MechWarrior Diplomatic Liaison from 1st Robinson Rangers

Wasn't aware where to post this, so... please don't tear me apart with axes!

I'm Major Liam Avery, of the 1st Robinson Rangers. It has came to my attention that another Major from the Rangers was attempting to set up scheduled role-play matches between the Rangers and the Shieldwall, and from what I've heard it's been a little spotty between the communications, so I've talked with my Colonel and Major Nomad, whom was setting training up, and we both agreed on attempting to set up some form of diplomatic relations to help ease communications between the two groups.

Tomorrow, as I was informed, is a match between my Regiment and the Shieldwall. I'm planning on being on the No Guts, No Galaxy teamspeak server an hour prior to the match to discuss in further details what we plan on doing, along with some other things. (Mech Variants that we've been running in training missions ourselves.) Major Nomad will hopefully be joining me as well.

~ Maj. Liam "Ghost" Avery
1st Robinson Rangers, Diplomatic Liaison

P.S. I hope I'm not intruding with this post.

 

Thanks for the cordial greeting, have a horn of mead.

Damon, I believe this one's for you?

 

Allow me to be the first to cardinally welcome you to our little patch of the Inner Sphere. Whilst I will be working most of tomorrow and not be able to get me mead on in a skirmish with you fellows, I do hope we all have a great match.


EDIT:

Guess I'm the second.. And wow Skwi was reading my mind when it came to word choice, eh?

 

*reads from a pantomime dictionary; pronouncing phonetically*

Dip-lo-ma-tick lee-ay-zon. "An office for communicating between two or more groups to facilitate union in action or to further agreement."

*shuts the imaginary book with a thoughtful expression*

That means we don't shoot this one. *grabs an advancing Private by the collar* Nor do we fill the coolant-reservoir of his 'mech with sun-ripened roe.

*salutes* Greetings from the ranks, Major. The officers should be responding soon.

 

Greetings Major Avery;

First off, welcome to the forum and the Skjaldborg; it is an honor to have you here for talks and I hope our meetings will produce much fruit. For time's sake, I'll get straight to the point.

"Match" may be a bit strong of a word. The Skjaldborg have regular meeting days where anyone who is ready, willing and able joins our NGNG teamspeak and set up games to play. The typical platforms tend to be MW4: Mercs, Megamek, and World of Tanks. These meetings are set at 7pm, EST Wednesday night and 12pm (noon) EST Saturday. We usually convene, discuss a game, and start playing: based off of previous matches, a set agenda (teamwork, company v. company battles, etc) or just for the luls.

Regarding this Saturday (today), I am actually not sure who will be available to play. The intent was for your leaders and ours (or, in our case, the leader and "lead" mods, Korprals Terrain and Damon Howe) to get together, discuss in more detail about what our actual "proposal" is, and agree on terms, conditions and the like. Basically, a "who's who, get to know you" affair. We've found with previous meetings between other merc groups that making sure we're all on the same page leads to a much more enjoyable gaming experience for all, and we want to ensure our members and yours are confident everyone will enjoy the gaming.

That being said, neither Dihm (our leader) or myself will be available to meet with you gents tomorrow. Terrain may be available, but I am not sure. That being said, I do encourage your guys and ours to get together and discuss things, perhaps play a few battles, and talk about any questions, comments or concerns you may or may not have. This will greatly help us work something out in the future that's more....concrete.

Finally, I'd like to address some of the issues persay. As mentioned, we have tried meeting with other MWO groups for practice battles before. We played several matches on MW4, but mostly everyone on our side felt...disgruntled about the playing atmosphere overall. I won't name names, but this was a "clan" merc unit. A few of the complaints included:
-Playing up their "clan-awesomeness" while bashing the IS players
-claiming to be clan while using un-clan-like tactics (missile-boating I believe was one such complaint; correct me if I'm wrong guys)
-Namecalling in the name of "role-play"
And several other complaints.

Naturally, this has left a bad taste in our mouth, one we want to avoid in the future with both them and other units. As for the proposal itself and why the offer is severely lacking in direct information....lets just say that we played last time with our enemy knowing all the objectives, maps and missions while most of our forces were left in the dark. It was intended that both enemies would be blind, but that didn't happen and caused many problems.

In any regards, thank you for reading this long, dry message, look forward to seeing and hearing from you again, and hopefully our forces will oppose each other on the battlefield soon for a friendly round of slaughter...at least as friendly as slaughter can be anyways.

-Kprl. Damon "Raven" Howe
--Skjaldborg - Shieldwall of Rasalhague

P.S. Perfectly fine, no worries.

 

*Returns the Salute*

Thanks for the warm welcomes Korporals. I'll be waiting to hear from your officers soon.

EDIT:

Wasn't aware you were going to reply quickly, considering it's the middle of the night.

It's a shame to hear that your leaders, or yourself are unable to show up at the meeting later today. However, this is completely fine with me as all of this is sorta short-notice. From what I've noticed communication between our two groups has been a bit spotty, possibly on our side due to how busy Nomad is. I suppose I might have jumped the gun a little and posted a topic on our forums to state that we're running a match against you guys tomorrow, so if necessary I can turn my pilots away who show up. I suppose if you do have extra members who show up we could perhaps have a couple of games to get to know each other (Free for all, I'm thinking, just for fun.)

While I'm thinking about it, Azantia (from the 1st Blackburn's Raiders,) and Ragotag (One of our Majors,) had put together about 76 chassis's and over 100 variants of Mechs that are considered canon by the Battle Tech tabletop games. These are MechWarrior 4 variants that we have in a drop box. Both ourselves and the Blackburn's have been running these variants against each other, considering MW4's variants have too much armor. These variants are also canon to the time-line that MWO is currently in. As much as I don't want to press the issue, I do have to ask would you guys feel alright with running these variants? Of course, this is something we can discuss once we have a concrete time and day set up.

Finally, I am sorry to hear that you have ran across those types of players within the MechWarrior Community. I can personally say that the Rangers strive to provide a fun atmosphere between any and all fellow Regiments we run against, or with, and we do not tolerate the kind of things that you've listed. If you do have any problems with any of our members (myself included) please bring it up with us, and we'll be sure to take immediate action.

 

Also, if you guys (Skjaldborg peeps) have anything to add, change, or rectify, feel free to post here. We all have a voice, best use it.

 

Nice to hear from those guys. I think I'll leave the diplomacy to Damon from now on.

I'll be there tomorrow.

 

Yeah diplomacy is better handled by those assigned to it that being said, If you guys ever have any late nighters (after midnight EST) that want to get together I'd be game for that.

 

Sidenote: I find it funny how I always wind up with diplomacy, even when I do try to pass it on to the higher ups.

At any rate, I'm out of time this morning to respond. Terrain said he'll be around, so as far as variants, configurations and the like for mw4 mechs I'm sure he would be willing to discuss the matter with you today, if you guys are available and willing to chat with our members. Terrain may be a korpral like myself, but he's modded one of our campaign games and practically had it rewritten from scratch, so I have the utmost confidence in him, Korpral to Korpral.

 

We do have a few late nighters, however I'm unaware of their schedules at the time being. We also have some folks from the oceanic section of the world who would indeed be on during these late night hours. I'm sure I can get in contact with their company commanders and see if I can't get another officer to represent them out on the field. Though, I would like to wait until we have some formal games being set up.

I am looking forwards to today's meeting and future ones.


EDIT:

This is the Canon variants that the 1st BBR and my regiment put together, Terrain has ran a couple of them.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/68516143/Mech%20Variants.zip

 

Unfortunately my PC is old school and not compatible with your download...is there a way you could put it in something like MS word?

At any rate, I like the idea of canon units. It makes things short, sweet and to the point. It was definitely a point of debate in our last matchup and forced everyone to use stock mechs to ensure a somewhat even playing field.

Some of us also like the idea of custom mechs in general, as it's been hinted that in MWO we'll be able to make custom variants to a certain extent, which may or may not include weapon mods and the like. Now, idk how you guys want to handle that; most of our guys are fine with stock or a select set of canon units. Our only policy with customization was "don't go overboard", such as creating Arrow IV boats, AC boats, laser boats (unless you're in a Nova Cat or SuperNova, in which case it's pretty much a given) etc etc. If anyone has a question about a unit, ask the group for approval. I think a general honor policy would be sufficient, but if you feel that might get out of hand again we can work with what we get. The only exception I would ask is for the use of Narc Beacons, as in several of our missions we used Narcs as a means of simulating TAG. Given that the only unit a Narc is standard on is a Raven, playing stock mechs really hurt the mission play.

Again, these are all just thoughts, and idk as of right now what exactly was discussed today at the match.

 

I've got them, but I'm computer illiterate, I can give you the stats for the mechs that you want.

And not too much was discussed yesterday, after all I was the only one their so things were kept pretty simple.

 

Most likely I'll be available.

 

I'll be there!

 

If you don't have the time, feel free to give me a shout and I can write up what the canon variants have for armor / weapons and what chassis their using.

At first I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to make it or not, though I will be able too make it now, so count me there as well.

 

Sounds good to me, I'll be sure to be in attendance

Who's handling the mission setup? Do they need/want any help?