Author Topic: MotW: Kodiak  (Read 23064 times)

Arkansas Warrior

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #30 on: 18 January 2017, 09:16:08 »
Pack Hunter.  Sure, the ERLL can reach out and touch you, but he's still got to hit you.  Granted, I'm still banking on a headcap or lucky TAC here, but I'd give it a whirl.
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Arkansas Warrior

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #31 on: 18 January 2017, 09:19:26 »
I'm going to try a different tact here. What's the minimum bid you'd use to face a Kodiak? For my own part, it's a Hellbringer Prime if I'm using a frontline unit. For a secondline unit, I'd use a Glass Spider 2. The big thing is that I'd try to crack open one of the Kodiak's side torsos and expose the ammo and the XL engine before it could really close. On a metagame level, I'd make sure that the game were balanced by BV ;)

As for Interface cockpits, the Ghost Bears are THE most traditional Inner Sphere clan. As a point of reference The Coyotl was introduced in 2853. The Ghost Bears did not deploy Omnimechs until after the Mad Dog was developed in 2963. The Ghost Bears have not adopted the fighter phenotype which gives them one of the worst Clan Aerospace sections despite their recent emphasis on it. I'd say it's safe to pick a three digit number and put a 4 in front of it to indicate when the Ghost Bears are going to adopt something like Interface Cockpits.
I don't think this is true.  All indications are that the Aerospace phenotype has been the least successful at what it's trying to do, and I don't think it's absence is the reason for the Bears lackluster aerospace success.  I think you've got the cart before the horse, in fact.  The Bears didn't adopt the phenotype because they don't care enough about aero to push for excellence in that area.
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #32 on: 18 January 2017, 10:31:21 »
Plus, an average pilot in a Jengiz is still flying a freaking JENGIZ and should be taken very, VERY seriously.  ;D
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Kidd

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #33 on: 18 January 2017, 10:50:18 »
Pack Hunter.  Sure, the ERLL can reach out and touch you, but he's still got to hit you.  Granted, I'm still banking on a headcap or lucky TAC here, but I'd give it a whirl.
Thought so too. If possible, custom modded with reflec armour.

MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #34 on: 18 January 2017, 14:19:39 »
How big is the battle area going to be?  If you're stuck on a single mapsheet a light mech isn't going to have a lot of room to maneuver.
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #35 on: 18 January 2017, 14:40:57 »
How big is the battle area going to be?  If you're stuck on a single mapsheet a light mech isn't going to have a lot of room to maneuver.

Which is true- and while most Battletech fights don't take place on one map, a Circle of Equals may not be very big, depending on the battle in question. At some point, the angry bear may simply run you out of space to run to.
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MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #36 on: 18 January 2017, 15:59:29 »
Also the officer overseeing the Circle isn't going to be very thrilled with watching you run around in a light mech trying to maintain LOS at extreme range while you pray for a lucky hit before your LB2-X runs dry.  IIRC, there's a limit on the allowed disparity between mechs during an augmented Circle.  Plinking your opponent to death at extreme range doesn't make for a terribly exciting Codex entry: if you're going to bring a light mech to fight a Kodiak I think that you'd be expected to boldly strike rather than run around like a cowardly Spheroid surat.
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #37 on: 18 January 2017, 16:34:36 »
Also the officer overseeing the Circle isn't going to be very thrilled with watching you run around in a light mech trying to maintain LOS at extreme range while you pray for a lucky hit before your LB2-X runs dry.  IIRC, there's a limit on the allowed disparity between mechs during an augmented Circle.  Plinking your opponent to death at extreme range doesn't make for a terribly exciting Codex entry: if you're going to bring a light mech to fight a Kodiak I think that you'd be expected to boldly strike rather than run around like a cowardly Spheroid surat.

Also true. Who gains more honor in the eyes of his peers? The guy who spends 45 minutes playing hide and seek with an assault Mech hoping for an eventual golden BB? Or the guy who shows up in a Mad Dog C with the Gauss switched for Ultras and charges in screaming the lyrics to 'Sympathy For The Devil'?
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Scotty

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #38 on: 18 January 2017, 18:32:38 »
The greatest honor in the Clans is victory, the one with the most honor is the one who wins the most.  Dying with style is by definition not winning, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Mad Dog C comes in last in terms of honor gained. :P
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #39 on: 18 January 2017, 22:34:36 »
Also true. Who gains more honor in the eyes of his peers? The guy who spends 45 minutes playing hide and seek with an assault Mech hoping for an eventual golden BB? Or the guy who shows up in a Mad Dog C with the Gauss switched for Ultras and charges in screaming the lyrics to 'Sympathy For The Devil'?

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #40 on: 19 January 2017, 01:15:38 »
My character hasn't got to the clannest death part yet but I'm predicting it will involve a Kodiak facing off with a WoB lance with Amon Amarth- Where is your God Now? playing in the background.
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #41 on: 19 January 2017, 01:51:07 »
Hah well that does fit with the whole 'live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse/codex' mindset of the Clans.
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #42 on: 19 January 2017, 17:53:04 »
The greatest honor in the Clans is victory, the one with the most honor is the one who wins the most.  Dying with style is by definition not winning, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the Mad Dog C comes in last in terms of honor gained. :P
I dunno, he/she's challenging a 'mech 40 tons his superior, and one that likely has a better pilot due to being a totem mech and all. Clans also seem to appreciate dying with style as long as it's enough style and you do enough damage. After all, why else would the Hunchback IIC exist?

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #43 on: 19 January 2017, 18:08:48 »
Pilots should be equal if the Mad Dog's is not better, for all that the Kodiak is a totem mech its still not an Omni which is where the prestige is among the Clans.  While a Kodiak might be assigned to someone who is likely to step into a frontline slot, at least pre-Jihad, its not the same as a Orion IIC.

I actually think a regular Mad Dog C against a Kodiak would be interesting- likely considered balanced- because while the Dog does do more damage, its explosive weapons that has a slightly shorter range.

Different story for the ranged Kodiak, there I would like to see the UAC/20 alternate- no guts no glory!
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Jellico

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #44 on: 20 January 2017, 00:41:58 »
The Mad Dog E is a thing.

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #45 on: 20 January 2017, 01:28:58 »
Yeah, that is at most 240 points of damage, the standard Kodiak has 280 points of armor and even if 35 of those points are on the back you still have 150-ish IS points.  So once the ammo is used up after 4 turns, what does that warrior do . . . ?  Oh yeah, close for a kicking contest . . .
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #46 on: 20 January 2017, 02:49:12 »
I dunno, he/she's challenging a 'mech 40 tons his superior, and one that likely has a better pilot due to being a totem mech and all. Clans also seem to appreciate dying with style as long as it's enough style and you do enough damage. After all, why else would the Hunchback IIC exist?

It's a fight the Gyrfalcon will never lose barring catastrophically bad luck.  Each of those ER Large Laser hits the Kodiak lands will do a whopping five points of damage, and in return the Gyrfalcon is threatening with four times as many hits (on average) with just greater than four times the average damage.  And that's on top of the difference in to-hit mods between +2/+3 (run versus jump) and +2/+4 (maximum TMM for Kodiak versus routine TMM for jumping Gyrfalcon).

My bid so far has been "boldest" in the same sense that a Wolfhound slapping around a Hunchback on an open plain is bold.  It's no contest.
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Arkansas Warrior

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #47 on: 20 January 2017, 09:07:54 »
I dunno, he/she's challenging a 'mech 40 tons his superior, and one that likely has a better pilot due to being a totem mech and all. Clans also seem to appreciate dying with style as long as it's enough style and you do enough damage. After all, why else would the Hunchback IIC exist?
Hunchback IICs are for Solahma who have given up hope of advancement and just want to die gloriously.  Warriors who want to win bloodnames, Khanshps, etc have to be alive to do so.
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #48 on: 20 January 2017, 11:27:40 »
Hmm...I bid a Gunsmith. There is little honor to be won when nothing is risked, so the Gyrfalcon is too easy! With the Gunsmith, the Kodiak will be able to hit back...theoretically anyway. I would still control the engagement, and most of those arm lasers aren't going to do nearly as much damage as normal, so I have advantages, but it isn't a lay-down. Either I'll rip the back out of the bear, or I'll loose a leg and get stomped. Either way, it will be a brutal knife fight. Plus, I'm doing it with an inferior Spheroid mech!

cavingjan

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #49 on: 20 January 2017, 13:13:32 »
I would just use an Anubis 5Y and annoy the bear into submission.

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #50 on: 20 January 2017, 15:40:20 »
Firemoth Aletha. And you know she probably did it too.

JadeHellbringer

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #51 on: 20 January 2017, 22:28:00 »
I would just use an Anubis 5Y and annoy the bear into submission.

So, standard ESOB operating procedure.  O:-)
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #52 on: 20 January 2017, 23:04:10 »
Hunchback IICs are for Solahma who have given up hope of advancement and just want to die gloriously.  Warriors who want to win bloodnames, Khanshps, etc have to be alive to do so.
The reason why I brought it up was so that it could be pointed out that the Clans don't always view death as this great dishonor. If you do some awesome explosive stuff on the way out you get recognized, if only a tad.

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #53 on: 09 November 2017, 20:29:29 »
The article went long, so I left it out, but I do want to take a minute to share my favorite pair of Kodiak stories.

The first one was many years ago (2003?) in Denver. Our gaming group was doing a Clan grinder, and to start the day a young JadeHellbringer (who by the way was very new to these forums at that point!) reached in the folder and pulled a Kodiak- this was of course back when the original was the only one out there. After spawning, another player pulled a Hellfire- a scary Mech, for sure. He then spawned... uh oh. Four hexes from the Kodiak, right on the edge of a cliff. Problem- no one wants to have a Kodiak at that range. The player kicked on his MASC and ran like hell... or anyway, that was the plan. He rolled a '2' for his MASC roll, and you'll recall that in the pre-TW days a failed MASC roll was a big problem. Rather than running, the Hellfire froze in place, with only the left arm able to wildly fire back as the angry bear approached. I fired the cannon on single-rate, added in the large laser and Streaks, but the real fun came from initiating a push attack. That's pretty funny- beating on a helpless foe, then shoving him off a Lv.5 cliff. What's even funnier was that a third player (my now ex-fiancee) had used the edge of the cliff to break LOS with the Kodiak as well, just in case. The last thing that went through her Koshi pilot's mind was a falling 65-ton Battlemech. (Remember, Hellbie Dice doesn't mean 'bad things happen to me', it means 'WEIRD things happen to me')

To prove that, the second story took place in a Clan invasion game. In this engagement, Kurita-backed mercenaries had taken over a Ghost Bear facility, and the Bears were landing to take it back. This involved a hot drop, and while the Kodiak doesn't have jump jets we did have the jump cradles from Mechwarrior 4 in place (which, since we didn't have rules for them, we made up). Unfortunately, the Kodiak botched its landing a bit- only took minor damage, but landed on an ice spire. The beast was on top of a Lv.6 spire, surrounded on all six sides by Lv.0 terrain. Crud. No way down. The most fearsome Mech in the Bear arsenal was left standing on a pillar firing a large laser all game long, never once in range to fire anything else. For laughs, we did extrapolate out what would have happened if the Kodiak pilot had just jumped over the edge, treating it as a Lv.6 fall- the answer was 'nothing good', for those interested, including four pilot hits and an ammo crit. Staying on the pillar was, as a result, the best decision of the day. But... oh man, a Mech that overheats as badly as a Kodiak, in a cold environment where it could pretty much use all of its weaponry with impunity? It killed me to sit up there all day plinking with a single laser.

Loving these stories and thanks for the write up! I not crazy about the first sculpt of it though...

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #54 on: 10 November 2017, 11:17:55 »
The greatest honor in the Clans is victory, the one with the most honor is the one who wins the most.  Dying with style is by definition not winning...

...Adian Pryde.

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #55 on: 10 November 2017, 14:00:38 »
Death is something everyone can do.
Victory sometimes requires death.
Victory and living gets you a bloodname
Victory with style get's you a line in The Remembrance.

Regardless, the Kodiak is definitely a mech that makes a statement. And that statement is "kill me quickly, or I will kill you". I absolutely love using it as a bait unit because of the attention it draws.
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Caedis Animus

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #56 on: 10 November 2017, 22:20:24 »
Death is something everyone can do.
Victory sometimes requires death.
Victory and living gets you a bloodname
Victory with style get's you a line in The Remembrance.

Regardless, the Kodiak is definitely a mech that makes a statement. And that statement is "kill me quickly, or I will kill you". I absolutely love using it as a bait unit because of the attention it draws.
- Only if you win a Trial of Bloodright. Winning several times-even to the point of being well-known-does not save you from becoming 'obsolete' in Clan culture. For an example of this, look up 'Star Commander Joanna'. She killed Natasha Kerensky by a Jumpjet incineration. Her reward for victory was two lines in the remembrance, and a cold, lonely death as an infantry solohma with no bloodname at what was likely the ripe old age of 40-odd years.

- Several Clan warriors died with honor, or in style; It is improbable that every single occurrence of this earned every warrior a writ in the remembrance. Perhaps a passing 'Congrats' by the Star Captain at a muster, but not much else. ("Oh, Jade killed an entire Lance of dirty Spheroids last battle, but died to a Gauss Rifle round to the face after she killed the last opponent. Congratulations Jade.")

Colt Ward

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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #57 on: 11 November 2017, 02:55:38 »
Um . . . Joanna was relegated to training sibbies after her leg was crippled . . . pretty sure it was 50s, maybe 60s.  Marthe put her in charge of training Diana with the reward she would be kept on the frontlines if Diana won the bloodname.

Also, a warrior CAN get their genetic material introduced to the breeding program for outstanding performance, but it will be paternal rather than maternal and so its not really the same as passing on the bloodheritage.  The monkeys have a bit of a issue with this, they are so inbred they started taking paternal material from lower castes.
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #58 on: 11 November 2017, 03:29:47 »
Joanna was 28 prior to the Clan Invasion when she fought the Ghost Bears as a Star Captain.  That was something like 3045.  By the time of her death in 3069, she was definitely in her 50s, but she was well outside the norms for a warrior without a Bloodname.  She was in line for solohma duty after the Battle of Twycross when the Falcon Guard was wiped out, it was only Aiden Pryde's request that she be transferred to his unit that kept her out of it.
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Re: MotW: Kodiak
« Reply #59 on: 11 November 2017, 11:42:47 »
The Kodiak is one of the mechs where the tabletop stats have been heavily influenced by the video game appearances.  The jump jet version, as noted in the article, was inspired by MW2, and all of the missile-heavy variants were influenced by MW4. 

The Kodiak was introduced to MW4 in an expansion pack that also added the Arctic Wolf, Cauldron Born and Masakari.  There was a companion Inner Sphere pack that added the Dragon, Hunchback, Zeus and Highlander.  This was back in the day when expansion packs were distributed on physical media.  A big patch dropped with the game that would allow everyone to play together, and if you whipped out one of your fancy new pack mechs everyone could play with you, but only you could use it.  I distinctly remember thinking this meant that the patch basically had to have the new mechs in it; since you could see the models whilst playing against them, and that this meant that the packs could just as easily have been distributed digitally.  And of course, that's exactly what happened in the end, with games sprouting loot boxes and all sorts of other optional ways to send the developers more money.

But I digress.

The "theme" of the IS pack was ballistic weapons.  All four IS mechs in the pack were very ballistic heavy, which made it the better pack of the two because missile weapons basically sucked in MW4.  I'm not sure why the devs thought that all the mechs in a given pack needed to have a consistent "theme," but the clan pack was the same way, only all of the clan mechs in the pack were super missile heavy.  For the Arctic Wolf this obviously made sense.  For the Cauldron Born... I could sort of see it, I guess it has missile racks on the shoulders.  For the Kodiak and Masakari it was just bizarre.  The clan pack also added the "roaring" jump jet noise for the Kodiak.  It was a nice touch in a product that was otherwise a quick and shameless cash-in; the Kodiak on release had serious hitbox issues that would actually allow fire to pass through the right torso!

So, because of video game influence the Kodiak has gained a lot of variants that jump and that are missile boats.  I don't think that's the right direction for a mech like this.  What made the original Kodiak scary is that it had enough firepower that it stood good odds of obliterating medium and some heavy mechs in a single volley.  At the very least, it stood good chance of removing limbs and punching through to crit weapons.  A mech that survived the initial attack from a Kodiak was likely to be down some firepower, or maybe missing a leg.  A lot of that was because so much of the damage was in concentrated, 20 point, limb-snapping chunks.  2X SLRM-20s is a lot of damage, but it's going to be almost homogenously spread out over the target.  It's going to shave off a lot of armor, sure, but it won't kill or maim in a single shot.

I will give the Kodiak II 2 that the idea of a self-repairing assault mech is hilarious, even if ferro-lamellor armor is the more efficient option against most threats (and also a Snow Raven invention, so there would be every reason for the Bears to use it).