#medium mech

The Chimera was originally introduced to battletech as one of several bespoke designs for Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance alongside the likes of fan favorites like the Argus, Thanatos and Uziel before being canonized on tabletop in Tech Readout 3067. Lorewise, the Chimera led a somewhat troubled early life--originally a joint project between the Draconis Combine and the Federated Commonwealth, the Chimera was meant to be a rerun of the Gunslinger project to similar results for cavalry mechs. However, as the Davion/Steiner super state fell appart the design became increasingly dominated by elements from Katherine Steiner-Davion's Lyran Alliance. On the eve of the civil war, Katherine's faction had nearly completely taken over the Chimera project and was distributing the vast majority of the runs to loyalist units. Theodore Kurita, ever eager to stir the pot with his long time enemies, secured additional production rights for the mech to sell to the Davions before the start of hostilities. For their part the Davions used them throughout the 3060s and '70s and then dropped the little dinguses like a hot rock for reasons that may become apparent (especially if you are familiar with the Davion's similar medium missile skirmisher, the Hellspawn)

Considering the supposed Lyran influences with DCMS tech, the mech that the Chimera reminds me of most is probably the Griffin, albeit on a tight weight budget. The CMA-1S is built on a 40 ton endosteel chassis with a 240 rate XL engine supplemented by 6 jump jets. 7 tons of standard armor gives the design an 88% belt, though the decision to focus on leg armor does mean that the torsos are not gauss-proof. Concerning given the mech's XL engine and 3 tons of ammo. For armament the 1S packs an all purpise load of an ER large laser, ER medium laser, 20 tube medium-range missile battery supplied for 4 minutes of fire, and a single machine gun with a half ton of ammo. The mech does not mount additional heat sinks beyond the engine's basic cooling capacity, and while a running alpha will slow the mech the jump jets make management easy enough. The intial production run comes with a single refit variant, the CMA-C, which replaces the machine gun with a C3 link while leaving all other systems untouched.

Fundamentally these are both trooper/raider designs--your limiting resource is going to be armor here so the best way to play a Chimera is going to be to loiter at range snapping off bad shots and repositioning to stick that MRM up the tailpipe of something big alongside the rest of your cav lance. The C does similar stuff while spotting for something more angry than it. This is a strategy I find very whelming but if you want quirky opfor I can see a place for this there. At the very least these little fuckers are very cheap BV-wise for a theoretical 35/33 damage alpha.

Fortunately, Kurita kept poking at this design long after the Steiners abandoned developement of it and came up with a much more interesting version. The CMA-2K monkeys around a lot with the internals, upgrading the engine to a 280 rate powet plant with an attendant 7th jump jet, mounted asymetrically to accommodate the newly installed XL gyro. The myomers have also been upgraded to triple strength versions, allowing the Chimera to run at an impressive 130 kph at full tilt. To make use of the heat-loving myomers, the entire weapon suit has been replaced (except for a C3 unit it shares with the CMA-C) by a snub nosed PPC in the right side torso and a pair of heat modulating small lasers in the left, a quartet of medium lasers in the left arm, and bayonet-mount sword in place of machine gun (though considering it'sa 40 tonner at full heat it only does 10 damage. So close Chimera, we'll get em next time!). The armor has been slightly improved by an extra half ton, though the only meeningful breakpoint it runs over is that a medium laser no longer penetrates the rear side torsos.

This is way better than the original run CMAs, committing to a decent gameplan more fully and bringing to bear a pretty frightening energy battery alongside a good movement profile and the spooky 16 damage boot. Your plan is going to be pretty similar to the stock Chimeras: plink at range looking for an opening, zap someone hard to warm up, and then sprint in as they're wheeling to shank them in the back a whole bunch. The one thorn this mech has (beyond again, kinda mediocre armor) is that with a max running heat build of +7 and not much in the way of pulse, you need to either remember to get 2 heat before you do your warm up wind up or else go for the inaccurate jump shot and hope some jazz happens with the sheer number of guns you got.