Lance Commands with Leopard and Argo Improvements

[mkruer]

This is a combination of individual ideas found on the Battletech Reddit, BTA Discord server and HBS forums. These ideas would help flush out some desired mod request for the game. All these these ideas tend to flow together but can be broken into smaller development chunks shoudl development occur. This should be a long term goal so please consider this as a parent bug for any of these new features.

Lance Commands: Add a new bar on the right hand side. This bar would act as hub for the features below.

Lance Move: Tired of having to move all your mechs one at a time? with this option you can move them all at the same time to a given area. They will walk, run, hop or skip until they all reach the designated area or if they spot the enemy. This help moving around on larger maps a bit easier.

Argo Improvements

Argo Called Orbital Strike: Using the Lance Command option, you should would be able to call in an Orbital Strike onto an area. This strike would be a current turn attack. The attack would be the size of the Artillery strike from the mission Liberate Tyrlon 3x3x3 hex but the target area could be anywhere within a 9x9x9 hex. Don’t aim it too close to you or you might get hit. Upgrades might include faster cooldown, better accuracy and more firepower.

Argo Called Artillery Strike: Like the Orbital Strikes but can be called once per turn, and require a mech in your mechbay (and not deployed) that have artillery weapons like Arrow 5, Long Tom, etc…. Using the Lance Commands, you could call an Artillery Strike each turn. Like from the mission Liberate Tyrlon, there is a one turn delay between calling the shot and the shot arriving. Number of shots should be limited to the number of Artillery mechs you have up to four, not in your current deployment.

Argo Called Aerospace Strike: Using the Lance Commands, you could call a strafing run on any mechs (including your own) along a path, 5 hex wide. Aerotech will remain above the combat for one turn and can be shot down. Or can do a dive-bomb providing and acts like a Called Artillery Strike. Upgrade might include multiple aerospace fights and faster cool downs

Argo Called Drop Pods: Using the Lance Commands, during a mission the seconds lance could be called in by Drop Pods. This makes mission like ambush a bit easier as you can send a small and fast mech to act as your scout and then call the Argo to drop the remaining lance on top of the enemy. Like the Orbital Strike the drop area is large and upgrades might be to increase the accuracy.

Argo Second Dropship. Fix the docking port on the other side of the Argo to allow for another Leopard. See Leopard Improvements for how and why.

Leopard Improvements.

Leopard Drop Limit. The Leopard should start off with a 300 ton Drop Limit (according to lore) and only capable of dropping four Mechs at a time. One of the first upgrades would be to the le be to increase the drop limit to 350 then to 400 tons or something to the affect.

Leopard Speed Increase. Because the Leopard is the only way to deploy Mechs early in game and you would be limited to four, per drop. The Leopard would need to return to the Argo (or a staging area) and pick up the remaining lance e deployed near the existing lance using the Lance Command option below. Because there would be Turns between drop, there should be a way to decrease the turnaround for the second lance. The turnaround time might be 10 turns by default a then be reduced to 5 turns after a few upgrades. The second deployment would be around your existing mech. This should fix some of the issues were you are deployed on one side of the map and then need to spend the next several turns reaching the enemy. You would only need to manage up to four Mechs and then stage an attack.

Leopard Weapons Upgrade: During deployment or evac the Leopard should be able to be upgraded to provide support fire with its 2xPPCs, 3xLRM-20s, 7xMedium Lasers, 5xLarge Lasers. During deployment it would get one turn to take shots if there are any enemies in range. During evac the Leopard can be called in and only pickup four Mechs at a time, forcing the player to either stand their ground or evac to a second location. The Leopard should be subjected to damage, and if the Leopard is destroyed, you lose the game.

Second Leopard: At some point those with 60M C-bills to spare can pick up a second Leopard allowing for to drop the full two lances at the same time and/or evac at the same time.

Thank you for your time.

[mkruer]

Posting to Reddit as this doesn't really belong as a bug for Missions Control https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleTechMods/comments/g2itip/lance_commands_with_leopard_and_argo_improvements/

[CWolfs]

Thanks for the suggestion. I use this issues area for suggestions (enhancements) as well as bugs so feel free to reopen it.

If I'm honest, I'm nots sure I'll ever get around to implementing any of this as it's a lot of work and I'm concentrating on custom contract types for a while - but it's good to see and I appreciate you writing it up.

[mkruer]

I will reopen it however based on what bloodydoves was telling me, this would be a mod in of itself. I know that the part he was most interested in was the idea of lance commands (his suggestion) I flushed it out with more options. There was also a chuck about contract rewards for lower limits and IA bug-out which didn't really fit with this, but I can spend some time a write up and add to this ticket if you would like.