<Disclaimer when you aren't having fun you can alter the rules a little, to what works for you. As long as you are having fun beating up Princess you are winning in my book>
Playing ATB and I had a recon raid contract against the Ghost Bears. Now we all know how ATB works when setting up sides VS the clans. A bit into the contract, I had drawn yet another chase mission, as the attacker. Now I don't know about you all, but I don't like attacking chase missions. The defender controls the battlefield so there is no chance of salvage, and any damage you take, is coming out of your pocket. Even if you get something back on battle compensation, you still have to get the parts and do the repairs, and hope nothing breaks. I get that sometimes for military operations you gotta hit a target or get info and run fast, but from playing the game you don't see the value of the intel, and it just feels like a lose lose situation.
So when my employer told me he wanted me to hit a target and run, and I saw the list of forces that were gonna be able to respond (Seriously do the clans ever turn off the production lever at the Lightning hovercraft factory?) well I almost told my employer to shove it. But eventually we got down to talking, and there was a bit of brilliant strategy.
My employer would get a lance of Urbanmechs (AC20 modified), a lance of FireStarters (2 9-H and 2 9-A) and some battle armor (3 IS Standard Flamers, 3 Longinus Flamers, 3 Raiden Tsunamis with the gauss rifles) hidden in my deployment zone under camo nets and thermal tarps. Then on a hill overlooking the area my lance would be fleeing through I got my employer to set up 6 LMR carriers with the 3055 upgrade with their C3 network linked into a pair of lance command Partisans, which was linked into a company command Partisan; that had 3 more regular Partisans linked in to the network to cover any aerial threats. While we hadn't gotten any intel of fighters in the area, there were a number of VTOLs patrolling and we wanted to shoot them down fast, before they could deal with the LRM carriers. Then 6 field gun infantry units set up in the rubble to support the tanks. 3 had LBX 10s and 3 had UAC 10s.
Finally while we didn't expect fighter support from the enemy that didn't mean we couldn't have any. They were POS conventional fighters, sourced from a "Local Militia" that my employer had loaded up with bombs of all sorts and rocket pods. Some of them like the Colt fighters didn't even have modern armor on them. One way or another there would be massive explosions in/from the sky.
I had tried to add an extra princess bot allied to me to control all these extra units, but it had trouble placing the units and ended up hanging. I restarted the mission, and this time took control of the forces.
The mission started off without a hitch. My forces funneled into the choke point just as the first element made contact and then were immediately engaged by the light mechs and battle armor. Some hovercrafts and VTOLs broke through the screen and attempted to get down range to cut my lance off from escape, but were met with a hail of missiles and autocannon shells.
I guess that the other clan units were scared of the LRMs on the hill since even the big omni-mechs didn't want to go near them and stayed in the deployment zone being screened my the light mechs. The battle armor decided the safest place was on the enemy mechs and started swarming everything they could. The LRMs and Partisans were almost silent except for the occasional token salvo or AC2 round at max range.
Then the conventional fighters started trickling in, over rounds 3 through 7. They fell into a weird swooping circle chasing each other as the darted in to fire their weapons after dropping their bombs at the initial contact. I expected the conventional fighters to drop like flies from the range of clan weapons and their power, but they held on a surprisingly long time.
Meanwhile the battle armor was proceeding to swarm any unit they could grab on to.
There were a pair of Hunchback IICs that were being climbed on and slowly dismantled by the battle armor. Now Princess isn't a tactical genius, we know that. If I wanted to dislodge swarming suits from my Hunchy I might activate my jump jets to try to shake them off. One other mech even walked into an inferno fire to burn the suits to a crisp. (Well the guys inside, the suits themselves were mostly fine) But this Hunchy well it's solution to being swarmed was to do a full alpha two rounds in a row causing it's heat to spike and the reactor to shutdown. Then the mech crashed hard to the ground squishing one suit under it and causing the rest to slide off. A level of brilliance on it's own right.
Both of the Hunchback IICs survived but were too crippled to continue losing side torsos and retreating due to the forced withdrawal rules. Let me tell you I have never been more incredulous than seeing the message that a Hunchback IIC was withdrawing. I'm betting those two pilots got reassigned to solahma units after that. I can't think of the clan warrior that would put them back in a mech.
For the most it was some of the most fun I have had playing a chase mission, by putting down expendable units to act as a speed bump. My issue about only feeling the losses on a chase mission were abated by having throwaway units, and while I think I went too far with all the tanks I put down, the battle did feel very fair with all the units the clan ATB puts against you.
I might need to adjust it a little in the future, but I like big battles. Even losing ones with into tech against a massive hoard of ravaging clan onmis.
