Early Career (147 days) Christmas

[mjbroekman]

So, I ran into a bit of a setback early in my career game. Went out for a "simple" 1.5 skull battle in the desert with my starting lance and ran into a fully armored medium lance (2 Wolverines, 1 Treb, 1 Vindi) that decimated me. 1 Pilot killed, 4 mechs in the repair bay for extended periods of time.

To "make the best of a bad situation", I travelled for 22 days across 4 systems to nice little backwater and ended up being able to field a lance of refit lights and recoup a bit of my losses.

Now I'm on my way "back" and decided to stop off at this nice little 1.5 skull system called Rockwellawan. What do I find waiting for me in the contracts?

THREE Assassination contracts... 1 skull, 1.5 skull, 1.5 skull.

The 1 skull target was a Wolverine...giving me a second piece for it.
One of the 1.5 skull targets was a fully armored Orion (w/ 2 lights and 2 Wolverines as support)


Yeesh, this career is driving me batty.

 

[samz812]

dont be afraid to use the withdraw feature to cut your losses, sure the faction that hired you wont be to pleased but when i ran into a firestarter, wolverine and then found out i had a Jagermech A waaaay out of range of me on a hill that took out half of my jenner and injured the pilot after a very luck LRM salvo and another one of my mechs already taking structure damage from another trebuchet coming from the other side of the field i knew i couldnt stay due to very bad positioning from myself, and enemies on both sides of me after the reinforcements came in,

if i had stayed i knew i would have more piltos in the med bay and be losing alot more C-bills worth of mech repair time and weapon systems.
sometimes you just have to know when to fold them.

 

[mjbroekman]

I tend to avoid the Withdraw feature unless it's absolutely clear I'm going to lose. I'd almost rather fail on the battlefield by ejecting pilots in some cases. The fight that sent me packing to the hinterlands was one I honestly thought I could handle, but that AC5 on the Wolverine 6R and the LL on the 6K both hit the CT of the same mech and I had to eject. Having the four mechs gave me a decent amount of manueverability that gave me an edge. And after ejecting the second pilot, I just became stubborn.

-=-=-=-=-=- The Orion Fight -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I managed to take out 1 Wolverine and 1 Locust pretty easily, but then the Orion got in range and started hammering my team. My Firestarter got the brunt of it and died to gut punch from the remaining Wolverine. But then I took out the Spider and that Wolverine. At some point, the Orion started to turtle without running away. I suspect it ran out of ammo for one or more of its weapons. But that gave me the chance I needed and I killed it 3 pips short of it's evac zone.

Still... parts galore. Completed a Wolverine 6K, got my first heavy part.

These 1.5 skull missions are, honestly, closer to 2 skull or 2.5 skull. I may need to have a talk with Darius about the intel he's getting for these contracts.

 

[Jade_Rook]

As a mercenary, any mission where the losses sustained exceed the contract payout is a failure, even if all (other) mission objectives are accomplished. Of course, reputation and honor also affect the choice to withdraw.

Priority one is living to get paid.
Priority two is getting paid.
Customer satisfaction is somewhere around priority three or four.
-paraphrased from Schlock Mercenary

Maxim One: Pillage, then burn.

 

[Donvale]

It took me 120 days to get my second medium with some pretty tough career mode settings selected (not total nightmare because 8 part mechs is just way to grindy).
But yeah I have had to withdraw once so far, better part of valour I say!
Sometimes it just obvious things are going to go badly, especially when your way out gunned and their armour still has that showroom shine!
It's interesting though, always check their armour state prior to withdrawing, I have had heavies come in with seemingly just rust holding them together, they were basically free mech parts they were so easy to kill.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

My worst experience was doing a 2 skull base assault (which are generally easier) with my only new mech being a second Panther I've used to put together a PPC Support team. I was sitting one part short of a SHD-2D and was so excited to see one in the OpFor, but it was supported by a Locust, Wolverine, Quickdraw and base turrets.

So I setup to play it proper guerilla warfare, hitting and running and searching for opportunities to sneak attack and relying on steady fire from the Panthers (supported by generous use of Sensor Lock) to whittle away at the OpFor with a shot at one of the best mediums in the game taunting me just there on the sidelines, Unfortunately the AI managed to finally sneak into a position to force me to make an end run with my Jenner around the base end to avoid being pinned, but I'm not too bothered because I can alpha the turrets dead in one shot.

What I can't do *anything* about is the lance of fully armoured Mediums that immediately spawned right next to my Jenner when I got too close to the base. Luckily I'd jumped into position so I was still in a position to hit withdraw before the lance tore my poor Jenner to shreds, but that was easily the biggest nope of my first career run.

 

[D-Day]

I lost a bucket load of Rep with Canopus last night by withdrawing. Was getting absolutely hammered by indirect fire from two turrets that were set up in depth to my assault line. A real shame as I had the OpFor advancing towards me through an extensive rubble field and it was a golden opportunity to grab a medium part or 2.
Is it "cheaper" Rep-wise, to punch out if you know you're shipping out of system for the next mission? I very rarely do either so I've not really thought about it...

 

[mjbroekman]

Not really sure about the rep-cost for withdrawing vs good faith failure. An interesting question though.

 

[Donvale]

So my second medium that took 120 days to get lasted 40 days before taking an AC20 to the chest..,
Ironman mode for the pain!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Not really sure about the rep-cost for withdrawing vs good faith failure. An interesting question though.

From my experience last night, there is no Rep Cost from a Good Faith failure. Heck, I failed an assassination mission last night (the target escaped), & still got a 75,000 C-bill payout & 1 piece of salvage....no rep loss.