Good Day Everyone.
Foreward: I will be utilizing this thread as a sort of informational back-up and archive for the campaign a buddy of mine and myself will be conducting utilizing the full rules set from Total Warfare, BattleMech Manual, Tactical Operations, Strategic Operations, and Campaign Operations. As such, we decided on an initial operational budget of 300 Million C-Bills and set about constructing our forces as well as setting up the background for the campaign. The idea of this campaign is to be as detail-oriented as humanly possible (with few exceptions). Essentially, we started calling it CalculusTech as a sort of inside joke, but anyone that has even attempted a campaign of this scale and size knows what we're talking about; the sheer amount of tabulations, calculations, spreadsheets, etc can be extremely imposing to the casual MechWarrior or MechCommander, and it's no wonder why Great Houses have a veritable army of financial, technical, bureaucratic, and support personnel that have to manage all these individual requirements and costs when it comes to maintaining a large size of forces like we have put together for this campaign. Even so, this was what we wanted to conduct, and while the Campaign hasn't had its first operation yet, I figured this might be a good place to log our exploits, findings, and pitfalls.
I will be updating this post as often as I am able and responding to comments and replies as time allows.
Background: The overall idea of this campaign is simple. We generated a random planet out in the periphery for the purposes of our battleground, and it resulted in a near-uninhabitable planet of snow, ice, and bitter temperatures that occasionally saw some violent volcanic activity. This has resulted in the planet's operational areas being narrowed down to a singular valley of geothermal vents and lakes, representing the only habitable zone on the planet. It is suspected by House Kurita that the planet houses machining tools and components capable of producing (or at least being able to refurbish) vital components for the operations of their LAM forces, which were devastated by Clan Ghost Bear. As such, the era is the FedCom Civil War, and though we didn't put a specific date on this campaign, we wanted to make sure that everything available in the FedCom Civil War's Master Unit List (MUL) would be available for our use. We haven't come up with a name for the planet (I jokingly call it Not-Hoth), but we have decided to make the map more node-based instead of a full on planetary map, as our previous attempts at such a campaign resulted in us never really confronting one another but rather making double-blind maneuvers and ending up playing this elaborate (and frankly silly) game of cat-and-mouse for most of that campaign. Making the situation node-based allows us to still stipulate on the location of supply trains, temporary bases, locations of strategic importance, etc without having the headache of constantly guessing where enemy forces were and (in some cases) literally walking past one another without realizing it.
My force is known as the Gryphon Medium Armored Cavalry, hired by House Marik in order to disrupt the operations occurring on the planet. Considering the high amount of c-bills being affording to me through Campaign Operations (CamOps) book via the contract system, it stands to reason that this is an EMERGENCY ORDER. Effectively, House Marik forces are too tied up with offenses from House Steiner in order to properly send a raid force in order to prevent those machining tools from being removed from Not-Hoth--they needed a force that was prepared to mobilize at that very instant. As it turns out, the Gryphon MAC was that unit, having already fully restocked and refreshed from its previous, successful contract. I'm going to assume there wasn't even time for the usual contract negotiations; they plopped down a full contract of almost 500 Million C-Bills as a proposition to the unit and said 'you have one hour to accept or decline.' Full Battlefield loss compensation, full travel expenses compensation. The only downsides were taking along a liaison to this mission, and all salvage has to be turned in to House Marik upon return. Considering the circumstances, this is a very lucrative contract, all said and told. (Someone must really hate Kurita).
The opposition is known as Horizen Security Solutions, on contract with Kurita to provide security to the machine crews that will be attempting to un-install and transport all the equipment on Not-Hoth and bring it back to Kurita space. Naturally, House Kurita's attitude towards most mercenary units resulted in a less-than-generous contract. Then again, considering that no one is supposed to know about this planet or what it (supposedly) possessed, one could understand the 250 Million C-Bill contract that Horizen was awarded. That being said, the fact that they were signed up for this kind of sensitive mission in the first place makes me think that the FedCom Civil War was tying up more units than Kurita would have liked for this kind of situation--but if it meant getting more of their LAMs in working order for their special operations, they were probably willing to pay any price.
Force composition is still a little subject to change, but as such, here is what we are looking at in terms of committed forces to this campaign:
Gryphon Medium Armored Cavalry: (36 'Mechs, 6 ASF, 32 Support Vehicles, 8 Combat Vehicles, 4 Infantry Platoons, 2 Medical Platoons)
Transport: Seeker, 2x Denais, 3x Union
2x STG-5M, 4x WSP-3M, 2x PXH-1, 12x GRF-1N, 12x WVR-6M, 4x WVR-7M
4x Cheetah F-10, 2x Stingray F-92
8x Savior Repair Vehicle, 4x BMRV, 4x Heavy BMRV, 2x Mobile HQ, 2x MASH Truck, 8x Sherpa, 4x Flatbed
4x Thumper Vehicles, 4x Gobline Infantry Support Vehicles
4x Rifle Infantry Platoons, 2x Medical Platoons
Total Personnel: 1512 (298 Combat Personnel, 56 Medical Personnel, 88 Technicians, 528 Astechs, 402 DropShip Crew, 140 Administrators)
Formations: 2x Recon Lance, 5x Medium Fire Lance, 3x Light Fire Lance, 1x Artillery Fire Lance, 1x Aerospace Superiority Squadron
Supplies: 12 Months of Food, 756 Tons of Ammunition, 300 Tons of Replacement Weaponry, 1400 Tons of Replacement Parts
Horizen Scurity Solutions: (16 'Mechs, 55 Combat Vehicles, 2 ASF, 17 Infantry Platoons, 7 Battle Armor Squads, 51 Support Vehicles)
Transport: Mammoth, Leopard
2x LCT-1E, 1x COM-2D, 1x PXH-4L, 1x HBK-5H, 1x VND-5L, 1x CN9-9D(m), 1x ARC-6W, 1x WHM-8D, 1x MAD-5L, 1x EMP-6A, 4x UM-R69
6x Manticore (C3 versions), 6x Bulldog, 6x Vedette, 2x Schilltron, 4x LRMCarrier, 6x Heavy LRM Carrier, 6x Light SRM Carrier, 6x Ballista
6x Minotaur, 6x Hetzer, 6x Maxim, 3x Marten, 6x Karnov, 2x Iroquois, 2x Sparrow, 12x Gabriel
6x Heavy Infantry Platoon, 3x Jump Platoon, 3x AC/5 Platoon , 3x Combat Engineer Platoons, 1x Operative Platoon, 1x Paramedic Platoon
6x Trinity MRR Battle Armor Squad, 1x Infiltrator Mk2 Battle Armor Squad
1x Scarlet AS-X1, 1x Slayer SL-15R
1x Legate, 3x Mobile HQ, 6x Flatbed, 6x Sherpa, 3x Engineering Vehicle, 3x Prometheus, 2x BMRV, 2x HBMRV, 4x Savior RV,
1x Salrilla EXO, 2x ScaverJack, 2x MASH Truck, 2x Jackdaw, 16x Trailers
Total Personnel: 3086 (993 Combat Personnel, 157 Technicians, 942 Astechs, 929 Administrators, 65 DropShip Crew)
Formations: TBD
Supplies: ~6 Months of Food, 2251 Tons of Ammunition, 373 Tons of Replacement Weaponry, 1468 Tons of Replacement Parts
As you can tell, we put no restrictions on customized or custom-made units (especially since there's no TRO for gun-trailers or turrets until the Jihad for some bizarre reason, and VTOL selection is arguably really pathetic). So long as you could afford it, you can bring it.
We haven't had our first session yet, but once we have, I'll be sure to post the results in this first post. Once I get more information, I'll be sure to share it with you. Happy Hunting.
