The Ongoing Iron-man Adventures of Trojan's Cavaliers

[Marc_Hicks]

Sigh......what the Galaxy Giveth, the Galaxy can also taketh away. Things continued to go swimmingly whilst I was waiting for the Griffin & Shadow-Hawk to be outfitted. Then I took a 2.5 Skull mission to "Settle a Grudge", & took along my Thunderbolt, Griffin, Hatchetman & Wolverine. I really thought I had this one properly covered.

Sadly, just a few turns in, I found myself faced off against both the primary OpFor & reinforcements-all of them 45t or higher, & all with full armour.

I almost thought I could win the day, with 1/3rd of the primary Lance eliminated & a second Mech-a Griffin-already heavily damaged. Then a Trebuchet & Kintaro showed up, & I feared I might be toast.

Buckbeak, my Griffin, seemed to be their primary target.....& I was ready to eject the pilot at the very start of the next round. Sadly, before that could happen, the Griffin got knocked down-& then got cored in the following round, before it had a chance to stand up again. Fortunately the pilot survived, but Buckbeak is no more. When that happened, I decided to bug out whilst the rest of my Mechs were still standing, which cost me a lot of reputation with the Capellans. I personally think they have a hell of nerve being upset with me, given how they under-sold the difficulty of the mission.

Anyway, I decided to travel from New Roland back to Kimi, & see if there was any work I could do to restore my credibility, & to reconsider my options going forward. I definitely think that I need to favour armour over jump capability the next time I get my hands on a Griffin.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

So, with my confidence bruised somewhat, I decided it was time to pull back a little bit & rebuild. I was good for money, so decided to maximise salvage in this mission, especially as it was a 2.5 skull mission!

I was slightly terrified when I saw the Catapult appear......but luckily Quasimodo was able to deal out a ton of damage in a single hit!

Man O War then made short work of the Catapult!

I was then greeted by a Jagermech, but a very lucky ammo explosion took him out of the picture pretty quickly!

A second Jagermech was equally short-lived .

So I guess this was the flip-side to the previous mission I mentioned. A 2.5 skull that felt more like a 1.5 skull. Still, it was a great way for some of my less experienced pilots to rank up a bit! Not to mention more parts for some heavier mechs!

More adventures to come.....

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

Looks like the last mission went well. What heavy parts were you able to snag?

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Looks like the last mission went well. What heavy parts were you able to snag?

Catapult (1/3) & a couple of Jager parts IIRC.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

So.....I just did my first Flash-point tonight. It was only the 2.5 skull one, but it was still pretty tough. Thank goodness I had enough spare Mechs to do each engagement. That "whizz-bang" Hatchet-man they were going on about was actually pretty garbage, if you ask me. Mine was superior in every way .

Anyway, I'll come back to that at a later point!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so going back in time a little bit. I don't plan to go into detail about this mission, but am mostly posting it here to show the truly amazing Hatchetman in its element .

So a fairly straight forward Base Destruction mission!

Here is Tin-Man, laying into an opponent. He doesn't need no heart .

Even at a distance, Tin-man was lethal .

Before and After:

....and another.....

One thing I am increasingly finding is the delicate balancing act needed to keep both the Capellans & Federated Suns onside!

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

I love seeing the Hatchetman in action. I try to use mine whenever I can.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

I love seeing the Hatchetman in action. I try to use mine whenever I can.

I have continued to use Tin-man, even when common sense might have suggested I use a heavier Mech .

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so going forward I don't plan to do detailed posts of every single mission. Instead, I will be more brief, & focus on missions that I felt were particularly noteworthy. Like the two missions that allowed me to get my hands on my second Thunderbolt, in very short span of time .

It began with a mop-up operation, where I suspected I'd be facing some heavier Mechs than a normal 2.5 skull mission might provide! Still, always a good opportunity for salvage .

So, long story short, I found myself facing a Thunderbolt, a Jager and.....best of all.....a Cataphract (one of my favourite Mechs).

Glitch.....I mean Prancer......was able to score a lucky first hit against the Cataphract, destroying one of its legs!

Then Tin-man was later able to jump in & finish the Cataphract off .

The Jager got taken out thanks to a wonderful Ammo Explosion (where *do* these JagerMechs store their AC2 Ammo?!?!)

The Thunderbolt fell not long after that!

Our Lance got through the encounter mostly unscathed.....except for Man O War, that seemed to bear the brunt of 90% of all the attacks (poor Prancer.....maybe I should rename her Dekker?)

A mighty fine haul on the salvage front, though!

Next up, I decided to fly back over to Arano Restoration Space, & took a job to deal with some ex-Directorate Raiders

It turned out to be a relatively easy job.......though Mjolnir got focused a little too heavily for my liking.

In spite of my concerns, Mjolnir wasn't too badly damaged.....thankfully. The Lance actually pulled through extremely well!

A decent haul yet again.....most especially that final 1/3rd of a Thunderbolt-5S I was after!

.......and here she is-Raiden, my 2nd Thunderbolt!

To be frank, I have so many whole Mechs-both in my Mech Bays & in storage-that I finally feel truly comfortable about taking on a Flash-point......at least a relatively easy one......which brings me back around to my post from yesterday .

2 Thunderbolts, 2 Trebuchets, a Wolverine, a Hunchback, 2 Hatchet-men & a Black-Jack......plus a Black-jack & Vindicator in storage.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so now we come to it......my very first Flashpoint. I chose an easy one, "The Joint Venture" (warning, spoilers follow!!!)

I opted to take on Sentry Team Alpha-rightly or wrongly.

It was a fairly long journey to where the Flashpoint was taking place, & I was happy to see that I could take other missions before taking on the Flashpoint. So I decided to build my nest egg up a bit more......just in case!

I took down a fully armoured Grasshopper in this one , & picked up an AC10++ (Stability Damage).

Then, once I was feeling financially secure, I decided it was time to tackle the Flashpoint head-on.

I considered taking 2 Heavy Mechs, but decided that it would be too difficult for them to keep pace with the convoy, so Mjolnir was the only Heavy I took along. Man O War has an extremely powerful Alpha strike capability (if somewhat range restricted), & has proven especially deadly in the hands of Prancer-with her Split Fire ability. Tin Man was an obvious choice, possessing both a good jump range & a very potent Melee ability. Logan was also high on my list due to the Jump Capability & ability to deliver some solid damage, even at range. Had I realised that the ammo would be refreshed between engagements, I might have swapped out Logan for Quasimodo-as that AC20 could have finished off the 2 OpFors much more quickly.

As is far too often the case with Escort jobs, the convoy decided to go full tilt & leave its escort behind......forcing me to sprint up on the first Round.

I was faced off against a Hunchback-4G at first, so decided to focus my efforts on taking out its primary weapon. Sadly, this blinded me to the threat posed by the two Jenners, that were able to take out one part of the convoy.....thus denying me part of my bonus.

Fortunately, with the help of the crazy/brave convoy members, my two most agile Mechs were able to take down the Jenners before they could do too much more damage.

With those two Mechs dealt with, we were able to focus on taking out the Hunchback.

Once again, Tin Man fully justifies my faith in its inclusion in this Lance .


The Griffin proved tougher to take down.....largely because the bulk of my Lance was deployed near the pick up point, to ensure the convoy made it out alive.

With the vanguard taken care of, I really should have sprinted towards the Evac Zone. However, at first I didn't even realize that the option to evacuate was open to me. For two full rounds (I think) I was of the belief that I had to take down the reinforcements as well. What can I say, it didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. Luckily, though, no lives or Mechs were permanently lost.....but the damage was very extensive, nonetheless.

No surprise that this necessitated me bringing along an entirely different group of Mechs for stage 2 of the mission.....though my employer insisted on sending along their "whizz bang" Hatchet-man prototype to help with the defense of the Mech Bay......a decision which proved more of a hindrance than a help!!!! Still, the salvage was pretty darned sweet!

So here is my second deployment Lance. Luckily I had a back-up Hatchet-man & Thunderbolt in my Mech-bay, & I decided to give Peregrine its first ever combat duty!

The first Mech, another Jenner, was easily taken down!

....but sadly the other Mechs proved to be a major annoyance, ignoring my Mechs in favour of pummeling the Mech Bay-sadly denying me part of a potential bonus.

Though my own Hatchet-Man proved almost as effective as Tin-Man was, my employer's Hatchet-man proved less capable, losing an entire arm from a single strike by an enemy Shadow-Hawk.

He did get some decent pay-back though!

Sadly, destroying the Vanguard wasn't enough, as two full Lances of reinforcements showed up to make my life a living hell. Between them, they almost cost me the entire mission, but we were just able to hold out long enough for reinforcements to arrive.......phew-though not before Siegfried & the Wunderkind Hatchet-man "bought the farm"!

My own Hatchet-man, though, continued to upstage the ringer .

Anyway, with the day won.....however barely.....it was time to look upon my rewards for this Flashpoint!

At least 1.5 million C-Bills, across both missions.....not too shabby. Though it came at a cost!

Dude, were you watching the same battle I was watching?!?!

However, cash payouts aside, this is what I really did it for......the Uncommon items......& what a haul it was!!!

Though I have really upset the Magistracy & the Capellans. May have a bit of work to do to restore the faith of the Capellans. Oh, but it was worth it to get my hands on this beauty!!!

....and this is now where I stand, financially. Pretty sweet, eh? That Flash-point was just the "shot in the arm" my Company needed!!!

So there we have it. I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts were in relation to my actions. Was there anything really, glaringly wrong you think I did. Anything you'd personally have done differently? I'd be genuinely interested to hear what you guys think!

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

A Cataphract! Those things are so rare, they might as well be a unicorn. It's nice to see them in combat.

That Joint venture is one of the few I have completed so far. That base defense mission is a bit hairy for sure. I also lost the Hatchetman in that mission as well. Maybe I wasn't as careful since it wasn't my ride...I'm not sure. :/

 

[ronhatch]

So there we have it. I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts were in relation to my actions. Was there anything really, glaringly wrong you think I did. Anything you'd personally have done differently? I'd be genuinely interested to hear what you guys think!

When I tried this flashpoint, it was on my campaign save... so I had massive amounts of tonnage available. Because of the skull rating, I "only" brought a Cyclops 10-Z from the assault class and put a master tactician in there so that everyone was at medium initiative or better. IIRC, my other units were an Orion, Black Knight, and Wolverine... but I could be off since it's been a while.

In any case, on ANY escort mission it's possible to figure out the path that the vehicles will be taking... get the slower units started significantly farther forward on the road before stepping in the starting objective space to trigger the convoy. (Alternatively you can have the mech that hangs back still be a slow one, but mounting LRMs.) In the rare case that enemy spawns show up in range of your units, it's going to be contact with your heavy/slow units anyway and you most likely won't even need to fall back.

Given the level of opposition you faced and what you have available so far, it still would have been an interesting challenge... but I suspect you'd have gotten that bonus pretty easily that way.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

When I tried this flashpoint, it was on my campaign save... so I had massive amounts of tonnage available. Because of the skull rating, I "only" brought a Cyclops 10-Z from the assault class and put a master tactician in there so that everyone was at medium initiative or better. IIRC, my other units were an Orion, Black Knight, and Wolverine... but I could be off since it's been a while.

In any case, on ANY escort mission it's possible to figure out the path that the vehicles will be taking... get the slower units started significantly farther forward on the road before stepping in the starting objective space to trigger the convoy. (Alternatively you can have the mech that hangs back still be a slow one, but mounting LRMs.) In the rare case that enemy spawns show up in range of your units, it's going to be contact with your heavy/slow units anyway and you most likely won't even need to fall back.

Given the level of opposition you faced and what you have available so far, it still would have been an interesting challenge... but I suspect you'd have gotten that bonus pretty easily that way.

Sadly I had no Master Tacticians in my Lance. One of the Pilots I was pushing in that direction had been confined to Med Bay for well over a month.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

So, with my first Flashpoint behind me, I decided to take a handful of random missions throughout Capellan Space.

Not too much to say about the first mission. Except that it pays to double check what Mechs you're taking out. I wanted Mjolnir, but took out Raiden instead (the latter is less durable & has less firepower). It almost cost me, as Raiden got pretty heavily focused & Prancer was forced to eject!

On the plus side, though, one of my pilots was able to decapitate an enemy Mech, using an AC20 .

Tin Man also continued to be extremely impressive!

Pretty hefty damage sustained, though.

Though the plus side was that I could finally complete a Kintaro!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Next, I decided to take on my very first 3 skull mission!

Two of my best Pilots in the infirmary, so had to rely on some of my....2nd tier pilots. Still, the did a really solid job, so no real complaints!

Some pretty intense combat ensued, though I did get some assistance from the vehicles I was escorting.

Part of the OpFor included an SRM carrier.....so my Wolverine decided to take the risk & try to take it out with a Death From Above (the carrier had already caused enormous damage with its opening volley, so desperately needed to stop it from firing a second time!)

The first enemy Mech was removed by a straight up incapacitation!

Tin-man took out the 2nd Mech!

The last of the vanguard was taken down whilst we were moving to rendezvous with the convoy!

We encountered the reinforcement Lance whilst waiting for the Pick-up, though the first Mech was taking out very easily .

The Crab was taken down not long after that!

I scored another lucky decapitation on a Vindicator that was sniping from a mountain-top .

All in all, I feel I came out of that mission in pretty good shape!

....and I got a ton of salvage out of it too!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Oh dear, disaster has once again struck my small-but growing-mercenary company. Ongoing success-even in 3 skull missions-has unfortunately fed my hubris. As they say, though, "Pride Cometh before the Fall".....& oh boy did I fall HARD.

Saw a 3 skull mission offered by the Capellans, which looked too good to turn down!

The moment I worked out the composition of the OpFor, I probably should have fled the field.....but my victory in the escort mission, against far greater odds......made me over-confident. Still, a fully armoured Catapult, Thunderbolt, Wolverine & Jager really should have given me pause.

Things went reasonably well, at first, with the decision to mostly focus down the Thunderbolt (really should have taken down the Catapult and/or Jager, in hindsight). Tin Man, especially, managed to deal a lot of damage.....but was forced to abandon the field early due to excessive damage.

The destruction of both the Wolverine & the Thunderbolt actually had me thinking I could win the day......especially with the combat effectiveness of the Catapult also reduced by 50%. Sadly, though, I'd underestimated the damage done to Mjolnir, & I sadly lost it when it got cored by the Catapult .

So, with 2 of my own Mechs out of the fight, & the remaining 2 having been heavily damaged.....I decided to bug out whilst I still could.....resulting in a bad faith Withdrawal. So, with my reputation amongst the Capellans so badly tarnished (though I am still liked by them) I decided to turn tail & run back to Restoration Space!

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

Man, sad to hear of the losses mate, it's been great reading the updates and it really felt like your run had turned a corner.

I am wondering how you're ending up taking so much damage though. Any thoughts on where you may be going wrong or things you think that you could do different?

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Man, sad to hear of the losses mate, it's been great reading the updates and it really felt like your run had turned a corner.

I am wondering how you're ending up taking so much damage though. Any thoughts on where you may be going wrong or things you think that you could do different?

Not sure exactly what I am doing wrong, though I think the main thing I should have done differently in the mission I mentioned was I should have taken a Mech heavier than the Hatchetman. Even a Trebuchet or Hunchback could have turned the tide in my favour.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

One thought which struck me, is that you look like you play fairly aggressively, heading out to meet the OpFor and often ending up out of cover. That gets some great screenshots for sure, but it may be the reason why you're taking more fire than you need to.

Are you pulling back and letting the OpFor come to you? Are you using initiative manipulation to limit the time your 'mechs are under fire? Do you plan your approaches around terrain screens? These are the main methods I use to keep damage low, at least until I get Called Shot Mastery and can reliably core 'mechs to get them off the field, which is when I start to play more aggressively.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

One thought which struck me, is that you look like you play fairly aggressively, heading out to meet the OpFor and often ending up out of cover. That gets some great screenshots for sure, but it may be the reason why you're taking more fire than you need to.

Are you pulling back and letting the OpFor come to you? Are you using initiative manipulation to limit the time your 'mechs are under fire? Do you plan your approaches around terrain screens? These are the main methods I use to keep damage low, at least until I get Called Shot Mastery and can reliably core 'mechs to get them off the field, which is when I start to play more aggressively.

Well, I do always attempt to retain my cover at all times......but its true that I make far too little use of the Reserve ability. Probably my biggest failing.