MME Board Joint MekHQ Campaign - The Sanguine Samurai

Nice report. Never a dull moment!

I like your description of Erik-John dodging around, so my suggestion would be for his callsign to be something like Rock'n'roll or Twisty.

The only use I could think of for the Wasp would be as a training Mech. Chuck a green pilot into it, but keep them near the rear lines to try and score a kill and earn XP. But that depends of whether we have a green pilot in need of training and sufficient other Mechs to form a 2nd lance. I'd say that's not the case at the moment so probably sell it off.

Oh wow, that was a REALLY well done batrep! Feels like you're finding your stride with these, definitely the best one yet I'll second High Tower for Erik's callsign, and definitely vote for selling the Wasp. It's one of the worst mechs in the game, and another three quarters of a million Cbills is good money. Kinda sad to see the enemy's morale having led to very few fights, since I was really banking on this contract giving us a ton of salvage but oh well. Getting paid to sit around and patrol without getting into fights certainly has its benefits!

Lots of downtime on this contract still.


In fact on August 19, I got the notification that our techs had raised the overall quality of Nomad’s Archer from D to E, yay for maintenance!

All of our Admin’s are now Veteran status with 5+ rolls for Admin



September

September 1st rolls around and we get the notification that our enemy is now routing. With that, we have completed our first contract.


Before we leave the system, we’ve been offered two additional contracts.


A recon Raid by the Lyran Commonwealth that would actually put us 8 Million c-bills in the hole with only 10% salvage rights so we wouldn’t make that back on that contract.


A Relief Duty contract for the Federated Suns against the Draconis Combine, that would net us a cool 9 Million C-bills, but again Salvage is atrocious, 10%.





Decisions



So what do we do?

Do we take the Relief Duty Contract on Shinonoi?

Do we travel to Galatea to find a new contract? – 4.6 Million C-bills in transport and 90 Days

Do we travel to Outreach to find a new contract? – 6 million C-bills in transport and 102 days



Our Bank account right now is 18 Million C-bills with the early success of the contract. The universe is our sandbox!



I’m tempted to suggest the Shinonoi contract if only for the fact they’ll pay for us to get closer to Galatea & Outreach.

Contracts normally account for round trip expenses in travel. You'll notice that the contract is paying us ~11 million base pay, then also paying us ~10 million for transportation below that. We still have to pay the transportation fees, the contract report just shows what our transport expenses would be if we did make a round trip, 100% transport just means Fed Com is going to pay us enough to cover 100% if we were returning to Hyperion afterwards (which means we'll make an extra 2-3 million if we go back to outreach or galatea afterwards as they'll be closer than going back to Hyperion)

We also don't have any dropships, so we pay a bit more since we need cargo space as well as transport.

Yes, transport does include jumpships and dropships, but consider that they're not risking anything. The transports earn a total of ~10 million for 90 days work without any real threat. Piracy really isn't that much of a concern this close to the center of the Inner Sphere, and even if it was a couple of ASFs aren't that expensive. Meanwhile we'll be risking our lives for 5 months to earn as much as they do without any real danger, when all they're doing is just moving us from Point A to Point B.

Or, let me put it another way: If operating as a transport dropship can earn you say 5 million Cbills (half the cost, assuming the other half is jumpship) for 3 months work, that's 20 million a year. Why wouldn't you just do that for 2-3 years than buy a company of mechs and be your own mercenary company? You gotta consider how this works with the full economy, which granted just is balls and FASAnomics has never been good. But this really feels to me less like something reasonable and within the bounds of the setting, and more like a ham-fisted balancing measure for the ATB players. Ammo and transport costs have never really been huge monetary concerns, nor has overhead, the main cost has always been on significant mech repairs.

So basically what I'm saying is, they've changed it from what it was and I don't like it, change is scary, I want my bottle ;~;

Oh I know they were building a universe rather than going for game balance, but that's what I mean; the old costs weren't so high, these sky high costs are new for the ATB campaign.

You might say that 10 million for 3 months is a bargain when the cheapest jumpship is thirty times that cost. But consider how much a bus costs. A quick google says ~$250,000. How much does a month-long bus pass cost you? Around here, it's $120, so $360 for three months or $1440 a year. The amount you pay for a year of bussing is less than 170th the cost of the bus, compared to the jumpship of 40 million for a year, which is roughly 1/8th the cost. The cost displayed in the current iteration of ATB is really bloated and it has knock-on effects that I think should be considered, such as wondering just where does all that money go? After all, jumpship maintenance isn't THAT much, which would mean the profit margins are actually MASSIVE, despite jumpship and cargo hauling having been presented basically throughout the setting's history as having very low profit margins. So now we have discrepancies. And that hurts things, at least it does for me even if the ATB devs don't care about it.

Secondly, jumpships don't generally come to get you. Jumpships are everywhere in the IS, thousands upon thousands of them. Travel is usually done by paying a jumpship that happens to be going where you're headed and has a free docking collar, and attaching to it. They're already going to where you are, there's no more danger than they were already facing because most of the money is in transporting goods through cargo dropships.

Lastly, the notion that they would get more pay because they're going into a warzone doesn't really work for two reasons. One, what are some mechs on the ground going to do to a jumpship hundreds of thousands of kilometers away in space? Not much. Ground to space weapons don't really become a thing for decades and even then, firing on a civilian jumpship would be a huge incident. It's like shooting at a civilian cargo freighter today. Second of all, even further compounding that, with a few time period exceptions (none of which we're in right now) jumpships are generally considered non-targets due to, at this point in time, being very difficult to produce. Basically all the factions realized "**** if we keep destroying each other's jumpships we'll have none left and everything will collapse" and agreed to not do that. The general feeling of "don't attack jumpships, even military ones" continued on even after the shipyard industry recovered further in the timeline.

Sorry for this post probably sounding like a big pile of "UM AKSHUALLY" but I wanted to address your points fully to explain why I have an issue with this change, which means explaining a bunch of the setting stuff. I'm not meaning this as gatekeeping or like, trying to brag about knowing about this stuff.

I just looked at the 2016 campaign ops rules for transportation.

The typical transport costs for military Forces are 0.5 percent of a DropShip’s purchase price (rounded up to the nearest CB) per month or fraction of a month, and 100,000 CB per docking
collar per jump on JumpShips. JumpShips will also charge for all docking collars at the rate of 100,000 CB per week per docking collar when kept idle, waiting for a military Force to complete its mission.

The example given in the book is a company sized force renting a Seeker Dropship paying 3.1 million for 6 weeks over two jumps. Four of those weeks are 100,000 per collar per week of forced idleness for the jumpship to stay

We're jumping 11 (22 round trip per transport contract rules) times over 3 months, probably with at least two dropships with what we have now. That's already 2.2 million. I'm assuming the dropship is staying in system for us, that would be 3 collars (assuming it's an invader) at 100,000/collar/week for 5 months. That's about 6 million there. So we're at 8.2 million just for actual transport costs already.

And we haven't even gotten to the cost of renting the dropshops.
10 million for 22 jumps and 11 months of work is accurate


Shoeless, where you might be getting hung up is the old cost per collar per jump was 50,000 in old campaign ops books I think. So pre 2016, this would have been cheaper. But I'd say earning 10 million for almost a year of work based on the cost of those assets is more like real world numbers, it's still probably even too low. An invader costs 500,000,000 C-Bills, without even adding in the costs of the dropships, that's a 2% ROI for a year of work.

Most businesses aim for at least a 15% ROI on equipment per year. Hell, if a jump captain could fill every docking collar for every week of a year they'd only make 3.1% of the cost of the jumpship each year. Even that's too low imo. Thats 32 years to even pay it off.

Shoo, two weeks of transit time from the planet to the jumpship. That had to be boring as hell.



December

Nothing too interesting happens en route, just lot of maintenance. We land on Shinonoi on December 5, 3039.

No one of note is stationed on or assigned to raiding Shinonoi during this time period. With the planet being mostly agricultural around the equator, with not much on the artic caps, I have the Draconis Combine militia here in a standard green garb and our allied Fed Suns units in a black, green, and grey camo.



Six days later, we’re tasked with attacking a Draconis forward line and destroy at least 50% of their units without losing more than 33% of our units. Our allies are sending a pilot of around the same experience as us in a Dervish 6M.

I reroll a pitch black attribute and it changes to Dusk/Dawn with Moderate Rain. Luckily, most of the enemies should have worse gunnery than us, but this is still gonna be hard to hit things at range 😐



Deployment



Not a lot of cover on the outskirts of this map. I deploy Igloo & Omega towards the north with some forest they can run to. And I deploy Snake Eyes & Nomad towards the south to try to split some fire.





Round 1

Igloo & Omega move up into the forests in front of them for some cover.

Nomad & Snake Eyes rush forward trying to get the drop on a Condor transport that moved towards them

A Galleon light tank gets bogged down and stuck! He should make an easy target once we get closer





Omega fires both PPCs at the closest Hetzer, nothing else is in range for him.
Igloo fires just one as he’s still at long range of the Hetzer. Snake Eyes has no good shots, and Nomad actually has a better shot at the hetzer with one of his LRM launchers instead of the Condor that’s closer.

One of Omega’s PPCs score a glancing blow on the Hetzer, dealing a crit to its motive system, heavy damage ½ MP for the unit.

In return, 9 of the Hetzer’s missiles find Omega’s CT. Everyone else misses this round



Round 2

The Saladin rushes Nomad & Snake Eyes, so they divert north to stay in long range of that AC/20. Of course that Saladin is one of the few things that has gunnery 4 on the other side.

Igloo & Omega are still at a good range from everything, so they both stay in their forest as they get better modifiers than moving with this light.




Nomad fires off an LRM launcher at the Hetzer again, as it stay pretty still after the last hit from Omega.


Omega also continues to focus on the Hetzer.


Snake Eyes fires his LRM5 & Large Laser at the Hermes heading towards Igloo & Omega.


Igloo switches targets to the Hermes as well and fires off two PPCs.


9 Missiles from the hetzer finds Omega again, this time splashing across both of his legs.


Omega returns the favor with a solid hit on the Left side, immobilizing the Hetzer. Chalk a kill down for Omega, as they should abandon the unit at the start of the next round.


Our Dervish friends fires some missiles at the Hetzer as well.


Everyone else misses.



Round 3

Igloo & Omega stay still, even as the Saladin and Condor rush them.

Snake Eyes moves to support the Dervish by rushing the Hermes. Nomad backs away a bit to put the Hermes in the sweetspot for his LRMs




Switching to Short Range weapons, Igloo & Omega fire everything they have into the Condor. With probably the most impressive effective kill I’ve ever seen in Battletech… They miss with everything EXCEPT for one small laser from Omega (that needed a 12 to hit mind you), that deals 1 damage to the LS of the Condor, dealing motive damage… and Immobilizing it! Someone get Omega a drink for finding that weakspot!


Nomad misses his LRMs on the Hermes, come on, ya only needed 8s!

Snake Eyes scores hits on the Hermes with all of his lasers except one medium. Scattering damage across the other mech.


Our Dervish friend scores a few missile hits on the Galleon stunning its crew for a turn.


Both the Dervish and Snake Eyes connect with kicks at the Hermes tearing apart the armor on its legs. The Hermes then proceeds to pass 4 PSR from missing a kick, getting kicked twice, then taking over 20 damage in a round. The absolute mad lad!



Round 4

The Hermes for some reason decides not to move at all. Nomad fearing a saladin rushing him if he stays backs up some.

Omega also backs up some in case the Saladin decides to go to him.


The Saladin moves towards Nomad, so Igloo stays still hoping to line up a shot on the speedy bastard.

Snake Eyes backs up into the forest near him and levels his sight at the Hermes




The Hermes deals a big Through armor crit on our Dervish friend, hitting his gyro & engine

Igloo & Omega miss their shots


Nomad takes an AC/20 round to the RT shaving off most of the armor there, he misses his return fire at the Saladin.


Snake Eyes blows the left leg off the Hermes with his large laser and scores two more hits to various components with his medium lasers.


Nomad makes his PSR. Our ally makes his PSR from the gryo hit, and the Hermes falls to the ground with its leg gone.



Round 5

The Saladin falls back to support his fallen mech ally. Nomad runs after him to get him in the sweet spot for his LRMs.

Igloo & Omega advance, Snake Eyes kicks his jumpjets into gear and jumps past the Saladin to get in its flank away from the AC/20’s reach.

The Hermes pilot blacks out trying to get his mech back up.

Our Dervish ally is crippled and retreating, but stupidly turns his back to an AC/20. Hope that doesn’t end poorly…




Nomad fires both LRM20s at the Saladin. Missing.

Igloo & Omega both have nothing to shoot at.


Snake Eyes fires all of his lasers into the Saladin’s side, missing as well.


The Saladin blows the right torso & arm off of the Dervish… Welp, let’s hope he makes it off the board edge soon or we’re gonna get yelled at… Oh, Oh no. The Dervish just fell… Well… shit.

Snake Eyes misses a kick on the Saladin, but stays standing.



Round 6

Snake Eyes has to move first, so I jump him back behind some forests. Don’t want a stray AC/20 round finding him…

The Dervish is toast, he falls twice trying to get up and the Saladin moves in for the kill.

Igloo flanks left to try to get a shot on one of the vehicles that came screaming towards him, Omega continues forward.

Nomad tries to get in short range of his lasers to shoot into the rear of the Saladin.




The Saladin blows the Dervish sky high, the pilot ejects safely.


Nomad takes a couple laser burns from hover tank by it, and manages to score a glancing blow on the rear of the Saladin. Everyone else misses.



Round 7

Igloo moves to provide support against the Saladin.

Snake Eyes moves up into the heavy forest in front of him and takes aim at the wyvern.

Omega also moves up and aims at the wyvern.

The Saladin moves towards Igloo, Nomad moves after it.

The Hermes pilot wakes up and proceeds to fall again. Some how manages an 11 to keep himself from getting hurt again.


Everyone manages to miss this round except the Saladin, who scores a hit on Igloo’s LT. "We really need to kill that thing!" Igloo yells into the comms.



Round 8

Nomad backs away from the Saladin, who moves late in the initiative. Yikes.

Igloo backs up some as well.

The Saladin decides to go all the way towards the bottom of the map (it’s not retreating)

Omega shifts slightly to get a better shot on the wyvern.

The Hermes tries to get up again and falls.




Snake Eyes has no good shots, Igloo tries two hail mary shots at the Saladin to no avail.

Nomad shoots his medium lasers at the heavy hover tank, missing both. Omega fires his PPCs at the Wyvern, shaving off most of the armor on its LA and dealing a glancing blow to its RL.

Luckily, the AC/20 shot from the Saladin misses Nomad.

Snake Eyes misses a kick at the hover tank, but stays standing


Round 9

The Saladin moves first and it places itself in the middle of everyone!


Snake Eyes jumps to get into its left flank
. Nomad, turns around to fire at it.
Igloo advances enough to get the Saladin in his sights.


Omega stays still hoping to deal more hits to the Wyvern

The Hermes pilot blacks out again


Not having a good shot on the Saladin, Igloo fires two medium lasers at the Heavy Hover tank by him, but is too late at switching targets and misses.


Omega, switches to short range weapons and fires into the rear of the Wyvern. Omega somehow misses with everything.


Snake Eyes fires everything at the Saladin as he’s flying through the air, missing everything.


Nomad adds his medium lasers to the lightshow, missing.


Omega takes a glancing blow from a medium laser to his LT. No concern.


No other hits.



Round 10

The Saladin screams past Igloo while the Sabaku and Wyvern circle Omega, who backs away from them.

Igloo turns to get close range shots into the back of the Saladin, Snake Eyes jumps after the Saladin, and Nomad gets into the sweet spot with his LRMs on the saladin.

We need one more kill, and I should probably be focusing on the Wyvern as it’s slow. But man that Saladin has pissed me off, so much so that I’m forgetting some screenshots…




Omega scores a glancing blow with one of his PPCs on the RT of the Wyvern.


Igloo scores two medium laser glancing blows on the RS of the Saladin! Stunning its crew for a turn!


Everyone else misses



Round 11

Nomad moves to support Omega, shooting at the wyvern.


Igloo & Snake Eyes moves up to deal some pain to the stunned Saladin, which deftly dodges them… Shoot. They twist and try to fire what weapons they have.


The Wyvern & Sabaku move towards Nomad, so Omega lines up on the slow moving Saladin with two PPCs, a medium laser, and SRM6 hoping to put it down




Nomad hits the Left Leg of the Wyvern.
Snake Eyes and Igloo Miss.


Omega takes a couple missiles to his rear armor from the goblin, but it doesn’t stop him from landing a PPC hit on the right side of the Saladin blowing it up!


Nomad takes a glancing medium laser blow.


That’s four effective kills, we need one more to call it a win.



Round 12

Omega turns around to fire at the Goblin. Nomad backs away from the approaching Wyvern.


Snake Eyes jumps towards Nomad to support, and Igloo turns around to also shoot at the wyvern.




Omega takes a few more missiles to his RL, missing his return shots.


Nomad scores a laser burn on the Wyvern’s RT.


Igloo scores a PPC hit on the Wyvern’s CT.


An SRM from the Sabaku removes the rest of Nomad’s RT armor, critting the LRM20. Yikes.


Round 13

Nomad moves on top of the Sabaku, firing his Medium lasers at the Wyvern.


Omega stays still and fires only one PPC to try to cool off.


Igloo advances to put the Wyvern in short range for his PPCs.


Snake Eyes rushes up next to the Sabaku, firing at the Wyvern and hoping to kick the Sabaku.




Snake Eyes takes two laser burns from the Sabaku to his LA. He deals two glancing blows to the Wyvern.


Igloo removes most of the armor on the Wyverns RA with a PPC hit.


Both Snake Eyes & Nomad miss kicks at the Sabaku. But Nomad falls after missing his kick, Luckily taking damage only to his CT.



Round 14

Igloo Stands his ground lining up on the Wyvern.


Snake Eyes rushes towards the Wyvern, Nomad stands and does the same. The Sabaku runs towards the board edge but is not retreating, so it gives us some time to finish off the Wyvern in peace.


Omega moves forward to underrun the Goblin’s LRMs and put his PPCs in short range.




Igloo blows the right arm off of the Wyvern with one PPC and Shaves the rest of the Wyvern’s CT armor away with the other! No Crit


Nomad scores a glancing blow on the Wyvern’s CT, no Crit.


Omega scores a hit with one of his PPC’s on the front armor of the goblin


None of our units take damage this round.


The Wyvern falls on his left side! Taking damage to its LT.



Round 15

The Wyvern gets up and moves slightly. Snake Eyes rushes up to it’s side, firing his lasers and hoping to get a good kick in. Nomad does the same!


Omega stays still firing at the Goblin.


Igloo rushes forward to get as much distance as he can from the Sabaku that flanked him.




Snake Eyes hits the Wyvern with 3 of his medium lasers.


Nomad hit the Wyvern with one of his Medium lasers


Igloo melts the rest of the Wyvern’s Left and Right Torso armor with two medium laser burns.


The Wyvern falls and Nomad & Snake Eyes go to town curb stomping the mech.


Snake Eyes removes the rest of the armor on the Wyvern’s Left Leg.


And Nomad, good ol’ Nomad. He manages to find SRM ammo in the mech’s RT! The ammo explodes, obliterating the Wyvern. But the blast catches Nomad & Snake Eyes too! Nomad receives 7 damage, but it scores a TAC on his right arm, blowing the arm off, some shrapnel finds his cockpit, wounding him.


Snake Eye’s damage from the explosion is inconsequential.


The Wyvern’s pilot auto eject engages and he ejects.


With that we have won, just as the Hermes pilot wakes up lol. Probably a good thing, that means he doesn’t kill himself trying to stand up.




Aftermath
We take the Hetzer and Condor as salvage to strip the armor, ammo, and weapons from. Or to repair if you all so choose. Sadly the Hermes was too much to take since there wasn’t much else salvage of value with the Wyvern blowing up.



Also sad, with the Dervish blown up we take a -1 to our contract score. So we’re at 0 for our contract score. We need to protect the next guy more.



Nomad comes back with a broken rib. To the Infirmary with you! That’ll be 20 days before he’s better, but luckily it’s not enough to affect any of his skills at the moment.


A vehicle gunner we captured from the Saladin wants to defect… Hm…




We have all of the mechs besides the Archer repaired by the end of the day. We ended up having to replace the LRM20 that got damaged in the fight. So I put another one on order. The techs have the arm reattached by the next day.





Phew, that battle could have been much worse for us if it wasn’t dusk/dawn. There was several scary things on the field. I didn’t quite realize how much fire that Sabaku heavy scout tank was putting out because it was 6/7, I’m so glad for that.



So we have a few decisions to make on the tanks we salvaged. Their motive systems are damaged, but otherwise not too damaged. We could put them into service. Or we could strip them and sell them.



Here’s an update on the Pilots Stats by the way!

Igloo – 4/4 – 7xp

Kills - 1 Mech, 2 Tanks



Nomad – 4/5 – 10xp – Want to spend it on piloting or save for Gunnery Maus?

Kills - 2 Mechs



Snake Eyes – 4/4 – 9xp – Saving for Gunnery now

Kills - 2 Mechs, 2 Tanks



Omega – 4/5 – 18xp – Saving for Gunnery

Kills - 5 Tanks





Omega took the kill lead with that last battle, racking up 3 tank kills during it! He must have a thing against the little guys lol

Villain Saladin finally defeated! I initially misread Nomad's LRM crit as LRM *ammo* crit and I was scared. Still, you managed to get everyone out, and hopefully next contract the ally doesn't get killed. As for salvage... I'm a little meh on it. The Condor's good, pretty well armored, but an AC/5 isn't that great. I think if we keep it, refitting it to the capellan version with the 4 medium lasers would be a good idea. I'm not a fan of the LRM Hetzer.

Another great battle report Igloo!

And kudos for a well controlled fight.

Good to see Omega picking up some kills

I agree salvage is the way to go at this stage. Probably better to work on filling out the reserve lance for the moment.

If I'd want to see anything out of this next match, it would be an atlas charged off a cliff. 

I'm typing up the results now, that 10% salvage is making me sad haha

Hmmm. An advanced-tech trebuchet would be really cool! And it has CASE as well so it won't be utterly wrecked if it does take an ammo hit. I think hiring the pilot is a good idea. Get some extra tonnage in our growing reserve lance. Hopefully get him to 4/5 without too much trouble, cause yikes green pilots are a liability.

Definitely a good call ending the battle sooner rather than later.