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[Spartan 117]

I'm dibsing our first ally pilot.

[Servant Corps]

move onto the story!

[Mephansteras]

Man, I loved this game when it first came out. I remember being blown away by the 3D combat. Actually being able to walk *up* hills or to use them for cover! It was intense.

Hehe. Ah, how fast technology progresses. Great game anyway, though.

Generally speaking I say we stick with Davion and Steiner as people to work for. They won't betray you and tend to pay well. I remember the other three houses being decidedly inferior to work for.

I have a hint for you if you're willing to abuse the AI.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Base defense missions are unfair. The enemy AI will ignore you to get to the base. I won many a mission against heavy mechs by running around them in a light mech and blasting a leg off of them to cripple them. You can move fast enough in a locust to easily take out one or two of them this way before they could get anywhere near their target.

Does work best if you have lance-mates in heavy mechs to draw their fire, though.

[Sensei]

Heh, I've done that before. And yeah, I've noticed Davion's contracts to be superior to everyone else' . Haven't been with Steiner before.

[Sensei]

Well, we're moving to Caph. Things might be a bit harder out there. So I've decided to recruit a new member to the Blazing aces. But the only mech pilot I can find on Greely (okay, just in the bar, I didn't look hard), well...

she's a happy-go-lucky rookie.  I don't care how "loyal" she is if she's dead in five minutes. But I bought a Locust for someone I'll hire on Caph.

So, I'm headed to Caph. It's probably the single core-most Davion world. Albeit the fare is a little pricy, we're off.



The neighborhood's a little- oh, did I mention? Floating in SPACE? Shit yeah.


So, off to the bar, for some sucker to pilot my my Locust. Let's, see, who's OSHI-

What the hell? Did she fucking follow me? A month later and halfway across the galaxy, she still wants to join my crew. I'm inspired by her foolishness. Instead I hire someone slightly less useless and a lot less creepy- T. D. Bente Spartan 117.


So, then, let's put him in the Locust...


...and off to our next fight! Hopefully not to disaster, as we have only about 523,000 credits left, which will barely suffice if our mechs are knocked out of commission. But I'm becoming a master haggler, on the upside.

Did I mention I liked the guy in the Greely office more?

Contracts (prices shown after haggling and may not be totally correct due to randomization and the order in which the contracts were queried):
A) Disabling of a field Comm Center- 540,000 credits, 14% salvage, 16% upfront. 1 Medium Mech. Marik planet (this is bound to get them plenty ticked off... albeit quite lucrative).
B) Retrieval of Captured Mechs- 470,000 credits, 18% salvage, 14% upfront. 1 Heavy Mech. Kurita planet (don't know if I want to tick off Kurita, and possibly steiner with them- but we could run straight to the building and claim our reward without fighting for this one. Risky.)
C) Retrieval of Stolen Property- 280,000 credits, 11% salvage 8% upfront. 1 Light Mech. Marik planet (this is a really easy bet.)
D) Rescue of Hostages- 550,000 Credits, 14% salvage 8% upfront. 1 Medium Mech. Marik planet again (I think we're doomed to anger Marik if we keep working with Davion).
E) Defense of a Landing Facility- 510,000 credits, 16% salvage 8% upfront. 1 Heavy Mech. Davion planet (a heavy mech is tough, but if we're lucky we can blast at its back while it ignores us and heads for the landing facility, like all defense missions. Risky.)

So, what'll it be? The light mech one is easy. The medium mech ones will be a challenge, but we have a chance. The heavy mech ones will be risky and likely devolve into shameless shenanigans. Also, who do we risk angering? (our standings haven't changed since the last screenshot)

_{edited for grammar}

[Mephansteras]

Go with D. Marik sucks to work for anyway. Cheap bastards.

[Spartan 117]

D.

Also, yay I'm a kickass old guy.

[Akura]

D.

Also, yay I'm a kickass old guy.

Better than a 16-year old girl who stalks a Davion mercenary halfway across the galaxy.

[Mephansteras]

Oddly, I remember that girl as doing quite well in some of my games despite her abysmal starting stats. Although there was some brunette girl who had an Average skill that I tended to prefer for my first recruit.

Not that it matters much. All of the initial mercs tend to suck a bit until they get experience. And of course you can recruit awesome ones later on.

[Sensei]

Caph missions, or maybe just fighting heavier mechs, seem to be a lot harder. And my wingman is great at blowing himself up. TL;DR, I savescummed after Bente got killed in no time flat and I had effectively zero profit over ten battles or so. Then I was doing fine, but all the sudden my arrow keys stopped working (WTF?)

So here's the real update, FINALLY. It's short because I'm worried something weird is going to happen and I'll have to revert my save again.

I set off on my first battle with Spartan 117.


Because he's an idiot, I have to tell him how to flank (how do you grow old piloting a Locust without knowing that?) There's a command screen that lets me give wingmen orders along the lines of "Attack", "Defend", "Capture the base", "Run motherfucker!", etc.

It doesn't pause the combat though, so you have to give orders through the DOS interface like lightning. There's an art to thinking faster than you can act.

Because the Locust is faster (I'd give him the Jenner if I didn't think he'd run my repair bill through the roof) he runs out in front of me and gets the enemy to turn away.


The enemy is a Shadow Hawk by the way, I can see from the command screen.

Of course, Spartan sort of breaks off his move order and OH SHIT OH MY GOD THAT MECH IS BIGGER THAN ME SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT!


Then something weird happens. The mofo in the red mech jumpjets off on a transatlantic fucking flight and doesn't come down for about thirty seconds (in prior attempts at this mission I tend to blow his head off in a desperate direct fire gambit, so eh).

When he finally comes down he has his back to me. This is because he is a skilled and genius tactician, or possibly because he has all the piloting skills of a crippled emu. I shoot his head off. Glory to the victorious me.


The mechyard has a slew of mechs we either wildly can't afford or just can't quite afford, but disappear when we have enough money. For the record, our Jenner is worth about 3.5 million if we sell it and the Locust is worth about 1.1 million.




So in the name of chasing empty dreams, why not head on down to the-

...Balls. And only now on this n^th savescum too, normally missions are many and bountiful.

So, whence shall we fly? Davion? Steiner? Inner sphere? Fringes of the galaxy? Got some specific suggestions, those of you who have the game? Remember flying farther costs more money- minimum 90,000, maximum 240,000. We're at about 1.4 million right now. And sorry, no news or bar-talk as of yet.

[Mephansteras]

Hmmm, best to stay within Davion for now, unless you really want a change of scenery. Heading off somewhere else will make us have to start at the bottom of the income barrel again.

[warhammer651]

yeah, head for davion.

Also, I would like to claim a pilot, and a Mech

[Sensei]

Sail we for greener pastures! Sail we for Marduk. Place we our verbs before our nouns.

It's hard to see the white selectors, but we're just making a short trip within Davion territory.


Why waste time? We're here for work.


I pick what looks like a deal that's not too hard and should net us decent pay.

We prepare for the fight, and...

Okay, so we didn't do anything. But there was this trashed mech outside the base, so when my tour finished and grabbed my gun and went to go take a photo on it. Chicks at the bar won't know the difference.

Actually they might, because when I got back to the contract office there was diddly squat to do. No contracts available. No action in the news. We might have to stir something up if this goes on any longer.

Before we moved on though, I found a mech in the yards...

if I sell my Jenner, I could buy it. It's the only mech in the yard right now, but we save our cash we might get a better and slightly more expensive Shadow Hawk, or upgrade Bente to a Jenner, or hire someone else (though I don't like going into battle with a ton of Locusts, repair bills get expensive).

So, do we buy it? Where do we move? Who's taking our jobs?

[Mephansteras]

Get the Phoenix Hawk. I've never been fond of Jenners.

[EuchreJack]

I doubt the Shadow Hawk is really better, although this game may treat the Shadow Hawk v Phoenix Hawk issue differently.  You're the commander, you deserve an upgrade!