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Lets Play: Megamek

Started by KraftySOT, Mar 11 2015 11:43 AM

106 replies to this topic

#101 Koniving

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 10:47 AM

Edit: Quote cleanup (bad word wrapping). Big chunk done.

Since Krafty isn't gonna play today (sad face), I figured I'd bring over an arena battle between Koniving and Lordred, using the Four Legged Tarantula (Kon) and the Urbanmech (Red). (Sadly at the time we didn't think to do patterns since before this I usually just saved transcripts and wrote about it. Here, wound up doing a number of screenshots along the way.)

Also note: Tarantula is doom incarnate. 25 tons. 4 legs. Incredible speed. Can run sideways without having to turn! Jumps. Battle Value of "666". Insert evil laughter here.

This arena battle is in a Morphing Arena (the walls and environment will change each turn; floors raising and lowering to form walls and canyons).

View PostKoniving, on 20 September 2014 - 11:13 PM, said:

Posted Image

Tarantula versus Urban Mech!
Coincidentally girl versus girl (the pilot names; didn't notice that until putting that picture up.)

666 versus 540.

*Queue dramatic music.*



Initiative Phase for Deployment
-------------------
Lordred rolls a 8[8+0].
Koniving rolls a 7[7+0].
Wind direction is South. Wind strength is Calm. The weather is Clear.

Visibility is Daylight.
Fog level is None.

Lordred: 540 BV remaining (from 540 initially) 0 BV fled
Koniving: 666 BV remaining (from 666 initially) 0 BV fled

-----
The stage is set.
Posted Image
The crowd cheers. Duncan Fisher introduces the pilots.

Begin.
Spoiler


They fired at each other and missed. Each used only the heat that their heatsinks could handle without stressing them.

As they fight, the ground shifts. Pillars begin to form, 30 meters in diameter.
The Spider skitters about for several more turns while under fire. Its own speed significantly reducing its accuracy.
Spoiler

The Tarantula had trouble hitting its target. The Urban Mech's LB-10x though had no trouble scoring hits.
Still as the ground shook again, things began to move once more.

The Urban mech was raised into the sky.
In an attempt to break the Urban mech's line of sight, the Tarantula ran into the far wall, only to discover the Urban Mech has jumpjets! It jumps down.

Spoiler

As mentioned the Tarantula tried to move out of the Urbanmech's sight, only to to be poptarted from behind by the Urbie!

The Urbanmech's attempt to poptart behind the Tarantula resulted in absolutely horrible inaccuracy! Everything missed! That's what you get for poptarting! Bad Urbie.
---
The Tarantula tries to remedy the situation and get behind Urbanmech, but failed the initiative roll (the Urbanmech caught on and countered this).

Without turning or anything, the Tarantula skitters backwards and around the Urbanmech. The Urbie counters by jumping backwards. Point blank range is about the only explanation for the shots placed here.

Spoiler

Again, another series of walls have formed.
The right rear torso of the Tarantula has lost its last layer of armor!

During this time, the Urbanmech tried to kick the Tarantula, only to miss and hit the air. It caught its balance much to anyone's surprise.

Juggling the ability to get behind each other wasn't going to keep working. Lordred lost his initiative roll, meaning I'd get to react to him. He changed tactics.
Spoiler


During the double jumpjetting (Urbanmech jumping on the wall first and Tarantula jumping after him), the Urbanmech who landed first got in the first blow. LBX to the Tarantula's front-side!

The Tarantula takes a critical blow to the cockpit!
Sensors damaged.
Life Support damaged. (Good thing we're not in space or a high heat/cold environment!)
Pilot injured!
The transplast (transparent metal alloy) windshield is dented!

Despite the blow and sequential laser fire, the Tarantula kicks the Urbanmech!
Urbie falls down! Pilot braces herself, preventing injury from impact and fall.

-------

This match has hit the one minute marker!

Urbanmech tries to stand with a Tarantula staring it down!

Spoiler


The shotgun blast of the clustershot from the LB-10x hit several sections including the Tarantula's cockpit. The transplast windshield (a type of transparent metal alloy) warps, though part of it breaches. The pilot is injured!

In retaliation, the Tarantula kicks the downed Urban Mech towards the ledge.

Behind the Urban Mech, there's a 12 meter drop (almost the height of a Timber Wolf).
Spoiler

The Urbanmech tried to stand. It failed as the Tarantula kicks it down again and shoots, blowing off the smaller of the Urbanmech's arms. It is destroyed.

On its next attempt to stand it succeeds. The spider jumps to avoid fire.
Spoiler

Both parties missed.

New pillars have formed.

With a new pillar having formed in such an opportune spot, the Spider leaps to a new high point and fires down upon the Urbanmech.
Spoiler


A winner is decided! Fight lasted 90 seconds! The crowd roars and Duncan Fisher gives his ending commentary.
Spoiler


Edited by Koniving, 12 March 2015 - 11:51 AM.

#102 Agent 0 Fortune

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 10:49 AM

Long time since I played Megamek, I started up an Against the Bots in MekHQ (there is a serious learning curve there). My first Merc company was doomed from the start, 5 out of 12 pilots dispossessed. and 5 of the remaining 7 in lgiht mechs, the heaviest two being Urbanmechs. I traveled 180 days across the galaxy, lost 2 of my mechs to maintenance rolls, but they were the lucky two, because everyone else died on planet under the wheels of Hetzer's and Condors.

My second campaign attempt I disabled maintenance, and saw a much luckier mech selection, but a very poor skillset (did you know they let pilots in the program with a 7/6 pilot/gunnery skill?). Much hillarity ensued when my Woverine, Wyvern, Blackjack, and Dervish engaged in a night fight base hit 6, +2 night time, +2 medium range, +1 walk movement, +2 enemy movement = Hit chance IMPOSSIBLE

Eventually the day was won!, and now time to assess the damage. So much for repairing that CT armor, it requires a Green tech roll, which my veterain tech failed. But at least he was able to reload my ammunition (It was honestly a bit scary to think that my tech crew could fail to load ammo, or worse yet, crit fail and destroy my entire dropship).
I also managed to salvage a shadow hawk. I couldn't see how to sell it, so I tried to repair it with my largely novice tech team, what a mistake, I chewed through all their hours in no time and the thing still isn't functional.

At least there is the mech market, I bought a hunchback for 75% list price, quite the bargain, and they didn't even try to rip me off, although shipping is 13 months.

#103 Koniving

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 06:48 PM

Megamek quirks, a how-to for establishing variant-specific quirks, for those who find the default unit quirks to be missing on mechs that are supposed to have them or for your own creations.

First: Quirks and how applying them works with your mech.

Page 193 of Strategic Operations will cover what you need to know, or "Design Quirks" on Sarna. Beyond the obvious, each quirk has a point value assigned to it. Use standard Megamek to look at "Advantages" and "Disadvantages" associated wtih each quirk with the quirk rules enabled and by right clicking the mech (you'll find it easily enough).

I was gonna paste several pages, but tiredness and laziness.
--------------

I highly recommend Notepad++ as the program to open the files.
Enter: Megamek\data
Open: canonUnitQuirks.XML

You will see a long list of canonical quirks (it is incomplete) already set up.

Let me copy/paste an example.

<unit>
<chassis>BattleMaster</chassis>
<model>BLR-1GHE 'HellSinger'</model>
<weaponQuirk>
<weaponQuirkName>jettison_capable</weaponQuirkName>
<location>RA</location>
<slot>4</slot>
<weaponName>PPC</weaponName>
</weaponQuirk>
<weaponQuirk>
<weaponQuirkName>jettison_capable</weaponQuirkName>
<location>LA</location>
<slot>4</slot>
<weaponName>PPC</weaponName>
</weaponQuirk>
</unit>

If you cannot understand what you are reading, you probably should not try to do this.
Essentially, it is the Battlemaster Hero Mech Hellsinger. Both Particle Projector Canons are hand-held, and can be released and picked back up when necessary. While not fully functional in Megamek, this would mean that the PPCs on the Battlemaster could be removed and replaced in a manner and speed similar to an Omnimech's weapons, but the drawback is only pre-designed hand-held weapons could be used, such as the Wolverine's hand-held AC/5. Also when functional, you could 'throw' the PPCs at enemies, or in theory immediately release/eject them when the PPCs are about to explode in your face (from having the field inhibitor off).

The above demonstrated a specific variant. This demonstrates how to include ALL variants of a chassis in one go.


<unit>
<chassis>Black Knight</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>command_mech</quirk>
</unit>
<unit>
<chassis>Blackjack</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>bad_rep</quirk>
</unit>

There's two. The first one gave a positive quirk. Black Knights are considered Command mechs (gives them an initiative bonus and other traits related to commanders).

The Blackjacks have a negative quirk, their bad reputations make them difficult to get full price out of their resale. (Something about their feet being too small, that they'd easily topple over. None of this is true, but word spread and the company almost flopped; Davions kinda bought some at an under-rated price and after they were tried in battle... the Davions ordered LOTS more.)


----------
<unit>
<chassis>Bushwacker</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>no_twist</quirk>
</unit>

This one means that Bushwackers do not have pelvises and thus cannot torso twist.


<unit>
<chassis>Chameleon</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>easy_pilot</quirk>
</unit>

This one means that Chameleons are extremely simple and straight forward with their controls. Their roles away from the battlefields as training mechs also kept their attrition rates down, allowing many of them to still hold the ever disappearing Star League tech in their software. I might note they have horrendous cooling and require a pilot to always manage their heat.

<unit>
<chassis>Clint</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>non_standard</quirk>
</unit>

This means that the Clint's weapons and equipment are not interchangeable with any other unit. This increases difficulty of repairs and replacement parts.


<unit>
<chassis>Quickdraw</chassis>
<model>all</model>
<quirk>hyper_actuator</quirk>
</unit>

This allows the Quickdraw to shoot behind itself with its arms even though they have lower arm actuators.

I had my Nin Kei in this list, but I remember that I uninstalled, reinstalled, uninstalled and reinstalled older/newer versions in order to try and save one campaign I was doing.

Remember to save the file without changing its name once you've added your unit. It must be added somewhere at the end of the list, and before '</unitQuirks>'.

#104 Karkland

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Posted 12 March 2015 - 07:13 PM

View PostKraftySOT, on 11 March 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

Starleague.

You have several options for buying things/acquiring things, as well as building your initial forces. I have a handful of "OOTL" (out of timeline, which is a megamek option) items. c3, I have an ERLL, and I have 20 or so tons of ferro armor. I started with that (rich uncle!), and have since acquired a Sword (not a melee wep until 3060 or so) from some black market traders.


For this to be the case, do you have to uncheck the 'limit units and parts by year' option in the campaign options?

Also, thanks for this thread - I've been meaning to try megamek for a while, but was waiting for a proper campaign mode. Now that it's apparently here... well, so am I.

#105 RedDevil

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Posted 13 March 2015 - 09:45 AM

So are you accepting extra people to help run the campaign? I'd be more than happy to take control of your AI opponents some time :D

#106 Koniving

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Posted 14 March 2015 - 07:39 AM

View PostKarkland, on 12 March 2015 - 07:13 PM, said:

For this to be the case, do you have to uncheck the 'limit units and parts by year' option in the campaign options?

Yes, you do.

View Postreddevil, on 13 March 2015 - 09:45 AM, said:

So are you accepting extra people to help run the campaign? I'd be more than happy to take control of your AI opponents some time :D

I dunno if he is (though it might have been implied), but I certainly would.

#107 Mekslayer

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Posted 31 March 2015 - 01:22 AM

View PostStefka Kerensky, on 11 March 2015 - 11:02 PM, said:


Just a question: my dream was to play with megamek those fasa campaigns I played in real TT, such as Galtor, Black Widow's scenarios, Kell hounds, Twycross, etc.: has anyone prepared those scenarios and campaigns ready to play?

(I hope the answer will be yes....'cause I'm quite lazy :P )


Yes, I believe several of the campaign modules have been added as scenarios to play in megamek, such as:
BrokenArrow
FistAndDragon
SwordAndDragon
TrialOfPosition
etc...
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