Versus Match The Lone Jenner versus the Empire

[Husky_Khan]

Random idea I got after watching someone play the first missions of MechWarrior 2 the other day.

---

Planet: Unknown
Terrain: Rolling Hills
Time: Day
Weather: Clear

In a matter of hours, the Beta Galaxy will engage the enemy’s Legion. Airspace over the battlefield is currently contested. All available aerospace fighters are currently detailed for escort or interdiction missions. Due to these circumstances, both orbital inspection of an enemy firebase and a strike mission upon its supply dump have been scrubbed. The Touman needs positive reconnaissance information so that the fighters can turn their attention to destroying the Imperial Battlegroup.

Primary Objective: Reconnaissance of the Firebase
Secondary Objective: Destruction of the Firebase Power Generator
Tertiary Objective: Destruction of All Enemy Forces

Enemy Forces in the Area: (enemy forces are believed to active but not alerted to your presence)
1 74-Z Speederbike
2 AT-ST Scout Walkers (roaming joint patrol)
2 P-Towers (on each end of the base, powered by generator)
4 E-Web Heavy Repeating Blaster Emplacements
36 Imperial Army Troopers divided into three squads (one squad active at any time to operate firebase defenses and speederbike) equipped with Blaster Rifles
2 PLX-2M portable missile launchers

Deployed Forces:
1 JR7-K Jenner Mech

---

 

[Laskar]

Unless we're wanking Star Wars, the Jenner has the advantage. All of the elements of the defensive forces are a threat to it, but the Jenner is fast enough to engage and disengage at will after it destroys the 74-Z Speederbike. The AT-ST scout walkers can't run fast enough to keep up with it, so unless they pull back to the firebase they're out of the fight.

The missile launchers and the P-Towers are a more formidable obstacle. If the Jenner attacks from one end, maybe it can use the firebase to conceal itself from one of the towers, and try to defeat the squads in detail.

Or the Jenner just destroys the speederbike, looses the walkers, wrecks the tower, and then destroys the generator and gets out before the infantry can kill it.

 

[Deleted member]

AT-ST guns are quite capable of gouging through multi-inch thick exotic armour and explosively destroying massive trees from the inside out by flash-boiling the water in them (which isn't actually that trivial). This may be a bit harder than it looks... Though the lack of a speed advantage certainly puts the Imperial forces at a disadvantage, particularly since any Imperial officer with a fixed position to defend is probably going to hold position and fight strictly defensively.

 

[Husky_Khan]

My next versus I'll try and lay out a map of things, but yeah, I based this off of the first mission of Mechwarrior 2. I was wondering (even without a map) if the Jenner could use it's speed and firepower and other capabilities, such as the briefing inferring it is a skilled (if not experienced) Clan Wolf mechwarrior going up against an Imperial Army firebase which is aware but not alert since they are in a combat zone. They are doing their patrols and manning their equipment (probably) to at least a bare minimum standard at worst but certainly aren't expecting enemy action.

If this was a flat plain it'd be trickier for the Jenner as it could be spotted from a long range but with gentle rolling hills I expect that the firebase was probably placed in a semi-sensible position (a few hundred meters/yards) of clearance especially for the P-Towers but nothing that could allude to a 'plinking' like if this Jenner was assaulting across the snow plains of Hoth. The main thing I wanted to see was y'all opinion on whether a single Jenner could fulfill its any or all of its objectives.

The Imperials have some advantages and disadvantages. The Jenner is more versatile then the AT-ST's but the latter are in a patrol (together). The speederbike is the speed advantage but it's only one bike. The P-Towers are likely powerful and have impressive range but they can only fire once every several seconds and don't have any real armor (and in this case are connected to some generator in the middle of the small firebase). Plus there's E-Web's in machine gun nest style emplacements and two missile launchers available. But there's only twelve Imperial Army troopers on shift to man the P-Towers, E-Webs and utilize the speederbike for patrol. (I'm assuming twelve more are off duty/asleep/out of kit and twelve more are simply awake and in various states of readiness (eating, training, socializing, maintenance etc).

 

[Deleted member]

Well, after the first attack, everyone in the firebase will be rapidly turned out, so... The first attack has to count.

 

[Laskar]

Well, after the first attack, everyone in the firebase will be rapidly turned out, so... The first attack has to count.

Which is why the Jenner has to somehow, impossibly, take out the speeder bike with a melee attack. Maybe a DFA. The sound of gunfire will send the troopers scrambling to their stations, but the sound of a horrible car crash might trigger the human rubbernecking instinct long enough for the Jenner to get a jump on the base.

 

[Deleted member]

Which is why the Jenner has to somehow, impossibly, take out the speeder bike with a melee attack. Maybe a DFA. The sound of gunfire will send the troopers scrambling to their stations, but the sound of a horrible car crash might trigger the human rubbernecking instinct long enough for the Jenner to get a jump on the base.

Yes, destroying the speeder bike without alerting the other Imperials would be of great help.

 

[Husky_Khan]

Which is why the Jenner has to somehow, impossibly, take out the speeder bike with a melee attack. Maybe a DFA. The sound of gunfire will send the troopers scrambling to their stations, but the sound of a horrible car crash might trigger the human rubbernecking instinct long enough for the Jenner to get a jump on the base.

Putting aside the noise issue, how hard would it be for the Jenner to target the Speederbike? Would it be much of a challenge for Battlemechs to engage small fast maneuverable vehicles such as those in the lore?

 

[Bear Ribs]

It's been years since I played MechWarrior 2 but shouldn't the clans be using the Jenner IIC instead of the Inner Sphere version? The '2' variant would be the best in this situation but we can't be sure what the pilot would pick.

Putting aside the noise issue, how hard would it be for the Jenner to target the Speederbike? Would it be much of a challenge for Battlemechs to engage small fast maneuverable vehicles such as those in the lore?

Just using tabletop rules, the Speederbike is going to have a +4 to hit modifier, rather difficult to hit but not an impossible shot for a clan warrior. Assuming no weapon with a bonus to hit, the Jenner is walking, and medium range you're looking at about a 17% chance to hit (per weapon) for a clan regular warrior. That figure can go down dramatically if the bike makes it to cover or long range, hitting single-digit percentages immediately. OTOH if the bike isn't going full speed, the Jenner gets to close range, or the Jenner has any weapons with a bonus to hit (most configurations of the Jenner IIC do) the odds can also get much better fast.

 

[Husky_Khan]

It's been years since I played MechWarrior 2 but shouldn't the clans be using the Jenner IIC instead of the Inner Sphere version? The '2' variant would be the best in this situation but we can't be sure what the pilot would pick.

Your absolutely right. I did just loom up the generic Jenner entry on Sarna and chose the variant that seemed most versatile. In this case I'll replace the Draconis Combine variant with a Clan one that has a similar combo of lasers and a missile launcher for this raid. So the Jenner IIC 2 most likely with its ER Large Laser, small pulse laser and the LRM-5 then. I want to see a combo of weapons to explore then the baseline SRM merch the baseline seems to be, especially since my thread head canon feels Raiders shoukd use more energy weapons and less ammunition based ones in general.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The best way to get a general idea of Battletech infantry for comparison is the laser pistol. In Tactics of Duty the standard laser pistol is said to have 100kJ power, about 20 grams of TNT per shot. In game terms, a laser pistol does 0.21 damage so five guys are basically needed to inflict a single point of damage on a Battlemech. Less than 1 point of damage rounds down on 'mech armor (though infantry weapons stack, so ten infantry with laser pistols do 2.1 rounds down to 2 damage).

In the same story, a guy's hit by a pulse laser pistol. The resultant damage vaporizes so much of his body fluids that his remains are catapulted backwards from steam exploding out one side of his torso. Such massive damage would appear, to my eyes, to be greater than what a Stormtrooper's rifle typically inflicts. This pulse laser pistol, in tabletop, does... 0.14 damage. This means that even assuming their weapons are as good as "explode a body into steam with enough force to launch the corpse" pulse lasers, the entire twelve stormtroopers are going to all have to hit the same spot in order to inflict... 1 point of damage. An Eweb is a significant upgrade of course, it might do a point or two all by itself. The Jenner IIC 2 can take three points at it's weakest area before it starts suffering internal damage, 8 to it's legs, and 6/13/6 on it's torso.

That bit done I'd say it establishes that for infantry weapons, BT weaponry is fairly superior to anything a Stormtrooper carries and their weapons are no threat. Infantry are also hosed by the small pulse laser. They'll get chewed up in seconds and their weapons can barely scratch the Jenner IIC.

The LRM5 is the best bet against the speeder bike. Long range and in Mechwarrior 2, highly accurate since it can lock onto targets, and inflicts splash damage. A near-miss will probably still kill the Speeder. Under tabletop rules the pulse laser is since it gets a bonus to hit, but the small is pretty short-ranged so the Jenner IIC will have to get lucky to get that close. Honestly the bike is the biggest threat. Assuming it can do any damage, it's fast enough to maneuver behind the Jenner and avoid the firing arc of the LRM 5, and can keep it's distance away from the small pulse laser. However it has to land dozens of hits on the Jenner IIC if it can do damage at all given it has basically a blaster rifle, while it will die in one hit from any of the Jenner's weapons.

The two AT-STs will be a hard target but they're extremely slow compared to the Jenner IIC, it will be the fight against the speeder bike in reverse with them struggling to bring their weapons to bear. I'm not sure the ER Large Laser doesn't outrange them as well.

Overall I'd say Lone Jenner takes it. It's not a sure thing and it could lose with the wrong dice rolls of foolish tactics, but it can take far more punishment than all of the enemies can while dishing out far more itself.