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Metacampaign 2010: A Steel Battalion Scenario
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I got all my training done Friday night to play, but the Brigade kept me busy throughout PAX (a first! Usually we run out early enough that I can hit the expo hall or play some games: but not this time, which ended up being a good thing
If we end up having monthly Steel Battalion LAN parties, I am so totally in. I'm still looking for an Action Replay memory card, though. I want to get my machine unlocked. :P
In the last minute or so, a PRF pilot side-stepped my mines, punched the door button, and headed into our base on the north side, making a beeline for our generator. He forgot to check his periphery and I ambushed him from the left, just outside his front firing arc. The first bang needle assault put him down. I jammed it into reverse and punched Override (whilst running on fumes), dumping energy into my battery. The battery sprang to full just as the PRF pilot was hauling himself to his feet, and I slammed into him with the bang needle one more time for the kill. Everyone's screen went white a handful of seconds later.
That match gave me my first 3 kills of the entire weekend. It took 3 days, campaigning as artillery, marker duty, and finally melee.
That last scenario was epic. It was the first indoor map I'd played, and having to switch out my sub weapon for a manipulator arm to push a button to open doors felt like being naked. I got a kill out of mining the button on the other side of a door, but my minefield wasn't thorough enough to prevent the second VT from getting through. If a PRF pilot hadn't locked onto me while I was staring at that door, I may not have seen him in time to prevent him from getting to our generator. And it was great fun to see the walls glow yellow when the Earthshaker discharged its EMP, then to hear profane mutterings and the flipping of switches on the other side of the curtain. I had a great time jacked in with notoriousBEN, TOGSolid, and the guys riding RED4 and RED5.
It was a tad frustrating to have relatively little campaign stick time (and lots of wait time) due to the influx of new pilots, but I don't disagree with the noobs-first rule. Sitting out for two matches in a row sometimes made me question my time allocation choices (which were mine alone). Since I went to PAX without friends, SB trampled all over the schedule I'd assembled pre-PAX. I like to think that I went to a Steel Battalion convention with killer events on the side. :P
Thanks to the Quartermaster (Maradine), the Force Commanders (esp. HSD), the Minders, and the Trainers for end-to-end entertainment. You guys rocked the hangar. Thanks to the PRF pilots, whose training and experience meant they were never, ever pushovers in the field (figuratively). The metacampaign was brilliant, and the physical tokens added so much to the experience. I especially liked the hidden Right Brothers enforcers and the VIPs assigned to Jaralaccs. As ambivalent as I am toward the iPad, they made perfect mission planning displays. My only suggestion on the physical bits would be to print the sortie point value on each of the VT tokens. Fielding lots of advanced mechs puts your team in a points hole, but I was never sure how much a 'tank contributed to that deficit when we were choosing VTs pre-mission.
I went to both: EAST. SETUP. BLOWN.
Seriously brother, you were epic. I can only wish I was able to rock the Garpike that last match like you did.
Shrapnel, I want to thank you immensely for mining the bejeesus out of all the chokepoints I set you up with all through day 3. It's not glamorous, but you mining bridges gave the PRF the not-so-envious choices of running a minefield with definite artillery barrages resulting in so much damage that they'd be banged, or try to run through absolute death with snipers. I think from now on, we'll give you whatever melee mech we can and let you run riot.
I was too focused on defense for the final match (as well as that being my VERY first time in the Earthshaker seat). If I was more confident, or we had more opportunities to run the beasts (juggernauts, NS-Rs, and the 'shaker) I'd have used the GUASS to knock out a room, and let the Jugg and NS-R run riot in the rooms.
For the life of me, I cant remember Red 4 or 5's names in the final match, but you guys did great in the Regal-N's (im sure it was the first time you guys were in 3rd gen mechs, but it was basically SSDD with spammable rockets). Im curious what your side of that battle looked like...
I cant remember everyone's names, but I remember your faces and it was pretty fun watching "deer-eyed" rookies saddle in for the first time on friday and saturday and see confidence bloom by saturday evening and sunday. Every HSD pilot remembered the waxing we took on friday, so it wasn't the cock-sure attitude of the PRF friday night.
Guyal, the HSD sergeant. You did a phenominal job as well. I DO NOT envy your job, but you were able to slot players well. The very nature of the HSD war effort -requires- experienced pilots and with the influx of green recruits at a pivotal moment on Saturday... yea... not fun. If through some miracle, that another 10 controllers come into the hands of Maradine's posse, it would be nice to open up two campaign rooms and tally both sides together. But that's a pipe dream at the moment.
******************************
Ok, technical questions. Is visability constant at certain times of day/weather?
Im probably answering my own question, because there was one assault map that happened at "dawn" or "morning" and it was VERY foggy. I had a hard time trying to find mechs in that pea soup and we suffered for it. And there were other maps at "noon" and I could see basically out to the "draw distance" of the game.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Perhaps those that show up for a round to find it full and don't want to wait leave their pilot card with the force commander. Then, when the next round starts, those that come back for their cards have priority(although still second to first timers.)
It means there'd have to be a new method of claiming VT's from the Right Brothers, but it's a start.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
You rocked the ever loving shit out of those PRF on the north side of the map. I really hope whoever was recording us posts that up somewhere.
The new guy influx was indeed a challenge to overcome (and I still feel kinda bad for that cutter boom rape Sunday morning) but watching everyone go from being green to having the SB thousand yard stare was a lot of fun. I think if we keep one experienced pilot on the team at all times (if available, but I doubt that'll ever be an issue) to help keep the new guys in line it'll mitigate issues like artillery rolling in too close or fast attack/scout VTs getting tangled up when they should have just bolted. Mistakes will still happen, but such is life, everyone screws up occasionally.
This might be tough.
Chicago Megagame group
Watch me struggle to learn streaming! Point and laugh!
While I was able to dodge the mines in the first place, and reached the southern door into the base near the south power generator, I'd been hit by the EMP blast, and had no idea what had happened. I didn't know about the Earthshaker's capabilities until after the second time when the campaign manager told me about it. I of course, felt pretty pissed to not know about it. Given its raritly, I was not expecting it at all.
So I open the door, and I come under immediate fire. I tried to return fire and get a better clean shot, and was dead-intent on taking down the VT that was firing on me. A tactical retreat, the best option, hadn't crossed my mind, and I lost my VT. In hindsight, this scenario, with a tactical retreat into the hallways made the best sense in a Jaralaccs C, to see if I could force that VT to chase me down.
The second time, I tried going down the middle and attacking the north base from the southern direction in the main hall connecting the north with the south. At the doorway, I spotted a Garpike in the distance, but could NOT hit him because something was interfering with the line of sight beyond the fog of war. It was weird - I could lock onto him, but I couldn't hit him and he was standing still like a statue! Of course, locking onto him was a mistake, because that alerted him to my presence and I decided to just rush the flag and try to tie up the enemy. Another mistake, where a tactical retreat would have also have served a purpose as well, but this had been in my mind, and I wasn't willing to let myself get trapped by any VTs hiding in the southern room.
My lack of voice communications with the team only served to make it more difficult for me to deal with this loss, because I could not tell my team my change in individual strategy so they could adapt to it if necessary. I'm not upset about losing the whole campaign, I'm upset about being stupid enough to charge straight in both times without any real information -- and even then, what little information I did know was not enough for me to make an informed tactical decision.
Thus why I'm searching the hell out of the Pacific Northwest for an Action Replay memory card so I can get my Xbox soft-modded to unlock the LOC VTs. More familiarity with the maps is needed. The only anathema I have for my frustration regarding the loss right now, is to train on each map, get familiar, and come back tougher than ever.
Still, kudos to the HSD for coming across such rare hardware.
Note: I was Blue4 in the matches I played.
Also, there are Action Replays on Amazon.
I already ordered mine. I found a copy of MechAssault at the Pink Gorilla store in the University District. They have one more copy left. The one in Chinatown is the Platinum Hits version.
Actually, I think the shots going wide may be part of the F.S.S. system. However, even if I had that disabled in that particular sortie, I thought the shots were dead on. So there had to be an obstruction.
Perhaps.
You got Line of Contact and your own rig? You should get on xlink and hang out with us other SB junkies.
I was supposed to set everything up today but ended up doing something else. Maybe in the next day or so.
But I have one really nice second gen controller and a worn but in good condition first gen controller.
Next i need to get a decent 720p tv that I can dedicate to SB.
But I did play campaign mode last night for about an hour.
Let the training begin!
That's the plan. However, you'll have to use IMs with me. I'm sure you understand the reason. :P
My Xbox is hooked up to my desktop computer through an old analog TV tuner in a PCI slot. I plan on replacing it with a better one eventually, but this means there may be some lag, unless I can find some kind of way to directly jack my headphones into the Xbox's audio feed, and have it feed the video directly to DVI.
Huge +1 for this. Dedicating that much of your own PAX time to training a few busloads of n00bs how not to fall over was enormously appreciated by us n00bs. My time serving the PRF was probably more of a help to our enemies, but it was a great time nonetheless!
No worries, my SB rig is next to my computer so I can easily keep track of IM convos while I play. Oh, and Xlink is kinda retarded in that you have to manually add people to your friends list, you don't get any notification if someone added you to theirs. There's a master list on lineofcontact.net so post in that thread once you (or anyone else here) get xlink up and running.
Don't be too hard on yourself; our HSD force was (surprise, surprise) playing a super defensive game once we had the point advantage. I saw you duck out after the match, but I wasn't sure if you'd been a PRF pilot on that round. Now I wish you'd stuck around so I could've shaken your hand (plague be damned).
The HSD fielded the Earthshaker in a previous match that day; I'm surprised the PRF communal knowledge was lost. That's a good lesson for everybody. If you see something crazy-stupid on the field, ask your commander/teammates what it is and make sure somebody remembers the enemy's new capability.
That was me.
When you locked on to me in the north room, I started nervously muttering to my teammates, "WTF? Who's got me locked? Where is he?" Looking at the stats on LOC.net, the Garpike and the Jaralaccs C are very similar; the Garpike's rated half a point better in most regards, but I think the C's cutter boom is more powerful. I opened fire with my cannon as soon as my forecaster reticule cleared the machinery, and I was pretty quick on the bang needle. I think you were still coming around to bear when I tipped you over. That matchup was way more dangerous than I thought; didn't realize you were piloting a melee VT.
It sounds like you figured out what went wrong in both of your encounters, which is awesome.
I'm glad we got to share a map, though it sounds like your opponents will have a tougher go of it next time.
That's the idea. I don't plan on being so easy next time. :P
I remember that I had forgotten to hit the Override button when I started getting tangled with you in the north room. That was probably the one mistake that gave you the advantage.
Alternately, I might just go hang out on a beach or something.
I'm asking because I don't have any additional ethernet cables to run from the router for the entire 30 feet to my room. :P
But I can tell you right now that you are probably going to have problems using wifi with your computer, I understand that both the xbox and pc must be connected via cable not wifi.
I had fun being a JAR!
I hope I get to play with/or against you, I think you and all your enforcers deserve to get a little dirty.
In that case, I probably should go pick up a 30-footer cable from Fred Meyer's while I'm doing the grocery shopping this week. The weather today is ass, though -- definitely not the sort I want to be walking through with groceries. Hope the rain goes away and the sun comes out later.
That was the best time I've had gaming in a long long time and I look forward to tracking down a controller and a copy of the game to get some practice in, granted there's plans for another next year.
Though we may have crumbled, PRF will rebuild and come back better than ever!
-Sean
Nerts, that was gonna be my question. I'll have to read the forums about this hook up. Probably gonna be awhile before I can mount up cause of finances, but I can't wait to play again so I can get more seasoned....>>;;
I've been around gaming for a lonnng time. I literally played Pong and Donkey Kong in the arcades when they originally launched, and the Atari 2600 was the second console I got for a holiday present. So I'm a bit jaded. But when Mara told me about Steel Battalion and Garpike 0000001 back in 2006, it all sounded ... incredible ... and I figured I'd really missed out on something special. So when he invited me to help out with PAX (thank Mara), I was totally in for it. And it was wayyyyyyy better than I expected. The game is something special. The Metacampaign was awesome. The volunteers were all new people to me and I came away really impressed. The players were all new people to me, and I came away really impressed.
The only real downside was having to walk out of the Campaign room after every match knowing I'd have to disappoint some of the many good people in the hall would had been waiting a long time to play. We really did try to get everyone rolling thru, but we also had to balance that with doing justice to the campaign and the people who were there all weekend and really holding the whole thing together. We'll have to work on that. There probably isn't an answer that will satisfy everyone, but at least there should be an answer that's clear and concise and less of a cat-herding art form.
That said, I really just came to this forum to praise shrapnel.
Someone asked, at about 6:30 pm Sunday, how things went, and my answer was "Far better than we could have planned it." HSD dropping down big on points on Friday, then clawing back to a tie. Then dropping down again 4-7, and clawing back again, finally taking the lead on. Going for the rout, and then having the last kill that seals the victory coming from the Garpike in melee. Just plain perfect.
That's part of it, but the icing on the end of the Bang Needle was having someone new to the game, someone struggling and frustrating with it, finally, utterly, Getting It, at the epic moment, with the quintissential VT. I watched a lot of players, including far, far more experienced, just-plain-better ones, fumble hard and even panic when they got their hands on one of the "special" mechs, including the Siegeszug, the Earthshaker, and a whole flock of Sheepdogs. But not shrapnel. He was concerned. He was worried. He was frustrated. But you could literally see the calm come over his face as he sat in his pilot's chair just before the start of the final round. You could see the moment of him Getting It. It was some sort of Platonic Ideal of Steel Battalion, something imagined by the game's creators in design sessions a decade earlier, come to life in 2010 at PAX.
Nice.
And remember, vanquished brethren of the Pacific Rim. You did not lose the war. You won free soda for all humans, for all time.
Thanks again, everyone, and thanks again, especially, to Maradine, for dreaming up something special and driving it all the way.
http://lineofcontact.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6405
I was lucky enough to play when we first tested out the campaign system in a garage one weekend. I happen to have been the pilot that got the final kill that won that short campaign for the PRF. I don't know if I'd play a full on campaign again, but a mercenary position would be nice. Maybe next year. Just glad you guys had fun.
I second this.
PS - Maradine to assemble his crew so I can buy them all drinks, please
PPS - Garpike 0000001 explains so, so much.
Does anyone have any suggestions for improving my video output quality? I am rather poor, so I do not have the money to buy a monitor+sound setup like what we had at PAX10.
Well, shucks, Commander. =P Thanks.
After the Colt Executive Fiasco, you reminded me that recognizing my errors extracted some value from that failstorm. Really helped me refocus on Saturday.
The Sunday morning impromptu Garpike humpfest in the training room helped, too. I think melee was really underrepresented on our side due to hardware shortages.
No hardware shortage here. I was sitting on 5 Garpikes by the end. >>;;
And I fielded 4 in the last match, so maybe we should've started running them sooner on the tight maps. Though I think TOGSolid was running melee Jaralaccs, too.
How do you break an enemy's lock on you?
Will the targeting reticule turn orange and identify a powered-down VT? If not, at what stage during the boot process does a VT start producing a signature that can be identified?
On lineofcontact.net, some docs on the campaign mode say that destroying a VT's legs allowed you to capture that VT. Was that option open to us? Should we be thinking about targeting body vs. legs?