IntroductionIf last update was administration, this one is repair, salvage, and refitting.
... and then also some more administration.
Tech OperationsThere's more left on this Puma/Adder than I thought.
Ooh, including a Clan XL210 engine. None of our current mechs uses an engine of that rating, but we'll keep it for a rainy day, alongside the 330XL and 375XL we salvaged off of the Hellbringer and Timberwolf while on Tukayyid.
Five refits get underway: the Ostroc, Grasshopper, and Crab all move to upgraded versions. The PXH-1K gets the PXH-1Kk kit, while one of the plain-jane PXH-1s will get the 3K makeover. Five of our best techs get to work.
Kepano Endo, who managed the refit on the Awesome, is working on the Crab. He's been with us since the very beginning, and is (I believe) the oldest Bastard, at 58. He has proven to be a deep repository of knowledge on lost mech variants. That skill is a little less important in the modern era (useful, maybe, for identifying second-line Clan mechs), but Endo has nevertheless been working on mechs for longer than most of the rest of the outfit has been alive. Some of the youngsters joke that he's been around the block so many times that he's the "Endo" in "Endo-Steel".
Jasia Reiseinauer, responsible for the Ostroc refit this time around, finishes first, on February 18. She joined up during the
assault on Nashira, dead in the middle of heavy combat with the Draconis Combine. She hit the ground running, however, and is now one of our cadre of veteran techs. She is as enthusiastic a worker as any of our techs, but cleans up better than most of them—it's not uncommon for new mechwarriors, who spend a bunch of time talking to her on the clock, to not recognize her after hours.
Edina Cameron is next to finish, adding a 'k' to the PXH-1K. Another of the company's originals, she was the first to call
Ker-Ker's Lancelot "Frankenstein", after the second or third time it was almost totally rebuilt from wreckage. She serves as a surrogate big sister for a lot of the younger techs—always willing to talk, fiercely protective.
George Linko, working on the Grasshopper, hits a small speed bump, and revises his estimate up another two weeks or so. He, like Jasia, joined the Bastards during our stay on Nashira. The two are about the same age, in their late 20s, and grew to be good friends during the mad rush to keep our mechs in the field on that campaign. Though Jasia is technically off duty with the Ostroc back in service, except for a couple of hours of routine maintenance each day, she nevertheless spends some of her free time pitching in on George's refit project.
Last up is Kesare Rodriguez, a newcomer to the company: she joined at the end of September last year. Though our best tech, she too runs into some difficult terrain on the PXH-3K project, on March 29: fitting an XL engine and changing the mech to double heat sinks requires redoing the heat piping through the limbs, and some small calculation errors in that process are going to require removing myomer and detaching arms to fix. It'll be another 54 days before the Phoenix Hawk is ready. That said, she'll be able to work on it while we refill our spare parts stores.
Or, as it turns out, while we finish other refits.
Euchre, in between near-daily training runs (if we're out of combat for so long, we might as well use the time well!), has evidently been hitting the books, or hanging around the mech bays while the techs do their thing. He presents
Drake and Kepano Endo with pretty detailed plans for a rework of the Bastards' Lancelots. It follows the pattern laid down by most of our other refits: double heat sinks to save weight, ER Large Lasers with the extra heat capacity, and peripheral armor and weaponry improvements to round out the design.
It's not just an idea, either: he has given some thought to engineering concerns like weapon mounting points, power routing, heat transfer, and so on. It will keep us on Outreach for a little while longer, but the opportunity for a period of uninterrupted training has been productive so far, and the tweaks will be a nice improvement to the Lancelots' combat ability, so we sign off on the plan.
Euchre picks up a level in Tech/Mech for his efforts.
One of the techs we just hired (see below), Orel Pestunov, takes the lead on the refit project. Edina Cameron will work on the second Lancelot.
RecruitmentMechWarriorsPhilippa Khadjikyriakos joins on Valentine's Day. She rolls the Maneuvering Ace special ability.
A veteran mech pilot, she originally served with the Waco Rangers, a large mercenary command. She quit over the vendetta the Rangers' commander, Wayne Waco, has been pursuing against Wolf's Dragoons for the past several decades, and seems eager to join a relatively low-drama outfit like ours. As the first to join Sixth Lance, she gets a promotion to sergeant, and will drive the Thunderbolt to start.
Margita bin Ala' al din joins February 28. She comes with a Quickdraw 4G, which goes into mothballs, and rolls the Iron Man special ability.
She hails from the Lyran Commonwealth, serving with distinction in the Lyran armed forces until the naked favoritism shown to the wealthy and well-connected in Lyran service (she was neither) pushed her to try her luck in the mercenary world.
The other veteran in the newly-formed Sixth Lance, she'll pilot the TBT-5N.
Mats Johansen signed on on March 21, bringing along a Whitworth WTH-1. It also goes into mothballs, while he is assigned to the TBT-5S.
Finally, Lise Selvåg joined us on March 28. She and Johansen are both refugees from the Free Rasalhague Republic, former mechwarriors in that nation's service dispossessed by the war with the Clans. Lise's ride will be the RVN-2X (which is discussed further down the post).
Relatedly, I forgot that I'm supposed to roll special abilities for pilots who advance to veteran/elite status, not just those who start there. The only pilot who was missing abilities was Simona, our Clan Wolf bondsman, who gets Missile Specialist and Hot Dog.
TechsThree new mech techs, Orel Pestunov (elite), Michaela Hupetcoff (veteran), and Moosa Elayavalli (green), bring us up to 25 (for 24 mechs).
AdministratorsThe company has grown substantially in the last year or two, and the administrative demands of managing it have gone up too. (Also, I wrote down some house rules for required administrators, so time to put those into effect.)
Our current requirements are:
- 5 command administrators (one for the unit, two per combat company, to handle both general paperwork and what militaries refer to as 'staff work')
- 5 transport administrators (one per combat company, one per 400 tons of cargo)
- 6 logistics administrators (one per 200 tons of cargo)
- 9 HR administrators (one per 10 employees of the company, not including temporary astechs/medics or HR administrators)
That means there's some additional hiring to do, which we can fit into the time it'll take to finish the refits.
Mech and Supply PurchasesRVN-2XOur Federated Commonwealth contact politely declines to sell us a modern Javelin, but is willing to part with a battlefield-salvage Raven. It arrives significantly down on armor and absent two limbs, but patching it up is a straightforward job.
The 2X variant mounts a pair of medium lasers, a large laser, and an SRM-6, and carries 104 points of armor. Its movement is 5/8, which is... not fast, even if it were a medium mech, but it's survivable and it can lay down a solid alpha strike. Sixth Lance is also pretty slow, with the pair of Trebuchets and a Thunderbolt leading the way—it can at least keep up.
SparesOur spares inventory is now extensive enough to support a long raid.
- 20 double heat sinks (Inner Sphere)
- 10 tons Inner Sphere ferro-fibrous armor
- An additional 20 tons of Inner Sphere standard armor (total of about 35 tons)
- We have about 13 tons of Clan ferro-fibrous armor on hand. Clan technology isn't quite impossible to buy on the open market, but it's close, so this stock (salvaged from destroyed Clan mechs) will have to keep us for now.
- 2 new standard gyroscopes (one for light mechs, one for mediums), to go with the two we have for heavy mechs and one we have for assault mechs.
- 5 ER Large Lasers.
- 6 medium lasers and 4 medium pulse lasers.
- At least one spare arm/leg, upper/lower arm actuator, and leg/foot actuator set for every size of mech in our inventory. (Not including the Ryoken and Koshi—Clan endo-steel parts are not
Ammunition- Roughly three tons per launcher/gun, in addition to whatever is loaded on the mechs, except in one case.
- Our administrators are attempting to run down more Clan Ultra AC/20 ammo for the Ryoken's primary armament. Like I said above, finding Clan tech at any price is a challenge, in particular Clan tech that explodes when it gets shot. On average, our administrators expect to find about one shot (not ton, shot) per week. Simona will just have to be careful pulling the trigger.
StatusIt is now May 15, 3053.
FinancesThe Bastards have
42.925 million C-bills in the coffers. (It's been a spendy few months!)
Repairs and RefitsGetting there. Technician Rodriguez is about a work-week away from refitting the -3K Phoenix Hawk. Technician Pestunov is still about a month away from finishing the first Lancelot. (Edina Cameron finished the other Lancelot already, because it was the 'second time' we used that refit kit, and therefore doesn't factor in the design work.)
ContractsThere are three on the market at the moment:
Beating up on Rasalhague at this point feels a bit cruel, but that's war, I guess.
The pay is good, but it might cheese off our FedCom friends. (On the other hand, we're not on long-term retainer with them, and mercenaries 'switching sides' isn't unheard of.)
An intriguing possibility! It's a relatively short contract against relatively light resistance, and the pay is also solid.
There's also the opportunity to enter into a longer-term deal with the Federated Commonwealth, fighting the Capellans. That could, however, tie us down to one employer for the better part of a year.
TO&E, MechWarrior Claims, and AssignmentsRevamping this section a bit. The TO&E here is the intended/official one—it may fluctuate on campaign if mechs are damaged and need to be cycled in and out of lances. MechWarriors without a bolded callsign are available to claim.
- 1st Company
- Drake's Destroyers
- Major Huri "Drake" Halit (Mephansteras) - Awesome AWS-DRAKE
- Cpl. Ferdinand "Woad" Kohler (A Thing) - Grasshopper GHR-5KOB
- Pvt. Jan "Euchre" Kojic (EuchreJack) - Lancelot LNC25-0B
- Pvt. Abdul-Hafiz "Pepper" Popalzi (mrkilla22) - Archer ARC-2K
- Rook's Raiders
- Captain Mariamu "Rook" Ishikawa (Culise) - Stalker STK-3Fb
- Cpl. Damayanti "Carcer" Ngo (Dorsidwarf) - Flashman FLS-7K
- Pvt. Elroy "Faceplant" Farooqi (NickAragua) - Dragon DRG-5N
- Pvt. E-Shei "Ker-Ker" Ec (Kanil) - Lancelot LNC25-0B
- Bear's Bruisers
- Lt. SG George "Linebuster" Atkinson (Hasek10) - Emperor EMP-6A
- Lt. JG Tedros "Teddy Bear" Jamil (Knave) - Vulcan VL-5T
- Pvt. Ed "Hanzoku" Yuksel (Hanzoku) - Guillotine GLT-4L
- Pvt. Xue-Min "Wizard" Que (Rince Wind) - Guillotine GLT-4P
- 2nd Company
- Fourth Lance
- Captain Sung-min "Double Dog" Dare (a1s) - Warhammer WHM-6R
- Pvt. Catherine "Severe" Payne (Burnt Pies) - Koshi/Mist Lynx
- Pvt. Gwenael "Kicks" Hernandez (Sheyra) - Phoenix Hawk PXH-1Kk
- Recruit Simona - Ryoken/Stormcrow
- Ortega's Outriders
- Lt. JG Jose "Milspec" Ortega (milspec) - Crab CRB-30-UK
- Pvt. Kevin "Blinky" Stirzacre (moghopper) - Ostroc OSR-2D
- Pvt. Erine Forakis - Phoenix Hawk PXH-3K
- Pvt. Ik-jun "Wojtek" Frajtov (Blaze) - Phoenix Hawk PXH-1
- Sixth Lance
- Sgt. Philippa Khadjikyriakos - Thunderbolt TDR-5S-T
- Cpl. Margita bin Ala' al din - Trebuchet TBT-5N
- Pvt. Mats Johansen - Trebuchet TBT-5S
- Pvt. Lise Selvåg - Raven RVN-2X
Author
Topic: The Opinionated Bastards: a BattleTech/MekHQ Mercenary Campaign (Dec. 30, 3053) (Read 86510 times)