Once again, seeing things for the first time

[Curtis Cook]

I'm closing in on 1800 hours played, and for (I think) the third time I'm posting that I've just seen something for the first time… but this time it might be three somethings.

On a desert planet I took on one of those 'rescue the secret information from one location and the secret agents from another' missions. I always enjoy those, but this one had three twists:
1) It was on a badlands map I'd never seen before — sort of in a bowl with exits at 4, 6, 8 and 12 o'clock. I came on at 6 and the evac point was a long way down 12.
2) The two objective locations were right next to each other. How close? Close enough to walk (speed 4/6) from one to the other in one turn. Close enough that I was able to bag both objectives the same turn. I've never done that before.
3) The OpFor behavior was… interesting. Their starting setup had 5 mechs, which I don't remember seeing before, three of them Orion 1-Ks. On turn 3 the fifth mech (Jagermech) showed up… from my exit road. (Having to exit through opposition is annoyingly routine, but having the OpFor apparently set up in my evac zone is pretty unusual.) The last two opposition mechs sort of made an appearance on turn 5, in that they became red silhouettes that lobbed LRMs at me, but as soon as they appeared the Jagermech retreated out of sight! And when the Jagermech returned on turn 6, the two flankers retreated. After I killed the Jagermech and started toward the evac point, the two remaining OpFor pulled back permanently… and vanished! I only remember that happening twice before, years ago.

On the whole a very interesting little adventure that I'll be telling the guys in my gaming group about.

 

[Curtis Cook]

I've just had a couple of things happen that hadn't in years.

1) I had pilots get injured in three consecutive missions. The second was a replacement for the first, and the third was the replacement for the second. Note that all of my pilots are now Elite or better. The last time this happened all the pilots were running the same mech and all leading the lance (that time I think it was four injuries in five missions), but this time they were in three different mechs and in two different positions in the lance — two leaders and one tail-end charlie.

2) On consecutive planets I had characters die, which was completely unrelated to thing 1 above. I had gone over 3300 days in that campaign without losing anybody, then one went down. A hundred+ days later I lost the second, in a way I'd never seen before: Apparently she was hit twice in the head by the same mech in the same volley. I didn't even notice the first hit, but suddenly her cockpit went black and she 'ghosted'. The most powerful weapon the guy shooting at her had was an AC-10, and that can't kill in one shot. It kind of put me into shock.

On the next planet I had another mission I'd never seen before — intercept a convoy in a city. I had a Highlander leading my lance down a boulevard, and we were picking off vehicles as they rounded a corner at the end of the street. The Highlander did a maximum jump, had a gyro that gave a 3 modifier to hit me, and the pilot had a +1 hit defense. Around the corner came an Atlas. I had just enough time to think 'He has an Atlas; I have an Atlas II (at the rear of the lance); no problem," when he takes a shot at range 7+ and blows the Highlander's head off with his AC-20.

I've been told that having a + cockpit reduces the chance of death from head hits, but you can't prove it by me. Both of the pilots recently lost had Health 8 or 9 and a +3 cockpit. I received no notice that there was even a chance of them surviving.

Now I are sad. *snif*

 

[MarkDey]

Wow! My condolences - sounds like your company has had a rough year. Plenty of room for promotions though.

I remember a convoy interception in a city. The reinforcements dropped in behind me and I was glad to make it out with only one Mech lost.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Yup, that was the one. It was weird from the start, with the convoy moving away from the zone I was supposed to be denying instead of toward it. Then the final convoy vehicle and final escort just locked into place in the extreme farthest corner of the board from where I entered (they started to move once I got eyes on them). The ones in front of them moved in convoy/escort pairs staggered a full move or more apart, so the whole thing took forever.

Meanwhile, two Catapults, an Archer and some 60 ton thing I never got eyes on dropped behind me and relentlessly pummeled me with LRMs. The only thing that went right was that when I dropped the last pair of the original convoy and my evacuation zone appeared, instead of it being on the far side of the convoy reinforcements as usual… I was already standing in it! One mech was already 'home free' and the other two survivors got into position in one turn.

But yeah, that was a bit scary. Normally indirect-fire LRMs don't bother me, but these guys ripped up an Atlas II and a Star League Highlander (in addition to the 733P Highlander the convoy Atlas took out) without me ever getting a shot off at them. This was only the first or second time I bailed from a convoy mission without sticking around to clean up the reinforcements. Brrr! "Who ARE these guys?" (Line from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid".)

 

[Curtis Cook]

…and it just got worse.

On the next planet (very next mission) I had another new-to-me mission — yet another convoy raid, this time on a Martian moon. The convoy vehicles all went down in two turns, but the escorts put up a good fight, and as soon as the second convoy vehicle exploded I got the announcement of reinforcements. Fortunately, these guys took some time to walk to the fight, and they didn't become observed until the last escort dropped. A Victor and a Battlemaster, both standard models. And only two? I'm not worried. First shot from the Victor and BLAM!!! There went the (again +3) cockpit on the Star League Highlander. I guess the 'good part' this time was that the shock is becoming less. And when today's victim's curriculum vitae, I see that he's enormously unlucky. Yes, yes he was. He also doesn't like to stay with one company very long, so I suppose he was relieved to see it coming.

And the final mission on that planet just added insult to injury. After the first (convoy) mission, I had no more special cockpits of any description (no Comm Systems, no Long Range Sensors) to use as replacements… then a +3 popped up as potential salvage after the second mission! (another 'rescue the agents and their information, but one I'd seen some time ago) Things are looking up! Then on the final mission (a raid the convoy in the arctic I've fought a few times) the new pilot in the Star League Highlander gets hit in the head. Three times. Well, it sure was a good thing I ran across that +3 cockpit, huh? Then convoy reinforcements trigger in AFTER the entire convoy was destroyed, but while there was still one escort alive. Despite my best efforts to take out the mechs that did the most shock first, my tail-end charlie gets knocked down. He's running a communications set. Eight days in the infirmary for concussion protocols.

The universe really does laugh at your (well, my) plans. After the Victor did his thing in the first mission I decided that any mech carrying an AC-20 would be elevated to priority one status. So the first escort to appear in mission three is a Victor. Off with his head! And the second escort was… a Victor. Can someone rid me of this foul priest? And the third escort was… a Victor. Am I on Candid Camera? And then the last vehicle in the convoy turned out to be a stock Devastator, but by that time I was just SO over it. The worst part was that I should've been able to take stock Victors down in three volleys, but these guys took 4, 5 and 5 (and in each case the left arm came off before the right), so I had to suffer through an extra turn of attacks by the convoy vehicles. And I somehow managed to jump the Star League Highlander just outside a forest instead of just inside, so he got beaten up really badly for no good reason.

Oh, yeah. And I learned something: If the star map says you have 38 days to get to a priority mission before it disappears, don't take 38 days to get there. Because it disappears on day 38 whether you arrive that day or not. That information should be in a sticky somewhere. Like on this site. Oy vey!

 

[Ken-Sw]

" First shot from the Victor and BLAM!!! There went the (again +3) cockpit "
Actually the cockpit mod does nothing in this situation - You only have so much armor and structure on the cockpit and the ac20 will take it out if you are not braced in cover. The cockpit mod only prevents pilot injuries from a cockpit injury IF the cockpit survives. If you set lethality off during game setup there is a SMALL chance of pilot survivability The Cockpit mod has no effect on this.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Thank you, Ken-Sw.

The game engine is just messing with me now, demonstrating my folly. In the next three missions I was inundated with AC-20s. First, out of eight mechs there were four Victors, some 90 ton variant with an AC-20 and a King Crab. Next was a convoy ambush in which the escorts were four Victors… and they were escorting 4 stock Devastators (at least that time it awarded 1100 experience, which is happening more frequently now). The third mission was back to four Victors and an Atlas (and an Annihilator, but who cares?) out of eight.

With no deaths or injuries inflicted, I guess the game engine decided it had proven its point and went back to more reasonable force mixes.

Oh, and of those dozen Victors, only two of them lost their ACs before the mech bit the dust. Note that the AI was very good about denying me shots at the mechs' gun-sides, but almost every shot was from straight ahead, and the 'random' distribution of the arm and side torso hits slanted radically toward their off-hands. And I was wrong about 'should be able to take a Victor out in three volleys'; with average luck and no cover it should take me four, though that should include a substantial margin of safety.

 

[Curtis Cook]

And today for the first time I had five pilots in the infirmary simultaneously — fortunately all for 7-8 day concussion protocols.

 

[Hobbes__]

Plenty of room for promotions though.

"Career advancement opportunities"

 

[Shark7]

My own sad story: I lose Dekker within 3 missions every time I use him. Almost always to a clean mech decapitation.

One of the more memorable times was a PPC to the head from across the map on a half-skull mission while he had 4 evasion pips. That is probably the equivalent of a 1 in a million shot. No other damage to the mech, just the decapitation.

It finally got to the point that my first action is to just fire Dekker so I can save on repair costs.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Many posters here have their own Dekker stories, but I do not. I've only lost Dekker once, in the first campaign I played, but even then he made it to day 124, though he was the first to die (of about ten in under 1600 days). For me, Dekker tends to get injured less frequently than most pilots, so in the fanfic I started I made him a 'lucky' pilot that several others are jealous of.

I just checked The Wall (which is a GREAT feature of the game), and in that first campaign he was only in two missions, taking multiple hits in both missions (though finishing with 4 mech and 2 'other' kills), and the reason it took him to day 124 to die was because he spent so much time in the sick bay after his first mission, so… maybe I do have a Dekker story after all.

Thanks for contributing to the thread.

 

[Shark7]

In my case, Dekker rarely gets injured...he never survives long enough to get injuries.

 

[Spartakus]

My very first campaign had Decker leading the kill board:

So for the final mission I decided to reward him with delivering the final blow to the end boss - while piloting an UrbanMech.

 

[Curtis Cook]

NICE graphics!

 

[Spartakus]

Got more. I made some extensive notes for this first campaign.

 

[Curtis Cook]

I understand the first two graphs; what's the scale on the third? Number of days to complete the repair/recover from the injuries?

 

[Spartakus]

I understand the first two graphs; what's the scale on the third? Number of days to complete the repair/recover from the injuries?

Correct. The X axis is the mission number (took me 55 missions)
You can spot the point where I managed to aquire cockpit mods to reduce injuries.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Correct. The X axis is the mission number (took me 55 missions)
You can spot the point where I managed to aquire cockpit mods to reduce injuries.

Cool!

 

[Shark7]

I finally downloaded a mod to reduce head hits because there were just too many of them in the base game. And it wasn't just me being on the receiving end, I was also rolling to many head hits against the AI.

TT head hits/injuries are more rare because of the sequence you have to roll to get them. Of course that also makes it so very, very satisfying when you manage to decapitate an Atlas with an Urbie's small laser in TT.

 

[Curtis Cook]

I've recently seen a couple more maps for the first time. The first was a desert base. The mission was to travel to the base , pick up something and continue to the pickup point (recovery mission). It was a long and winding road, and I expected to get ambushed any minute. The opposition didn't appear until turn ten or later. I've never seen so much forest on a desert map.

The other was a megacity. It was an attack/defense mission, and while the area around the base that needed to be destroyed to cut off the flow of attackers looked extremely familiar (as in I'd already destroyed that base three times on that planet alone), the area around the base I was defending and what lay between the bases was — again — covered with the most forest I've ever seen in a megacity; it was almost like fighting in Central Park.

Other recent oddities, all in megacities, were: The one where I was supposed to knock down three buildings out of five in a base, and the OpFor took out two of them for me; the one where the OpFor had a lance each defending two bases and the more distant lance had two Archers… and they never fired indirectly on me during their approach march; and the one where after I took out an Orion the terrain around the destroyed mech looked like an explosion crater. When I later moved through it (it was green like lawn, but the dots inside it were red) a terrain I'd never seen before was revealed: It was a Coolant Pool. The effect was -25 to heat if you stopped in it and -15 to heat if you passed through.

"You never know what you're going to see when you show up at the ballpark."