Hiding a BattleMech

The last forty-five minutes of this most recent session was the party scrambling to hide Shin's Firestarter before the Word of Blake found it within spitting distance of Clark's Farm. Being at the base of the Rocky Mountains, they decided to stash the ComStar-white machine in the snowcaps about 80km west. This involved a number of issues, not the least of which was two of their personnel who had some technical skills had been out of commission for two weeks, healing from wounds earned in the attempt on Demi-Precentor Lecna. Simon's job left only David and Clark to maintain both the Firestarter and the Hawk Moth for the two weeks after the landing.

David took point, but started out of the gate by rolling snake-eyes twice on his Technician/Nuclear checks. He recovered quickly, but the damage to the Firestarter was pretty bad -- two engine crits and a number of quality downgrades. Once Alex was back on his feet, things got a bit better, but one they got the Firestarter into the mountains in early April of 3068, the real work began. It took two weeks for them to mothball the BattleMech in the harsh and frigid environment in the high Rockies, and in the process Shin managed to destroy two more flamers trying to prepare them for long-term storage. The whole endeavor gave the three of them much to do, and Clark and Simon used their survival skills on the opening weekend of the mothballing to ensure the trio had sufficient supplies laid in for the entire time they were there. The Word never sighted them, and they eventually covered the 'Mech in snow, hopefully ensuring even if some of it melted, it would be invisible from the air.

The rolls for this part of the adventure were particularly hard to calculate, for a number of reasons. First, the maintenance rules in Strategic Operations are all set up based on the BattleTech skills system -- that is to say, lower is better. The Technican skills are easy to convert (8 minus bonus), but that's just the first step. There's a set of tables on pages 170-172 that describe all the modifiers that can be applied to each maintenance roll -- suffice it to say, the list is extensive, and there are perhaps half a dozen tables involved. All this isn't particularly troublesome -- that is all precalculable.

The second issue, which made the first thing an issue, was that I wasn't expecting to make these rolls. The party decided they wanted to take care of this while we were in session, so I winged it with StratOps open in front of me. I already know I cheated them of their -1 because we were making component-based rolls, but I don't think that mattered too much. The bigger issue is that I had to remember the components that had to be rolled for off the top of my head. Engines and weapons were easy, and the armor and structure rolls were can't-miss with their Technican/Mechanics levels being where they are, but I forgot to have them roll maintenance or mothballing on the Gyros. It was a sloppy job on my part, and I feel bad about it. In retrospect, we could've handled the whole thing over email and I would've had the proper procedure in front of me. Not only have I screwed up that encounter, but I've given my players an erroneous impression of the process should it come up in the future. My group is well-mannered and understanding enough that if I change the rules they'll understand why, but I would be very concerned if I were running for a group I knew less well.

The takeaway here is when something very logistically intensive comes up, like maintenance rolls and mothballing rolls, and you're not prepared for them, table the encounter. Don't be afraid to take that particular session off-line, because calculating the rolls is time-intensive, especially if you don't have a checklist in front of you.