JSOH CABLE AND NOT ME JHOH wrote:

Played some Mech Warrior 4 today and yesterday and two things happened. The second one was magical and proves that it wasn't too expensive to buy so quickly.
The first one wasn't so magical. It was quite simple, I was blowing up the prisoner busses and laughing at all the sad and mournful teammates explain to me just how horrible it was that all those innocent prisoners are now dead. I just played it over and over while trying to have it happen right in the middle of the mid-mission objective review scene. What MW4 does for in-game radio transmissions is it plays them all in the order they are recieved, but only one at a time. So I would intentionally blow up the busses at that point to trigger the end of the mission. What happens then is it puts the screen in a letterbox view and plays sad music as the visual spirals around your mech's head.

So now the mission is over, lettebox overhead view, I get something like "Ok, escort the prisoner busses (that you just destroyed) over to the landing zone and protect them while they load into the choppers."

"Roger that, we'll continue on to the LZ and protect the prisoners."

"Man, this desert is hot, I am glad I'm not in the infantry."

"Target destroyed."

"Target destroyed."

"Target is dead."

"OMEGA, CHECK YOUR FIRE! THAT WAS ONE OF THE PRISONER TRANSPORTS, REPEAT THAT WAS ONE OF THE PRISONER TRANSPORTS. CHECK YOUR FIRE."

(sad sounding)"Command... they're all dead."

"Oh no."

"(more sad stuff)"

And I laughed. Ok, the second thing was something that happened just now, while I was flying fucking high as a kite. I decided yesterday to scrap my 10th complete run through of all the missions on easy, opting to play on the next hardest difficulty. For a few missions it was about as easy as the previous difficulty, but then a mission came up that just kicked my ass for a long time. For a lot of that time, I was cursing my teammate's aim. He was barely hitting the enemy at all, I either had no weapons left functioning or no ammo left, and I was for some reason spared on the battlefield, a walking burnt hulk of armor plates.

The mission was suddenly too hard. I tried it a few times and the same problems came up. Finally one solution worked. I was letting my teammates use the heaviest mechs so that I could do the most damage possible in the lighter selection. I went against that and used the heaviest, and loaded it down with the two weapon hardpoints that it allowed, lasers and missilery. I gave it the enhanced missle lock sensors and equipped the best long range clusters. Then I packed on a few decent beam things. Something that would sustain me outside of long range missiles. I almost didn't make it out after losing everything but a flame thrower and one medium pulse laser, but I got out anyway and learned a few things about making good mechs. Still, I was upset with my crew, their aims sucked terribly, and it was almost like they did nothing but distract the enemy from somone who could actually hit them (which I tried using as a tactic).

However, I gave my crew another chance to redeem themselves. The mechs they had previously weren't that well configured for good weapon usage. I selected the weapon groups in a fashion of long range instant hit stuff aside from any of the mid range pulse stuff.

In one of the desert missions, my weakest gunner (the girl, and I consider gunnery to be the best skill ever YOU DUMB BIM) did an awesome kill. I had tracked down some enemy medium class mech from around a mountain. His friend was able to rush to the other side, away from me. The girl was the only one near him, my other lancemates were behind me. She was the only one with a good chance of taking out the enemy soon.

I hoped that she would get him before I had the chance to join the battle. I saw the enemy just in time for the very top of him to disappear over a ridge. One last chance for my lancemates to be redeemed.

The very next shot was from Jen (that's the girl's name). I had selected her weapon groups so that she had all the weapons except the extended range particle projection cannon (ERPPC), and then that would be in it's own separate weapon group.

Like an assassin, she blasted off that blue beam, and the next thing you know, "Target has been eliminated." I was so happy, I tried typing into the chat about how happy I was for her and to congratulate her on that shot. Alas, I could not.

So I decided to celebrate by smoking a shitload of weedulars. Played a few missions, had almost no trouble. Jen did another sniper PPC shot, right by my head, into a guy tromping right for me. Blasted the guy in the chest.

:)