A place to store and document my solo game of Mercenary Air Squadron, taking place in the cyberpunk future depicted in Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere.

INTRODUCTION

Hello! Lake here.

Welcome to my SOLO game forum. On this occasion, I will be playing Mercenary Air Squadron (MAS), starting with a fresh MAS and going through the original "campaigns" to see if the MAS can make it. If they survive, I might even make some custom "harder" ones later. The catch? I decided to set the game in the near-future setting of «Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere», very cool, isn't it? I think it fits the MAS spirit, but I would have to make some slight adjustments for it to work.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT?

To begin with, I will be moving the "starting date" back to 2032. It is earlier in the timeline, but we also know for a fact that the year 2040 is a simulation (and a very biased one tailored to Simon's needs, which he confessed at the end of the game as such):

SIMON

«...Well, there's no such thing as a scripted story out here.»

«Let's start the game...»

As the game would be before the start of the (hypothetical) «Intercorporate War», some worldbuilding changes will be needed. Nothing too big, but I will also take the chance to alter some stuff to my liking. HOSTILE has a more nuanced (imo) take on how "Megacorps" work in a cyberpunk setting, so I will be taking hints from that.

Finally, I will be using the original Ace Combat 3 Setting, the one that was supposed to be our own real world but in a cyberpunk setting, before it got retconned into "Stragereal" as the series went on. So, no love for Stragereal lovers this time.

WHAT RESOURCES WILL YOU BE USING?

Primarily, the MAS Handbook (obviously). As mentioned, I also own almost all supplements from HOSTILE, and I found Dirty Wars particularly useful as a guide on how PMCs operate, so expect to see some of that stuff here and there.

And, of course, a tailored set of new aircraft and equipment depicting the planes and weapons seen in «Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere» of my own making. The airframes are all "late game" tier, and a few of them are outright locked to NPCs and require a specific "Unique Attribute" to have limited access for the player. I also added a new rule for twin-seated aircraft, nothing too fancy, but I found it weird that vanilla MAS didn't account for them. In any case, all of my homebrew is available on the Resources tab if you are interested in using it for your own games. I might add more or change existing ones as the game moves forward.

HOW OFTEN WILL YOU BE POSTING?

In short, whenever I feel like. This is a solo game, and intended for me to play when I'm bored and such. I made it public because I feel it forces me to keep playing and keep more organized rather than having a mess of notes on scratch paper.

CAN I PARTICIPATE?

Well, not directly; all forums and threads are locked, but I added a "Contact Us" forum in the Game Pages tab, which includes a thread that serves as a suggestion and/or comment box. You are free to post there and talk to me.