss slug flies into the center of mass, dinging the gyro. The 70-ton mech crumples to the ground and doesn't get back up.

The Sparrowhawk comes back for another strafing run, pinging some ordnance off Isgrimnur's armor. Our mechwarrior returns the favor with a PPC blast and some SRMs, with the Lancelot joining in and adding a laser blast to the mix.

Round 15:

Spoiler:

El Guapo and Isgrimnur put the building complex under suppressive PPC fire, El Guapo using one of his last two gauss slugs to pop a Vedette that pokes out a little too much. The Griffin briefly returns fire from inside the base with its PPC but the incoming volume of fire unnerves the mechwarrior and he ducks back down.

Shortly, the three remaining mechs pull back to the southeast. Now the job is *really* done. The crew of the Hooch n' Scooch still has to wait half an hour while our recovery vehicles get there, as our mechs all have armor breaches and can't actually stick their hands in the water, but we get them out. There's some ribbing about 'inadequate flotation cushions and life preservers', but other than needing a refresher course on the structural integrity of rickety wooden bridges, everyone's fine.

"I wonder where that Sparrowhawk is going to land now." Isgrimnur muses idly.

The salvage from this battle is pretty sweet. First of all, we scored four tons of Artemis-capable LRM/10 ammo, and four Artemis fire control systems. Second, we've got ourselves two Warhammers and a Grasshopper, so our 70-ton mechs should be good for spare parts for a while. Third, it looks like the guy in the custom Warhammer was either super rich, super connected or a veteran of fighting against the clans. How can we tell? Well, the tech crews assigned to handle said Warhammer collectively need a change of pants. It's got two large pulse lasers, two extended-range medium lasers, two extended-range small lasers and a streak SRM/6 launcher. All clan-spec. The streak/6 launcher is pretty awesome, although getting ammo for it will be pretty tough. Pretty much everybody is drooling over the pulse lasers and extended-range mediums.

"With salvage like that, why do we even need the Star League stuff?" Thud asks nobody in particular.

The mech itself is in pretty bad shape, missing an arm and a leg, with the cockpit blown out by an ejection, and is actually a standard Warhammer with some extra heat sinks. But we'll definitely have some choices regarding which of our mechs to upgrade.

Moley, meanwhile, considers how to handle the artillery base. Our force is a Thunderbolt 5SE, Hyena's Warhammer 7S, our upgraded BattleAxe and a Blackjack BJ-3. Plenty of long-range firepower with a good amount of short-range firepower to boot. Recon overflights indicate the four artillery pieces are a mix of Arrow IV launchers and standard tube artillery, defended by two tank lances and a reinforced medium mech lance, plus some stationary turrets, including twenty five LRM tubes.

We could bring in some light aerospace fighters loaded with bombs to help "level the playing field", so to speak. With little in the way of local air superiority, the main threat to our units would be the artillery pointing its barrels skyward and letting loose with flak rounds. Also, carpet bombing doesn't tend to leave much to salvage.

Alternately, we could bring in some light armor and hovercraft to help out instead. Less risky to expensive assets, but also less firepower. If we happen to score some salvage, it'll likely be more intact.

[] Bring in aerospace fighters - (probably) quicker resolution, less salvage
[] Bring in additional light armor/hovertanks - (probably) slower resolution, more salvage

[Isgrimnur]

No fuel air explosives available?

[Leraje]

[x] Bring in aerospace fighters - (probably) quicker resolution, less salvage
[] Bring in additional light armor/hovertanks - (probably) slower resolution, more salvage

Bomb 'em! Pieces providing AA fire are not firing at ground units and vice versa.

[El Guapo]

[X] Bring in aerospace fighters - (probably) quicker resolution, less salvage
[] Bring in additional light armor/hovertanks - (probably) slower resolution, more salvage

I feel like I've made my thoughts clear on how to handle the artillery base.

Does the Ares Convention prohibit dropping small asteroids on things?

[NickAragua]

No fuel air explosives available?

Sure there are, that's what reduces the amount of salvage.

[Zenn7]

Unless there is some amazing salvage we hope to get, bomb 'em. Want to make sure we neutralize this place once and for all.

[$iljanus]

Unless there is some amazing salvage we hope to get, bomb 'em. Want to make sure we neutralize this place once and for all.

Sometimes, you must bomb the salvage in order to save it.

Send in the planes!

[TheMix]

Unless there is some amazing salvage we hope to get, bomb 'em. Want to make sure we neutralize this place once and for all.

+1

It didn't sound like the salvage was likely to be that great. And we really need to get rid of this place.

[moleymoleymoley]

Agreed, bomb them back to the stone age (they stop shooting)