Beaked TF Up in Unity City

You simply don't get shit like this from franchisees that are more starry eyed and less cognisant of the failures of the Military Industrial complex

I was exactly the kind of nerdy kid that collected dedicated books filled with diagrams explaining the various sci-fi vehicles or technology from my favorite shows and movies, and I cannot recall any other fictional universes that went out of its way to deliberately imagine stuff that was canonically crappy.

Here's the starting snippet from the Sarna's BattleTech wiki entry on the Charger:

Can you imagine playing a game where more than one of the options it offers are deliberately bad and making them even somewhat passable requires you to jump through more hoops?

Why do these things exist? Same reason crappy military equipment exists in real life: lobbyists, corruption, graft, lazy or rushed engineering, take your pick. Some 'Mechs like the Assassin are noted for being so uncomfortable to use that its pilots developed fucking back problems.

It's one thing to have players argue about what mechs or builds are superior in which situations but BattleTech took the bold stance, "What if you were just given sub-par equipment and had to make the best of it?"

Sure you get a giant robot...but what if you were given the giant robot equivalent of a lemon?

And yanno what? Some people still like the bad mechs. You can run into forums where people defend the Assassin or the Hollander or argue about the Cicada. There is a meticulous and frankly excellent Youtube video that defends the "abject failure" of a 'Mech that is the Charger with a run time of one hour and sixteen minutes and it is fucking riveting. It has to be the most mecha pilot things I've ever seen: it incorporates the 'I love my ancient, shitty car' attitude to your giant stompy death robot shenanigans.

The Charger gets the CGR-1A9, and eventually the CGR-3K and CGR-3Kr refits, tacking on some advanced tech and significantly improving the weapons suite, making the mech significantly more effective, especially at close ranges.

In addition, the Charger is refined into the Hatamoto-Chi, where it gets the power of samurai armor and the internals of a Thug THG-11E crammed into the chassis, significantly improving the capabilities of the original design. The Hatamoto-Chi also gets a myriad of good versions as well, as it continues to get refits even into the ilclan era.

The Assassin has generally been a pretty underwhelming mech for most of its lifespan, until you realize it was designed to hunt other light mechs and vehicles. It has very decent mobility for a mech of its size, and it performs decently well as a scout.

Besides being cheap, the Assassin was also famous for being able to flank very quickly in comparison to many of its contemporaries, only really being outmatched in jump distance by the Ostscout, a mech not designed for direct combat. In addition to that, many light mechs of the era would have similar levels of firepower, but were not as mobile over most terrain compared to the Assassin.

Aside from lore considerations, the Assassin was unparalleled during the original 3025 setting, as target numbers for range bands were fixed attributes. This meant than an assassin in medium range after jumping was a guaranteed 10+ to hit on 2d6, which provided it a lot of evasion.

Even the most modern version of the assassin is dedicated to the same ideas as the original. The Assassin ASN-109 incorporates Stealth Armor powered by an Angel ECM Suite as an integral part of its systems, making it exceedingly difficult to hit, and is equipped with a Light PPC and an MML-5 rack, as well as a One Shot SRM-2. This is not perfect by any means, but it vastly improves over the original's damage potential, and retains the original's idea as a light mech hunter and overall annoyance.

Now, on to the Cicada. The Cicada was envisioned as a 40t Locust with slightly better equipment. This meant a marginal increase in armor, and two medium lasers instead of a single one. It's not paticularly interesting overall, but it is reliable as a larger counterpart to the Locust.

Like many of the others above, it also gets some very good upgrades, with the newest Ilclan-era version mounting some very advanced weapons. The Cicada CDA-4A equips two medium Variable Speed Pulse Lasers and a single Re-engineered Medium Laser, as well as a supercharger. This means that the design is very accurate when attacking at point blank ranges, and certainly has the speed and armor to make it there.

This design is unironically one of the best designs I've ever seen, and it is exceedingly reasonable for its BV cost, being a very VERY nasty flanker which will get into the back arc of an opponent.

Finally we arrive at the Hollander.

I dunno who told you the Hollander was bad. Whomever they are, they are lying. If you haven't been headclipped across the map by a Hollander BZK-F3, you don’t have a say in this conversation.

A Gauss Rifle mounted to the frame of a light mech is not something to underestimate.

You have not lived unless you've seen one of your most expensive designs, a King Crab KGC-008B, an work of mechanical art that excels above and beyond what this little malignant mockery of a mech even costs, fall to a single watermelon-sized metal ellipsoid quickly delivered straight through its cockpit.

You can definitely make an argument that the sequels to the original Hollander are subpar mechs, but the original stands apart as a classic. No substitutions.

It does require some particularly strong materials and custom sizing, aff.

It does require some particularly strong materials and custom sizing, aff.

Galaxy Commander Ophelia Khatib of Clan Cloud Cobra!

But the "put cropped pictures of your and your friends' furry blorbos into megamek so you can imagine them piloting the robots" is something that I've been doing for a very long time. Can't recommend it enough if you've got blorbos to spare.

(below: an example)

for apers work you bring the equivalent of Engineers (FLASH)/Saperi (RPO) and cut throttle for close escort so that you don't get schwackd by srms or something in a city fight/bocage hell dimension

i dont have huge faith in machine gun infantry being able to do anything well enough to be bothered with and tonnage is pretty precious for leg troops, but maybe a mortar platoon or so can be mobile based into position. to pack up and relocate you get back in the box and get towed.

mech joining combat may actually be optional since it pulls double for security and prime mover work.

My Merlin (:

Love this mech, wish there were more variants of it! I find it so silly that the first few variants are so minimally different.

Preview:

Look at dis absolute goober.

Full version below the cut. Naked ladies under here!

Since people seemed to enjoy my MW5 design opinion post I have another fresh one

My Hot Battletech Take is the Panther is a better Urbanmech. Comparing stock to stock you get 2x Speed, enough Jump jets to actually clear an average building, AC10 proof armour on each hit location, same damage main gun that doesn't need ammo, arms for throwing hands, and an SRM4 for Anti Vehicle or Infantry work. Buy a Lance of them, give the Commander smoke rounds, another one inferno rounds, you're all set. All this for less than twice the C-bills and or BV. Sure the PPC has a minimum range but you're more mobile and you can punch people!

Scrap your Egg, buy a Catboy!