And meanwhile, I took a 3-skull Highland escort - possibly the smallest map in the game other than the final two story maps. It's one of those that could net you roughly a kajillion C-bills or 5/22 salvage depending on the allocation; luckily, my choice to do 4/17 was not in vain. Nor was my decision to do the mission instead of taking Darius's advice to abandon it due to having a 195-ton "heaviest lance available."
The enemy started with a light lance (Jenner, Locust V, Firestarter, Commando B.) I dispatch those with due diligence, and reach the escort to the west. On this particular map, the start point, escorts, and dustoff point are quite nearly within LRM range of each other. Right in front of the dustoff (straight up the road to the east,) a reinforcement marker appears.
Another Jenner and another Locust (this time an S) spawn south of the dustoff, while a Commando D spawns in the north. So I squish them, but only get about a round to cool down before two of the Sleipnirs reach the promised land... summoning... another lance of light 'Mechs spread around the area. One more Locust (an M), one more Commando B, and then a Spider and Panther.
Liao sent a Plague Storm - pretty much a full blasted **company** of lights - to a 3-skull escort. Needless to say, my salvage allocation was certainly not wasted.
A nice conclusion to the pre-Weldry corridor crawl, actually. Before that, there were a pair of rather epic Martian Battles on Untran. The second was Hot Landing, and the first... my nemesis of two previous campaigns, Settling the Grudge.
My experience with Martian battles told me to cut northwest along the edge to establish my battle position; and I did this for Grudge. Dekker (in my Jenner modded to F spec) made first contact with a Cicada - which was good enough to establish that the other mediums were a Shadow Hawk H, and a Blackjack. Played with sensor range to avoid shenanigans while I handled the Cicada. Then the Locust S arrives, and the two Panthers start cleverly hiding at edge of weapon range, using spotter-granted LOS to poke with those PPCs of theirs.
Meanwhile, the mediums were dancing in the nearby Radiation Zone, doing their level best to do stuff. It turns out the Panthers also were, and they were already internal from hopscotching with rad spikes. Clean up the mediums, run out of AC/5 and AC/2 ammo (!!!), fight the Panthers who were *trying* to practice good heat management, and finally find a Locust M parked in the northeast, picking its nose or something.
Hot Landing was slightly different; rather than stand and deliver in the west, I figured that another stranded Locust M would occur, so I opted to send Dekker west to start combat, then run everyone back to start and around the east. Surprisingly, the Opfor DOES tolerate such shenanigans, since they went to where they saw Dekker and then roughly followed my pathing, rather than my position. The reinforcement lance consisted of a Panther, Trebuchet, and Striker tank, while the main lance was (on a 1.5-skull mission, by the way) a half-armoured Jager A and two SRM Carriers! Two internal'd 'Mechs, and two injured pilots... and I couldn't avoid a coring on the Jager. Stupid high-guts pilots. Salvage rolls were predictably jammed by the twenty SRM-6 racks from the Carriers.
