holy shit I think I just ran a successful sneaking mission in Lancer. I did not know if that was possible.
I'll try to get a writeup but wow, only once I wind down a little.
I promised a writeup, and thus, here we are!
The setup was pretty straightforward: This Lancer subsquad is trying to infiltrate (and blow up) (probably) a base housing a faction that's been messing not just with them, but also their IPS-Northstar contact Gin Stellar (think Gene Starwind but even more of a loser). Also, an independent Lancer team going by Discord Kittens is on site, and they accidentally kidnapped one of their pilots. It's a long story. Anyway, they had the option of going in "Loud" and knocking on the front door guns blazing, or going in "Quiet" and seeing how far they could get without provoking a response. Loud would have been a fixed-difficulty frontal assault followed by a fixed-difficulty final confrontation. They chose the risk/reward of Quiet, a "sneaking mission" approach with a final confrontation whose difficulty would scale based on how Sneaky they could be. In mechs.
Let's fucking go.
They had a "backdoor" to the facility located, at the end of a snaking canyon, which allowed for a controlled overland approach. The goal was to hit the backdoor, take out whatever sentries were onsite, and be inside before a response could be scrambled.
The complication: a convoy was arriving onsite at the same time, under guard.
The players deployed not at the base of the snake canyon at the bottom of the map, but instead at the little pass about 25% up on the left side of the map. Their goal was "exfiltrate your units through the exit in the upper-right corner of the map".
I'll go over the exact composition of the OpFor in a bit, I'll talk about the sitrep first.
The mission started with VARIANT INITIATIVE. Rather than Lancer's normal popcorn initiative, all player characters moved first in sequence, followed by a status check, followed by "end-of-round" movement based on Alert Level.
Alert Level begins at 0. If the Alert level hits 10, we are headed to the Worst Outcome (and probably a second knock-down drag-out fight). There are several break points along the way: at 1, 4 and 7, the situation will escalate, and also the next fight will be Harder because of Forewarning. I did not tell my players where the breakpoints are: I didn't want them panicking about any specific Alert level, but rather the Alert Level in general. I didn't want them to know that "Well, 0 is the pipe-dream pie-in-the-sky, and then 1 through 3 are the same and we only have to worry about 4", I wanted them to treat it as more a rheostatic tension. I just don't have the brainpower to run a tactical scenario and also track responses for 10 different tension steps.
Alert level increases in the following ways:
- The first time an enemy is DESTROYED, the Alert Level increases by 1
- If the players end the turn in open combat, the Alert Level increases by 1 (open combat means that an enemy was attacked or otherwise engaged, but not destroyed or otherwise incapacitated)
- If a convoy truck is destroyed, the Alert Level increases by 1
- There are 5 Scout units on the map for security overwatch. They each have an Active Sensors effect in Burst 5 around them: for each player unit that enters an Active Sensors effect in a round, increase the Alert Level by 1 at the end of the round, if the Scout survives. This increase happens even if the player unit is Invisible, Intangible, or Hidden, but does not remove those status effects.
- The first time a non-Scout unit moves adjacent to a wrecked ally, increase the Alert Level by 1
- The first time a Scout unit moves to within Burst 5 of a wrecked ally, increase the Alert level by 1
- If the Alert Level is 3 or below, increase the Alert Level by 1 if a player unit is adjacent to any convoy or defense unit at any point during the round (4 or higher and it doesn't matter, the gig is already up and they've been marked as Definitely Hostile).
While the Alert Level is 0: Each unit in the convoy moves 4 along the canyon towards the backdoor exit at the end of the round. Scouts do not move. Defenders do not move.
When the Alert Level reaches 1: the nearest Scout unit moves its Speed towards the location where the Alert Level was raised, at the end of the round. If the Alert Level reached 1 because of a player sniping a Scout and destroying it, for instance, the next nearest Scout will move towards the location of the destroyed Scout to check on their buddy that just dropped off comms.
When the Alert Level reaches 2, switch to standard Lancer Popcorn Initiative (treat Convoy Trucks as a third, Neutral faction or move them at the end of the round). Do not activate every enemy unit normally, instead, check:
- If the unit is a SCOUT, activate the unit normally if a player is within Burst 5 ("hot" sensors radius). Otherwise, move the Scout towards the last known disturbance or known player location.
- If the unit is NOT a Scout, first check to see if the unit has line of sight to any non-Hidden, non-Invisible, non-Intangible player units. If yes, activate the unit normally. If no, roll a Just Following Orders save with target equal to 16-(Alert Level): failure means that the unit Follows Orders and keeps station, success means that the unit activates normally.
When the Alert Level reaches 4, all enemy units activate normally. In addition, the next battle will start at the first escalation (or appropriate to your scenario)
When the Alert Level reaches 7, reinforcements arrive. In addition, the next battle will start at the second escalation, as appropriate to your scenario
When the Alert Level reaches 10, reinforcements arrive. In addition, the next battle will start at the final escalation, as appropriate to your scenario.
When a character arrives in the exfil zone, they may immediately withdraw from the battlefield. If they don't, they may withdraw as a free action on their turn.
Combat ends when all player lancers have exfiltrated.
The enemy forces on the battlefield for our mission were:
- 5 Convoy Trucks (Size 1, Move 4, scattered along the canyon, mainly a red herring and there to raise the alert level by being disruptive)
- 5 Scouts (Scout Vehicle, Hover, Marker Rifle and Expose Weakness, primarily there to both spot characters and disrupt them with identification through the Marker Rifle)
- 5 Light Hover Escorts (Sniper Vehicle, Hover, a big threat once the alert level is raised, but because of Loading only every other turn)
- 3 Heavy Hover Escorts (Scourer Vehicle, Hover, Pulse Laser, a heavy weapons and deterrent platform once the alert level is raised, but only within about a range of 8 give or take, still avoidable)
- 2 MACC Monsters (Deluge, Riding the Redline, Spray and Pray, serving as the "Gate Guards" of the scenario, there to lay down overlapping hail-of-fire fields once characters are spotted and make movement difficult/risky)
Reinforcements were on tap, but turned out unnecessary; through some incredibly tense maneuvering our team got out at Alert Level 3, finishing up with a mad dash to the exit.
It was really good, folks. I had a blast.
EDIT: Update on Alert Level specifically. So, once things Go (even partially) Loud, I.E. once the Alert Level hits 1 or higher, there's no sneakin' by on "oh haha we're not here" or "whoopsie uh we're... allies with malfunctioning IFF's?" or the like. There's no re-establishing Undetected status; if you blow up one of the scouts or even just Jam them so they can't communicate (getting creative, etc) their friends are gonna know that Something is Up. So this isn't about "no one knows we're here", as soon as anyone knows you're there, as soon as you make any mark on the battlefield. An Alert Level of even 1 means that Someone knows Something's up, so it's just a question of "can we capitalize while they aren't sure what is going on yet", combat tension, and so forth. It's not "will they know we're even there", it's "can we get out before they realize what's really going on".
