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The year is 3015. The Third Succession War is winding down, but low-intensity conflicts continue to plague the Inner Sphere. In the Free Worlds League, the Marik Civil War is slowly dragging itself towards its humiliating and ignominious conclusion. In the Lyran Commonwealth, Archon Katrina Steiner plans the first drafts of a peace proposal she hopes will allow her nation’s armies to rest after centuries of warfare. To the east, the Draconis Combine is busy digesting the worlds it has seized from the Federated Suns, reasserting the Dragon’s authority over its southern borders. The Federated Suns are likewise consolidating their gains, ably led by their new Prince, the shrewd and calculating Hanse Davion. In the south, the Capellan Confederation redoubles its efforts in espionage and subterfuge, stoking the fires of rebellion in both of its larger neighbours. Finally, on ancient Terra, ComStar plots and plans and weaves its web of control over the entire Inner Sphere.
It is a time of both danger and opportunity. Demand for battlemechs, skilled mechwarriors, and deniable assets remains high. Into this environment steps the Sterling and Sable Company, a freshly minted group of adventurers, eccentrics and former soldiers itching to try their hand at this whole ‘mercenary’ business.
About Battletech
Battletech is a hex-based Tabletop RPG where teams of bipedal robots battle it out for factional supremacy. There is a whole expanded universe including books, video games, animated cartoons, etc. but the core concept remains the same across all media. Most readers will probably already be familiar with the brilliant Battletech Let’s Plays run by SomethingAwful’s very own PoptartsNinja, whose style I have shamelessly stolen been greatly inspired by.
Running a mercenary company? How will that work?
Our mercenary group will begin work in 3015 and continue through the Battletech timeline, until either the company is destroyed or we hit the current franchise end date of 3150. The story will follow the Battletech canon, so the Succession Wars / Clan Invasion / Jihad will all take place on their historical dates and the thread will have to deal with the various difficulties / opportunities those events present. The initial contract is a bog-standard pirate hunt, but after it has concluded the thread will be free to vote on what the company does next. Volunteers from the thread will take control of the company’s mechwarriors for the span of each mission, while I control the enemy forces arrayed against them.
For this LP I will be using MekHQ to keep track of the company’s finances, assets and personnel. Battles will be conducted via MegaMek. This will help streamline things since Battletech requires a lot of dice rolls and having everything automated gives me more time to work on the narrative. It also lessens the chance of me making gameplay errors.
You said we can vote on things?
That’s right. The following will be up for the thread to decide:
Contract Votes – The Sterling and Sable Company begins this LP under a pirate-hunting contract. Once this draws to a close, I will draw up a selection of new contracts for the company to pursue. These contracts will vary in their location, mission type, payment, salvage rights and other aspects. It will be up to the thread to read through the details of each contract, weigh up the pros and cons, then choose the one they feel will be the most profitable / interesting / exciting.
Salvage Votes – Salvaging enemy equipment is the lifeblood of a mercenary command. Most missions will end with a list of salvageable OpFor units being presented, with the thread deciding which units should go to the mercs and which should be left to the employer. The total amount of salvage the company has a right to will vary by contract, so make sure to think carefully before laying claim to something.
Logistical Votes – A logistical vote will take place before the start of each new contract and occasionally between missions. The matters under consideration will include the recruitment of new personnel, the purchasing of new equipment / sale of old equipment, and whether to repair salvaged units or strip them for parts. If there is XP to be assigned this will take place then as well.
Ad-Hoc Votes / Event Votes – There may be other events where voting is allowed, for instance, whether to break a contract with a duplicitous or exploitative employer, whether to take a side in the Succession Wars / fight against the Clans, etc. These will happen as and when appropriate.
What happens if the company goes bust?
Good question. Mercenary life is hard, both in-game and in the canon. If the company goes deep into the red I can take out loans, but these come with nasty conditions and may wind up being merely a stay of execution. If the situation becomes unmanageable I will give the thread a vote to decide whether they disband, join a Great House, or turn to piracy, write a final update about their subsequent fate, then let the thread create a new company for us to follow.
I want to be a pilot! How do I sign up?
Great. Send me a PM and I’ll add your username to my master list. If you don’t have PMs, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, because I don’t do email communications. You can still take part in the thread discussions and audience votes.
What is the deadline for orders?
The deadlines for player orders are Tuesday and Saturday, 9:00 PM GMT. If you have the misfortune to live in a country that is not Great Britain, you can use this handy website (https://greenwichmeantime.com/current-time/) to figure out when this is in your local area.
Just a quick warning: I won’t be chasing anyone for orders. If I don’t receive any instructions by the deadline, I will take control of your unit for that turn and attempt to make a decent play with it vis-à-vis the mission objectives. If this results in your unit being destroyed or left out of position, then so be it. I know it's not ideal, but I want to keep things moving quickly. If you have a personal crisis and have to pull out midway through a mission, let me know and I’ll call in a substitute.
Can we discuss the Battletech rules / sourcebooks?
Discussing the rules is fine, as is helping new players understand things. Posting direct links to pirated sourcebooks is not fine and will get you reported to the mods.
Can we talk about the Clans / Fed-Com Civil War / Jihad / Dark Age?
Go right ahead. Battletech’s lore is one of its strongest aspects. Since we’ll be proceeding through the official timeline anyway, certain events are guaranteed to be topical!
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Current House Rules:
OpFor Initiative – For this LP I will be following the standard set by PoptartsNinja in that the OpFor will always lose initiative. This means that players will see my movement ahead of time.
Design Quirks – Design Quirks are in play, both positive and negative.
Experience Distribution – Mechwarriors receive 1XP for every successful mission, and an additional 1XP for every three kills. XP may also be awarded to MVPs as voted by the thread. Non-combat personnel receive 1XP for every 25 successful tasks, 1XP for critical success rolls, and have a small chance to earn an additional 1XP for every month of service. Administrative staff automatically receive 1XP every three weeks. These rules may be altered if they prove to be unbalanced.
Levelling Curve – The levelling curve for Gunnery (Mech) and Piloting (Mech) have been altered to make early progress cheaper but late progress more expensive. This is both to make training up new recruits easier and also to stop players from power-levelling a particular character to 0/0 within the first decade of play. Other levelling curves remain at default. Again, this may change in the future.
Kinder Maintenance – The default maintenance system in MekHQ is absurdly brutal and often results in your technicians doing more damage to your battlemechs than the enemy. Repairing their blunders also costs money, and failed repair rolls can result in your techs destroying the parts they are working on, costing even more money by forcing you to order replacement parts. I have therefore toned things down a bit; maintenance checks will now take place every month rather than every week, era-specific repair rolls have been turned off, and the default maintenance modifier is now -2 rather than -1.
Ejection Rules - For this LP, ejection rules have been tailored to increase a pilot’s chances of survival. Ammunition explosions in a unit without CASE will automatically trigger an ejection. I am also using the Skin-Of-Teeth Ejection rule, giving pilots a slim chance to survive even if their mech’s head is blown off.
Players can also request a manual ejection if they feel their mech has taken too much damage or if their pilot is in danger of dying. However, players should not feel pressured to do this; ultimately the goal is to have a fun time with stompy robots and if a mech is destroyed or a character dies then I will simply roll with it and continue the story without them.
Ejection rules for the OpFor will be determined on a mission-by-mission basis.
Mobility Kills – Mechs that lose a leg or suffer a destroyed Gyro will be considered mission-killed and removed from play.
Early Mech Destruction – Players who suffer the incredibly bad luck of having their mech shot out from under them early in a mission will be invited to play again during the next mission.
Character Death - If a character takes six pilot hits during a mission and dies, I will roll a d6 at the end of the mission. On a roll of 1-4, the character dies permanently. On a roll of 5-6, I will remove one pilot hit from the affected character. The character will miraculously cheat death, albeit with crippling injuries that will take months to recover from and may force them into retirement or a non-combat role.
MegaMek / MekHQ Technical Difficulties – Hopefully this won’t be an issue. I have Paranoid Autosave turned on, so MegaMek will be autosaving after every phase, and I will be saving manually as well. I’m using a stable version of both programs so the chance of glitches is small, but it’s better to be safe.
And last but not least… Don’t be a dick. If your favourite character gets killed, don’t give the players crap for it. Shit happens in Battletech. It’s even canonical – most new mercenary groups don’t even survive their first year. Similarly, don’t whinge if a particular vote doesn’t go your way.
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The Sterling and Sable Company was founded in late 3014. The company is named after its two principal founders, Roger Sterling and Jenna Sable. Roger Sterling is a former Hauptmann in the 19th Lyran Guards who resigned his commission after three quarters of his company was wiped out due to faulty intelligence and over-eager superior officers. Many of his former subordinates joined him in exile and now make up a plurality of the company’s forces. On the other hand, Jenna Sable is a mechwarrior-errant and former Davion noble who fronted most of the money needed to get the company started.
Dramatis Personae
Sterling Lance:
Sable Lance:
Ruby Lance:
Technicians and Mechanics:
Medical Personnel:
Administrative Staff:
These are the currently named and backstoried characters in the company. I will probably end up making a graveyard for the ones that die, including their length of service, cause of death, etc.
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State of the Company, Castor VI, January 14th 3015
This section will contain a brief overview of the Sterling and Sable Company prior to the start of the game. I won’t be going into the nuts and bolts of MekHQ; this is just to present some basic information about the state of the company. Everything is fairly standard for a brand new company; twelve mechwarriors, some support staff, an entirely mech-based force, and no DropShip.
Most mercenary companies start out at company strength, ie. twelve mechs, and Sterling and Sable are no exception. There are three lances in total; Roger Sterling’s command lance, Jenna Sable’s all-purpose lance, and Mike Clements’ recon lance.
Here are the lances in more detail. I have tried to give the company a good spread of decent units to start out with, but nothing too overpowered. No inexplicable Star League Royal variants here. We do have one Heavy Mech, Sterling’s Warhammer, but that’s all. Heavy and Assault Mechs are rare in this period, so we might not encounter any others for quite a while. Everything else we have is either Medium or Light.
We have some supplies to start out with, but again, nothing too fancy. We have plenty of spare armour, some ammunition, and a few heat sinks. Other spare parts will have to either be purchased from elsewhere or stripped off salvaged units.
Our financial situation is precarious. One and a half million C-Bills may sound like a lot, but a single bad engagement can easily beggar us. Replacing a 1-ton mech gyro costs 300,000 C-Bills. Our current contract also only barely covers our basic expenses.
Here are the details of our current contract. The monthly payout is pretty lacklustre, but basic pay isn’t everything. The planetary government have agreed to a Battle Loss Compensation rate of 50%, which means we get back 50% of the damage we take in cash. Salvage rights are also extremely important, since we can either refit salvaged units for our own use, strip them for parts, or sell them for extra C-Bills. For this particular contract we’ll also be earning a bounty for any enemy personnel taken alive. This isn’t part of MekHQ, just a little something I added on to hopefully earn a bit more money. I can add the cash in and remove the imprisoned pilots using MekHQ’s GM function.
And here’s our first mission of the contract! Each contract we take will have a certain number of missions the company will need to complete before it can be considered fulfilled. In this case our players will be intercepting a pirate lance in the wilderness. Let’s wish them the best of luck!
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Castor VI, January 14th, 3015
Jenna Sable’s boots drummed a steady beat against the hard concrete floor as she trotted down the corridor connecting the barracks with the mech hangar. Alarms blared in the distance, a droning keen that cycled up and down like the territorial shrieks of a predatory bird. Jenna paid the sound no heed and kept walking, pausing only to sidestep a security officer coming from the opposite direction. The young man frowned and paused as if to challenge her, but closed his mouth and hurried on past after noticing the cooling vest and neurohelmet tucked under her arm.
Jenna ignored the faux-pas and kept walking. The officer had only been doing his job, and besides, she didn’t look like a mechwarrior. Standing just shy of 4’10, with a slight build and delicate features, Jenna Sable appeared far younger than her actual age of 25. The four years she had spent as a mechwarrior-errant had sharpened her previously doll-like features, but not enough to give her the hard, lean look of a professional soldier.
A dozen more steps took Jenna into the mech hangar. A huge expanse of steel and ferrocrete greeted her as she stepped inside. Girders hung like spiderwebs from the vaulted ceiling, supporting a vast network of cranes, pulleys and heavy-duty machine tools. A noxious smell tickled Jenna’s nostrils, an unpleasant mix of grease, lubricating oil, and those rancid cigarettes that Sam Kost insisted on smoking. A small army of astechs dashed hither and thither, the alarms stirring them into action like a swarm of angry fire ants.
Jenna plunged into the throng, jogging towards the dozen mech bays set into the opposite wall. Once, those bays would have held battlemechs belonging to the 30th Marik Militia, but they were off-world at the moment, helping to put down Anton Marik’s mad rebellion. Now their sconces were occupied by the battlemechs of the Sterling and Sable Company, the newly minted mercenary company of whom Jenna Sable was a founding member. Weaving between the astechs, Jenna quickly made her way over to the north west corner of the hanger, where the battlemechs of Sable Lance were being prepped for launch.
As Jenna reached her Wolverine she caught sight of Sadanobu Muto, her technician, kneeling by her mech’s right foot. He looked up as she approached, then barked some orders to a nearby astech, who quickly disappeared.
“Everything okay?” Jenna asked, nodding at the Wolverine’s foot. Going into battle with a sticky foot wouldn’t be pleasant, but Muto’s boyish grin dispelled her worries.
“Just a last-minute visual inspection. Wouldn’t want you to trip and fall on your first outing.”
Jenna returned his grin. “Indeed not. Sterling and Sable are a serious company. Mechanical pratfalls are not on our agenda.”
Muto chuckled, but his expression quickly turned serious. “They’ve made their move more quickly than I expected.”
Jenna nodded soberly. The pirates calling themselves Preston’s Prowlers had lain low ever since their DropShip had crashed. What raids they had conducted had been small and limited in scope, targeting provincial towns and villages hundreds of miles from the capital. Nobody had expected them to launch a raid on New Villastellone itself, especially not barely a fortnight after the Silver and Sable Company had arrived to reinforce it. Was it overconfidence? Desperation? Or simple ignorance?
Before Jenna could contemplate further the astech Muto had sent away earlier returned driving a mobile scissor-lift. Jenna quickly clambered into the cradle. She could freeclimb up into her Wolverine’s cockpit if she had to, but using the machine was quicker and safer.
“Good hunting!” Muto called as the scissor-lift’s arm began to rise. “Bring me back some salvage, yeah? Something good, like a Star League Griffin!”
Jenna laughed. “I’ll let you know if we find one!” Then she got to work shrugging into her cooling vest and neurohelmet. Once the lift was level with the Wolverine’s head she swung her legs over the side of the cradle and carefully clambered into the mech’s open cockpit.
Wolverines were notorious for two things; their versatility in combat, and the sheer discomfort of actually piloting one. The Magna MKII Medium Laser built into the head provided decent punch at close range, but its bulky cooling assembly ate into the mech’s cockpit space, leaving it cramped and difficult to move in. Thankfully, that wasn’t a problem for Jenna. Her small stature allowed her to easily fit inside, even with her bulky cooling vest and neurohelmet.
Ensconced inside, Jenna initiated the mech’s startup sequence. Her fingers danced over the central control panel, muscle memory selecting the correct buttons and switches without her having to consciously consider them. The canopy slid down and sealed itself shut, pressurising with an audible hiss. A soft vibration shuddered through the cockpit as the Wolverine’s engine cycled up out of low-power mode. As the mech’s DI Computer finished booting up, a familiar female voice emanated from its speakers.
“REACTOR… ONLINE. SENSORS… ONLINE. WEAPONS SYSTEMS… ONLINE. ALL FUNCTIONING SYSTEMS… NOMINAL.”
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Included just for the test post:
Battlemech Unit Sheets:
Banners:
