3049-04-09
Recruits: A 4/7 dispossessed MechWarrior seeks employment. With a piloting score like that, hell no. I'm not in desperate need of a pilot to man the Vindicator anymore, so this guy can take a hike. Maybe if I had an Urbanmech laying around?
3049-04-16
Recruits: A 4/6 Vehicle crew with a Hetzer seeks employment. The Urban Renewal Box! I'm short on cash, but if there's one thing that's awesome about Hetzers, it's that they are dirt cheap. As in, I'd pay less than 350,000 to bring these guys on board, vehicle included. At that point, I'd still have nearly 750,000 to get us where we're going, and that'll last a long way. That does mean I won't be able to bring on any new crew that bring their own vehicles anyway, but I didn't even expect to get this lucky. Welcome aboard!
Along with that comes some changes to the organization of the company in order to make it work. In the intervening time I've filled the first lance up with 'Mechs, so these vehicles necessitate a change in the company. I've switched people around some and made it fit by turning the 11th into a Heavy pure 'Mech lance, and the 13th into an augmented lance ala the Capellan Confederation with four vehicles and two 'Mechs, all medium weight save for the Brutus leading the formation. Because it's six units instead of four, it's considered a Heavy lance, so they'll be facing some opposition when they get into the field, but with a Brutus, Vedette, two Hetzers, a Shadow Hawk, and a Vindicator, there's some solid firepower and armor in there, even if it's not very quick.
Here's how the roster looks right now:
11th Heavy Combat Lance "Daybreakers"
Major Caden "Easy" Webb, 3/5, Awesome AWS-8Q (The_E)
Lieutenant Andrew "Duck" Gibbs, 3/4, Grasshopper GHR-5H
Master Sergeant Anders "Rapier" Bullman, 4/5, Awesome AWS-8Q (Dragon)
Corporal Jean "Werewolf" Vidal, 4/6, Crab CRB-20 (Spardason21)
12th Light Scout Lance
Captain Bowen "Polly" Borham, 2/5, Phoenix Hawk PXH-1 (Polpolion)
Corporal Dereje "Esarai" bin Hassan, 6/5, Wasp WSP-1A (Esarai)
Corporal Ian "Patriot" Fatin, 5/6, Wasp WSP-1A (Patriot)
Corporal Richard "Night" Adeboro, 5/5, Locust LCT-1V (NGTM-1R)
13th Heavy Combat Lance
Lieutenant Aaron "StarSlayer" Yi, 3/6, Brutus Gunner/Commander (StarSlayer)
Corporal John "Scourge" Aherne, 3/6, Brutus Gunner (Scourge of Ages)
Corporal Nancy Ma, 3/6, Brutus Gunner
Corporal Kevin Huffman, 3/6, Brutus Gunner
Corporal Cheng-gong Pak, 4/5, Brutus Driver
Sergeant Allan "Toothless" Moore, 4/5, Vedette Commander/Gunner (Aesaar)
Corporal Hanlon Turtle, 4/5, Vedette Gunner
Corporal Monica Nasuton, 4/5, Vedette Gunner
Corporal Mark "DJ" McMickan, 4/5, Vedette Driver (CommanderDJ)
Sergeant Cliff "Dire" De, 4/6, Hetzer Gunner/Commander (DireWolf)
Corporal Corey Lovegrove, 4/6, Hetzer Gunner
Corporal Donna Lewis, 4/6, Hetzer Driver
Corporal Esmail Osmani, 4/6, Hetzer Gunner/Commander
Private Farraj bin Abu Bakr, 4/6, Hetzer Gunner
Private Christian Pescaru, 4/6, Hetzer Driver
Corporal Lage "Phantom" Duineveld, 6/5, Shadow Hawk SHD-2H (PhantomHoover)
Corporal Alan "Mongo" Fisting, 4/6, Vindicator VND-1R (dsockwell)
2nd Aerospace Wing
Lieutenant Chris "Tophat" Valsan, 5/6, Sparrowhawk SPR-H5 (HerraTohtori)
Unassigned
Sergeant Dermott "Iron" Carver, 4/6 (IronBeer)
Corporal Zhong-xian Wang, 4/5
Naturally, this means I need somebody to be the vehicle commander for the second Hetzer. Any volunteers? Unfortunately, I'm not able to put IronBeer into it right now. The Hetzer came with a crew, so I can't just kick them out and say "thanks for the ride, now take a hike".
3049-04-23
Recruits: a Jump Rifle Infantry platoon seeks employment. Jump platoons are worth a
lot in the non-combat portion of this ruleset. To sum up, briefly, there are five different tasks that infantry can accomplish, depending on their skill and type. By the letter of the rules, infantry can:
Patrol – add a civilian unit on my side. Green if foot platoon, regular if motorized, and veteran if jump. I can only get one per battle, and only one per week per platoon, meaning I have a maximum of three infantry platoons that can be deployed in this capacity. Civilian vehicles, as you've seen, aren't exactly the best things ever, and I don't get any bonuses for keeping them alive through the battle, so essentially these are fodder units that I can use to distract the enemy until they die. I don't use them much.
Field Drop – Can deploy in any mission where I'm attacking, including big battles and special events that aren't duels. Due to the generally ineffective nature of infantry on the field, I don't use this much, either. This is restricted to jump infantry, so I could actually use these infantry for this purpose.
Defense – Can deploy in any mission where I'm defending, including big battles and special events that aren't duels. This one is significantly more useful, especially when I'm doing something like a base defense mission that I
cannot lose. Any platoon can be this, so this is where the platoon will likely end up if I don't house rule something.
Rescue – The single most useful infantry type in these rules, Rescue infantry is able to rescue a single MechWarrior who would have otherwise died in combat that week. They come back with five hits and lose a random point of gunnery or piloting. It's well worth it to keep MechWarriors on the roles. According to the rules, these guys can only be motorized infantry, but I'm going to houserule it a little bit by allowing any kind of infantry. In my houserule, foot infantry can rescue a single MechWarrior as mentioned above, motorized infantry can rescue a single MechWarrior or any dead from a single vehicle crew at the same penalty, and finally jump infantry can rescue
either up to two MechWarriors or vehicle crews with the above penalties, or up to one MechWarrior or vehicle crew with no penalties (but still five hits). All of that would still be per week, not per battle, so the number of people I'm still capable of losing is a fairly high number if everything goes sideways. I'll also impose the limit of three platoons on Rescue duty, and only one can be active per battle.
Scout – The second most useful infantry type, Scouts change the type of battle to either the one above it or the one below it on the battles table. This can be very useful, because it gives very good chances of getting Base Attacks, and removes the possibility of having to do a Base Defense unless I manage to roll that one twice or more in a single week, which isn't very likely. Platoons have to have scout training, which is fairly hard to get a platoon with without training them myself.
There's also a training status that I can put infantry in where it costs 100,000 and several weeks to retrain them to a different weapon
or a different motive type. I can't do both at once. Changing weapons is 1d6 weeks, and changing motive types is 2d6.
So that's infantry! Now I'll be needing an Infantry officer to command the new detachment. If there's more than one person who wants it, I'll fill out the squad and team leaders. There are 21 guys in this platoon, so I highly doubt that I'll run out of people..
...Or not, my brother volunteered for infantry officer, so that's that. Anyway, only one more week in April, so I'll get that done before I finish this post.
3049-04-30
Recruits: Green Admin! Wooooo! Not having more Admins has been really hurting the support side of things, most notably contract generation and recruitment. The recruitment gets a -2 to everything determining quality and vehicles if I don't have an HR admin, and even a Green one lessens the penalty significantly. This one is going to be an HR admin, so please welcome her to the staff. If anybody wants to play her, be my guest and volunteer.
That's it for the month. I'll open the next post with the market for the next month, if there is any, and we'll navigate our merry way through May.
Well..
You could customize our Wasps with something a little less explosive in them, say, add a medium laser? 
Wouldn't want us scouts to get blown up thanks to an ammo hit now would we?
Oh and yes, this involves doing a custom job instead of picking a refit kit.
I have now customized a fair few mechs in my own campaign, gonna see if i can net myself a contract to fight against the clans, September 49 hurrhurr.
We'll see about that. I'll see how much it would cost and how much time it would take, and decide from there.
