Bossing Around Mad Cats for Fun and Profit: Let's Play MechCommander 2!

[BooNL]

What I meant with omni's was not that every IC 'mech was modified to be an omni. What I meant was that MC2 doesn't even make a distinction between regular hardpoints and omni hardpoints.

Every 'mech is capable of fielding any weapon they want, provided they have the slots for it. How is it a Catapult, with an insane amount of missile bays on its chassis, can fit in a AC if they want? It doesn't make sense.
Granted, I've never played the boardgame and I know MW4 isn't perfect, but at least you have take the choice of 'mech into consideration.

Also, you guys wouldn't happen to know if there's a Mech Warrior roleplaying game out there? (table-top, not pc game)

[Brother Oni]

Also, you guys wouldn't happen to know if there's a Mech Warrior roleplaying game out there? (table-top, not pc game)

There's Mech Warrior, which used to be published by FASA. It was re-released by another company in 2007 according to the Wikipedia.

The only other major table top version is the Battle Tech minatures games.

Wiki link of Battle Tech games.


My brother used to play Mech Warrior and my favourite story was when an Elemental (clan power armour soldier) ambushed a mech, put a shaped breaching charge on the cockpit and waved goodbye to the pilot before jumping off.

[Artanis]

The manual mentions that units fighting the Clans often retrofit prototype adapters that allow Clan equipment to work with Inner Sphere-made components, and vice-versa. Basically hand-waving the matter of how your techs are pulling it off.

Well now I feel kinda stupid. I couldn't find my manual, so I figured I had to've read it somewhere else

What I meant with omni's was not that every IC 'mech was modified to be an omni. What I meant was that MC2 doesn't even make a distinction between regular hardpoints and omni hardpoints.

This.

Even in MC1, that sentence or two in the manual is the only time it comes remotely close to acknowledging a meaningful difference between omni and non-omni. MC2 just figures that players - especially those who had played MC1 - would be too busy playing with the customization to care about a fluff distinction with no effect on gameplay


As a vaguely-related side note, the single most popular multiplayer mech in MC1 was Mad Cats that wound up very, very close to stock. Players always kept the 8 LRM Racks while replacing the ER PPCs with (usually) ER Large Lasers to raise money for more Mad Cats

[Eldariel]

As a vaguely-related side note, the single most popular multiplayer mech in MC1 was Mad Cats that wound up very, very close to stock. Players always kept the 8 LRM Racks while replacing the ER PPCs with (usually) ER Large Lasers to raise money for more Mad Cats

Though the 8 LRMs was simply because of the Missile Boat ban online; otherwise you just stacked as many LRMs as you could on every mech you had and Alphaed everything to oblivion.

But man, Mad Cat was just awesome; a Heavy Mech with the speed of a Light Mech? Yes, please! Though there is something to be said about A-type Atlas and the Masakari too. I hated how multiplayer was always Clan vs. IS though; IS needed huge extra tonnage allowances to be anywhere near equal (their only advantages were like...standard PPCs and Advanced Sensors).

[Artanis]

The only Clan vs. IS match I ever saw online was when I suckered somebody into playing low-resources, and then proceeded to beat his Cougars with my Centurions. Otherwise, it was pretty much always high-resources, and everybody played Clan tech because there was no point to using IS with that much to spend.


And yeah, good ol' 4/6 4/6 8/10 no boats

[Eldariel]

I did IS vs. Clan too much; just got a bunch of Awesomes whenever playing IS, ran up to the skin, laughed at their ER PPCs and LRMs and Boom Boomd the face. Of course, whenever I faced someone actually competent, I got my rear handed.

[Artanis]

==STEINER CONTRACT, MISSION 9==


==MISSION BRIEFING==

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TYPE: Search and Destroy

LOCATION: Littlebear Island, Ivan Sector - Bandit Territory




TEAM:
--LONGSHOT, Zeus
--FLASH, Zeus
--DAGGER, Zeus
--PALERIDER, Men Shen

==MISSION LOG==

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This was it, the final mission of the contract. Steiner intel had found the bandits' HQ, and our job was to take it out. In a few short hours, we'd be free to look for another job...and not a moment too soon, because Renard was going deeper into insanity at an alarming rate. He spent most of the briefing ranting about how he couldn't trust anybody and how we didn't want to be part of the "plans" he had for Carver V. Working for paranoid lunatics was usually either lucrative or suicidal, but considering that Ambassador Yee - and Renard's entire command staff, for that matter - were conspicuously absent from the VidCom picture, I didn't want to take my chances.


With the island no doubt crawling with bandits, I couldn't afford to be hit from behind during my final assault. Thus, my tactics would be simple: work from the outside in, using a long series of short, sharp fights to clear the enemy layer by layer until only the HQ was left.

Even more than usual, this called for overwhelming firepower, and for me, overwhelming firepower meant Longshot, Flash, and Dagger in Zeuses. Even my scout would be big, a 55-ton Men Shen piloted by Palerider.


It didn't take long before I was glad I had brought so much firepower. The team had been dropped in a ravine, the end of which had been heavily fortified by the bandits. I mean really, really fortified.



Luckily, there was a way up out of the ravine that led to a plateau overlooking the fortifications. And wouldn't you know it, there were fuel tanks there.




Rather than starting with a bang as usual, I decided to draw in as many bandits as possible, hoping to catch them in the explosion. There turned out to be a few more bandits than expected: about half a dozen mechs and nearly three times that number of vehicles. Even after a heavy firefight and the fuel tanks going off, there were still three Fire Ants coming after us.








As the fort was overwhelmed by the firepower of Assault mechs (and the more literal firepower of exploding fuel tanks), Diaz told me that she was intercepting a transmission from the bandit leader. She patched it through to my console, and I heard Vong in the midst of telling Liao that his forces were being overrun and he needed support. In response, Liao basically told him to go to hell and stop calling.



Win or lose, the bandits' fate was now sealed. If we failed, he was abandoned, trapped, and soon to be without most of what firepower he had left. However, I almost felt sorry for what had to happen when he called me directly and declared that he was not going to go down without a fight.

Renard, of course, then called me to rant about how our job was to finish off Vong. I told Diaz to mute him.




When everybody had finished blathering, it was time to start my sweep. Moving clockwise around the island from the ravine fort would ultimately take me to the first objective, a weapons facility, while minimizing the chances of a two-front fight and netting me some RPs along the way.


The first stop was a resource building guarded by a pair of vehicles I hadn't encountered before: Swarm LRM Carriers. They're a lot like LRM Carriers, except that they replace the normal LRMs with long-range area-effect rockets. Swarm LRMs are very, very dangerous...if you can hit with them. If you can't, you wind up with nothing more than a pretty light show and a bunch of friendly fire casualties.

I ordered the team to use the radical strategy of keeping moving.



The second RP building, on the western edge of the island, was a similar deal.




With that flank secure, it was time to attack the weapons facility. It had a suspiciously light garrison, with only a few vehicles showing up on Palerider's sensors. I found where the rest of it was hiding though when I noticed a Mechwarrior barracks that sat right next to a platform big enough to park a handful of powered-down mechs.




While the ammo dumps made an inviting target, the RP truck parked next to them dissuaded me from blowing them apart. With flat terrain and no explosives nearby, my assault would have to go down the old-fashioned way: a face-to-face pounding match. There was no point in delaying, so I gave the order to charge.

295 tons of laser-toting death stormed into the complex, and my console almost instantly informed me of four mechs powering up. The barracks had indeed turned out to have powered-down mechs next to it, and just like that, the vehicles were reinforced by four Urbanmechs.








The battle gradually drifted east, out of the complex and towards the ruins of a small industrial town. More vehicles and mechs poured out of the shattered area, picking up where the now-beaten previous group had left off.

The running battle continued its eastward march as my mechs chewed their way through the bandits faster than they could join the fight on their own. By the time the last bandit was eliminated, we were getting close to within sensor range of the main enemy encampment.






It was the exact sort of thing my sweep had been designed for. Had I gone straight for the enemy HQ, I might've had these guys sandwich me. This way though, an entire flank of the future HQ assault was clear.

The reward for the battle was substantial. Not only was there a resource truck and resource building, but the weapons facility held Ultra Autocannons. Unlike their mundane counterparts, these autocannons were not entirely without merit (...well, other than the HAC, that is).




Next up was clearing the center of the island, then proceeding to what was probably the second-most heavily defended point left, the fuel refinery in the southeast.

The center proved to be tricky: the only resistance was a pair of (thankfully non-swarm) LRM Carriers sitting by some fuel trucks, but there was a resource truck nearby. With LRM Carriers' tendency to explode when destroyed, Palerider had to lure them away so that they could be killed without setting off a chain reaction that would take the beautiful RPs with them.




After eliminating the LRM Carriers and stopping for brief touch-up repairs, it was time to attack the refinery. Unfortunately, I had been right in my assumption that it was crawling with vehicles and mechs.



But on the bright side, it was also full of fuel tanks, giving me a head start on clearing it out.




The explosion alone was almost enough, devastating the bandits' primary defenders. All that was left was a few Fire Ants, who were quickly mopped up by the team. Once they were gone, nothing stood between me and the refinery.






The perimeter was now secure. Nothing was left to reinforce the bandit HQ as the final showdown between me and Vong went down. We had the advantage of initiative: the bandits had to stay put while we chose when and where to attack, and thanks to the exploding refinery, they wouldn't see us coming until it was too late. The bandits, however, had the advantage of fixed defenses to help them.

They also had numerical superiority. BIG numerical superiority.








I called in a Long Tom on a ridge overlooking the base and steeled myself for the coming fight. The plan was simple: draw the bandits out and then make my stand on the high ground, trusting my firepower.

The first half worked to perfection, with the bandits taking the bait and following me up the hill.





The second half of the plan, not so much. Vong himself led the charge, using his Lao Hu's jump jets to negate - and reverse - the high ground advantage. He was backed up by Swarm LRM Carriers, forcing the team to scramble out of their kill zones and into Vong's sights. When he landed, the team desperately focused their fire on the toughest bandit they had yet faced, hitting him with a full barrage straight to the cockpit as he took off. By the time he landed again, he was dead.



But the battle was far from over. Driven berserk by the death of their leader, the remaining bandits tore into the team with an unholy frenzy. Swarmed from all sides, the team was twice pushed off the top of the hill and to the very edge of turret range, and twice the team clawed their way back up.








When the smoke cleared, all four of my Mechwarriors were wounded, the sheer volume of enemies having guaranteed multiple cockpit shots. Flash was the worst-off of all of them: with her mech's head armor almost completely blown away, she was wounded so badly that the shock of ejecting could have killed her.

The bandits though...

The bandits had fought to the death. The hillside was strewn with blown-apart mechs and the burning, twisted remains of combat vehicles.




It was almost anticlimactic, really, when the team mopped up the two or three vehicles that had stayed behind and burned down the bandits' HQ with their lasers.




The trek back to the extraction point was highlighted by more than sixty thousand RPs being used to salvage bandit mechs, including Vong's Lao Hu. As the bloodied, exhausted team waited for pickup, I leaned back from my console and grinned at Diaz. With the bandits destroyed, we had won.

And most importantly of all, nothing helps a mercenary make money than a win on his resume.

==MISSION COMPLETE==


Don't worry folks, there's plenty more to come

[The_JJ]

Fun game. Wonder why I've never heard of it...

[Artanis]

It didn't last very long, IIRC. I remember the hubbub that went through the MC1 multiplayer community when the first few screenshots came out, and then it just seemed to fall off the face of the Earth. I never heard of it or saw it in stores or anything after that, and only discovered it when another thread prompted me to poke around wikipedia's Battletech-related stuff on a whim.

[Artanis]

==INTERLUDE: A BUYER'S MARKET==


Everybody in the company was busy as we wrapped up our contract. Cash was working on the half-dozen Steiner mechs we had bought before we left, Diaz was busy looking for a new employer, and I was doing the most important job of all: collecting our paycheck.

Renard only grudgingly handed over the c-bills. He obviously didn't trust us - even by mercenary standards - but since we'd been brought in pretty much by the Archon herself, he didn't have a whole lot of choice. The unofficially-required pleasantries exchanged during our final meeting were even more forced and hollow than usual, but it didn't really matter in the end. Renard was rid of the bandits, we had our money, and neither of us had to put up with the other anytime soon.

Renard's insanity aside, I hoped that all of our contracts could be so profitable. We had come to Carver V with two Bushwackers and a Razorback, and were leaving with fully two dozen mechs, seven of them Assault-class. Where we had started with a mostly-green Mechwarrior corps, Dagger, Flash, Palerider and Steel were skilled veterans while Longshot had grown into one of the truly Elite.

And best of all, we were hundreds of thousands of c-bills wealthier.


When I returned to our base of operations, Diaz informed me that she had already found a new contract for us: working for House Liao. It turns out that we had literally blasted ourselves a job opening, doing so much damage to the local Liao forces that they needed reinforcements. Since there just so happened to be a certain company of mercenaries whose work Liao had seen up close, well...

I just wished I could see Renard's face the first time we dropped into combat against him.

[chiasaur11]

No loyalty to anyone but your paystub, turning around and attacking an ally as soon as someone else pays a dime more, and the only response you conscience had was enjoyment at the thought of the look on your former client's face?

Could learn to like you, yes?


(Sorry. Had to get it out of my system.)

[Demented]

@Renard,
So long, and thanks for all the mercs mechs.

[SparkMandriller]

All this Mechcommander talk has made me want to play it, but the AI is terrible and makes things boring.

We should all get together and play sometime. You guys would be much more interesting than the AI.

[Guancyto]

@Renard,
So long, and thanks for all the mercs mechs.

Hey, you got a couple of mercs off him too!

Steel and Claymore are some of the best. And Steel was a covert operative who may or may not have had access to classified Steiner information, and Claymore was one of his Assault 'mech pilots.

That's got to be a kick in the teeth right there.

[blackouttwo]

This Let's Play has been awesome from day one. It just got more awesome, because the Liao campaign was always great fun for me. Can't wait to see how you handle things while you've got Liao 'Mechs on tap instead of the super-powerful Steiner 'Mechs.

One thing I've noticed is that you seem to be avoiding non-combat interaction between your player character and any of his employees/employers. Any particular reason? It'd add another dimension of storytelling to the whole thing. There's no problem if you don't, but I think people always like a Let's Play that has that more than a Let's Play that doesn't.

[Artanis]

I originally tried to do that, but ran out of steam pretty quickly. I decided that doing things the way I am now would probably work out best, especially since I was new at this sort of thing

[blackouttwo]

Ah. Well, understandable.

Another thing I've noticed is that you don't have any specific 'this pilot works with this pilot' plan. In a lot of MechCommander Let's Plays I've read(most of which are now defunct, the rest of which are slowing down, and none of which are as compelling as this one, IMO), the player encouraged audience participation by allowing the audience to vote on who would always work with whom, which pilots were permenantly assigned to which mechs until such time as they got a promotion, etc. Just some food for thought, figured I'd throw that out there. Even if there's no specific interaction between pilots and the player character outside of missions, it'd add to the illusion that your mercenary unit is becoming more than some ragtag warband from the middle of nowhere.

[Artanis]

I'll definitely keep that in mind for the future. The next update, which'll be posted here shortly, should have at least a little of that, I hope

[blackouttwo]

As a side effect, it lets the audience work on cool names for the individual lances, and lets you permit them all to vote on which lances to send out on specific missions. Aren't duty rotations fun?

[Artanis]

==LIAO CONTRACT, MISSION 1==


==MISSION BRIEFING==

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TYPE: Rescue

LOCATION: The Gulag - Steiner Territory




TEAM:
--STEEL, Lao Hu
--CLAYMORE, Catapult
--HACKSAW, Bushwacker
--TWITCH, Starslayer
--WORM, Raven

==MISSION LOG==

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Just a few short days ago, we had been fighting against Liao on behalf of Steiner. Now, we were doing the opposite. In the army, joining our enemies to fight our one-time allies would be betrayal and treason. For mercenaries like us, it was business as usual.

Liao's local ruler, Mandrissa Anita Cho, seemed reasonable enough. Her son Jason, on the other hand, was an arrogant prick securely under his mother's thumb. I cringed at the fact that he was also the commander of Liao's local forces, and thus the one we'd be taking orders from.

(Note: the cast list in the OP has been updated)

Most of the briefing consisted of both Chos giving long-winded descriptions of their innocence in the bandit matter that I neither believed nor cared about. When they finally got to the point, they gave us a mission to liberate The Gulag, a political prison that Renard had set up. I guess the Mandrissa must've been impressed by the way I had snuck into their own prison while working for Steiner.

At any rate, the first-string Mechwarriors were having a much-needed rest, and Flash was barely out of the hospital. I made the decision to hold them in reserve and send in the backups for the initial drop. Steel would lead the way in the new Lao Hu, followed by Claymore in a Catapult, Twitch in a Starslayer, and Hacksaw in a Bushwacker. Worm would be running recon in the Raven.


It didn't take long for Renard to realize what was going on once we dropped. In less than a minute, Diaz told me he was calling and patched him through. He had a few standard-issue insults about mercenaries and money, and patched me through to a live feed from the prison. Renard then swore that no prisoners would be left by the time we got to the Gulag, and the prison's guards opened fire.




Time was of the essence. Innocent people were dying, and they were taking my paycheck with them. I ordered the team into action, and they blasted through minimal resistance on their way to a ridge overlooking the eastern edge of The Gulag. There was little time to spare, as mechs and vehicles had nearly finished off the main prison building.




I gave the order to charge. Five battlemechs raced down the hill and cut a bloody swathe through the Centipedes and Hunters as they dashed to save the complex. Seemingly caught unawares, a single Razorback was the only mech to turn and help the doomed vehicles, and its reward was to be cut down by the team's lasers.





A Zeus charged down the hill as the Razorback fell, but despite its armor and firepower, it simply could not stop the mercenary onslaught.



The final defender was a Hunchback that plodded in from its post guarding the front "gate" a ways down the road. It didn't last long under the team's withering fire.




Renard called to rant about "conspirators" and "anarchists", swearing that The Gulag would be destroyed. The transmission cut off just as he turned to order somebody off-screen to scramble bombers.



Thankfully, not all was lost. As I scrambled to grab RPs with which to salvage the nearly-pristine Zeus, I got yet another call, this time from a guy named Baxter. He claimed to be with a resistance movement, and that he was sending a convoy of transports and ambulances to get the prisoners out.




There was just one problem: the whole sector wasn't safe for the prisoners, and the only way to get them to safety was via a heavily-defended airstrip nearby. We would have to take the airstrip, and protect the convoy from the reinforcements that Steiner had sent from there.

...I guess that's actually two problems, but I digress. After salvaging and repairing the Zeus, I sent the team across the ridge east of The Gulag to meet the Steiner reinforcements. The first wave was a trio of choppers that posed little threat to the team.



The second was two Hunchbacks and two Hollanders. This can be a tricky combination to fight, since staying out of the Hollanders' range puts you right in the Hunchbacks' sights, and vice versa. Fortunately for me, I had enough firepower for it not to matter a whole lot.






With the would-be Steiner attackers crushed, I pulled the team back to The Gulag for repairs. I was just in time to find myself in the middle of a traffic jam as Baxter's convoy arrived at what was left of the prison and began the evac. He called me up to tell me that he had to get underway, and that we needed to have the airstrip clear by the time they got there.



I found myself starting to like Baxter. No insane ranting, no lie-filled politicking, just the facts. It was a shame he was probably going to get killed in the crossfire sooner or later.


When everybody was patched up, it was time to clear the airstrip. It had heavy SRM turret cover, so I would have to draw its defenders out and fight them in the open. I needn't have worried on that front: when I drew into LOS of the airstrip's defense grid, its defenders charged out without any prompting. Most of the defenders were Centipedes, which were little threat even to Worm's Raven.

The Atlas that came with them, however, was another story.




Longshot stepped to the front of the formation and met the Atlas head-on. With hundreds of lives on the line, two Assault mechs stood toe-to-toe in the driving rain and slugged it out.



It was not a fair fight. Zeuses - and the rest of the team, for that matter - were designed to blast an enemy to smithereens before it could get close. Atlases, on the other hand, are designed to survive just such a barrage while it closed to HAC range.

The Atlas proceeded to do exactly that, storming through the team's massed firepower and handing Longshot her ass on a 100-ton platter.






In the end though, the Atlas was just one mech. No matter how durable, nothing can withstand nearly four times its tonnage firing at it. It eventually fell, leaving Longshot standing...if only just.




With the Atlas down, the Centipedes were little more than an afterthought. Even the team's capture runs through the SRM turrets wound up being more painful than the mop-up. With the final obstacles to a safe evac removed, Baxter called up one last time to thank me for my help.




It was certainly an interesting start to a new contract. Despite the apparent ease of taking on such scattered resistance, the implications were not good for the people of Carver V. The war had spread to the civilian population, and with Steiner and Liao at each others' throats, it was only a matter of time before Davion - and their Omnimechs - were dragged into the fray. And then there was Baxter, who was just going to make things even more complicated.

Four-way wars are depressingly common in the Inner Sphere, but four-way battles on a single planet, not so much. And we were caught right in the middle.

==MISSION COMPLETE==



It's time once again for audience participation!

I have two votes to ask for this time around. The first is that I have two missions to choose from, so it's up to you guys to pick which one I go with.

2a) Mobile Intercept: Killdeer
--There's a bunch of Davion troops headed to reinforce a base, and I have to stop them before they can do so. Expect lots of minelayer action.

2b) Facility Assault: Hijack
--Davion and Steiner have bases on opposite sides of a river, and I attack both to try to spark a war between them. Also, there's weapon facilities...plural!


The second is that I'm going to go with blackouttwo's suggestion of letting readers suggest and vote on lance names. While I think I'll stick with choosing the pilots myself for the time being, "first-string" and "second-string" aren't very dramatic names and could do with replacements

For reference, the primary lance is Longshot, Flash, Dagger, and Palerider. The secondary lance is Steel, Twitch, Claymore, and Worm.

[blackouttwo]

Awesome as always.

Spoilers! For those of you who haven't played MC2, don't click.

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Baxter always was my favorite character, if only for the theme music you get during briefings while you're working for him during the Partisan campaign towards the end of the game.

For reference, the primary lance is Longshot, Flash, Dagger, and Palerider. The secondary lance is Steel, Twitch, Claymore, and Worm.

Alright. I vote for the primary lance to be called one of the following: Alpha, if we're going for a formal designation, Hammer Lance if we're not.

For the secondary lance, I'm voting for either Beta or Hawk Lance, because of Worm's sensor specialization and their general usefulness in smaller mech's(if I'm not mistaken, the secondary lance has a reputation for piloting smaller mechs).

[Demented]

What would Hammer have to say about not being in the Hammer lance? :p

[blackouttwo]

Excellent point.

Hmm...I'm now leaning towards Spear Lance or Axe Lance. Axe Lance especially, since the heavier mechs' job is to hack-n-slash their way through any opposition they come across.

[Cristo Meyers]

Definitely go with 2b. Raising more trouble means more business opportunities.

[Guancyto]

2b for what is probably the best single weapons facility in the entire game.

And a ton of free 'mechs.

Since they have to do a little more dodging fire than soaking it, Beta should be Dance Lance Revolution. If not now then if you make another lance in the 3rd campaign it might be appropriate.

As befitting the fact that they are an elite commando team, Alpha should be the Lance Without Pants (or the No Pants Lance, which ever works better).

[The_JJ]

Yeah, 2b.

And... [weapon] Lance just sounds... off to me. Both clishe and nonsensical at the same time.

Lion/Eagle for the primary, something else for the secondary.

Or like a Thor/Loki thing.

Achilles/Ajax?

[chiasaur11]

Galactica and Pegasus.

My reasons are my own.

[blackouttwo]

Achilles? I don't think that'd...fit. We're trying to create an atmosphere of success. But Thor/Loki...I like that. I'm changing my votes to that. Also, 2b. Just for the Davion mechs we'll get.

[The_JJ]

Well he won.

But yes, getting offed by the goddess of love and her nambypamby boytoy is kinda sad.

[Errant_Polearm]

Another vote for 2b: Hijack. With your love for lasers I doubt those Davion mechs will see much use, but if I recall correctly what you get from their weapons facility will.

The primary lance's call signs make me think "Rangers" or "Rough Riders", that sort of thing, but I don't have any suggestion for the other.