Alrighty, time to figure out what's going to be involved in this battle. I've already selected the Command lance for this one. That lance has been designated the 11th Combat Lance for the time being; it'll get a nickname sometime soon. In case anyone needs a refresher:
The lance consists of The_E commanding, StarSlayer as his second, Dragon in the Awesome, and IronBeer driving around the urban renewal box. For this fight, we'll have one allied unit attached to the lance, under our direct control - no bot for this guy. For a combat lance, that means adding a medium 'Mech of the same tech level as our allies for the contract. A quick roll show me that we have a friendly Phoenix Hawk to accompany us. There are absolutely worse things to have, and the high mobility should serve us well in the city that all base fights have to take place in, for whatever reason. Just about all I'd ask for in exchange is a Hunchback.
On a base attack, my allies also send in two lances that are lighter than mine, which means two medium lances. A pair of quick 1d3 rolls determines that our employer isn't exactly swimming with 'Mechs, sending along a vehicle lance and a mixed lance. Every single unit getting sent along are mediums, too, so these guys
might not be very helpful. Let's find out. Punching in how many units I want to the RATs in MegaMek, my allies end up with:
Phoenix Hawk PXH-1
Wolverine WVR-6R
4x Vedette
1x Vedette (AC/2)
1x Vedette (Liao)
Well ****. Vedettes for everyone, and they'll be green to boot. Wonderful. Ah well, the enemy is going to suffer almost as much, right? Hopefully. Turns out I misunderstood the forces the enemy would have to oppose us. It's not just a pair of Heavy lances, I have to roll twice on the table that determines who's defending, on the Heavy table, since I'm bringing a Heavy lance. This will generate things like 3 Light or 2 Medium lances, or 1 Heavy and 1 Medium, or something like that. The effect is that I'm going to be hideously outnumbered.
Rolling once gets me 2 Medium lances. Rolling a second time gets me 3 Light lances. Hoo boy. Five lances, plus base personnel, line up to oppose our two-hour-contract. Woooo 13:30 odds. At least the 11th is going to be qualitatively astronomically superior to any individual enemy.
More rolling, to figure out the types and weighs of the vehicles arrayed against me: 'Mech Medium, Mixed Medium, 2 'Mech Lights, 1 Mixed Light. That means 16 'Mechs and 4 vehicles.
Further rolling (it's a trend) finds the exact distribution of weights: 7 Lights, 8 Mediums, and 1 Heavy for 'Mechs, and 2 Lights and 2 Mediums for vehicles. That should be enough to figure out the exact variant of everything on the field (minus base units, which are civilian stuff that's closer to target practice than actual enemies). Plugging all of that into the MegaMek RATs gives me:
Wasp WSP-1L
Wasp WSP-1A
Stinger STG-3R
Stinger STG-3R
Stinger STG-3G
Urbanmech UM-R60
Hermes HER-1A
Crab CRB-20
Clint CLNT-2-4T
Wolverine WVR-6R
Vindicator VND-1R
Vindicator VND-1R
Vindicator VND-1R
Vindicator VND-1R
Vindicator VND-1R
Rifleman RFL-3N
Scorpion Light Tank
Scorpion Light Tank
Vedette Medium Tank
Vedette Medium Tank
...
This is going to be hilarious.
Those base vehicles I keep mentioning end up looking like this:
Flatbed Truck (LRM)
Flatbed Truck (LRM)
Flatbed Truck (SRM)
Wheeled MG APC
Wheeled LRM APC
Coolant Truck
Harvester Ant (LRM)
Harvester Ant (LRM)
Quasit QUA-51T
Icarus ICR-1X
Yeah, this is going to be awesome. Any single shot from a PPC can cripple or destroy over half of those vehicles, and the same to quite a few of the line combat units the pirates are bringing, too. All of their skills will be taken from the Green table, which means ranging between 4/5 and 6/7. That's a lot more tedious than this, so I'll do that behind the scenes and just use MegaMek for it.
Next up, figuring out the exact size/terrain/conditions of the battle. Since it's a base attack, it has to be either light or heavy urban terrain. A coinflip tells me Heavy Urban. After that, lighting. This roll comes up "Moonless Night". Good God. I might not actually even have to kill most of these enemies at this rate; they'll do it themselves. At least it's clear, without a torrential downpour or a tornado, or something.
After that, finding start locations. Base defenders always start center, but I have to roll for anyone else, and it comes up SW. We'll be deploying in the southwest corner of the map initially. This map should be kind of hyooj, too, so that's actually significant.
Map size is started with a random roll, and added to based on the number of units in the scenario. I rolled up a 40 x 10 hex initial map. Every lance involved adds 5 hexes to either dimension, and base attack adds another 10. Wow. This map just ballooned to 90 x 60 (+10 base attack, +40 for eight lances involved).
Figuring the exact map used is pretty random. The rules that I'm using come with a set of map seeds that I just alter the dimensions of and then generate before each battle. That keeps me from fighting the same battles on the same maps over and over again, across the entire sphere. I take the terrain type (heavy urban), and figure out what exact map type I encounter. There are four options with varying probabilities of coming up, and I happened to roll City-high for my map seed. That means lots of high rise buildings and restricted sight lines, as well as lots of pavement for moving and falling on.
That's all it takes to set up a battle. It gets easier the more times you do it, so after this I'll just post the results instead of walking through the process every single time. The final scenario:
Terrain: City-high
Size: 90 x 60
Light: Moonless night
Weather: Clear
Allied Start: SW
Enemy Start: C
Now I can
actually play a game. Holy ****. I'm not going to sit here for the next six hours and play the game while I wait to post this though, so enjoy this token of appreciation for your continued support. Just stare at that image of pure malicious delight, and know that's what's about to happen.
