The Ongoing Iron-man Adventures of Trojan's Cavaliers

[Icewraith]

Or you can get on the left side of the Hunchback and call a shot on the left torso. Once the armor is gone any hit may pop the ammo, and the gun is useless if the ammo goes. Even a pilot with bad tactics has good odds hitting a side torso from the side.

Opening with LRMs to drop evasion and stack stability isn’t a bad combo, though.

Edit: if you don’t mind the advice, there’s a couple other things you could be doing to help your survivability and kill speed.

First is put jump jets on everything possible. You seem to take a lot of damage, Jump Jets are a big boost to your evasion and mobility. A mech that gets in to trouble can get a lot safer by jump-bracing into trees.

Second is turn generalist loadouts into specialist loadouts, and have your loadouts be complementary.

Your Thunderbolt has a PPC, some lasers, and a nice SRM-6. One of your Griffins has an LRM-10 and large and medium lasers. You probably don’t have enough stability damage to complement the AC/20 on your Hunchback.

The Thunderbolt has the tonnage to make a nice jumping dual PPC boat with plenty of heat sinks and armor. You could drop either the large or medium lasers on the Griffin and go to an LRM 20 or 15 (or LRM 15+5+5) respectively. (I prefer to take at least 15 LRMs if I’m going to bother with them, preferably 30-40.) Griffins IIRC have 3 missile slots, so you can also turn one into a pseudo-Kintaro, and toss the good SRM-6 from the Tbolt on there. If you want the firepower from 8 or so medium lasers, instead of doling them out piecemeal throughout your lance bring an 8 medium laser jumping Pback. That way you can get all 8 mediums off in one called shot with a great pilot, which is ideal for both salvage (headshots and legging from the side arcs) and killing quickly (CT called shot from the front or prone).

Finally, hang out in cover more and use bulwark for damage reduction instead of vigilance. If you don’t have bulwark on a Pilot, Vigilance won’t help them very much if they’re in the open.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Well, time is fast running out on the official portion of my Career......so I've decided to give a quick run-down of some highlights of my final missions.

This mission was both frustrating & cool in equal measure:

Definitely looks like a good pay-day. I'll do it!

Scored a nice early victory against one of the Mechs, though I was already dealing with ranged fire from the still unseen reinforcements!

Scored an awesome Ammo explosion against a second Mech-though it didn't take said Mech out of the fight!

Though that changed a mere one round later!

I made a point of using my jump capable mechs to get *behind* the Orion-knowing that was where it was most vulnerable-a tactic that appears to have paid off, overall

Yes, I thought, I finally have the third part I require to field an Orion......my first 75 Ton Mech!!!! More on that later .

After that, I just needed to take out the pesky reinforcements, which took longer than I'd have liked, thanks to my Griffin being taken out of the fight by a lucky shot to one arm (the Mech was still in working condition, just lost all of its weapons ).

Still, even with only 3 fully functioning Mechs, I was able to take down the reinforcements!

OK, now show me my new Orion BABY!!! Well, as soon as I inspect the damage, I guess .

Say *what*?!?! It was an Oni-K, not an Oni-V......you have *got* to be kidding me!!!!

So now I wish I'd worked harder to either decapitate or de-leg the bugger. Oh well, it seems my search for an Orion will have to continue!

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so I have decided to skip ahead to the After Action Report.

The official part of Trojan's career has now ended. I'd hoped to get in one last mission, but all my best 'Mechs were still undergoing repairs.

So my score, whilst not atrocious, was not the best I would have hoped for.

Still, I did get some nice loot from my Regular Rank:

The Quickdraw Part allowed me to put together a new Quickdraw.

So what are my thoughts on the campaign? For the most part I felt I did reasonably well, but I do feel I suffered from an over-cautious approach to what missions to take. I also clearly made some really bone-headed choices (like passing up parts of a Kintaro & an AC-10++) without even realising it.

I also wish I had make better use of the Reserve ability, & forced the OpFor to come to me more often. Something to keep in mind for my next career, I guess.

I plan to retain this game, & dip my toe in on a regular basis.....if only to see if I can grab a few more Heavy Mechs, & maybe even an Assault Mech!

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

That's a solid build on your QD. I'd probably run it a little hotter by exchanging a heatsink (or two) for some more armor. I'd also slightly prioritise torso armor over leg armour.

An alternative if it starts feeling too hot at that point would be exchanging two Mlasers for an SRM 4, which is pretty much my main SHD build, especially if you have a +dam version, but you will run the danger of maybe running out of ammo: 10 shots is scraping the bottom of what feels viable on a brawler build, but it has managed to get me through most deployments.

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

A good and entertaining ruin @Marc_Hicks <o

Thanks for posting it.

 

[ntw]

Well played sir!
And that thing about confusing the ONI-V for an ONI-K happens to me all the time - curse my poor memory!

 

[Icewraith]

An entertaining run, and you made it through!

I would drop a some heatsinks (and possibly a Laser) for more armor and at least 2 SRM 4 or SRM 4+SRM 6. No way does 1 SRM 6 need more than one ton of ammo.

Quite frankly, I’d rather run a second Shadowhawk instead of a Quickdraw.

 

[Prussian Havoc]

An entertaining run, and you made it through!

I would drop a some heatsinks (and possibly a Laser) for more armor and at least 2 SRM 4 or SRM 4+SRM 6. No way does 1 SRM 6 need more than one ton of ammo.

Quite frankly, I’d rather run a second Shadowhawk instead of a Quickdraw.

Given a second Shad...

...I would agree with you. Gotta love BATTLETECH’s Initiate System! : )

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so I haven't switched to a new career just yet, so will keep updating this thread for the time being.....really just post-career highlights from now on,

The first highlight is that I *finally* got my lovely Orion-K

On a related note, I am one step closer to a Cataphract too .

Also, hilariously, I managed to take out 2 Thunderbolts with LRM Ammo Explosions.....

I also got offered a chance to ally with the Capellans. Once I saw their list of enemies, though, I declined .

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

Hooray for an Orion!

Any ideas how you want to spec it?

 

[Prussian Havoc]

..I also got offered a chance to ally with the Capellans. Once I saw their list of enemies, though, I declined .

Wut? You want you should live forever? : )

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Hooray for an Orion!

Any ideas how you want to spec it?

I dropped the LRM15 for an LRM10+ (Stability Damage), then used the extra tonnage to mount additional Medium Lasers & really beef up the torso armour.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

Wut? You want you should live forever? : )

Its more about limiting my access to jobs .

 

[MeiSooHaityu]

Wut? You want you should live forever? : )

 

[Icewraith]

I dropped the LRM15 for an LRM10+ (Stability Damage), then used the extra tonnage to mount additional Medium Lasers & really beef up the torso armour.

IDK how well that will work out. Stock Orions don’t have extra heat sinks, so they tend to lean on their lower-heat ballistic and missile weaponry.

Orion Ks are super-versatile chassis though. You can make a stock Marauder, stock-ish Archer, or better initiative Victor out of them, for starters. I tend to run them with Jump Jets and either 2 LRM 20 or AC/20+++, 2 SRM 2, and 1-2 Medium Lasers. An AC/20 with any bonus damage will headshot anything except a bulwarked, braced, full head armor mech in cover.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

I tend to stick to roles for my 'mechs, so mixing ranges never really delivers for my lances: if you're mounting MLasers it's because you're using MLas or SRMs to deal damage.

As for roles for the ON1-K, I've always found it hard to get AC20s to feel comfortable on an Orion. Adding an SRM feels like I end up with far too much ammo waiting to be shot (or too little to keep me going through a whole deployment), but adding Mlasers makes it run too hot for my jump cavalry style of play. By far my favourite build so far has been a +dam AC10, +dam LLaser backed up with a couple of LRM5s (I know, I know, a cheesed LRM 10 ), which is just an up-armored Enforcer, but the weapon complement has a nice solid direct fire punch. Even better, I recently found a +100m rangefinder, which instantly turned this build into my heavy scout/spotter of choice, giving it a basically permanent place in my lance, because the rangefinder means it can give itself, and the rest of my fire support, line of sight at its maximum firing range.

This puppy almost feels like cheating given how easy it is to kite the OpFor now - especially if you reserve right - and can easily replace a Sensor Lock scout when played right. Throw in a Lancer or Gladiator and you can even use the LRMs to strip evasion without costing too much firepower!

 

[Icewraith]

I tend to stick to roles for my 'mechs, so mixing ranges never really delivers for my lances: if you're mounting MLasers it's because you're using MLas or SRMs to deal damage.

As for roles for the ON1-K, I've always found it hard to get AC20s to feel comfortable on an Orion. Adding an SRM feels like I end up with far too much ammo waiting to be shot (or too little to keep me going through a whole deployment), but adding Mlasers makes it run too hot for my jump cavalry style of play. By far my favourite build so far has been a +dam AC10, +dam LLaser backed up with a couple of LRM5s (I know, I know, a cheesed LRM 10 ), which is just an up-armored Enforcer, but the weapon complement has a nice solid direct fire punch. Even better, I recently found a +100m rangefinder, which instantly turned this build into my heavy scout/spotter of choice, giving it a basically permanent place in my lance, because the rangefinder means it can give itself, and the rest of my fire support, line of sight at its maximum firing range.

This puppy almost feels like cheating given how easy it is to kite the OpFor now - especially if you reserve right - and can easily replace a Sensor Lock scout when played right. Throw in a Lancer or Gladiator and you can even use the LRMs to strip evasion without costing too much firepower!

Hm. I’m usually either comm system or cockpit mod (or battle computer), but that does sound interesting. Too bad I don’t have any 100m rangefinders on my main career mode run.

I may actually be using the wrong Orion for a close range headshot build. 3 SRM 2 and a medium laser for cold environments/buildings/extra punch sounds like a better balance.

Of course, none of this compares to the insanity that is the 2AC/20 3?SRM2 King Crab or 6 Medium Laser 4 SRM 6 Stalker with called shots and 9 tactics pilots. Salvage city. But those are slow.

 

[Marc_Hicks]

OK, so Trojan gets to tick another thing off her "Bucket List"......she finally completed a Target Acquisition mission successfully!

This was previously as successful as I'd been-but this time I managed it with about 2-3 rounds in hand.

I managed to take out 2 of the OpFor whilst awaiting instructions! A Hunchback 4G & a Locust

Unfortunately, this is where I kind of messed up a little bit. I had an Orion-k & a Griffin in the OpFor who were on their last legs (there was also a Blackjack & a Vindicator, but they were almost unharmed), so I spent a whole extra round trying to take them down whilst moving towards the Extraction Zone. That turned out to be a dumb move, as it meant I was unable to get 2 of my Mechs (the Orion & the Quickdraw) to the extraction point in time-even at a full sprint. In the end, I was forced to eject both Mechs in order to complete the mission.

That wouldn't have been a big deal, except that both of those mechs had Cockpit Mods!!!! Damn.

Oh well, it was worth it to see this screen!

The payout was fantastic, the salvage not so much.

 

[ntw]

DOH!

Lesson learned I hope?

 

[Marc_Hicks]

DOH!

Lesson learned I hope?

It was learned. Sprint to the Evac point as soon as the location is known.