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[Culise]

I'll pull Mariamu "Rook" Ishikawa, if it is alright.  This looks rather interesting; I looked at various BattleTech freeware utilities once or twice, but I never really tried it since I thought all of these were multiplayer-only.  Also, I'll vote to stand back for a moment and accept the surrender, for the reasons outlined. 

[Kanil]

I'll take Ec and the Frankenstein, callsign Ker-Ker. The Lancelot has really terrible armor layout, so if at some point you could afford to move some of that rear armor elsewhere, that'd be great. Enough head armor to survive a PPC to the face would be ideal, a bit more leg armor wouldn't hurt either, but might take too long refit-wise.

As for the pirates, I say we fight 'em. We can get paid, or we can get paid and get salvage? Seems an easy choice.

[Hanzoku]

The problem is that with base fights, you're going into a masive brawl against an entrenched enemy, and while your allies put a bit more effort into it, you're still stuck doing the heavy lifting.

I vote to accept their surrender

[Kanil]

So you've got a lot of enemy units to provide XP for killing, a lot of enemy units to salvage, and a bunch of friendly cannon fodder...

What's not to like?

[Hanzoku]

The chase mission gave the wrong impression. There, the AI's main focus is fleeing off the map, and any damage dealing is incidental. A base assault means they're fighting for survival, and the victory conditions mean you basically have to destroy them all. It is very easy to take a lot of casualties, and we don't earn enough salvage on this contract to make it worthwhile.

[Kanil]

30% isn't that bad. It's not great, but we still pulled out over an entire month's worth of pay from the last mission. Drop a couple of heavies and maybe some tank support and a single battle could potentially yield more salvage than the actual payment for the entire mission.

Of course, that depends on what's defending the base, how much of it, and how confident one is on actually beating it without suffering too many losses

[EuchreJack]

I vote take the free money, accept the surrender.

Mainly, the base assault is a pain in the butt, even if we might profit, so might as well skip it.  When I play MekWars, I cheat the software so I don't have to play base assault (either declare victory if attack or defeat if defense, they're just painful missions to play).

[Dorsidwarf]

30% isn't that bad. It's not great, but we still pulled out over an entire month's worth of pay from the last mission. Drop a couple of heavies and maybe some tank support and a single battle could potentially yield more salvage than the actual payment for the entire mission.

Of course, that depends on what's defending the base, how much of it, and how confident one is on actually beating it without suffering too many losses

Even If the pirates only field a force identical to the last one to defend their base, we'all almost certainly get a couple of seriously crippled or destroyed mechs. That SRM group was really nasty, and encountering a second one as well as actually having to fight the pirates mechs at the same time (rather than spraying fire as they legged it) could be disastrous. There's no battle damage compensation on this contract, and if I'm not mistaken the *repairs* to a single mech from that battle are most of the salvage C-bills (not counting the parts we put in storage or used to fix the SRM'd one )

Like, that broken gyroscope alone was 900,000 c-bills? That battle didn't really pay for itself even if you pretend one of our mechs didn't turn into a firework display

[Kanil]

That SRM group was really nasty, and encountering a second one as well as actually having to fight the pirates mechs at the same time (rather than spraying fire as they legged it) could be disastrous.

SRM carriers are 3/5 speed and have 12 armor. While they demand respect, they aren't typically very threatening. Of course, when you get a chase battle and 5 of them phase in out of thin air right next to your units, that is a problem, but not one you'd expect to see in a non-chase battle.

We didn't get a screenshot of the pirate base defense, so we don't know what's there. Lacking that information, I'm always going to go with attack, because salvage is great.

[EuchreJack]

That SRM group was really nasty, and encountering a second one as well as actually having to fight the pirates mechs at the same time (rather than spraying fire as they legged it) could be disastrous.

SRM carriers are 3/5 speed and have 12 armor. While they demand respect, they aren't typically very threatening. Of course, when you get a chase battle and 5 of them phase in out of thin air right next to your units, that is a problem, but not one you'd expect to see in a non-chase battle.

We didn't get a screenshot of the pirate base defense, so we don't know what's there. Lacking that information, I'm always going to go with attack, because salvage is great.

To be fair, the chase battle occurred in the mud, which really hurt mobility.  The way you fight SRM carriers, and any vehicles really, is to run/jump on top of them really fast (use lots of movement), then kick them into oblivion.  Night missions are bad because while visibility makes it harder to hit, you can't run as fast without risking a fall (although you can jump just fine, which is what I'd recommend).  It is not typical of a vehicle battle.

I always sing "Lets get Physical" when fighting vehicles

[Kanil]

Just make sure you're not standing on a Demolisher when you lose init. That really ruins your day in a hurry.

[Fishbreath]

The real trouble is that the AI seems to use its initiative pretty intelligently; it's hard to end up on top of vehicles at all times, and being next to but not directly on top of some of BattleTech's vehicles is infinitely worse than having to shoot it out with them at longer ranges.

I've gone ahead and added the various mechwarrior claims since the last update. Remaining are Captain Halit, Private Ngo, and Private Frajtov.

Edit: the pirate base defenders include 18 vehicles, two medium mechs, and 10 civilian vehicles, split between industrial mechs and armed trucks and personnel carriers.

[Hasek10]

The real trouble is that the AI seems to use its initiative pretty intelligently; it's hard to end up on top of vehicles at all times, and being next to but not directly on top of some of BattleTech's vehicles is infinitely worse than having to shoot it out with them at longer ranges.

I've gone ahead and added the various mechwarrior claims since the last update. Remaining are Captain Halit, Private Ngo, and Private Frajtov.

Edit: the pirate base defenders include 18 vehicles, two medium mechs, and 10 civilian vehicles, split between industrial mechs and armed trucks and personnel carriers.

Yeah I've noticed that too. Say what you will about the Princess AI bot, but it generally utilizes initiative extremely well.

[Hanzoku]

I just wish they would merge the handling of VTOLs from TestBot to Princess so she'd stop slideslipping them off the map all the time.

[Fishbreath]

Chatter in the public developer Slack suggests that Princess may be getting some improved VTOL handling down the line. I'm mostly in the MekHQ channel/github project, though, so take that with a grain of salt.