Six sessions so far, though two of them could have broken into two sessions (Or maybe you could combine the two and shake down three sessions out of the deal). We're midway to fourth level. The character I used to illistraight my essay on character building is the one I'm using for playing here.
One of the unusal things is that we had some limited Mecha skills and Mecha access to start with. One Cyclone, but the Freedom Fighter who drove it didn't know how to transform it (VR-52 Battler, swapped four of the starting eight missiles for a EP-37). He has ASC Tactical Corp body And that was it. Prevailing weapons are Koskov-47s and AKs all around. You know that part in Standard Equipment for the Freedom Fighter OCC were it lists a Wolverine? No. AK-47 (SKS-Red China variant to be exact, still in production). This made things trickey.
But I said something about the best ride in the Fleet, didn't I. So the last three sessions we've been tangling with the Black Reign. See, they found out the local of a fight, and sold that information to the Invid. Who showed up to disrupt the fight. That cost the League some serious money. Regional Championship fight (semi-finals). Unfortunately for the Invid, they didn't bring enough. So we got Jackie Chan on their collective bug demon asses. I got to wack a RCB with my busted up TC Recon. Granted she had already eat some ground fire, and then got laid into by a cranky Zentraedi Melee specialist turned Su-Dai fighter (*punt*) but hey, I got 40% salvage on that deal.
So after some bribing, trickery, a good beating or two and threatening, we found out where the Reign was hiding. We slipped into their cover village (without obvious body armor of course and only packing light weapons hidden in our traditional Chinese clothing), we find the place in a panic. Villagers are running everywhere and their is an ant the size of of AAT-30 rampaging all over the place. Yay! We wack the ant and as a reward for our services, get information on the Black Reign base (by reward, I mean we threatened the village elder to either talk or get his hand jammed into the fan blade of the village truck). And as you may have guessed, it turned out that the Reign and the Ants were sharing a hole in the ground. Though the ants were suing for sole custody of the hole. If we were going to go get the guy we were sent to capture and drag back to our warlord/Su-dai production agent, we'd have to go in after him (yay team!). We grabbed our armor and the cyclone.
Cue "buried alive" from the Revised Return of the Masters. Only, lots more ants and just after we got ahold of the little weiner dude who sold us out, a relife force from the Black Reign shows up. Much-o fire fighting breaks out. We did catch a break and find one of their weapons store houses with some extra E-clips for our Koskovs and a fresh suit of CVR-3. Those of you with access to the book and the map, imagine a room to room gun fight/ant swarm three way free for all running up and down the long North/South tunnel. Things got bad and us and our hostage (who the Reign it seems could care less about) were slowly dislodged from the northern rooms and the Reign pushed us south, towards where the Ants' access point had been.
Lucky, our Scout had the bright Idea of mixing a pot of honey he had lifted when we passed through a morge or something (must have been a kitchen to start with, but the Ants were stacking bodies in there for whatever reason, thank goodness for enviromental seals) with water from his canteen and some nasty smelling herb he kept in his rucksack (???). That kept their attention and we tried sneaking around them to the east. That was working untill I totally blew my Prowl Check (70 something out of like 40%
)then the ants were already to go rainbow on us (You know, come marching into your house, crawl up your leg and bit the inside of your ass).
Again our NScout saved the day by noting that their was a rough tunnel carved to the north of the long east/west tunnel we were in. One problem, dead ant in the way. Actually, two problems, dead ant in the way, whole bunch of live pissed off truck sized ants trying to kill us. The guy in the cyclone had his work cut out for him while we blitzed the ants with laser fire.
Finally! Enough wiggle room!
We got just inside the tunnel where the ants couldn't follow. Me and my cobalt mine made sure of that.
We found the remains of an RDF aircraft, out of Japan. A tunny Transport (the Prototypes from RotM and a case of baked beans). YAY! Except no Super Alpha, instead a REF Excaliber. I took the Zentraedi Striker Battloid for my ride. It kicks ass. (I know, finally to the point of this verbal masterbation.) It took us about two hours to free up the machines, and their was an Black Reign RDF Gladiator waiting for us, then some Invid. I mean a whole lot of Invid.
Now I like this machine, but I am woefully under skilled to drive it (it's a battloid so I got the right skill, but because of it's specialized nature, I'm eating -25% to drive it *ouch*). While the other PCs are ripping the opposition new ones, I'm desperately trying not to put my eye out with this thing. Plus I had the spounge monkey hostage riding in my jump seat. He's blindfolded and whiney, plus he peed himself earlier and now his wiz is stinking up my machine and sloping on my seat.
But rest assured, this is one bad ass machine. The Black Reign guys, when they realized they were going to be overwhelmed, blew their base We picked up a little salvage and ammo, but not too much. But we did secure a nice load of ammo for our machines beyond their existing payload.
After toasting most of the Invid, and chasing the RCB that lead them away, we completed our mission, even cutting up the Gladiator into five major pieces and stashing it as trade to the League.
One of the things we traded for was that I got to borrow one of the Micronized Female Zentraedi pilots to teach me how to fly this thing at full profficeny (I'll end burning two skills that only allow for piloting the Zeb).
It's hell of well armed. The two GU-X2s in the arms are my favorites, though I try to use the Lasers or P-beams more often (save on ammo). As a player I tend towards Veritech Fighters, Alphas, VF-1s and Logans, in that order. I like this better, full Battloid capabilities, but no having to screw around with changing modes to get gunship (guardian) like response and capabilities or transform into a fighter to get max air to air abilities. It faithfully provides all of the weapons systems I like, including a burst capable energy weapon (great for killing infantry). The missile system is impressive, packing all of those missiles is very tempting to use them a bit more freely. But so far, only two have been used and both of those were counter fire against incoming missiles.
Orginally intended to store a Cyclone (which I can't pilot beyond motorcycle and it will be sixth level before I even have the oppertunity), the space lets me keep some of my camera gear, a medium suitcase with clothing for differant spy like roles (remember, my character has the skills and attributes for mixing among the enemy without them knowing it) and I put a colapsable bycycle in there too, along with some extra ammo and other such supplies. One stop shoping for me. Plus, once I'm full proficent, I'll use the other seat as more storage or something. I might seatbelt my little mini-field kitchen in there.
If you get the chance, you must drive this thing, it roxors the house.
<---TAF
Sucks to be in the infantry, cyclone or not. Toward the middle of the pit, our VTOL capable machines were concealed in the sand. We'd actually had to laze some of the sand together (melt it into obsideon actually) to get firm enough area so as not to sink. The ground was trecherous in the extream, even for those flight capable machines. And effect we hoped to use against the Invid.
