Mission #9: Mistakes were made.
The next mission is the story mission and I am going to skip most of the details on this one because it might give too much away; it might take away any anxiety you might feel going in. That doesn’t mean that there are lessons that can’t be learnt. I am not sure if I have double, triple or quadruple negatives in there but who are you, my editor?
Here is the lance that I fielded. I made good advantage of the time in transit to refit the my Vindicator much as @Tankerwade suggested. The Vindicator makes more sense fulfilling this role as it seems to have more tonnage to give to LRMs, especially when you take off those jump jets. I did not have time to return my Shadow Hawk to something closer resembling the original configuration so I have two mechs that can LRM targets that my scout can sensor lock. I am going to take advantage of that.
But, first things first. If you get to this point where you are ready to launch the mission but remember that you have not leveled up your mech warriors, fear not as the functional Esc key will take you back far enough to do that. You can then get back in to where you were before by following the same path (and the same, or other, dialog options). So, gentle readers, remember to get those mech warrior skills in place before you land your mechs.
I have no real reasoning behind my skill choices at this point but I do seem to be bee-lining it to max the two skill paths that each mech can specialize in. That is likely not worded good (sic) but it means that you can only choose those special skills for your mech warriors in two trees. Once a warrior has two skill paths with special abilities, the other paths loose their special abilities. You can still add more Guts to a warrior but they just can’t get the specials.
When I first hit the screen below I honestly thought that the quote was attributed to our own @DeadMeat! I mean he might have said it, but the game has erroneously given it to Deadeye … whoever that is.
Mistake #1: When you ‘Death From Above’, you damage your legs. You probably don’t want to do that at the start of the mission as it just makes everything else with the damage mech a little more risky. It is very satisfying but this vehicle could have easily been dealt with without the extra damage to my scout;
Mistake The Second: Do not, and I mean this in the nicest way that is both shouting at a new recruit yet trying to be parental, do not run your scout up next to a medium mech to engage it in Melee thinking: “I wonder if I can knock that guy down”.
Poor Dekker was mercifully punched in his mech chest, which resulted in his implement of battle becoming a pile of screws and Dollar Shave Club razor blades. Unfortunately Dekker was not removed from his mech before the process started.
I was able to retrieve the mech at the end of the battle but there is so much damage done to it that I think I can just build substitute one more easily and leave this old one in a small box. The mech-techs were able to scrape what was left Dekkers remains out of the ‘cockpit’ andI found a mustard jar that now holds all that is left of this brave pilot up on a shelf.
Another Mistake: I don’t want to count them anymore because it is all so depressing. Make Called Shots or Precision Strikes but please, when you do…
…remember to select all the weapons that you want to hit with. If you don’t, someone is going to retaliate and remove some of those weapons for you as you obviously don’t need them.
In this case I was lucky and the big mean mech was angry about the ones I did use, removed those, and left the ones that I didn’t use. I used those later.
And here is what I limped out of that battle with:
Rest in peace Dekker. It will not be the last of these virtual mech warrior lives that a extinguish - I just hope I do it more on the enemy side than my own.