Vote Results:
Januar 5, 3052, 1346 hours
Katsura River Valley
This winds up being pretty much a no-brainer. Gamma-Probe can get to where they need to go and then get out. Nobody's sure why the House Kurita guys think that two lances of heavy/medium mechs is appropriate for a raid behind enemy lines, but Akalon just says "No, be quiet. We're not having this conversation."
Gamma-Probe is Akalon in an upgraded Vulcan, Bass in a Phoenix Hawk 3M, AWS in the Phoenix Hawk LAM and another pilot in a Phoenix Hawk 3D. The Kurita force brought eight standard mechs, and four three-man squads of battle armor. We'll see how they stack up against the clan battle armor. Bass's guess: "Yeah, right."
The clan force guarding the staging area is ten medium and light mechs, with a Hellbringer and Mad Dog on the heavy side of things. And also twenty Elementals, so we've got our work cut out for us.
Round 1:
Our lance deploys a little to the east while the two Kurita lances and their battle armor buddies come in from the northwest, getting the drop on a Hellbringer. Bass and the other Phoenix Hawk drill a Mad Dog with their Phoenix Hawks' extended-range lasers, melting a substantial amount of armor, which allows AWS to fire the Phoenix Hawk LAM's snub-nose PPC at the 60-ton mech's right torso. The high-energy particles melt through the remaining armor and contact an LRM ammo bin, which promptly explodes, sending a gout of flame out the back of the mech while its right arm goes flying off. With the mechwarrior unable to compensate, the mech drops to the ground, practically glowing red - it fired a lot of weapons. Another jet of flame blows out the left side of the mech as it hits the ground, leaving it little more than a pair of legs attached to a mangled mess. AWS smiles.
The Kurita Archer takes most of the return fire, including a center torso armor breach.
Round 2:
Akalon follows the rest of his lance southeast, the group putting a hill between themselves and the bulk of the clanners. A Mist Lynx (a fast 25-tonner) tries to run up behind Bass - Akalon targets the mech with the Vulcan's twin medium lasers - one of the weapons makes contact with the left arm. The limb disappears as nearly a ton of LRM ammo detonates, puzzling our mechwarrior, who wonders if the clanners maybe forgot to close up their ammo bins before firing up their engines. Other than the loss of the left arm, though, the Mist Lynx seems more or less functional.
AWS jumps into a lake on top of the hill to the south, using the opportunity to fry an Elemental with a blast from the snub-nose PPC. "Think I'm finally getting the hang of this gun." our mechwarrior mutters.
To the west, a Hellbringer and a Wolverine exchange taking major damage, both mechs on the ground by the end of the massive weapons exchange. A nearby Kurita Griffin stomps on one of the Hellbringer's legs, cracking an actuator and the A-Pods (which might technically be useful this battle as the Kurita force has battle armor capable of climbing up a mech.
Round 3:
The two lances of Kurita mechs finally finish off the poor Hellbringer, knocking out its XL engine to force a shutdown. In the process, their Rifleman takes multiple armor breaches, as does the Wolverine. The Rifleman's situation is so bad that the mechwarrior actually doesn't reach the reactor shutdown button in time, and the mech deactivates, going into a "maintenance rest" position. Not great, given that there's a Kit Fox pointing a gauss rifle at his head. The Wolverine "just" drops to the ground.
Our mechs pull back a little, snapping off ineffectual laser shots while Bass' Phoenix Hawk takes a couple of LBX autocannon rounds, absorbing the pellets without much issue.
Round 4:
The Kurita Archer leaves the battlefield, apparently having taken too much damage to continue fighting.
Bass, Akalon and the other Phoenix Hawk continue their wide arc to the south, Bass dragging a large laser beam across a Nova's head across a small valley.
As predicted, the Kit Fox uses its gauss rifle and medium lasers to eviscerate the downed Rifleman - the 60-ton mech's right foot disappears after a gauss slug slams into it, the right arm is cut off by a medium laser while the second laser enters directly into its center of mass, cutting bits of engine and gyro off. A nearby Centurion and a Shadow Hawk team up on the Kit Fox, the Shadow Hawk wrecking the light mech's leg with its autocannon - thankfully, that'll take the extremely mobile gauss rifle out of action, as it drops to the ground, unmoving. The mechwarrior must have blacked out - the short-range missile to the mech's head probably didn't help.
Round 5:
The Kurita guys, in brave samurai fashion, cluster around the downed 25-ton Kit Fox and blow it to bits, while we exchange fire with the clanners on the hill to the east. Both us and the clanners lose some armor, while a Kurita Warhammer loses one if its PPC arms.
Round 6:
"Glad you guys finally decided to join the fight." Bass comments as the Kurita mechs decide to engage the main body of the clans that, so far, we've been screening by ourselves. Gamma-Probe lance concentrates fire on a Stormcrow that moves a little too slowly, our Phoenix Hawks badly overheating themselves with their extended-range laser fire, but we score enough hits that the large amount of armor melting off the clan mech unbalances it, and it has to drop to a knee to prevent from falling over.
Round 7:
A clan Mist Lynx (the same one whose LRM ammo Akalon detonated earlier) makes a tactical mistake (probably on account of his bell still ringing from the ammo explosion), jumping in within Akalon and AWS's jump jet range, allowing our mechwarriors to get behind the 25-ton mech and open fire with weapons, followed up by a rousing game of mech soccer, with the Mist Lynx serving as the ball. AWS takes a couple of laser hits from the clan back line, but the Mist Lynx loses its right leg - it twists to avoid Akalon's kick, only to run into AWS' boot. The right leg snaps off, the tear continuing through the torso section above, also separating the arm, and the light mech flops to the ground. It's not too much firepower loss for the clanners, as that mech had already lost its LRM/10 launcher, but every little bit helps.
Round 8:
The Kurita Warhammer moves forward, Akalon and AWS briefly jumping behind it - the 70-ton mech lands a PPC shot on an approaching Nova. The shot should have taken the head off the clan mech, but just barely grazes it; instead, the Nova returns fire with its LRM/20 launcher, one cluster of missiles landing on the Warhammer's center of mass. Akalon cringes, already knowing what's going to happen - the machine gun ammo bin there detonates, ripping the Warhammer apart.
Round 9:
A pair of clan mechs try to do a flanking run around our units, but Akalon is on the jump, firing the Vulcan's jump jets until they glow red hot and landing above a Mist Lynx. The Vulcan's laser blasts through the light mech's right torso, melting engine shielding and a jump jet. The damage is severe enough that the clanner decides to bug out right then and there.
Round 10:
The allied Centurion takes a couple of laser blasts from an Ice Ferret that runs in while Gamma-Probe lance is cooling off - the left torso comes apart, half the LRM launcher falling off with the arm, and the mech dropping to the ground from the excessive damage.
Gamma-Probe's extended range weapons work great, as do the double heat sinks on the Phoenix Hawks, but we still have to spend some time cooling off if firing an excessive amount of lasers.
Round 11:
Our Phoenix Hawks focus fire on a Stormcrow trying to cross the valley between the clan-held hill and ours, a couple of pulse lasers stripping armor off the 55-ton mech and one zapping through to burst a heat sink and crack some engine shielding.
The Kurita battle armor, meanwhile, joins the fight, but not exactly in the way they wanted - a couple of stray cluster rounds from a Nova's LBX autocannon perforates one of the troopers, dropping him to the ground.
Round 12:
The damaged Stormcrow moves south, trying to get away from at least one of our Phoenix Hawks, but runs into an SRM salvo from the Kurita Wolverine - the missiles completely perforate the clan mech's engine, forcing it to shut down immediately and flop face first into the ground. It's dying salvo, though nearly cores out the Wolverine as well, while the nearby Ice Ferret blasts the 55-ton Kurita mech's right arm off, and the Wolverine joins the Stormcrow on the ground, where its left leg promptly snaps off.
Round 13:
Akalon watches the Nova to the north try to get a good angle on Bass' mech, but our mechwarrior fires up the Phoenix Hawk's jump jets and puts a hilltop between himself and the clan mech - this allows Akalon to redline the Vulcan's jump jets and land directly behind the Nova, unloading lasers into its back. A little engine damage causes the mech to stumble, at which point Akalon's machine gun rips through its cockpit, taking it out.
Bass duels inconclusively with a nearby Ice Ferret, meanwhile.
Round 14:
Bass heats his mech up pretty good, melting a significant amount of armor of an advancing Stormcrow - it looks like there are only three clan mechs left on the field, to our six, so we've probably got this in the bag, especially seeing as how our mechs are fast jumpers while theirs are mostly ... well, they're fast, but they're not jumpers.
Round 15:
"Somebody's made a mistake." AWS comments - three of our mechs get the drop on one of the Stormcrows. An LRM salvo from the Kurita Dervish exploits the damage we do to its armor, disabling one of the arms, the firepower forcing the mech to a knee.
Round 16:
As the Stormcrow gets up and moves north to join its buddy, we continue picking away at the two mechs. With no heavies to anchor our line, the situation becomes very fluid - what we excel at, actually. Until a Stormcrow draws a bead on Bass with its ultra AC/20 and saws his Phoenix Hawk's left leg off. Akalon retaliates by disabling the offending autocannon with the Vulcan's lasers, the mech's heat alert beeping up a storm. Both Bass and the Stormcrow drop to the ground.
It's crazy, but the Elementals actually shoot at something - the Kurita Dervish gets close to a few, and the ping some rifle rounds off its leg.
Round 17:
Both Bass and the downed Stormcrow get up, although Bass's feat is a little more impressive, considering that the Phoenix Hawk's left leg is little more than perforated metal shards.
Gamma-Probe lance splits their fire among the Stormcrows, with one Phoenix Hawk jumping behind the southern one and sawing its right arm off, while Akalon disables the right arm on the northern one with the Vulcan's lasers, continuing to ignore the blaring heat alarms. A pair of SRMs from a nearby Kurita Shadow Hawk blasts the leg actuators on Akalon's target.
Bass focuses on the southern Stormcrow, flaking armor off the mech, but then his mech just stops and drops to the ground as lasers pierce the engine shielding and the reactor initiates safety shutdown.
So does Bass's target after getting stomped by our other Phoenix Hawk as it goes down.
With the bulk of their mechs out of action, the Elementals and remaining Ice Ferret retreat to the north.
We did pretty well - Akalon's Vulcan and the second Phoenix Hawk are in excellent shape, with only minor armor damage. Bass's Phoenix Hawk is leaving the battlefield on the back of a salvage truck, while AWS' Phoenix Hawk LAM has an armor breach on the left arm.
The Kurita guys did marginally less well - out of the eight mechs they showed up with, they have three functional ones left: a Shadow Hawk with a busted autocannon, a Griffin with multiple armor breaches and a Dervish. Their battle armor was pretty useless, except for absorbing a couple of bursts from an LBX autocannon. Well, who knows, maybe they'll get there eventually. It's definitely better and more maneuverable than our stupid grenade launcher suits.
Our salvage is a couple of Mist Lynxes, a Stormcrow and the Nova. The Kurita guys walk away with an engine-killed Hellbringer, a Vulture missing most of its torso section, an engine-killed Stormcrow and some spare parts belonging to a Kit Fox (at this point, the 25-mech is just a loose gauss rifle with a cockpit and a leg lying somewhere nearby).
We could probably hook up a trade, but there's nothing particularly attractive for us, and the salvage we did get has a lot of medium lasers.
Our next assistance request comes from a local planetary militia force, of all things. Two mech lances, one medium, one light, accompanied by a light armor lance, some infantry, and a Monitor naval vessel are attempting to hold a bridge crossing against ten clan mechs, mediums and lights, plus something like forty Elementals.
We could send a real mech lance over, which would cut into our mech lance budget (we're down to eight operational lances, and can probably put together another one from mechs that are starting to come back from earlier battles). Or, we could send some of our hovertanks over, this is more their speed. The Scimitar/Drillson lance has slightly longer range but is a little slower, while the Falcons and Zephyr really cook up close, as long as they don't get hit.
[] Send mech lance, Delta-Sweep (lights)
[] Send mech lance, Alpha-Ranger (mediums, but minor battle damage)
[] Send a hovertank lance (3x Falcon, 1x Zephyr)
[] Send a hovertank lance (2x Zephyr, 1x Scimitar, 1x Drillson)