Characters / Battletech Specific Mechs Inner Sphere

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Inner Sphere | Clans | Periphery | NGOs and Others | BattleMechs: Inner Sphere Light and Medium | Inner Sphere Heavy and Assault | Clan | Periphery

Tropes associated with specific BattleMechs used by the factions of the Inner Sphere in the BattleTech Universe.

Heavy Mechs

Archer ARC-2R

The Inner Sphere fire support 'Mech, both prototypical and archetypical.

^{Click here to see the original Unseen design}

Production Year: 2474
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

One of the earliest and most enduring fire support BattleMechs, the Archer was built in 2474 to serve as an Assault-grade long-range brawler before being relegated to the Heavy category. One of the most common LRM-wielders in the Inner Sphere, the Archer is iconic for its internal shoulder-mounted LRM racks and the signature missile bay doors that protect the launchers until the Archer is ready to fire.

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• Achilles' Heel: It has a few, but it's so practical nonetheless that nobody particularly cares.
  • Ammo. Those LRM-20 launchers are ammo-hungry, and with only two tons each (enough for twelve salvos) the Archer stands a very real chance of running out of ammunition for its primary weapons. The ammo bins also lack CASE, meaning that a solid critical hit (through the admittedly tough side torso armor) can destroy the entire 'Mech.
  • Overheating: The Archer's main issue is that its LRMs generate more heat than the chassis is capable of sinking each turn, leading it to have to fire in volleys (both LRMs twice, then only one to sink the excess) even when standing still and almost every turn if it's moving.
• Boring, but Practical: The most enduring Archer variant, the 2R, was based on a much more advanced 1A prototype with a lot of advanced electronics. The chief engineer made the (in retrospect very prescient) decision to tear most of the advanced stuff out in favour of a cheap, practical design using off-the-shelf components and built into a solid frame, and the 2R would go on to survive both Star League and all four Succession Wars due to its ease of manufacture.
• Cephalothorax: The Archer's cockpit is notable in that it protrudes out of its torso forward instead of having a distinctive humanoid head. Rules-wise it's no different than any other 'Mech, including the much bigger likelihood of an incoming shot hitting Center Torso than the Head.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The original Archer is a member of the Unseen, 'Mech designs from the original Battledroids set that were licensed from Japanese anime (the Archer is the Destroid Spartan from Super Dimension Fortress Macross). As with most of the Unseen, legal issues with the license holder led it to be missing from official artwork for well over a decade until it had an original re-design that sidesteps this issue.
• Irony: Verbal. One of the largest and heaviest fire support 'Mechs is named for the lightest medieval missile launcher (compare with the Catapult (5 tons lighter) and the Trebuchet (20 tons lighter).
• Long-Range Fighter: A classic 'fire support'-class Inner Sphere 'Mech, the Archer fights best beyond 10 squares (or indirectly, from behind cover) where the long range of its LRMs outranges most 'Mech weaponry.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The archetypal Inner Sphere example, capable of launching 40 missiles per salvo. Later versions managed to take this even farther, adding SRM launchers or additional LRM launchers. The 5CS version that ComStar pieced together for the Battle of Tukayyid can fire 60 missiles every turn and keep going until the bins run dry.
• Mighty Glacier: The Archer is incredibly well-armored for a fire-support (carrying as much armor as the much more short-ranged Thunderbolt) and carries a lot of long-ranged firepower, but it has no jump jets, average ground speed, and heat issues that prevents it from moving around too much.
• Power Fist: It has Battlefists when Quirks are enabled, allowing it to (somewhat) reliably punch lighter 'Mechs who get within arms' reach.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: As is typical of fire-support 'Mechs, the Archer carries as quartet of Medium Lasers for up-and-close defence, two of them being rear-facing. Certain variants (specifically the 2S and 2W) downgraded the missile launchers or stripped armor to add short-range missile launchers to provide for more close-in firepower.
• Shoulders of Doom: The original Unseen version had the LRM launchers looking like pauldrons.
• The Workhorse: One of the oldest Mech designs still in existence. Over a hundred thousand of them were built between the introduction of the design and the start of the First Succession War. Even after the recovery of lost technology spurred new variants being designed, the original 2R model was still being built in the Periphery.

Axman AXM-1N

Come a little bit closer. . .

Production Year: 3048
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 65 tons

Developed by the enigmatic Team Banzai, the Axman is the Hatchetman's bigger brother, designed as a dedicated anti-mech platform, and also as a symbol of the Federated Commonwealth's solidarity, taking parts from each section of their space to help build it.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: The Hatchet is an excellent force multiplier for a 'Mech engaging in melee combat. But not quite enough so over the built-in BattleMech punch and kick to justify the Hatchet eating up a not-inconsiderable percentage of the Axman's tonnage and crit allotment. ^Rules-wiseA Hatchet takes a variable amount of tonnage and crit slots based on the weight of the 'Mech mounting it, and deals as much damage as one kick, or two punches, from a 'Mech of the same weight. The Axman's is five tons and five slots, for which it gains a modest attack bonus and 7 extra damage over an unarmed limb.
• Close-Range Combatant: With an AC/20, three Medium Lasers, one Large Pulse Laser, and the infamous Hatchet, this is a 'Mech that really needs to get in your face to bring the pain, but once it does. . .
• Inventional Wisdom: Under the physical attack rules, Hatchet attacks cannot be made if the arm containing the Hatchet has any weapons that were fired earlier in the turn. The Axman mounts all three medium lasers in its right arm, where the Hatchet is located, meaning you either lose a fair amount of close-up punch setting up for the Hatchet attack, or can't use the 'Mech's signature weapon when you get right up next to someone.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The AXM-2N replaces the AC/20 with two LRM-15s, basically turning it into a fire-support 'Mech with the Hatchet as a backup weapon if it gets rushed.
• Meaningful Name: It has a battleaxe (technically a Hatchet) taking up a chunk of tonnage and most of its right arm.
• Off with His Head!: Like the smaller Hatchetman, has a Full-Head Ejection System. It also does enough damage with its hatchet to decapitate an enemy of any weight class in a single blow, so getting into melee range rewards players with the possibility of removing an opponent from the field instantly.
• Shoulder Cannon: The AC/20 mounted high on its right torso.

Black Knight BL-6-KNT

None shall pass.

Production Year: 2578
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

A dedicated front-line Assault and Command 'Mech developed by the Star League in 2578, the Black Knight has been a valuable part of any battlefield it's been on, and since its production lines were destroyed in the 29th century, it has only become more and more valuable with time.

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• Arm Cannon: Carries a PPC in its right arm and a Large Laser in the left.
• Beam Spam: If you don't mind it melting in the process, the Black Knight can Alpha Strike with seven lasers in a single round plus the PPC, an energy output outperforming even the heavier Battlemaster.
• Chest Blaster: A Large Laser in its center torso means the Black Knight can stay in the fight until the engine is cored out.
• Enemy Scan: Originally carried a Beagle Active Probe, which is generally not found on post-Star League models.
• Frontline General: Originally designed as a command 'Mech for SLDF companies, though the command console was lost during the Succession Wars.
• Lost Technology: Its production line was destroyed by the Capellans in the Second Succession War, and no new Black Knights were produced between 2820 and 3062 when ComStar sold the schematics for their "clanbuster" variant to a manufacturer. Black Knights kept active in the meantime were often downgraded to the inferior BL-7-KNT due to lack of advanced components, removing two tonnes of armour and its advanced command and scanner system.
• Made of Indestructium: The classic Black Knight is a zombiemech and takes a lot to reduce to irrelevancy. It has an all-energy arsenal with a lot of redundancies and lasers in both its head and centre torso that lets it keep firing even with both side torsos gone. Later variants would downplay this, with the BL-7 being more of a Glass Cannon due to low armour for its tonnage and the BL-9 and later models using XL engines (Engines shut down if they take three critical hits, an Inner Sphere XL engine takes three slots in both side torsos, all equipment in a location takes a crit if the location is destroyed).
• Superior Successor: The BL-9-KNT "clanbuster" variant made by ComStar added a Hatchet, replaced the standard engine with an XL engine and upgraded to Double Heat Sinks and Pulse Lasers, playing to most of the Black Knight's strengths as an energy-loadout 'Mech in return for making it more fragile due to the XL engine.

Caesar CES-3R

Alea iacta est. The die has been cast.

Production Year: 3049
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

The Caesar was one of the numerous new 'Mechs designed in the aftermath of the Fourth Succession War and the War of 3039, unknowingly releasing the 'Mech just before the onset of the Clan Invasion. House Davion captured numerous samples of the Capellan Cataphract, as well as the planet housing the Cataphract's main production factory. They proceeded to announce that they would develop a new 'Mech based on the Cataphract, but improved. Military intelligence analysts quickly realized that this boasting was actually a smokescreen for the testing and development of the Axman, but the Caesar would go on to be a reasonably capable sniper in its own right and highly popular with both the Davion and Steiner sides of the Federated Commonwealth.

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• The Aesthetics of Technology: While Battletech art is notoriously schizophrenic about this trope, the Caesar is fairly consistently portrayed as a more "refined" version of the Cataphract, with a smoother, more rounded and symmetrical design in contrast to its more blocky, patchwork forerunner.
• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: The Caesar is able to rotate its arms fully behind itself, thanks to its flexible arm joints. This allows it to point its fearsome array of energy weapons at people behind it, who will quickly regret being in that position.
• Ace Custom: Featured in "Double-Blind," Marcus Gioavanti pilots a heavily customized Caesar laden to the gills with Clan tech named 'Archangel.' It was so distinctive that they made a print of the cover featuring the Archangel◊.
• Arm Cannon: Not the PPC, which is hand-carried as the Caesar has two working hands. Instead, the forward-firing medium lasers are mounted in blisters in the 'Mech's forearms.
• Achilles' Heel: Armor amount and placement. Ten and a half tons of armor is sufficient for a 50-ton 'Mech and inadequate for a 70-ton one... though it would have been at least tolerable if they hadn't pared down the side torso armor to such levels that a single Gauss Rifle or PPC hit there could compromise the whole 'Mech.
• Badass Back: The Caesar has nimble arms, like the Quickdraw, and can point almost all of its firepower to the rear if needed. Lightweight flankers may find themselves unpleasantly surprised by the quadruple pulse laser array and stonking-huge PPC pointed at them from what had previously been an unprotected rear aspect.
• Beam Spam: The primary ballistic weapon is supported by a diverse variety of lasers and particle cannons, usually enough to slag two tons of armor in a single salvo.
• BFG: The torso-mounted Gauss rifle is the Caesar's primary weapon and the heaviest weapon by far on the 'Mech. The base version is 15 tons, but one variant carries the terrifying Heavy Gauss Rifle, an 18-ton monster the size of a light 'Mech.
• Cephalothorax: The Caesar's head is frontally mounted in its torso, bearing a faint resemblance to Slave I.
• Chest Blaster: A bit more of a "Lower Torso" Blaster, the Gauss rifle is mounted low on the 'Mech's torso, just above the hip joint.
• Chicken Walker: Of the rare "reverse-legs on vertical torso" variant, due to being based on the Cataphract.
• Equipment Upgrade: It received several useful updates, mostly to introduce bigger guns or better defensive measures such as an ECM pod and heavier armor.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Both of its big guns are mounted on its right side, producing a distinct, almost 'lopsided' silhouette from the right.
• Glass Cannon: Its combination of PPC and Gauss rifle are very powerful, both capable of blowing off heads and killing pilots in a single shot. However, its armor is not terribly good with several notable weakpoints (particularly its side torsos and its rear aspect).
• Inventional Wisdom: Whose bright idea was it to install eight tons of medium pulse lasers as backup weapons, two of them in a rear-firing-only aspect, on a sniper chassis with weak back armor and fragile internal components? The 180 meter maximum range and pitiful 60 meter optimum range makes it woefully easy for the Caesar to get hit, and also falls inside the minimum range of the Gauss Rifle primary weapon. Later updates figured out that this was a terrible design decision and replaced the pulse lasers with either extended-range lasers or more armor.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Gauss rifle and extended-range PPC strongly encourage pilots to keep their distance and hammer opponents with powerful hits so that they can't exploit the Caesar's thin armor.
• Lightning Gun: Particle projection cannons come standard to pair alongside the Gauss Rifle.
• Magnetic Weapons: The primary weapon of all Caesar variants is some type of Gauss Rifle, and is far and away responsible for its threat value.
• National Weapon: Of both House Davion and House Steiner—the former as the primary manufacturer, the latter due to the Caesar being a straightforward and effective heavy 'Mech. Later, Lyran Alliance troops would unofficially adopt the Caesar en masse as a tribute to the fallen Caesar Steiner, widely considered one of the most capable and beloved generals in the Steiner army.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: A lot of them, in the form of four close-range medium pulse lasers mouted two forward, two aft. The problem comes from the fact that the useful range of these weapons is so short that the Caesar can't help but take damage, and the damage the pulse lasers do rarely justifies their weight.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: The Liao perspective on the Caesar, as a descendant of the Capellan Cataphract. Some argued that the Caesar amounted to little more than a bootlegged Cataphract and tried to have its model number reclassified.
• Superior Successor: The general opinion of everyone who wasn't House Liao, thanks to the dozens of tons of advanced technology in the Caesar, as well as its intense hitting power and practically heat-free operation. Most users found that whatever the Cataphract could do, the Caesar could also handle, and from further away to boot.
• Take That!: There's rumors that the name Caesar was specifically chosen by House Davion to thumb their noses at the notoriously paranoid and anti-Davion neighbors, the Taurian Concordat. The logic goes that 'Caesar' is the title of the ruler of the Marian Hegemony, and the Hegemony and the Concordat are bitter rivals and there is no love lost between them. House Davion names their excellent new heavy 'Mech the Caesar specifically to piss off the Taurians, who would expect to be troubled by Davion Caesars for years to come but also be thinking of their hated Periphery rivals the whole time.
• Tempting Fate: Naming their new sniper 'Mech the Caesar after the most famous of the Roman conquerors is definitely hubris on the part of House Davion, but forgetting to supply it with adequate armor means that the 'Mech is just asking to be destroyed by foes that get in close to attack it in the sides and back, particularly en masse. Indeed, many Caesars have been lost for that exact reason.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: This trope happens any time a Liao Cataphract fights a Davion Caesar. The long-ranged limb-shearing, head-removing potential of the Gauss rifle often gives the Caesar the edge.

Cataphract CTF-1X

Proof that the Capellans are capable of building a decent 'Mech, and that the Davions are capable of taking it from them regardless.

Production Year: 3025
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

Developed as a brand-new Capellan heavy 'Mech in the tail end of the Third Succession War, the Cataphract is actually the end result of Capellan ingenuity and making do with what little they had. Originally prototyped using a variety of ruined parts and battlefield salvage, House Liao eventually managed to standardize the development of the 'Mech enough to justify a serial number and a production line. The Cataphract would go on to be not only one of the best new Capellan 'Mechs, but one of the best new 'Mechs in general during that timeframe. House Davion would eventually capture the main Cataphract factory and use it themselves, eventually leading to the development of the Caesar, leaving House Liao to struggle with producing its own Cataphracts via secondary production lines.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Side torso armor. Though the Cataphract has slightly better armor than the Caesar by all of one point, it's still going to have a bad time if someone gets through the flanks due to the ammunition or primary weapons stored there.
  • Ammunition. Many early Cataphracts lack ammunition, with a paltry 10 shots for their main gun. Later Cataphracts rely heavily on ammo-based weapons, putting them at risk of running out at inopportune moments.
  • Heat. Early Cataphracts forced into the thick of combat and firing all weapons can build up 26 heat, but only have 16 heat sinks. And with only 10 shots for its autocannon, it will eventually have to rely on the ruiniously hot-running PPC to deal damage.
• Arm Cannon: Both of the arm blister variety, for the left-arm laser, and the full blown limb-replacement variety, for the right-arm laser and PPC combination.
• Beam Spam: A Cataphract can unload quadruple lasers paired to a PPC... not for long, but it can do it.
• Boring, but Practical: Despite its quirky appearance and origins, the Cataphract is actually rather orthodox by 3025 design standards. Modest armor, typical heavy 'Mech speeds, a couple of strong weapons backed up by lasers, and enough heat sinks to support it for short skirmishes.
• Cephalothorax: The head is a bulbous lump of canopy set high in the center torso, facing forward.
• Chest Blaster: Torso Blaster, technically. The autocannon serving as the primary weapon is set low in the 'Mech's body, just above the waist. Other versions moved it up to nearly the shoulder, and the earliest art put it dead center in a highly improbable center-torso mount.
• Chicken Walker: Has a vertically oriented body but reverse joint legs, and in terms of real life timeline is arguably the first example of such a design in the game.
• Depending on the Artist: Early on, no one could agree on what the Cataphract actually looked like, resulting in at least three different interpretations of the 'Mech, including the wildly ugly CTF-1X from the original House Liao sourcebook.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Due to its somewhat clunky nature, the 'Mech is very right side heavy, as that side features a Marauder-style energy pod in contrast to the more humanoid left arm. The right torso also has the autocannon barrel where the left torso is flat.
• Flawed Prototype: The original Cataphract models were put into production shortly before the discovery of the Helm Memory Core and were limited by Succesion Wars technology, and the 0X and 1X variants were under-armed, under-equipped, and (in the case of the 0X) carried a prototype version of the lostech Guardian ECM.
• Gonk: The original CTF-1X from the House Liao sourcebook is notorious for being phenomenally butt-ugly◊ even by Succession Wars standards.
• Jack of All Stats: Fairly average for a heavy 'Mech. Acceptable armor, acceptable speed, and acceptable weapons without excelling specifically in a specific area. Which is good for the resource-strapped Capellan Confederation, as they can produce Cataphracts in volume and expect them to perform adequately for most purposes.
• Jump Jet Pack: The Davions went a little mad and added four jump jets to the legs of their Cataphracts, turning them into highly effective bad-terrain fighters.
• Lightning Gun: House Liao preferred to stick with the PPC in its Cataphracts to reduce ammo dependency and provide more mid-range power.
• Meaningful Name: Named for a type of heavy Byzantine horseman, the Cataphract 'Mech is an excellent rapid-response or skirmisher design... that is, it's a cavalry 'Mech.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: The Helm Memory Core's widespread release was kind to the Cataphract, particularly due to the advent of double heat sinks keeping the 'Mech cooler and extra-light engines allowing more movement options.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: The original Cataphract was a lopsided mishmash of recycled 'Mech parts. Most notably, it uses Marauder legs and has a Marauder style right-arm energy weapon pod, moves the autocannon mount down to the torso, and uses a left arm from a Shadow Hawk. Over time this eventually evolved into the squat, broadly built modern Cataphract.
• More Dakka: True to form, the Davions installed both an LB-10X autocannon and an Ultra AC/5 on their version of the Cataphract, trusting on the cool-running guns to keep their Cataphracts in the fight.
• National Weapon: For both House Davion and House Liao, much to the latter's chagrin. House Davion captured the main Cataphract factory from House Liao during the Fourth Succession War and proceeded to rub it in their face by ramping up production so that the Capellans' own home-grown 3L variant was overshadowed by Davion's 3D variant. As it turned out, the Cataphract was perfectly servicable so House Davion just kept producing more of them to fill out its regiments.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The one thing that Liao and Davion can agree on—the LB-10X autocannon is absolutely a requirement on the Cataphract as its main gun. The highly effective scatter-blast of flechettes is great at knocking down opponents, ruining internal components, and rendering vehicles and infantry to the past tense.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: With Liao Cataphracts fighting Davion Caesars, this trope was inevitable. Raw damage numbers favor the Caesar, but the large number of fragile components in a Caesar means that a Cataphract only needs to get lucky once to possibly bring down their opponent.

Catapult CPLT-C1

It's missiles, and lasers, and legs, and that's what's up.

Production Year: 2561
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 65 tons

A dedicated fire-support 'Mech that initially saw action in the 2560's for the Terran Hegemony, but became far more known for their relative rarity to the Inner Sphere, and ubiquity among the Clans once a vast majority of the survivors ended up in the hands of Kerensky's exodus.

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• Ace Custom: The Catapult is noted in-universe for being extremely easy to modify for a standard BattleMech, mostly because its primary weapons are externally mounted pods replacing its arms. As such, it has a bewildering array of variants considering its rarity.
• Arm Cannon: If Quirks are active, has the "No/Minimal Arms" Quirk. Its "arms" are nothing but big LRM pods.
  • The Kuritan K2 and K4 variant, however, switch out the missiles for PPCs and Heavy PPCs respectively, which fit this trope better.
• Chicken Walker: Reverse-joint legs to hold up its fuselage-pod body.
• Jump Jet Pack: Comes equipped with Jump Jets, to help it reposition for better firing solutions or escape from enemies who get too close and aren't threatened by a measly four medium lasers.
• Lightning Gun: The K2 variant swaps the missiles for PPCs, apparently because the Kuritans thought it was funny.
• Long-Range Fighter:
  • Subverted by the standard C1 configuration - it certainly looks like one with its pair of LRM pods, but it actually has a quite respectable close-in punch courtesy of 4 medium lasers.
  • Played entirely straight by the old A1 model, which forewent any lasers in order to carry more ammo and armor, and the C4 model, which trades its four medium lasers down to two small lasers and removes two heat sinks to make room for larger LRM-20 pods.
• Lost Technology: Only two years' worth of Catapults were produced before Hollis switched the entire production output to the more popular Battlemaster, and most of the surviving original run left with Kerensky on his Exodus. The Capellan factory that produced more of them was destroyed in the First Succession War, meaning no Catapults were built between 2786 and 3030 when the Capellans resurrected the design. As a result, the Catapult was one of the rarest surviving 'Mechs of the Inner Sphere, doubly so for the refitted Royal variant that upgraded the armor and improved the ammunition capacity and heatsinks.
  • Ironically, the Catapult not being Unseen (and having inspired the look of the Series Mascot of Battletech) means it's much more common in Battletech artwork and assorted video games than the Archer and Crusader, 'Mechs that fill the same niche but are much more common In-Universe-wise.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The standard Catapult launches 30 missiles per round, which is fairly standard for an Inner Sphere support 'Mech (equaling the Trebuchet and Crusader, but less than the Archer).
• National Weapon:
  • The Capellans love these things, mostly because they were the only Inner Sphere power able to build them after the original production run vamoosed with Kerensky. To the point Capellan techs said "hold my beer" and slapped an Arrow IV artillery missile launcher on the thing.
  • The PPC-equipped K2 variant, meanwhile, is used almost exclusively by the Draconis Combine.
• Series Mascot: Indirectly. It's basically one-half of the Mad Cat (the Marauder being the other half), so those who know nothing else about BattleTech will likely recognize the Catapult...and wonder why someone forgot to draw the Timber Wolf's arms.
• Superior Successor: With the Catapult being so rare, it wound up having something of a bigger, meaner brother in the assault-class Longbow Mech.
• Swiss-Army Weapon: The Catapult and its "arm" weapons pods are widely noted for their versatility and ease of customization to a degree that wasn't really matched until the invention of the OmniMech. As such, the Catapult has not only a large array of official variants, but also a great deal of field modifications that mount more or less whatever weapons were available.
• Walking Tank: It's a cockpit on legs, with missile pods attached, and that's it.

Champion CHP-1N

Sort of fast, sort of well armoured, sort of decent weaponry, the most adequate-at-best heavy 'Mech ever built

Production Year: 2602
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 60 tons

A 2602 design from the venerable Bergan Industries of Locust fame, the Champion was made as a quick strike and scouting 'Mech that could manouver as fast as it could hit. While the resulting 'Mech was mediocre at best, its superb agility for its size made it quickly popular as it was very well-suited for the skirmishes and duels that were common at the time. Outside this very limited field, however, the Champion is a very flawed 'Mech.

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• Awesome, but Impractical: It is very speedy for its large size, but it will most likely get murdered in any fight that is not 1 on 1. Also, it can put a fair amount of hurt on smaller Mechs, but it only packs ten standard heat sinks, meaning it will very quickly overheat in a pitched fight.
• Close-Range Combatant: Most of the standard model's armaments are best used at close range.
• Epic Fail: Not the base 'Mech, which is pretty decent. But the attempted Land-Air Mech variant the designers utterly failed to make work definitely counts, and was possibly only even considered to begin with because of the same dubious thought processes that lead Clarkson, Hammond, and May to attempt to turn a Reliant Robin into a Space Shuttle, specifically "It's a bit pointy in front."
• Equipment Upgrade: ComStar created a "clanbuster" variant for the Battle of Tukayyid that not only included the Star League-era lost technology, but upgraded the engine to an XL variant, upgraded the heat sinks to double-strength versions, and added a pair of Large Lasers to the Mech, increasing its long-range firepower. The Clans, however, upgraded the design with Clan technology, improving the armor and upgrading the heat sinks, and adding an XL engine, jump jets, and a pair of ER medium lasers, resulting in a very mobile (if still not particularly cool-running) design for their second-line units.
• Glass Cannon: It's capable of going 86 KPH at top speed and packs a decent amount of firepower for a 60-tonner, but it's large and underarmored.
• Inventional Wisdom: Bergan skimped on costs and only used the ten standard single heat sinks on the base design. This spawned the unofficial 1N2 version, which was a field refit rather than an official variant as Bergan didn't want to admit they made a mistake with the design. It also didn't include CASE, which with the ammo-dependent weapons means a particularly heightened risk of explosions destroying the 'Mech.
• Lost Technology: The autocannon and armor were both Star League tech, and during the Succession Wars both had to be replaced with lower-quality versions, which made the Mech even more fragile.
• Master of None: Besides overheating and relatively light armoring, it doesn't have any overt design flaws, but is generally outclassed by most designs it's bound to encounter in combat. A competing bid when it was introduced highlighted this, proposing the lighter Griffin that could do everything the Champion could for cheaper.
• Situational Sword: It was designed for heavy reconnaissance and fast-striking, and it does that well and not much else.

Crusader CRD-3R

Deus vult!

Production Year: 2572
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 65 tons

Developed for the Star League Defense Force shortly before the Reunification War, the Crusader has since become one of the most common heavy 'Mechs in the Inner Sphere. Possessing a heavy missile-based armament backed up by medium lasers and machine guns, good armor, and decent speed for its weight class, the Crusader is a good general-purpose all-rounder, with sub-par heat control being its primary weakness.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Heat. The standard Crusader only comes with the basic ten engine-mounted heat sinks, meaning it can't fire both LRMs on the move or unload with all its short-ranged weapons at once without suffering heat buildup (to say nothing of trying to Alpha Strike). Two separate Succession Wars-era variants, the CRD-3D and CRD-3K, were created to address the heat problem by stripping out the machine guns and downgrading either the SRMs or LRMs respectively to make room for more heat sinks.
  • Ammunition. The standard Crusader has a very ammunition-intensive weapons loadout, with four separate missile launchers and a pair of machine guns. All that ammo is stored in the torso, with the SRM and machine gun ammo in particular being in the center torso (and therefore vulnerable to through-armor critical hits), while the LRM ammo bins in the side torsos are the only components in those locations that can suffer criticals. All this means that the Crusader has a distressingly high chance of suffering an ammo explosion that will, without fail, completely annihilate the 'Mech. (This also ties in with the overheating weakness, as one of the possible results of excessive heat buildup is ammunition explosions.) Nearly every Crusader variant created after the rediscovery of CASE technology makes a point of including the system to try and improve the mech's survivability.
  • Longevity. Risk of catastrophic explosions aside, the standard Crusader carries only enough ammo for sixteen total LRM-15 salvos and fifteen total SRM-6 salvos, each split across two launchers. While this is sufficient if the 'Mech is able to transition from long- to short-range combat over the course of a battle, it's a bit low if circumstances force the MechWarrior to engage entirely within one range bracket or the other.
  • Weapon placement. The majority of its weapons are located on the arms. If an opponent is able to blow those off, the Crusader will have lost 80% of its fire power, leaving only its SRMs as backup.
• Boring, but Practical: The Crusader was so popular for a reason. It uses extremely basic technology and while it isn't particularly fast or cool for its weight class, it is heavily armed and armored, which helped it survive for so long.
• Equipment Upgrade: The numerous post-Helm Memory Core models upgraded virtually everything on the Mech in some fashion - some with an endo-steel chassis, XL engine, or ferro-fibrous armor, others with Artemis IV guidance, C3 equipment, Streak launchers, or pulse lasers. Some finally fixed the overheating problem with double heat sinks and CASE to stop the thing exploding so frequently. With the numerous production facilities across the Inner Sphere, everyone wanted to put their own spin on the 'Mech.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Another of the classic "Unseen" designs derived from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, in this case the VF-1A Armored Valkyrie. Like the others, it would eventually get a new "Reseen" design in Project Phoenix, and then a recognizable-but-legally-distinct "Classics" redesign in the late 2010s.
• Homing Projectile: A lot of Crusader variants swap the SRM-6s for Streak SRM-2s with improved homing characteristics.
• Jack of All Trades: The Crusader packs a variety of short- and long-ranged weapons, decent speed, and good armor. It doesn't excel in any particular role, but if you need a job done, the Crusader can probably do it well enough.
• Jump Jet Pack: A few Crusader variants mount jump jets in the torso to improve maneuverability. Sometimes this is paired with upgrades to the heat sinks to help with the overheating problem, sometimes... not so much.
• Leg Cannon: Nearly every version of the Crusader mounts its short-range missile launchers in the legs, specifically on the hips. With Quirks enabled, these launchers are even stabilized to let them fire more effectively on the move.
• Macross Missile Massacre: A standard Crusader can unload a salvo of twelve missiles at close-in opponents, and thirty at targets further away. (Probably not both at once, though, unless you have a plan for dealing with the heat buildup.)
• National Weapon: While the Crusader can be found in all of the Great Houses' militaries, the Lyran Commonwealth in particular are proficient users of the 'Mech, and their technicians can fix one up in just a day.
• Shoot the Bullet: The SRM-6 launchers being mounted in the legs was an attempt to avoid doing this to itself - the low-level mounting for them helped prevent those missiles from interfering with the flight paths of the higher-mounted LRM launchers.
• The Workhorse: Thanks to its production being spread across multiple different factories owned by four different manufacturers, said production running continuously from the glory days of Star League all the way through to the Jihad, and the 'Mech itself being a robust and easy-to-maintain generalist, the Crusader is one of the most numerous and ubiquitous heavy 'Mechs in the Inner Sphere.

Dragon DRG-1N/Grand Dragon DRG-5K

Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

Production Year: 2754
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 60 tons

Originally designed in a bid to replace the Shadow Hawk in service in the SLDF at the time, the Dragon was passed over for an upgraded version of its competitor. It was then offered to and bought by the Draconis Combine, who promptly began mass producing it, holding it in a place of honor among their main weapons in the coming centuries. While it carries a rather versatile package of firepower, its weaponry is somewhat weak for a 'Mech in its weight class. The Dragon, however, more than makes up for it by being very fast and supremely tough for its size.

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• Arm Cannon: Played with. Its right arm serves primarily as housing for an AC/5 (or the PPC for the Grand Dragon), but due to its increased weight and armour, it is most effectively and commonly used as a bludgeon.
• Chest Blaster: Normally carries an LRM launcher in its center torso.
• Distinction Without a Difference: The Draconis Combine shuns the use of medium 'Mechs in their strategy, Combine strategists viewing them as an unnecessary compromise between the speed and scouting/flanking abilities of light 'Mechs and the focused force of heavy 'Mechs. The Dragon, based as it is on the Shadow Hawk, features the speed, armouring and weaponry of a medium 'Mech but is officially a heavy 'Mech and treated as such by the Combine.
• Frontline General: The Combine made Command Console variants of the Grand Dragon, possibly in a bid to reduce their dependency on the rarer Battlemaster.
• Inventional Wisdom: Rather than more armor or weapons and heatinks, the Dragon has two tons each of LRM and AC/5 ammo, more than it could possibly use in any one engagement.
• Lightning Gun: The DRG-5K carries a PPC by default. Originally this was treated as a Dragon variant, but the retrofit proved so popular in the PPC-happy Combine that it was spun into the Grand Dragon, which would go on to replace the baseline Dragon around the time of the Clan invasion.
• Long-Range Fighter: Subverted. One would think this would be the 'Mech's primary role given the AC/5 and LRM-10, but the Combine tends to use the Dragon for close assaults, employing its long-range weaponry as support fire on approach.
• Made of Indestructium: Downplayed example. While not a zombie 'Mech due to carrying explosive ammo, the Dragon is very heavily armoured for its weight, has the "Low Profile" quirk which makes it harder to hit, and carries a Centre Torso weapon... Sadly, it's an ammo-requiring LRM-10, meaning that without its Left Torso the Dragon won't be firing it. The Grand Dragon plays this straighter by replacing the ammo-dependent AC/5 with a PPC and additional medium lasers, and later adding CASE as standard equipment.
• National Weapon: The Draconis Combine absolutely loves these things, making so many of them that even their rivals managed to get their hands on a good number of them through capture and stealing.
• Pummel Duel: Adept at getting into these, due to its speed and toughness, it will almost inevitably get up into its enemy's face and slap the bejesus out of it with its cannon arm.
• Power Fist: Played with. Its right arm isn't really made for melee, but as a side effect to being reinforced with extra weight for the autocannon housing, it is very effective as a bludgeon and functions in more or less the same way.
• Stone Wall: Its offensive firepower is somewhat lacking, barely higher than the Shadow Hawk's, but the Dragon is very well-armoured and has above-average speed for a heavy 'Mech. The Grand Dragon comes closer to Lightning Bruiser territory by adding a more damaging main weapon, but even then it will only outdamage a Griffin at close range.
• Superior Successor: In 3024, the Dragon was given an update by the Draconis Combine. Officially re-designated as the Grand Dragon DRG-5K, the 'Mech was pretty much just a Dragon with a PPC replacing the AC/5. The Grand Dragon would go on to more-or-less replace the Dragon in the DCMS, having become the dominant variant post-Clan Invasion.
• The Workhorse: Given its modest price tag, ease of modification and all round versatility, the Dragon would become the spine of the DCMS's heavy BattleMech divisions.

Grasshopper GHR-5H

The leanest, meanest killing machine to come out of the Inner Sphere

Production Year: 2780
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

An unorthodox design that arose from the Amaris Civil War, the Grasshopper was originally intended to be a stealth unit with a heavy emphasis on laser weaponry and mobility, but problems with implementing stealth subsystems caused it to miss out on Kerensky's bombastic invasion of Terra. The finished article became incredibly popular in the subsequent Succession Wars, where it built a reputation on its ability as a short range fighter capable of closing the gap with long range units to tear them apart before help could arrive.

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• Achilles' Heel: Heat, the Grasshopper achieves its incredible balance of speed, power and durability by carrying a large number of primarily low tonnage energy weaponry. Meaning an alpha strike will generate large amounts of heat which, while it can dissipate quite quickly due to its 22 heatsinks, still forces pilots to keep a close eye on the heat gauge and being careful about how fast they fire.
• Beam Spam: Almost every weapon on the 'Mech is energy-based, the sole exception being the LRM-5 that's attached to its head slot, which is normally seen as a secondary weapon at best.
• Boring, but Practical: Nothing is particularly complex about the Grasshopper - basic technology in the engine, skeleton, and armor. It carries single heat sinks, jump jets, and weapons that are mostly ammo-independent. However, it carries a lot of heat sinks to offset the high heat load of carrying so many lasers, a lot of armor, and thanks to the jump jets, it is very maneuverable for its size.
• Chest Blaster: Carries the majority of its lasers in its torso.
• Close-Range Combatant: The bulk of its firepower is destined towards fighting at medium or closer ranges. The only long range weapon is an LRM-5, which was normally employed as a skirmish weapon on approach.
• Equipment Upgrade: Has a number of upgraded variants primarily unveiled after the Helm Memory Core led to rediscovery of a lot of lostech and the restarting the model's production run. Newer models focus mostly on upgrading its heat sinking capacity further by giving it double heatsinks.
• Fluffy the Terrible: While there are many examples of this trope in the setting, calling a towering seventy-ton Lightning Bruiser the 'Grasshopper' is one of the Inner Sphere's cruellest jokes - especially since most 'Mechs named after insects are indeed on the small and delicate side.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Grasshopper is very adept at using the jump jets to suddenly and inconveniently appear in the middle of a lance of lighter 'Mechs. With only one very secondary ammo-dependent weapon, the design was normally employed as a raider and fast strike design.
• Jump Jet Pack: The standard model carries four jump jets mounted in the legs, giving it excellent manuverability for a heavy 'Mech.
• Lean and Mean: What sets it apart from other heavy 'Mechs, the Grasshopper is thin and quite tall, which makes its silhouette quite distinct from the normally squat and thick Inner Sphere heavies.
• Lightning Bruiser: By the standards of the Inner Sphere, it's more or less the ideal Close-Range Combatant heavy raider, with extremely respectable mobility, durability and firepower that will make the enemy terrified of setting foot in any terrain denser than an open field. There's a reason everyone fought so hard to prevent it from becoming Lost Technology.
• Lost Technology: Averted, while the manufacturing processes were lost in 2843 due to the Succession Wars blowing up its few existing factories, the Grasshopper was such a popular design that it was nearly always given priority in repair and refurbishing in post-battle salvage and recovery. This meant it still had a large number of surviving models by the time production was restarted in 3049, and even then the base model was still significantly more numerous and popular than the newer variants.
• Made of Indestructium: Despite its thin silhouette, the Grasshopper is still very durable, with 13 tons of armor. By carrying its main weapon (a large laser) in the center torso, it can still be dangerous as long as the engine and head are still running.
• Meaningful Name: The Grasshopper name comes from its ability to "hop" around with its jump jets.

Guillotine GLT-3N

It sounds scarier than it is. . . but it's still pretty damn scary.

Production Year: 2499
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

The Guillotine was designed as a front-line fighter for the Terran Hegemony and served as the Star League's standard heavy 'Mech for generations. As newer and more potent heavy 'Mechs entered production, the Guillotine still found a role as a raider and cavalry heavy. Its high maneuverability for a heavy 'Mech — thanks to jump jets — and battlefield longevity kept it viable on battlefields dominated by much, much scarier heavy 'Mech designs.

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• Beam Spam: Built around a large laser and 4 medium lasers to burn down its opponents.
• Boring, but Practical: Despite being a Star League-era design, the Guillotine used mostly simple components and as such managed to survive the loss of advanced technology with only minor hits to its performance. The biggest saving grace was using single heat sinks, meaning the loss of double-strength versions didn't cripple the design and allowed for a few to be sacrificed for weight when endo-steel became LosTech.
• Equipment Upgrade: As with many Star League era 'Mechs, the Guillotine had to be downgraded into the 4L as some things became LosTech (notably, CASE and Endo-Steel). Once the Helm Memory Core was retrieved, the Guillotines upgrades began. The 5M replaces the large laser with an ER version, but is otherwise the same as the 3N.
• Jump Jet Pack: Carries four jump jets, one in each leg and one in each side torso, granting it good maneuverability for a heavy 'Mech.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Also carries an SRM-6 for close-up punch. The Blakists upgraded theirs by replacing it with an LRM-15, at the cost of removing all the extra heat sinks.
• Nonindicative Name: Named for a device that effortlessly decapitates, but carries no headchopper weapons.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: Oddly for a mostly energy-based 'Mech. The fiberoptic cables connecting the large laser to the power source can bind if the 'Mech's arm is moved wrong. An experienced pilot can clear it easily, a rookie might snap the cable (a difficult and time-consuming repair). The SRM-6 also has a problem with sometimes failing to arm two of the missiles, removing the CASE system is the only fix.
• So Last Season: Toyed with. It was an early 'Mech design, and as such was superceded by later generations of 'Mechs in its original intended role as a frontline shock trooper. However, with its jump jets and heavily energy-based loadout, it was easily slotted into and excelled in the role of a heavy raider 'Mech.
• Superior Successor: The Clans created a IIC variant that utilized superior technology and crammed more weapons into the chassis.

Helepolis HEP-2H

Artillery, the king of the battlefield

Production Year: 2460
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

Shortly after the advent of the Mackie and dissemination of the design, the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere saw the necessity to create a greater variation of BattleMech designs for greater tactical and strategic flexibility. Keeping in line with the history of human warfare, the desire to effectively fight at distance was one of the first concerns to be addressed. Enter the Helepolis. Carrying as its main weapon a Sniper Artillery Piece, a scaled-down version of the extremely powerful Long Tom artillery gun, it can put significant hurt into anyone and anything at a ridiculously long range and thus is normally not seen operating with a lance, instead forming "batteries" and providing indirect fire for its comrades closer to the frontline.

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• Arm Cannon: The Sniper Artillery Piece is the Helepolis' right arm.
• Awesome, yet Impractical: The Helepolis' main gun is so large the 'Mech qualifies as walking artillery, but the low speed and mediocre secondary weaponry make its use outside of the intended fire support purpose very limited, along with that. There is also the option of just getting a mobile Long Tom vehicle, which is much, much cheaper and carries a larger gun for indirect fire duty.
• BFG: The king of the big guns. Not even the later Fafnir design can top the sheer size of the Helepolis' main weapon.
• Chest Blaster: Carries some of its secondary weapons in its torso.
• Equipment Upgrade: The original version used primitive technology, so as the components left the prototype stage the "standard" model was developed. After the Jihad, a futher-upgraded version (carrying an improved engine that remedied the speed issue) went into production.
• Inventional Wisdom: The Helepolis belongs in the awkward early stage of BattleMech development, when weapons manufacturers stuck practically any weapon configuration on two legs to see if they could, rather than consider its actual utility. The end result was a 'Mech that offered very little in a setting where DropShips already lets you deploy much cheaper and compact non-'Mech artillery batteries anywhere you can safely land.
• Long-Range Fighter: So much so that, in the tabletop, the Sniper's range is not measured in hexes, it is measured in maps.
• Lost Technology: The Helepolis's only manufacturing plant was destroyed in the Amaris Civil War and the last functional examples of the design were destroyed in the Succession War. Like the Mackie, it now only exists as a museum piece.
• Mighty Glacier: It is very slow for its weight class, but carries a fair amount of armor and an artillery cannon as offensive weaponry.
• Situational Sword: It was designed to lob artillery shells over huge distances and pretty much nothing else.

JagerMech JM6-S

This is my airspace. You are not welcome in my airspace.

Production Year: 2774
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 65 tons

Designed to address shortcomings of the earlier Rifleman, the JagerMech is primarily an anti-aircraft platform first and a ground combat unit second. The 'Mech is built around a very simple concept—filling entire flight vectors with flak and staying as far away as possible from anything even remotely threatening. To this end, Kallon Industries elected to scale up to the 65 ton weight range and replace the previously hot-running large lasers with more autocannons, turning the JagerMech into a cool-running air defense unit. Accommodating the heavy quadruple gun loadout forced several concessions, however; the 'Mech has few weapons for close-defense, and its armor is perilously thin for a 65-ton 'Mech. Despite these shortcomings, the Federated Suns and Capellan Confederation would go on to use the 'Mech extensively, the former out of its national love of ballistic weapons and the latter out of sheer desperation for any kind of war materiel.

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• Achilles' Heel: In the course of trying to improve on the Rifleman, it somehow manages to replace that design's flaws with its own flaws:
  • The Overheating issue is remedied by swapping the large lasers for small autocannons. This cools the 'Mech down considerably, but at the cost of three-quarters of the lasers' hitting power.
  • The inclusion of the autocannons drive up the weight, forcing the JagerMech to shed even more armor than the Rifleman, leaving it grossly underprotected. This goes double for the rear torso—what was already thin on the Rifleman is practically non-existent on the JagerMech.
  • Adding more ammo to the 'Mech to make up for the lack of shells in the Rifleman also means that, should its thin armor be penetrated, the JagerMech is much more prone to exploding. Worse, they're spread out across all three torso sections, meaning a critical hit to any one of them will likely cripple or outright destroy the whole 'Mech.
• Anti-Air: Its raison d'etre, the JagerMech is a dedicated anti-aircraft unit thanks to its four autocannons and top-mounted radar. This is due to the long range of its guns, and the fact that any hit in atmosphere, no matter how minor, can cause a pilot to lose control and possibly crash.
• Arm Cannon: Four of 'em, two to each arm. The normal arrangement is a smaller 35mm Autocannon-2 stacked on top of the larger 75mm Autocannon-5.
• Even Beggars Won't Choose It: Even during the equipment-starved Third Succesion War, some Great House and mercenary units, even hard-luck cases desparate for more 'Mechs, refuse to use the JagerMech due to its host of issues (and the probable exorbitant costs and logistical headaches of keeping all those guns loaded).
• CamelCase: Yes, it is correctly spelled JagerMech and not Jagermech.
• Cephalothorax: Its head is a small dome squished into its chest, under its shoulders. The spindly T-shaped 'head' protruding above it is the sensor suite.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Excellent at shooting down aircraft or fending off light vehicles. Utterly rubbish at fighting enemy 'Mechs or heavily armored vehicles.
• Gatling Good: The JM7 series from the Federated Suns features dual Rotary AC/5s, because of course they would.
• Glass Cannon: Almost more of a paper cannon, its large size, slow speed, and thin armor means that it is not hard to disable or destroy a JagerMech.
• Long-Range Fighter: Its four main guns are best at extended ranges. Later configurations would stretch the range out even further, keeping it at distances where its thin armor would be less likely to suffer.
• Made of Explodium: The JagerMech has the unfortunate tendency to detonate violently if and when its armor is penetrated, thanks to the three tons of high-explosive cannon munitions spread cross its three torso hit locations. Since there are so few additional compoments to be used as 'crit padding,' any Critical Hit is likely to set off an autocannon magazine, with loud and unpleasant consequences for the JagerMech.
• Midseason Upgrade: The JagerMech received several valuable upgrades after 3050. This includes an extra-light engine, freeing up much needed space, enhancements to its weapons kit, and the addition of desperately needed armor upgrades. Post-3060 designs would become downright fearsome with bigger guns and better technology.
• More Dakka: Very much so. Four autocannons is the largest number of autocannons carried on a base 3025-era unit, and it can pour out a storm of fire for 20 rounds (provided it doesn't die before then). Later units would up the dakka by including Ultra autocannons (fire two rounds per gun per turn) and Rotary autocannons (fire up to six rounds per gun per turn). A sufficiently motivated JagerMech could have a dozen 50mm slugs in the air at any given time.
• National Weapon: For House Davion, because of its single-minded dedication to autocannon usage. Paired with the other Davion favorite, the Rifleman, few Federated Suns units had to worry about coming under enemy air attack. House Kurita captured the factory during the War of 3039 but didn't care for the original model, but the upgraded JM6-DD model was highly popular with them.
• Non-Indicative Name: JagerMech translates into something like "hunting 'Mech" in German. This is weird because the JagerMech is an air-defense unit, and House Steiner, the Germanic-influeced Great House, does not actually build any of these things—the more French-inspired House Davion does.
• Not the Intended Use: Meant to be an anti-air defense unit. Often pressed straight into ground combat against other armored units, a role for which it is not well suited.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Two medium lasers in the torso for close range combat. God help you if you have to rely on those lasers, though.
• Red Shirt: Almost every time a JagerMech shows up in a BattleTech Expanded Universe novel, its sole purpose is to get its ass kicked while the author muses about its woefully thin armor. The sole apparent exception to this was Peter Steiner-Davion, who piloted one during his (brief) time with a militia unit. It was also canonically piloted by the Player Character of the computer game at least once according to Shrapnel magazine.
• Sketchy Successor: Meant to improve on the Rifleman and address the various faults on that machine. Despite the effort, Kallon Industries somehow created a machine with even more issues than the original.

Marauder MAD-3R

"It's a beautiful balance of guns, armor, mobility, and most importantly, character." - Tex Talks Battletech. Reseen design.

^{Click here to see the Project Phoenix redesign}

^{Click here to see the original Unseen version}

Production Year: 2819
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

The Marauder first debuted in 2612 with the intention of it being the vanguard of a new kind of 'Mech for the Star League. While the Star League was never able to make that evolution happen due to its dissolution, the Marauder has done pretty well for itself as a powerful long-range fire-support 'Mech throughout history.

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• Achilles' Heel: The stock Marauder 3R carries the ammo for its AC/5 in the left torso, in an otherwise empty compartment. The first Critical Hit to hit the left torso will therefore unfailingly hit the ammo magazine, and probably One-Hit Kill the Marauder in the process.
• Arm Cannon: Has a PPC built into each of its arms, which are reinforced to allow the Marauder to engage in melee combat without damaging them.
• Boring, but Practical: Lore-wise moreso than in-game. Two of the major advantages the Marauder has over other, more humanoid 'Mechs are actually old concepts first worked out in the early years of World War 2; the ability to go "Hull Down" (placing the bulk of the 'Mech behind cover and only exposing the respectibly-ranged AC/5 to the enemy), and its narrow angular body shape which reduces the profile of the 'Mech, especially at range, and presents armor to the enemy at an angle - which would increase the functional thickness of the armor and reduce the likelihood of penetrating it. To reflect this on the tabletop, the 'Mech features the Narrow/Low Profile quirk, imposing a flat penalty on all incoming shots.
• Chicken Walker: Has reverse-joint legs, aiding its distinctive, hunched-over appearance.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The design was initially reserved for the SLDF, but the Royal Regiments eventually got their own version with ER PPCs and Double Heat Sinks.
• Equipment Upgrade: Everyone had their own variant, usually based on what technology they had ready access to. Marik swapped out the PPCs for Large Lasers to make it more heat-efficient, Davion ditched the autocannon for a Large Laser to make it ammunition-independent. When lost technology was recovered, the Great Houses upgraded their Marauders with the best equipment they could, giving their variants their own upgrades to the latest technology.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: The most well-known Unseen, the Marauder's original design was that of the Zentradi Battle Pod from Super Dimension Fortress Macross. It was Reseen through Project Phoenix, with a visible redesign of its cockpit, AC/5 placement, and arms. It then received a "proper" Reseen redesign as part of the blanket Retcon of all the Unseen.
• Long-Range Fighter: The Marauder's main guns are a pair of PPCs and an AC/5, giving it a preference for fighting from 4-18 hexes.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Inverted, as the medium lasers usually found on the design are used in cases where an enemy is too close to engage with its other weapons, which are primarily for mid to long range combat.
• Scary Scorpions: Its doubled barreled arm guns and back-mounted cannon invoke a scorpion's pincers and stinger.
• Shoulder Cannon: The Marauder's AC/5 is built into its right torso shoulder. On both the original Unseen and Reseen designs, this manifests as a large cannon on a pintle mount on top of the 'Mech's centerline. The Project Phoenix redesigns made it a "proper" Shoulder Cannon.
• Superior Successor: The Marauder has two successor variants, both of whom improve upon the original machine. The Marauder IIC is a ClanTech Equipment Upgrade made by the Clans during the Political Century that is upgraded to an 85-ton assault 'Mech and carries a trio of the deadly ClanTech ERPPC, while the Marauder II is a 100-ton assault 'Mech designed by Wolf's Dragoons during the late Third Succession War, sporting superior armour and jump capability (as well as initially having only energy weapons).
• Those Two Guys: It's often paired up or contrasted with the Warhammer, both being heavy 'Mechs with identical primary weapons and a similar battlefield role. The original MechWarrior rivalry of the game, Natasha Kerensky and The Bounty Hunter, was between a Warhammer and a Marauder.
• The Workhorse: Virtually every Successor State has their own particular variant of the Marauder, and most of them work pretty well. It never quite achieved the availability in numbers that similar designs like the Thunderbolt or Warhammer did during the Succession Wars, but it never came close to going extinct like many other designs did.

Orion ON1-K

A rich man's Centurion and a poor man's Atlas.

Production Year: 2525
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

One of the first heavy 'Mechs, the Orion is one of the oldest BattleMechs still around and bears the unique honor of being Aleksandr Kerensky's 'Mech of choice.

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• Achilles' Heel: Beyond ammo explosions, a serious concern when the design has as many ammo-dependent weapons as the Orion does, the loadout produces a fair amount of heat with no additional heat sinks.
• Arm Cannon: Both arms, in fact.
• Macross Missile Massacre: It packs both an LRM and an SRM launcher in most variants, letting it barrage targets with missiles at any ranges it wants.
• National Weapon: Not deliberately, but the Free Worlds League wound up with the only functional factory producing the model.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: Besides the odd tendency for the hip-mounted autocannon to jam unless it was loaded with nineteen salvos instead of the full twenty available, it can be accidentally knocked out of alignment by the right arm.
• Superior Successor: The Inner Sphere OmniMech Perseus was developed from the Orion. In addition, the Atlas is pretty much the Orion made bigger, tougher, meaner, and scarier by adding 25 tons to the chassis and sculpting it to be intimidating, with more missiles, more lasers, and a bigger autocannon.
• The Workhorse: There are over a dozen variants spanning the design's centuries-long production run.

Quickdraw QKD-4G

Voted "Most Underwhelming Replacement" for three centuries and counting.

Production Year: 2779
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 60 tons

The Quickdraw is the byproduct of someone in the SLDF attempting to test the age old adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". First thought up as an attempt to replace the Rifleman in the front line roles it ended up being employed in (something it was not designed to do), the Quickdraw was designed as an extremely mobile fast attack platform that could hit quite hard for its speed and size. For that, it was outfitted with a positively huge Vlar 300 engine and 5 jump jets, meaning that it could run like hell, jump like mad and smash anything smaller than it with the guns it carried. Well, that's the theory, at least, the truth is that the Quickdraw turned out to be a bit of a mess, being very hot when used in its intended role and too fragile to reliably act as a frontline fighter.

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• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: The Quickdraw's excellent elbow actuators allow it to point its arms straight behind it without rotating the torso, allowing it to focus all four of its lasers at anyone in its rear arc in an emergency.
• Achilles' Heel: Achilles Ankles, actually. The Quickdraw had an insanely easy time in climbing hills and rough terrain from well-built ankle actuators which also happened to be fragile as hell, something that did not go unnoticed by pilots fighting them. This led to the strategy of shooting any and all Quickdraws in the feet to get an easy kill.
• Arm Cannon: Mounts a pair of medium lasers in its arms.
• Badass Back: The one thing most can agree the designers actually got right about the Quickdraw was giving it the Hyper-Extending Actuators quirk, allowing it to flip its arms to the rear like the Rifleman while still having proper fist-laden arms in the event punching is called for. Being able to bring four medium lasers to bear in its rear arc at least provides the Quickdraw with a reason for having its otherwise problematic jump jets, even if it's not a terribly convincing one.
  • A popular variant, the QDK-4H, would see the rear lasers swapped with the forward SRM launcher, giving it a bit more punch and greater range flexibility while still allowing it to retain a hefty rear guard. While time intensive, it was otherwise fairly easy for a decent technician to swap between the G and H models in the field.
• Equipment Upgrade: Seeking to remedy the 'Mech's underwhelming firepower issues, the 5A variant swapped out the LRM launcher for two more medium lasers and four extra heat sinks to help handle the increased heat load. As those of you who can do math might have already guessed, this only exacerbated the overheating issues of the base Quickdraw, forcing Mechwarriors to be even more judicious with their shots. Kurita liked the underlying concept enough to revamp it into their 5K model, which resulted in an actually effective design boasting ferro-fibrous armor and seventeen double heat sinks.
• Glass Cannon: The Quickdraw is very mobile for a heavy 'Mech and hits hard for a Succession Wars-era design. But it only carries eight tons of armor, which is about average for a medium 'Mech.
• Inventional Wisdom: Most people will tell you that a heavy 'Mech would benefit more from having 5 more tons of armour or 5 more heat sinks, but someone thought it was a good idea to stick 5 tons of jump jets in the Quickdraw. Additionally, almost one quarter of its firepower is dedicated to the rear arc, while its forward facing weapons have a very narrow range where they synergize well, leaving the Quickdraw struggling to fight back effectively.
• Master of None: Designed as an earnest attempt at a generalist 'Mech, the Quickdraw ended up being saddled with so many additional requirements that its ability to fulfill whatever role it found itself in was rather underwhelming. In fairness, it did succeed in providing a better frontline combatant to replace the more second-line specialized Rifleman, but that was a small comfort to the MechWarriors condemned to drive the thing.
• Meaningful Name: The Quickdraw has a distinctive wide-armed stance that resembles a gunfighter about to draw his pistols, as though it were participating in the nominal dueling style. Later artwork revisions would give the 'Mech wide set antennae on its head to visually evoke a cowboy hat when seen straight on, furthering the wild west gunslinger motif.
• Midseason Upgrade: Later models use double heatsinks to ease the heat issues.
• Overheating: What the base model will spend most of its time doing.
• Sketchy Successor: The Quickdraw was meant to be a Superior Successor to the Rifleman in light of the various challenges that design faced in the close-combat battles of the Succession Wars. Unfortunately, the Quickdraw doesn't have much more armor than the Rifleman and also has terrible heat-sinking capacity. So while it can get in close and hit hard better than the Rifleman, it can't hang in there for long.

Rakshasa MDG-1A

The Rakshasa, just in case you need an object lesson in how hard Inner Sphere tech sucks.

Production Year: 3055
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

The Rakshasa is what happens when the Inner Sphere got to see their first OmniMech in the Mad Cat, and wondered "well, how hard could that be to make?"

The result is this 'Mech, which has a lot of its Clan-contemporary's strengths, but ultimately falls short in critical areas (namely in being ludicrously expensive) that ultimately gives it a really nasty reputation.

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• Arm Cannon: Like the Mad Cat, it mounts ER Large Lasers in its arms.
• Glad I Thought of It: When first briefed on the Mad Cat by Anastasius Focht, ComStar Primus Myndo Waterly ordered all of the ComGuards Catapults to be reconfigured like Mad Cats, believing (not necessarily incorrectly) that such powerful 'Mechs would let ComStar easily take over the Inner Sphere. Focht had to point out that mounting the array of weapons the Mad Cat possesses would result in it being insufficiently armored, and adding proper armor would then require sacrifices in speed. A few years later, the New Avalon Institute of Science made the Rakshasa, an attempt to emulate the Mad Cat which is in every way not quite as good as the Clan 'Mech it was based off.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Rakshasa has half the missiles of the Mad Cat, but does have Artemis IV fire-control systems, making the missiles more dangerous.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: It isn't a bad design when you overlook the ludicrous price tag and the comparisons to the 'Mech it was trying to copy. Unfortunately when measured against the Mad Cat, it always comes up short.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: The Rakshasa is an attempt by the Inner Sphere to copy the Mad Cat, which failed miserably due to the inferiority of Inner Sphere tech compared to the Clans. The Rakshasa has two LRM-10s where the Mad Cat has two LRM-20s, 2 ER Large Lasers, 2 Medium Lasers, and a Medium Pulse Laser, losing the ER off the Medium Lasers and the Mad Cat's Machine Guns. The Inner Sphere weapons are also heavier, bulkier, do less damage, and generate more heat than the Clan versions. By Inner Sphere standards, it's still an exceptionally dangerous heavy 'Mech, but it is also ridiculously expensive due to the weight-saving technologies needed to mount that many weapons, so it's two-thirds the cost of a Mad Cat and two to three times the cost of other 75-ton 'Mechs.
• Shoulders of Doom: Like the Mad Cat, has big missile launcher shoulders.

Rifleman RFL-3N

The definitive anti-aircraft 'Mech.

Production Year: 2770
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 60 tons

The Rifleman is another older 'Mech, this one designed primarily to shoot down aircraft. While it was often plagued with issues throughout its lifespan, its impressive targeting tech and even more impressive guns ensured it would see its way onto battlefields well into the days of the Word of Blake Jihad.

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• Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: It can flip its arms over its head to shoot at targets directly behind it. Usually a very awkward maneuver, only very skilled Rifleman pilots could get much use out of doing it. This became a plot point in the Warrior trilogy.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • Armour. The Rifleman is very poorly armoured, especially in the rear. When flanked, even a Wasp or a Locust can quickly punch through its armour.
  • Ammo. The lasers aside, the RFL-3N carries only a single ton of ammo for its two autocannons, meaning it has enough ammunition for only ten rounds of combat.
  • Heat. Carrying only the standard engine heatsinks, the Rifleman will quickly overheat once it starts using its lasers. The Arbitrary Weapon Range on its Autocannons only makes this worse, as it has little to no heat-efficient ways of deterring close-up enemies.
• Anti-Air: The archetypical anti-air 'Mech of earlier starts, to the extent that it was the first one to have the "Anti-Aircraft Targeting" Quirk, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Arm Cannon: Its arms are cannons.
• Badass Back: Theoretically. The above-mentioned Abnormal Limb Rotation Range of its arm-mounted weaponry was a design feature meant to compensate for the limited torso twist ability, so the Rifleman could easily blow away a target that got behind it. The problem with hitting anything at close range remains, especially as the Rifleman is one of the very few 'Mechs with that ability, making it an uncommon move. This is actually a plot point in the Warrior Trilogy novels, as Justin Allard is able to recognize Gray Noton as the man who shot his arm off because he's one of the few MechWarriors who regularly uses this technique.
• Beam Spam: The Rifleman was originally an entirely energy-based 'Mech until heat concerns led to the introduction of the AC/5s by its third incarnation. The 3N has remained the definite version of the Rifleman ever since.
• Boring, but Practical: The Rifleman is slow, poorly armoured, prone to overheating and not nearly as long-ranged as it would like, but it is one of the cheapest 60-ton 'Mechs around and is simple to build. Its targeting and communications systems are noted In-Universe to be incredibly accurate and robust, and never became Lost Technology. The Rifleman is very good at anti-air and long-range fire support duties. It is not good at virtually anything else.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The baseline RFL-3N manages to avoid the pitfalls of its otherwise very niche combat role by virtue of its cheap, effective and very accurate targeting computer allowing it to engage foes well beyond their own effective ranges. However, the Rifleman III, designed by Stefan Amaris in the final days of the Amaris Civil War, is a textbook one-trick pony desperation weapon. Four Gauss Rifles and a bleeding-edge stealth system meant it was a hideously lethal ambush weapon, to the point where it jumped an SLDF Company and downed nine of their twelve 'Mechs before depleting its ammo. However, accommodating that arsenal meant it was slow, poorly supplied, very poorly armored and had absolutley no backup weaponry, all adding up to making the Rifleman III a very expensive novelty and liability outside of this single combat scenario.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The Rifleman had an SLDF elite variant known as the Rifleman II, exclusive to the royal regiments. In a departure from most royal 'Mechs, who tend to have an Equipment Upgrade but leave the chassis the same, the Rifleman II was an assault 'Mech 20 tons heavier than the regular Rifleman.
• Equipment Upgrade: As lost technology was recovered, various Great Houses gave the Rifleman a facelift, increasing armor protection and heat capacity and up-gunning the 'Mech in exchange for driving the unit price up.
• Flawed Prototype: The Rifleman III, of which only one prototype was ever completed, was an attempt by Stefan Amaris to build a "wonderweapon" to turn the Amaris Civil War back in his favour. Basically a canonical "Gausszilla", the Rifleman III mounted four giant Gauss Rifles and advanced stealth armour, and precious little else because of the immense cost and weight requirement. The prototype was used briefly during the Siege of Terra, where it successfully ambushed a few 'Mechs before running out of ammo and being abandoned by its pilot.^note A shortage of ammo was one of many major flaws with the Rifleman III (beyond its hideous expense, poor armoring, abysmal speed, and high industrial base requirement). To put in terms just how undersupplied it was, the III had exactly enough ammo for four volleys, giving it a theoretical combat endurance of around 40 seconds. Which makes it all the more impressive that, in the ambush it executed, its targeting computer recorded nine kills before running dry.
• Glass Cannon: The Rifleman has very solid damage for a 60-tonner, but its speed is on par with other heavy 'Mechs and its armour is barely more than half that of the Thunderbolt.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Based on the Destroid Defender from Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the original Rifleman is now one of the Unseen. Like all of the original Unseen, it has a legally distinct Reseen version.
• History Repeats: It's not the first piece of military equipment originally made to be an anti-aircraft platform that was then turned against armored ground targets, an example being the German's 88mm flak cannons during WWII. However, while the flak cannons could do it because of their particular barrel size, the Rifleman can do it because of how easy it is to customize the weaponry mounted.
• Long-Range Fighter: As can be expected from a 'Mech designed to shoot down aircraft (who tend to stay away from the ground where 'Mechs operate), the Rifleman operates best at medium to long range. This resulted in a poor reputation for the 'Mech during the Succession Wars, as a 'Mech that was designed to stay at range to suit its armoring, ammo capacity, and heat sinking capability was often forced into close-range engagements due to lack of other 'Mechs to put in the fight.
• More Dakka:
  • Rediscovery of the Ultra Autocannon from the Helm Memory Core quickly made its way to the Rifleman in the form of the 5M variant, a straight-up Equipment Upgrade of the original.
  • House Davion, always fond of the Rifleman, made sure to stuff their Rotary Autocannons into the 'Mech at first opportunity and creating the RFL-8D variant.
• Too Desperate to Be Picky: As a support 'Mech its job is to provide anti-air firepower from behind other 'Mechs. But thanks to the destruction wrought by the Succession Wars, and the prevalence of MechWarriors desperate for any 'Mech on the battlefield, the Rifleman ended up fighting on the front lines despite it not being up to par even against nedium 'Mechs in a straight-up brawl.

Thanatos TNS-4S

The Inner Sphere's take on the concept of death in 'Mech form.

Production Year: 3061
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 75 tons

The Thanatos is a post-Clan Invasion heavy 'Mech based on several design philosophies borrowed from Clanner designs. Initially designed to be an Inner Sphere OmniMech, its prototype was deemed by the Federated Commonwealth as too costly to reliably manufacture in great enough numbers. It was eventually reworked into a standard 'Mech that combined a large arsenal with impressive agility and speed, which was eventually accepted into official use.

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• Achilles' Heel: Despite being a tough nut to crack, it carries a massive 375 rating XL engine which takes up a lot of space in its side torsos, meaning that any serious damage beyond its (admittedly thick) side torso armour has a good chance of disabling it.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Part of being initally designed as an OmniMech. It has both endo-steel construction and an XL engine, which leaves plenty of room for other equipment but also makes it very expensive. It was intended to emulate the Clan's Summoner design, and is only marginally cheaper than one.
• Beam Spam: Four-fifths of its offensive weapons are lasers of various types, and it has enough heat-sinking capacity to fire them all day long.
• Follow the Leader: Subverted. It was initially intended to emulate the Clan's Thor as a fast, hard-hitting Omni design with jump jets, but much of this was discarded along the way.
• Jack of All Stats: Its got a decent ammount of tools for about any situation, but not enough drawbacks to make it a Master of None.
• Jump Jet Pack: Carries a total of 5 jump jets, allowing it to jump much higher than one would expect from such a large machine.
• Lightning Bruiser: Despite its mass and size, the Thanatos is capable of a quite impressive 86.4 KPH top speed. It also boasts more than adequate firepower to make any 'Mech think twice about engaging it in a one on one fight.
• Macross Missile Massacre: It packs an MRM-20, which are nasty up close.
• Walking Techbane: Usually carries an ECM suite, which allows it to screw with the sensors of any nearby opponents.

Thunderbolt TDR-5S

"Thunder! Thunder! Thunder! THUNDERBOLT, HOOO!"

^{Click here to see the original Unseen version}

Production Year: 2491
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 65 tons

A late 25th century model that was initially one of the heaviest 'Mechs made at the time, but has since become well-known for its heavy armor and eclectic weapon-selection in an already tanky Heavy-Class. It does however, have plenty of heat issues that have been the bane of any of its pilots.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Heat. The Thunderbolt's attack will generate about twice as much heat as it's able to sink, at any range, and will quickly pop all its ammunition.
  • Speaking of ammunition, the Thunderbolt carries its missile ammunition in its Centre Torso. While this means any potential ammo explosion is located behind the thickest armour of the 'Mech, it also means one lucky through-armour critical in the most likely hit location — or one good Back Stab — will instantly destroy the whole 'Mech. Granted, that's pretty much the case for any Inner Sphere 'Mech without Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment.
• Affectionate Nickname: It's known as the "T-bolt" in the Inner Sphere, partly because its roomy cockpit makes it a favoured ride for MechWarriors.
• Arm Cannon: A Megatron-style forearm mount for its primary weapon. This has ranged from large lasers to partcle cannons, and at least one variant swaps it wholesale for a Gauss rifle.
• Boring, but Practical: It doesn't do an awful lot new; its main strategy is to fight at long range with its large laser and LRM launcher, then get close and bring its full mix of lasers, missiles, and machine guns into play. It'll walk slowly the whole way there, but it can and will absorb murderous punishment and deal out much of the same before anyone brings it down. This simple and effective game plan has allowed Thunderbolts to play a role in every major siege and battle in the Inner Sphere, and out-of-universe it is often used as an unofficial benchmark for other heavy 'Mechs to compare against.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: The unusual combination of a single large missile drum carried high on the shoulder and an off-center cockpit—one of only a few 'Mechs to feature a cockpit that doesn't sit on the centerline—gives the Thunderbolt a distinctive silhouette.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: One of the Unseen, the original Thunderbolt design was based on the Hasty F4X "Ironfoot" from Fang of the Sun Dougram. The modern Thunderbolt is more streamlined and carries its cockpit on the opposite side. This also makes its parentage as the primary inspiration for the Clan Summoner more obvious: large energy weapon in the right arm, ballistics in the left, and a left-torso missile pod.
• Jack of All Stats: The Thunderbolt features decent weapons coverage (barring its heat problem) and is well-armed and armoured for a heavy 'Mech. It also has a ton of variants that lets it fill a variety of roles, including a Jump Jet-capable variant for scouting.
• Mighty Glacier: The original Thunderbolt had an undergunned engine that made it as slow as an assault. Advances in engine design makes most modern versions average movement for a heavy 'Mech.
• Shoulder Cannon: For its LRMs.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: It's pretty clear where the Clan Summoner derives most of its design inspiration, leading to this trope whenever Clan Summoners meet Inner Sphere Thunderbolts. The most notable example was Maeve Wolf in a Thunderbolt refitted with Clan technology versus Alpin Wolf in a Summoner during the Dragoon Civil War. Maeve won.
• The Workhorse: It's one of the oldest 'Mech designs still around, with dozens of variants and upgraded versions.

Warhammer WHM-6R

The Warhammer that started it all. a Rolling Thunder Warhammer from Battledroids first edition rulebook.

^{Click here to see the Reseen design}

Production Year: 2515
Weight Class: Heavy
Mass: 70 tons

The Warhammer was designed to be one of the first anti-'Mech 'Mechs ever conceived in the early 26th century, and it has been one of the most well-used and well-loved 'Mechs in history; dozens of famous pilots count the Warhammer as their ride of choice, and its respectable armor and weaponry ultimately allowed it to become the gold standard of Heavy-Class 'Mech design.

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• Ace Custom: Its highly upgradable, customisable Jack of All Trades design makes it an extremely popular choice for aces looking to build the 'Mech that's perfect for them, with the most famous example being Natasha 'the Black Widow' Kerensky.
• Achilles' Heel: The base model carries the machine gun ammunition in the center torso, so a shot that penetrates there (or the heat gauge spiking too high) can take out the entire 'Mech. Worse, the base 6R model only carries eighteen single heat sinks, meaning just firing both PPCs at the same time will start that heat gauge climbing. Volley-fire is a common solution, but various derivative models sought to alleviate that issue by removing the ammo in favor of more heat sinks and armor.
• Arm Cannon: Its forearms are both taken up by its main guns, a pair of PPCs.
• Beam Spam: Besides the PPCs serving as the main guns, the Warhammer also typically carries a pair of medium and small lasers in the side torsos, allowing it a decent close-range punch.
• Beat Them at Their Own Game: It was one of the first dedicated anti-'Mech designs, design to hunt and destroy 'Mechs of its own or lower weight class.
• Boring, but Practical: The original Warhammer production model had no particularly advanced technology - no CASE, weight-saving technology, double heat sinks, or advanced missile guidance - but was extremely efficient at what it was designed to do. This let it survive through the Succession Wars with little trouble, and it continues as a popular heavy 'Mech in defiance of newer designs because it's cheap, simple, and works.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: The Warhammer had an SLDF royal version, the WHM-6Rb, but it was only a slight upgrade from the baseline model with Double Heat Sinks, Artemis IV guidance, and slightly better armouring. It would later be replaced by the WHM-7A, which gave it the latest in Star League weaponry.
• Equipment Upgrade: A frequent recipient as practically all nations to field it tended to modify the baseline model to fit their own needs: Removal of the machine guns (either for more heatsinks or alternative, less explosive Anti-Infantry weaponry) was a particularly common modification. After its main producer StarCorps decided to permanently upgrade their Warhammer models in the mid-3060s, their factories in each of the Inner Sphere nations (the FedComs, Capellans, Combine and FWL) created their own unique upgraded versions.
• Jack of All Stats: The iconic heavy 'Mech of the early game, the Warhammer has a set of mostly non-overlapping weapons that lets it deal around 20 damage at both close and long range (and about twice that at optimal overlap), carries a decent amount of armour, a pair of machine guns for Anti-Infantry, and has an average speed for a heavy 'Mech. It has no real weaknesses, apart from ammunition explosions and not being particularly stellar at any one role. There's a reason it became The Workhorse for every Inner Sphere faction that could get their hands on it.
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: Another famous Super Dimension Fortress Macross transplant, the Warhammer was based on the mark one Destroid Tomahawk and thus rendered Unseen. Its Reseen version was introduced through Project Phoenix.
• Long-Range Fighter: A slightly downplayed example. The Warhammer deals optimal damage at four to six squares' distance (short range for the PPCs and medium for the lasers and SRM rack), but it lacks the heat sinks and armour to brawl with heavier 'Mechs at that range for long. While it deals only half as much damage at long range, it has much better heat management and endurance at that range.
• Master of All: One reason it's so popular is because its robust, versatile and highly customisable Jack of All Trades design with its massive but heat-hungry arsenal offers so much upgrade potential, letting any Mech-jockey dream of turning their Warhammer into one of these one day if they find enough lostech. It's not a Clan OmniMech, sure, but it's the next best thing, and a proper Ace Custom Warhammer like the one piloted by Natasha Kerensky is a terrifying foe indeed.
• Series Mascot: The Warhammer was featured on the first edition of the Battledroids book and the original Battletech manual. It featured heavily on early promotion material until the Unseen debacle, having lost a fair bit of prominence since.
• Shoulder Cannon: Holding a six-tube short-range missile launcher. The other shoulder typically carries a floodlight.
• Superior Successor:
  • One of the earlier 'Mechs to get introduced to upgrades from the Helm Memory Core, with the Combine producing an upgraded model as early as 3047. ComStar created a "Clanbuster" variant for the Battle of Tukayyid that included Star League-era technology and the inclusion of jump jets.
  • The Clans, on their end, produced the C-line of the Warhammer (C1, C2 and C3), each model increasingly replacing the original technology with more ClanTech. Eventually this turned into the Warhammer IIC, upgraded to an assault chassis and built entirely with Clan components.
  • The Warhammer itself is actually a successor design to the Hammerhands, the 'Mech that arguably started the Federated Suns love of Autocannons. Switching the arm guns from AC-10s to PPCs, along with more subtle upgrades across the board and adding support weaponry, the Warhammer was such a monumental success that it reduced its otherwise proud predecessor to a mere footnote in history.
• Those Two Guys: Often paired up or contrasted with the Marauder, the original heavy 'Mechs of the setting with overlapping roles. Natasha Kerensky drove a Warhammer for most of her career, battling The Bounty Hunter in his Marauder.
• Upgrade vs. Prototype Fight: The Warhammer's design heavily inspired the Clan Hellbringer/Loki, making any encounter between the two an example of this.
• The Workhorse: One of the standards for heavy 'Mech design for over 500 years, the Warhammer is produced and fielded by practically every major Inner Sphere power (and the Taurians) and has a ton of variants due to field reworks and variability of production facilities. With quirks on it is both "Rugged" and "Ubiquitous", making it easy to repair and find replacement parts on a longer campaign, which combines with its sturdy Jack of All Trades versatility to make it a complete no-brainer for anyone who sees one on sale.

Assault Mechs

Annihilator ANH-1A

Annihilator (n): A person or thing that entirely destroys a place, a group, an enemy, etc. : one that annihilates something or someone.

Production Year: 2779
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

The Annihilator was one of several 'wonderweapons' designed near the end of the Amaris Civil War, in this case to serve as the ultimate siege BattleMech. It was never built in the Inner Sphere, as the plans and early concepts were taken by the SLDF on their Exodus. The Inner Sphere would first encounter the Annihilator in 3009, when the mysterious Wolf's Dragoons arrived in the Inner Sphere carrying with them, amongst other rarities, a 'Mech completely unknown to the Successor States. The Annihilator would serve the Dragoons as an exclusive terror weapon until 3048, when they decided to offer the 'Mech's production specs to Inner Sphere manufacturers for unknown and not-at-all-related-to-an-imminent-Clan-invasion reasons.

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• Achilles' Heel: As with most "ultimate iteration" weapons, the idea was better than the execution. The Annihilator proves no different:
  • Ammunition. The -1A model carries only four tons of ammo, meaning it has only enough rounds to fire the four AC/10s ten times before having to fall back on the medium lasers. The Dragoons would try to remedy this by switching to an all-energy loadout with four PPCs instead of the autocannons and filling all the other available space with heatsinks.
  • Armor. The 12.5 tonnes of armor means that the design is relatively squishy by assault 'Mech standards, which combined with the above and the lack of CASE in the Succesion Wars-era design means any shot that penetrates the torso will probably turn the whole 'Mech into a fireworks display.
  • Speed. 2 hexes of movement per turn. 3, at an all-out sprint. The design was meant for city defense, but the Annihilator is less of an assault 'Mech and more of a geographically flexible turret.
• Arm Cannon: Each arm carries a pair of AC/10s.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Annihilator is very big, very armed, and very scary... And also underarmoured, low on ammunition, limited to direct line of fire and with mediocre range, and also very, very, very slow, making it easy for practically anything that can't take it on directly to escape its reach in open terrain.
• Cyber Cyclops: While it is a human-driven 'Mech and not an actual robot, the Annihilator's design still evokes it with its cockpit and its single top window, especially in its Mechwarrior Online design.
• Foil:
  • To the Clan Bane. Both are 100-ton autocannon-based 'Mechs that were originally designed and prototyped in the Inner Sphere and brought along by the SLDF, but the Annihilator's original model is based around four LB-X 10 autocannons with a big Alpha Strike ability (with variants carrying mostly Gauss or PPC weapons) while the Bane carries ten Ultra-AC/2s and depends on Death by a Thousand Cuts (with variants carrying LRM, Rotary AC or HAG weapons). The Annihilator was quickly mothballed by the Clans and given away to the Dragoons, while the Bane was still used as a workhorse garrison 'Mech by the Clans as late as the Republic era.
  • To the UrbanMech. Despite being at completely opposite ends of the weight class spectrum, the Annihilator and the UrbanMech are both primarily intended for use in urban warfare, built around an AC/10 primary armament, and roughly share the same speed and armor profiles. The similarities are close enough to spawn jokes that the Annihilator is actually "four Urbies in a trenchcoat."
• Glass Cannon: Carrying four AC/10s, the Annihilator can match a King Crab or an Atlas in close-combat firepower while comfortably out-ranging both of them with its main guns, but at only 12.5 tonnes of armour it has less armour than many Inner Sphere heavy 'Mechs.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: The Dragoons were forced to do this to the 'Mech: The original Annihilator model, the 1X, carried CASE, LB-10X autocannons, and pulse lasers that were Lost Technology in the Inner Sphere and would have evoked (even more) suspicion. The 1A (which was the first introduced to the game out-of-universe) used regular autocannons and lasers until the available technology was rediscovered and allowed the Dragoons to upgrade their 1A variants to the 2A, which brought it closer to the original.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: The Clans equipping the Dragoons with the Annihilator was their biggest research failure, as while most of their other 'Mechs were Lost Technology, the Annihilator had never even been produced beyond a prototype stage. This immediately made several people in the know extremely suspicious of the Dragoons.
• Lightning Gun: After the battle of Misery, the Dragoons retrofitted many of their Annihilators to run PPCs instead of Autocannons, replacing the AC/10s with four PPCs and forty-one heatsinks instead, turning it into an even bigger Awesome.
• Lost Technology: The entire 'Mech was this at one point, technically speaking. Like the Maelstrom, the Annihilator was developed very shortly before the Star League collapsed and was still at the prototype stage when the loss of technology, industrial base, and design plans meant nobody could produce it as it was originally intended. Unlike the Maelstrom, the Star League in Exile and later the Clans produced the Annihilator for some time, meaning that the Inner Sphere got a very large surprise when the mysterious Wolf's Dragoons rolled out a design that most people had never seen.
• Magnetic Weapons: Practically all Annihilators produced post-Helm Memory Core use Gauss Rifles in one form or another, as the increased range and damage perfectly complements the Annihilator's drawbacks. The Ace Custom 'Gausszilla' variant used by a particularly daring Ghost Bear carried five of them at the cost of practically everything else.
• Mighty Glacier: The Glacierist of them all, as its undersized engine means it moves only 2 squares a turn. The only 'Mech an Annihilator can tie in speed is an UrbanMech.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: A salvaged Annihilator became part of a FrankenMech known as Schwerer Gustav as a result of a bar-room bet. It featured a mix of Clan and Inner Sphere experimental technology, a Rotary Autocannon, and a freaking artillery piece.
• More Dakka: The Annihilator's stock in trade. Very few Inner Sphere designs carry four autocannons, let alone in the AC/10 range. The 3A variant brings eight Light AC/2 autocannon to the fight, which let it plink away at vehicles and soft targets that come within range.
• No Export for You: An In-Universe example. Wolf's Dragoons owned the only Annihilators in existence and they did not trade them away, giving them an advantage in unpredictability because no-one in the Inner Sphere knew what the design was capable of doing.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: To the Clans, the Annihilator was a two hundred year old relic long since rendered obsolete and sent with the Dragoons with stripped-down equipment so as to not evoke suspicion. To the Inner Sphere, it was one of the most frightening things imaginable — a technological novelty developed outside known space.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: The Annihilator carries a quartet of medium lasers (or pulse lasers in more advanced variants) for when the ammo inevitably runs out.
• Robot Antennae: Has these as well, which alongside the single-eye type cockpit only reinforces the robot aesthetic.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Indeed they are, and the Annihilator was originally designed with four of them, but the lack of LB-X autocannons in the Inner Sphere means they had to be stripped out to maintain the Dragoons' cover.
• Urban Warfare: Designed for siege combat, the Annihilator's main weaknesses are lessened by the cramped quarters and clear lines of fire available in urban combat.

Atlas AS7-D

The 100-ton Assault 'Mech

Production Year: 2755
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

The premiere Assault-grade BattleMech, which premiered in 2755 with the sole goal of keeping the Star League Defense Force's unquestioned superiority over its member states, developed in part by the legendary Aleksandr Kerensky himself. It's most well known for its foreboding "death's head" cockpit, its nigh-impenetrable armor, and for its terrifying payload.

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• BFG: By default, carries an AC/20 in its right hip, the biggest gun a BattleMech can mount.
• Chest Blaster: The Atlas carries two missile launchers (an LRM-20 and an SRM-6) in its left torso and a pair of medium lasers in its rear centre torso.
• Close-Range Combatant: Barring its LRM-20, all of the Atlas' weapons are close-range. Combining the AC/20 as a "can opener" to strip away armor plus a whole bunch of light, multi-hit weapons for criticals means it's nasty close up. The A variant leans into this further, downgrading the autocannon and the long-range missile launcher to cram more short-range missile launchers into the torso.
• Depending on the Artist: The size and shape of the Shoulders of Doom tend to vary, with some portrayals showing them as more pauldron-like while others have the tops of the shoulders level with the top of the 'Mech's head. The design of the skull face is another common variable, with depictions varying between a full skull, the top of a skull (missing the lower jaw), or even a more helmet-like appearance in MWO.
• The Dreaded: With Quirks active the Atlas is "Distracting", causing enemy 'Mechs to suffer accuracy penalties if they aren't attacking the Atlas directly. Nobody wants an Atlas around that's not in their sights. In-universe, if you're facing down an Atlas in anything that isn't an assault 'Mech in its own right, run.
  • But again, remember that unlike the Awesome, the Atlas has almost exclusively short-range, ammo-dependent weapons. Once those are gone, it's more or less a 100-ton paperweight. Unless someone has the bright idea of mistaking unarmed for harmless within arm's reach. Then, it becomes a paperweight that can still punch holes clear through most other non-assault 'Mechs with its fists. And one that in fluff (and with rules recently added to allow it in game as well) is one of the few 'Mechs strong enough to use a light 'Mech as a flail to smash other 'Mechs to pieces. Not a part of a light 'Mech, like an arm or a leg. The whole 'Mech.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Downplayed. The Atlas was designed for the Star League Defense Force, who got the absolute best equipment available, but soon proliferated throughout the Inner Sphere. So the SLDF designed the Atlas II, with even better technological goodies, and reserved it for SLDF Royal Regiments.
• Frontline General: The Atlas wasn't originally designed as a command 'Mech (a 'Mech equipped with a command console), but command variants quickly became very popular because, well, just look at the thing. Who wouldn't want to use it as their frontline command post? Anastasius Focht and Ian Davion both used Atlases as command 'Mechs, and it was the favoured ride for Nicholas Kerensky to observe early Clan society and Devlin Stone during the Jihad. Even Aleksander Kerensky himself used an Atlas II earlier in his career, although he switched to the lighter Orion and became far better-known for piloting one of those.
• Implacable Man: A general characteristic of the design. With the extremely heavy armor, the aesthetic choices, and low speed, the Atlas will typically tank anything you can throw at it while slowly walking up to its targets to bring them into range of the majority of its weapons or smash them to pieces.
• Long-Range Fighter: In stark contrast to the A and D variants, the AS7-RS has only an SRM-4 for close engagements, instead boasting twin Large lasers, an AC-10 and an LRM-15 rack. While it does sacrifice some overall punch, the RS variant nearly doubles its effective engagement range and is able to carry more shots in a similar tonnage of ammunition.
  • Taken to an extreme with the Kurita-designed K variant, which is practically a sniper 'Mech. Its primary armament is now a Gauss Rifle, complimented by dual ER Large lasers and an LRM-20, along with an Anti-Missile System to thwart easy retaliation. A pair of Medium pulse lasers is its only real concession to close combat.
• Macross Missile Massacre: In two flavors: an LRM-20 in the left shoulder and an SRM-6 on the left hip, letting it volley missiles at any range. The Atlas AS7-A variant plays this to the hilt: It mounts only an LRM-10, but compensates with five SRM-6 launchers in its torso, meaning at close range it will absolutely sandblast anything that gets close.
• Mighty Glacier: The 'Mech carries an enormous amount of weaponry, enough heat sinks to keep heat under control, and almost twenty tons of armor, but its cruising speed is pretty lousy.
• Power Fist: The Atlas has the "Battlefists" Quirk if they're allowed in-game, which when combined with its massive weight makes it an utter terror in melee, beyond being just an utter terror in general.
• Rage Helm: The cockpit of the Atlas was deliberately designed to invoke the image of a grimacing skull for that extra intimidation factor.
• Series Mascot: The covers of many a sourcebook feature an Atlas, including the current version of Total Warfare, the "core" core rulebook. An image of its iconic skull head is often used to represent the franchise itself; for example it provides the Steam library icon and desktop launcher icon for BattleTech (2018).
• Skull for a Head: Deliberately designed with one, as part of its goal to be a Weapon for Intimidation.
• Superior Successor: Though they look extremely different, mechanically the Atlas' default loadout is basically an up-armored, up-gunned version of the older Orion heavy 'Mech. Fittingly, its development was spearheaded by Aleksandr Kerensky, whose personal 'Mech was an Orion, and though he himself doesn't seem to have used one, his second in command Aaron deChevalier did.
• Weapon for Intimidation: No less than General Aleksandr Kerensky himself demanded the Atlas be as intimidating as possible, "so fear itself will be our ally."

Awesome AWS-8Q

The last word in Shock and Awe. . . until the Clans fielded the Hellstar

Production Year: 2665
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 80 tons

The Awesome was initially designed in 2665 to replace the similarly large Striker, and it succeeded with flying colors: Becoming a rugged, sturdy fire support Assault 'Mech that sees plenty of action well into the present.

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• Arm Cannon: The right arm of the Awesome carries its primary PPC, with the other two distributed across its torso sections.
• Beam Spam: Commonly seen firing triple-PPC salvos at anything unlucky enough to be within half a kilometer's range, and able to consistently pump out these devastating broadsides with little pause.
• Boring, but Practical: 80 tons, average assault 'Mech speed, thick armor, 3 PPCs, and enough heat sinks to fire them nearly constantly with some modest heat management planning. And that's really everything you need to know about the Awesome. That, and its low cost: 6.5 million C-bills makes it one of the most affordable assault 'Mechs on the market, cheaper than some Inner Sphere heavies. Most similar-tonnage OmniMechs could buy you a lance worth of Awesomes.
• Inventional Wisdom: Not the beloved AWS-8Q model itself, but historically any Awesome variant that doesn't just double down on the original's brutal yet elegant design of "heat sinks and PPCs, wise guy" tends to try to fix what doesn't need fixing until it's good and broken. This started with the very first variant; on paper swapping out the PPCs and replacing them with long range missile racks kind of makes sense, trading one form of long-ranged firepower for another, but in practice the result is an over-sinked mess that struggles to outcompete lighter mechs with similar armament, while filling up its interior with ammo for enemy crits to cook off so it's also much less sturdy.
• Lightning Gun: Carries 3 PPCs. That's a lot of Shock and Awe.
• Long-Range Fighter: The PPC is meant for long-range. The Awesome packs three of them. The later -9M version leaned into this and upgraded the PPCs to extended-range versions.
• Made of Indestructium: A classic "zombie 'Mech" ^explanationa 'Mech you basically have to kill by headshot or central torso destruction to stop, the Awesome has almost max armour for its weight, carries no explosive components or ammunition, and has a ton of Heat Sinks (or 18 tonnes if you want to be literal) that makes Critical Hits against anything important much less likely. Though it lacks a center torso-mounted weapon, its PPCs are evenly distributed throughout its body and it can, hypothetically, still do damage as long as the legs, CT, and head stay intact... Just not a lot of it.
• Mighty Glacier: The Awesome carries almost maximum armour for its weight class, and due to the immense heat generation and long range of its weapons it tends to stand still and snipe. Later versions up-gunned the engine and upgraded to double-strength heat sinks, but the Awesome still won't set any speed records.
• Power Fist: Under the Quirks rules, has the "Battlefists" quirk, making its punches more effective than a 'Mech of similar weight. That big, clawlike left hand? Not just for show.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: In addition to the 3 PPCs, carries one Small Laser, just in case an enemy gets within the PPCs' minimum range but is outside the range of its Power Fist.
• Takes One to Kill One: A popular saying about the Awesome is that the only defence against it is another Awesome. This isn't strictly true gameplay-wise, but at 3025 tech levels there are few 'Mechs capable of outright hard-countering an Awesome's sheer durability and long-range firepower.
• When All You Have Is Particle Cannons: ...then everything looks like a target profile. There is very little that's fancy or requires finesse with an Awesome, being one of the game's finest examples of pure brute-force projection. Its sole solution to any problem placed before it is "drown the target in repeated PPC fire until it stops being a problem."
• Vertical Mecha Fins: One of the most striking visual elements of the Awesome is the pair large fins rising above its shoulders, presumably to protect the shoulder actuators from side attack or as part of its heat dissipation systems. Their exact size and sometimes even where exactly they sprout from is very much a case of Depending on the Artist - sometimes they're very large and are attached to the forearm or elbow, and other times, they're smaller and attached much closer to the shoulder, and sometimes they're depicted as very thin, and other times as rather thick. Regardless, in most depictions, the top of the fins is the highest point on the 'Mech.

Banshee BNC-3E

Unlike its namesake, the wail of this Banshee heralds little more than the arrival of a really sad MechWarrior.

Production Year: 2475
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 95 tons

Back in 2445, the Banshee was an impressively fast close combat Assault 'Mech in spite of its weight... But it was quickly noted as being extremely undergunned and underwhelming in performance for its class, and quickly gained a nasty reputation and a level of regretful longevity simply because nobody save the truly desperate wants to use it.

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• Arm Cannon: Notable for being one of the few Mechs to only have one in certain variants. While the default 3E version has two fully articulated humanoid hands, the upgunned 3S completely replaces the lower left arm with a PPC as opposed to adding a hardpoint to the side of the forearm or using a detachable rifle-style grip mount.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Banshee is one of the deadlier 'Mechs in the base game in melee combat (especially without Quirks, as it means no Battlefists which the Banshee hasn't got anyway), and as its charge allows it to deal headchopper damage, but if it's denied a brawl it's little more than a fire magnet.
• Close-Range Combatant: Its intended role. Which it doesn't even do particularly well.
• Cool Shades: The armored visor of its cockpit is modeled to look like these.
• Even Beggars Won't Choose It: Even with its original production run stopped in the 25th century, the Banshee survived the Succession Wars with a third of its number intact, because no commander wanted it in their frontline units. While its contemporaries the Mackie and the Emperor went extinct due to attrition, the Banshee soldiered on because it was rarely ever in use.
• Inventional Wisdom: The Banshee was intended as a fast brawler, using its mass and speed to close on lighter foes and obliterate them... And it's equipped with long-range weaponry with minimum ranges, and doesn't even have Jump Jets allowing it to skirmish or turn around easily. The original also carries 16 heat sinks, which is more heat than the Banshee can realistically generate even while running at full speed and Alpha Striking.
• Lightning Bruiser: What it was intended to be - it carries a massive engine that lets it move much faster than most assault-class 'Mechs, but it doesn't have room for much firepower as a result. One variant produced by the Lyran Commonwealth during the technology-strapped Succession Wars downgrades the engine, which frees up over a quarter of the 'Mech's total weight for equipment. This moved it into Mighty Glacier territory, reducing the speed to typical assault 'Mech levels but letting it haul enough guns to fight properly. After the rediscovery of extra-light engines and double heatsinks, the Lyrans combined the recovered technology with their slower, more heavily-armed variant to restore its speed to that of the original model and implemented some of the rediscovered weapons like a gauss rifle, fully realizing the 'Mech's potential as a fast, hard-hitting assault 'Mech.^note Notably, when Catalyst Game Labs was designing its new line of plastic BattleTech miniatures in 2020, the design they used for the Banshee depicts one of these upgunned variants rather than the standard 3E model. This is partially because one of the designers has a particular fondness for those variants, and partially so that when people buy the box set that includes the Banshee, they'll actually use the damn thing and not feel like they wasted their money.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Has the "Bad Reputation" Quirk when these are allowed. The Banshee's anemic offenses means it's not a very popular 'Mech, with the price-point, space, weight, and maintenance requirements of an assault 'Mech without the firepower to match.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Carries a Small Laser in its head, for those occasions when something is just outside the reach of its (much more damaging) fists but inside its other weapons' minimum range.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: An In-Universe example. Recovery of the Helm Memory Core and the discovery of XL engines and Double Heat Sinks gave the Banshee the weight savings and tools to actually accomplish the role to which it was originally intended while still carrying respectable weaponry, and removed its bad reputation. Banshee variants made post-3039 do not have the "Bad Reputation" quirk.
• Skull for a Head: The first 'Mech to feature this. Unlike the Atlas, don't expect it to inspire that much terror.
• Stone Wall: Due to its oversized engine and respectable 15 tonnes of armour, the Banshee's limited space makes it less deadly than an Enforcer (a medium 'Mech half its weight) on offense. It is still an assault 'Mech, however, and will survive a long time if left alone (which it will be, because it's a Banshee).
• The Workhorse: Subverted. The Banshee is one of the oldest assault 'Mech models still present in the Inner Sphere, but it's not because it's good, it's because most of them never saw combat. None of the Banshees present in the Inner Sphere in 3025 were less than five hundred years old.

BattleMaster BLR-1G

A sweet ride for any battlefield commander.

^{Click here to see the original Unseen design}

Production Year: 2633
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 85 tons

The BattleMaster is a ubiquitous part of any major Battletech theater of war: Big, powerful, and a fantastic command 'Mech. While it's only ever been made in fairly low numbers since its 27th century introduction due to its sheer mass and cost, pretty much anybody who has one loves it, and everybody who doesn't have one desperately wants one.

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• Adaptational Badass: Its Dougram counterpart, the Bigfoot, was not only in the same size class as the title mech (adapted as the Medium weight Shadow Hawk), it was slightly under-gunned in comparison, carrying only a handheld rifle and shoulder missile launcher, with the tubes in its chest being smoke launchers rather than laser emitters.
• Arm Cannon: Defied with the initial artwork, which showed the PPC held in the 'Mech's right hand (and looking like a high-tech sawed-off double-barrel shotgun). Later artwork plays this straight, putting the PPC along the 'Mech's forearm.
• Beam Spam: While the original design had four front-facing and two rear-facing medium lasers, most adaptations (particularly video games) tend to put all six up front, letting it pull off an extremely impressive lightshow.
• Chest Blaster: Depending on the variant and media depiction, the BattleMaster has either four or six medium lasers in its pectoral armour, letting it pull off a credible Mazinger Z impression whenever it's not dodging the copyright lawyers for Fang of the Sun Dougram.
• Close-Range Combatant: Downplayed. While a BattleMaster is certainly not harmless at long range, thanks to its biggest gun being a PPC, it's at close quarters where it really lives up to that grandiose name. In the unlikely scenario that something can get through its hail of missile, laser, and machinegun fire, it'll soon find itself pummeled to death by two gigantic metal fists.
• Frontline General: A "command 'Mech," the BattleMaster is designed to allow its pilot to effectively coordinate a large force while blowing the hell out of the opposition personally. The "Command 'Mech" Quirk (which the BattleMaster naturally possesses) adds to the Initiative of all friendly units. The trope also made two of the major leaders of the setting — both Hanse Davion and Takashi Kurita piloted Battlemasters extensively, and were exemplars of this trope in action.
• Guy in Back: Most BattleMasters at least have space for a second seat, and some include a specialized command console or other equipment to allow for a full second pilot to operate the machine. Most often, there will a pilot to handle actually driving the 'Mech while the second seat is occupied by a battlefield commander. Under Quirks rules, the BattleMaster has the "Rumble Seat" Quirk, indicating the presence of an additional space in the cockpit for someone besides the pilot. The BLR-1C, 1Gbc, and 1Gc variants all mount Command Consoles (basically a full second cockpit with additional command and control features).
• He Who Must Not Be Seen: One of the Unseen, the original BattleMaster was was based on the Soltic HT-128 Bigfoot from Fang of the Sun Dougram. A Project Phoenix version was eventually created, and it has since been Reseen with new artwork to divorce it from its inspiration.
• Jack of All Trades: The BattleMaster is an exceptionally well-rounded 'Mech, moving at a respectable (for an assault 'Mech) 64.8 km/h (4 hexes walking or 6 running in game terms), packing a PPC, six medium lasers (three in each side torso, two of which are rear-mounted), an SRM-6, and two machine guns, it spits out respectable firepower at all ranges and can even defend itself well from infantry attacks.
• National Weapon: Although they didn't start making it until after the Jihad, the BattleMaster is noted to be extremely popular with the Federated Suns, with most of their assault 'Mech lances including "at least one" BattleMaster.
• Series Mascot: Before being Unseen, the BattleMaster was one of the iconic 'Mechs of the franchise, appearing on several book covers and, at one point, as part of the BattleTech logo. Since being Reseen, it has returned to featured status, gracing several sourcebook covers (notably the Tech Manual). The new Classic has also graced a couple of prominent covers, including Interstellar Operations and (in Hanse Davion's colors) the cover of the Game of Armored Combat basic box set.
  • It's become such a series mascot, in fact, that the official icons for moderators, staff and official volunteers on Catalyst's own forums for the game are Battlemasters.
• Shoulder Cannon: In this case, holding a six pack of short-range missiles.
• Throw-Away Guns: With Quirks enabled, it can detach the arm-mounted PPC. In-universe, Hanse Davion did this after pistol-whipping an enemy 'Mech so hard he broke the weapon's barrel.

Berserker BRZ-A3

Rip and Tear, until it is done

Production Year: 3056
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

Possibly the single most dangerous individual design to ever come out of the Inner Sphere, the Berserker is the ideal Lyran design. Carrying enough armor to take fire without much worry, a complement of weaponry that can be effective at any range, and an engine big enough to run at medium 'Mech speeds, it would be the definitive answer to any Clan design it would run into, were it not for the fact that it is ludicrously expensive even by Clanner standards.

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• Awesome, yet Impractical: More or less the core of the 'Mech itself. It is an absolutely deadly machine by the standards of any age, but too costly to reliably produce. For context, for the price of a measly one Berserker, you can get 3 Atlases and have money left over for a few UrbanMechs.
• Close-Range Combatant: It can certainly fight at medium to long ranges with a PPC and a pair of Large Pulse Lasers, but the biggest concern for anyone facing the design is the gargantuan hatchet it brings.
• Lightning Bruiser: It weighs in at 100 tons with the expected firepower for its size, combined with medium 'Mech speeds. At eight hexes of movement running flat out with the MASC engaged, it can get up in a target's face in a hurry to put the hatchet into use.
• Lightning Gun: Carries an Extended Range PPC for long range combat.
• Limit Break: Normally outfitted with MASC, which allows it to run at an incredible (for assault 'Mech standards) 86 KPH.
• Kill It with Fire: Has a head mounted flamer, mostly for intimidation, but it also works surprisingly well on any unarmored infantry that get too close for comfort.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The B3 model changes from a close-range brawler to a fire support design, swapping the pulse lasers for a pair of LRM-10 launchers.
• Point Defenseless: Subverted. It carries an Anti-Missile System to handle incoming missile fire, along with a Guardian ECM Suite to make it harder to hit. And, considering the 'Mech costs roughly the same as an entire heavy 'Mech lance, the ability to avoid and defend itself from missile fire is more or less mandatory.
• Superior Successor: Depending on who you ask. The Free Worlds League saw the Berserker and created the Neanderthal in response, a 'Mech twenty tons lighter, almost as capable, and most importantly, significantly cheaper.
• Sword and Gun: It has the ER PPC in one arm and the hatchet in the other.

Charger CRG-1A1

The big 'Mech that couldn't.

Production Year: 2665
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 80 tons

The Charger is seen in the Inner Sphere as an example of abject design failure. It was designed to be a highly manouverable 80 ton 'Mech to be used for scouting out enemy positions and survive the ordeal; for that, it was given a 50 ton engine that allowed it to run at the blinding speed (for an assault 'Mech) of 86.4 KPH, but has a firepower comparable to something a quarter its size.

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• Beam Spam: Technically the base model's firepower revolves around this, as it equips a respectable number of lasers. The problem is they are small lasers, so burning mean phrases in your enemy's armour is pretty much the most damage you can inflict using them.
• Close-Range Combatant: When your only ranged weapon is a Small Laser, you're pretty much this by default. The Charger is completely harmless to anything more than eight hexes away (eight being the Charger's running speed, because it's more dangerous for its melee charge than its ranged weaponry).
• Crippling Overspecialization: Built into its design. The designers of the Charger wanted a scout 'Mech with the speed of a medium built into the frame of an assault-class, and no weapons that would tempt the pilot to actually enter combat. They got exactly what they asked for, creating a 'Mech that can run fast and tank an impressive amount of hits but literally cannot do anything else. It falls into this with regards to offensive options as well, as it has only a battery of small lasers and can't harm anything that is farther away than the 'Mech's running speed. Had the Charger been built five tons lighter, it would have had room for more weapons, more armor, and retained the same speed profile.
• Epic Fail:
  • In virtually every possible way. The Charger comes in at 7.5 million C-Bills, enough to buy a Black Knight and have money left over, or multiple light 'Mechs that are actually suited for recon. It has an absolutely gargantuan 400-rated engine (engines above that rating are not constructed) that makes it as fast as a medium 'Mech, but only carries ten tons of armor, meaning it's very lightly armored for an assault 'Mech. Those two factors together means it has a whopping 2.5 tons of space available for guns. The SLDF couldn't get rid of it fast enough, and the manufacturers had already constructed over a thousand of them by the time word got out about how bad it was. Sure, it hits hard enough in melee, but odds are it'll be picked apart by lighter 'Mechs before it gets close enough to do real damage. It didn't even mount any sort of advanced sensors or Active Probe equipment to help it scout. Fan theories for the sheer lack of applicability for the 'Mech range from the design being intended for dirty, unpleasant war-fighting, to outright graft on the part of the designers, but the design company only remained solvent because the Succession Wars destroyed better designs on such a scale that even the Charger started to look appealing.
  • The Capellans managed to somehow make the Charger even worse with the 1L model, which trades off four and a half tons of armor and all of its Small Lasers for a Large Laser and two Medium Lasers, leaving the CGR-1L with all of five and a half tons of armor and a pathetic array of weapons for an assault 'Mech that's still prone to overheating, albeit still making it more able to beat up on 30-40 ton scouts. Still, the 1L remains in Capellan use as a training 'Mech, and according to in-universe rumor, as a punishment for dissident soldiers. That said, most 1Ls were upgraded to the much more capable 1A5 configuration.
• Equipment Upgrade: Virtually every variant of the Charger other than the standard 1A1 pattern is an equipment upgrade due to how spectactularly awful the 1A1 model is. And owing to how awful the Charger is and how many of them are still lying around, there have been quite a few attempts to make a useful 'Mech out of them, some quite successfuly turned it from a mildly capable head bashing machine to a deadly Lightning Bruiser.
  • The 1A5 and 1A9 models make the sensible trade of downgrading the Charger's engine from a 400 to a 320, reducing its speed to about 65 kmh but freeing up room for other weapons. The 1A5 uses this extra space to mount an AC/20 and trades the small lasers for two SRM-6s, a medium laser, and five tons more armor, making it a fast brawler, while the 1A9 uses the space to upgrade all the small lasers to mediums, mount an LRM-20, and four jump jets, making it a heavy harasser. These models are still relatively lightly-armed for 80-ton assault 'Mechs but fill a reasonable niche as relatively mobile assault 'Mechs, similar to the Victor.
  • The 3K model used an XL engine and ferro-fibrous armor to improve its durability while opening up more tonnage for weapons. It's still under-gunned for an assault 'Mech, but it's less horrible and can defend itself at range.
  • Even the Periphery got in on it with the 2A2, which embraces its original role as a heavy scout but instead discourages extended fights by replacing all the small lasers with Rocket Launcher 10s and a ton of armor with a Medium Laser. This gives the 2A2 a respectable punch but no endurance, thus if it gets into a fight, it wants to land a hit or two and get out.
  • The SA5 model then improved upon the 1A5 with a light engine, MASC to allow it to briefly reach the classic model's speed, and an LB-X AC/20 and two Streak SRM-6s in the place of the standard AC/20 and SRM-6s of the 1A5.
  • The SB model just throws the entire concept of the Charger as a fast assault 'Mech out the window by trading the engine way down to a 240-rated engine then uses all the spare tonnage on maxing armor, upgrading four Small Lasers to Large and the last to Medium, then puts everything left into heatsinks, giving it a similar role to the well-regarded Awesome. It's so radically changed in function that the CGR-SB was renamed from Charger to Challenger.
• Even Beggars Won't Choose It: By the end of the Third Succession War, five hundred of the original thousand Chargers were still in service. This was mostly because even though the destruction of the Succession Wars made any 'Mech better than not having a 'Mech at all, they rarely sent the design against anything larger than a Stinger or Wasp, and it was typically stuck on rear-area duty or garrison duty on lower-tech worlds where something that didn't need much maintenance was more important than being useful.
• Foil: To the UrbanMech, while the Urbie is a small, slow, (relatively) hard hitting light 'Mech, the Charger is a big, fast (relatively speaking), and weak hitting assault 'Mech. Most importantly, the UrbanMech is well regarded as a respectable and effective weapon for its intended purpose, while the Charger is a veritable Epic Fail.
• Giant Mook/Smash Mook: Tends to play this role when it appears in computer games. In MechWarrior 5, for example, it often shows up in waves of attackers alongside light and medium 'Mechs, tanks and helicopters in early-game defense missions, usually before you've ever even encountered any heavies, where they will continuously try to ram into you in melee, which is bad news considering they're nearly double the size of the largest 'Mechs you're likely to have at that point.
• Idiot Ball: Lore-wise, the designers were holding it firmly when they made this thing. Apparently they saw anything other than gathering data as a distraction, which explains its all round awfulness.
• Inventional Wisdom: Basically the entire 'Mech. Nobody wanted an assault 'Mech that was designed for scouting and had a price tag several times any other scout 'Mech. If the Succession Wars hadn't created a crushing demand for literally any 'Mech anyone could get their hands on, the manufacturers would have gone out of business.
• Joke Character: Outside a very specific niché (hunting down medium 'Mechs), the Charger is fairly useless on the tabletop and is very rarely seen. Since there is no Fog of War or hidden hexes on the tabletop, its In-Universe use (scouting) doesn't even come into play. Outside the tabletop it is even worse, as no other medium that has managed to implement melee - the one place the Charger really excels - actually includes the Charger until MechWarrior 5. Ironically, the mechanics of the first game adaptation that implements melee, BattleTech (2018), would make it even more terrifying in melee as the game's mechanics would allow it to follow up a melee attack with attacks from all five of its small lasers, something it can't do on the tabletop. MechWarrior 5 adds the Charger with the "Heroes of the Inner Sphere" expansion, but doesn't actually add the ability to punch until "Legends of the Kestrel Lancers" and its fists still can't be upgraded until the third DLC, "Call to Arms", which also adds an apocryphal model with a proper melee weapon. Instead, the game gives the Charger surprisingly-generous hardpoints^note MechWarrior 5 generally does not allow installing weapons of a larger size category than the standard equipment of a 'Mech, but it allows the CGR-1A1 to upsize all of its small energy weapons to medium energy weapons, which the 1A1 can't really use due to its overweight engine.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • The one aspect where the Charger truly shines, is in hunting down smaller 'Mechs or ground vehicles and bludgeoning them in melee, because while it carries armaments comparative to a light 'Mech, being shoulder tackled by an 80-ton 'Mech going at 86 KPH is still quite painful. This made it quite useful in the apocalypse fest that was the Succession Wars, since most weaponry of the time couldn't take it down quickly enough, it could comfortable charge into the fray, punt kick a whole lance of tanks, then run back before any serious damage was inflicted.
  • The CGR-SB Challenger configuration looks exactly like the common CGR-1A1 pattern, not just sharing the chassis, but the same category of weapons in the same places, and the emitters for different sizes of lasers look pretty much the same in current depictions. However, its four Large Lasers and one Medium Laser give it actually respectable firepower for an 80-ton 'Mech.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Capellans got their hands on some Chargers and (in one of their smarter moves) downgraded the engine, freeing up almost half the 'Mech's weight to shove in more weapons and armor while still maintaining speed comparable to heavy 'Mechs. Then the Kuritans got the idea of doing much the same by instead replacing the standard engine with an XL engine, gaining nearly as much weight without trading any speed, and then just for good measure, installed five jump jets.
• Meaningful Name: They called it the Charger because there is only one thing the standard model is good at: charging in head first into the fight, smashing another 'Mech's cockpit in, then retreating.
• Mighty Glacier: The CGR-SB variant replaces the massive 400-rated engine and drops it all the way down to a 240 engine, reducing its speed to 56 kmh, then uses the over 40 tons of saved weight to max out its armor, upgrade the Small Lasers in the arms and torso to Large Lasers, and upgrade the laser in the head to a Medium Laser, then uses the rest of the tonnage afforded to it on 18 heat sinks, taking it up to 28 heat sinks when including the 10 in the engine. The end result is something similar to an Awesome if the Awesome was built around Large Lasers instead of PPCs. It is in fact so different in function from a standard Charger that the CGR-SB is no long called a Charger and is instead known as the Challenger and is essentially a completely different 'Mech built off the same chassis and using upgrades of the existing weapons so as to be able to repurpose the existing targeting systems of the Charger and generally minimize the effort of the modification.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Suffers from the same "Bad Reputation" Quirk as the Banshee, for pretty much the exact same reasons (albeit even more extreme), but while later pattern Banshees shed the reputation, the Charger never loses it.
• Stone Wall: In its standard configuration, it's something of a mobile stone wall combining the ground speed of a Kintaro and the armouring of an Awesome... And the offensive weaponry of a Locust, which is to say it's fast, it's armored, and it has virtually no firepower.
• Superior Successor: Most variants of the Charger are this by default, since the standard variant is awful at pretty much anything you could want a 'Mech to do except maybe throwing mechanical hands. The variants, however, are actually dangerous seeing as they still retain most of the speed, are almost always tougher and carry hard hitting weaponry normally associated with assault 'Mechs.
  • The model would also later be reworked thoroughly by the Draconis Combine into the actually well regarded Hatamoto-Chi, which is far harder hitting and far more successful. ^note Poetically, the Hatamoto-Chi is itself a Sketchy Successor to the Star League-era Thug, having the exact same armament but half the heat sinking capacity.
  • Solaris jocks took a different tack in improving the Charger and instead focused on its great speed and decent melee capabilities. With the help of an XL engine to free up weight, triple-strength myomer to make it even faster when it gets hot, and appropriately armed with a Mace and Claws, the Cudgel was born. Even outside of melee, the Cudgel vastly outguns the Charger.
• Vertical Mecha Fins: Not unlike the Awesome, each shoulder of the Charger has a large fin above it, and like the Awesome, it's not entirely clear what they're for, especially since the Charger can't really justify them as part of the heat dissipation system as it generates little heat and only has the standard engine heatsinks.
• Violation of Common Sense: Seriously, whose idea was it to build a scout 'Mech that stands ten meters tall and costs as much as any other assault-class 'Mech?
• The Workhorse: A subversion like the Banshee. The Charger is an incredibly old model that (together with the Banshee and the Stalker) makes up a lion's share of surviving Inner Sphere assault 'Mechs by 3025, but mainly this is because it's been kept out of actual combat. Even its main user, the Draconis Combine, mainly uses it as a garrison 'Mech because it looks imposing and is (relatively) cheap to maintain.

Cyclops CP-10-Z

If you want to coordinate 324+ 'Mechs at once, accept no substitutes.

Production Year: 2710
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 90 tons

The Cyclops was envisioned as an assault 'Mech and headquarters unit for Star League Defense Force field commanders, using its Tacticon B-2000 Battle Computer to allow the pilot to effectively command up to brigade-sized units. Unfortunately by the end of the Succession Wars, not even 10% of surviving Cyclopses had B-2000's due to them becoming Lost Technology, instead typically being replaced by Collapsible Command Modules or C3 Master Computers which were easier to procure for command 'Mechs.

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• Achilles' Heel: The Cyclops carries a lot of LRM and autocannon ammo in the mostly empty Left Torso, and a ton of SRM ammo in the Centre Torso. A lucky crit to either location will One-Hit Kill the entire machine, and due to its rather lackluster armour (just a little over half of what it can possibly mount) and short range expect the ammo bins to be mostly full by the time that armour is torn off.
• BFG: Most Cyclops variants have an AC/20 in the Right Torso, much like the Atlas. That being said, the Cyclops is specialized to command far out of weapon range, so its firepower mainly serves to discourage enemies from getting too close. Some variants do have a Gauss Rifle instead, letting the Cyclops keep more distance from the front lines—special mention goes to the CP-11-B, which caries a pair of Gauss Rifles.
• Chest Blaster: Carries an SRM-4 and a ton of ammo in the centre torso. Unfortunately this also means a single lucky hit to the CT will make the Cyclops go up in smoke.
• Cyber Cyclops: It's in the name, the cockpit is big and circular much like an eye. It's also even more of a target than standard 'Mech heads due to the Battle Computer.
• Frontline General: Heavily discouraged for the few with a B-2000 due to their priceless nature, but the majority of Cyclops 'Mechs fit into this role nicely. While they only have 10 tons of armor, they're still 90-ton assault 'Mechs and they are more than capable of providing fire support while simultaneously coordinating allies.
• Glass Cannon: Mounting a very heavy 360-rating engine and a decent kit for knife-fighting range (almost exactly the same as the Atlas), the Cyclops has the speed of a heavy 'Mech and is nasty up close, but has mediocre armouring at best. Not helped is the Cyclops's usage of heavy (and explosion-prone) autocannons and missile launchers as weapons, compared to the more energy-based Battlemaster. The most common Succession Wars variant, the CP-10-Q, was specifically designed to avoid this, dumping the autocannon for more missiles and armour that makes it more of a fire-support 'Mech.
• Inventional Wisdom: Imagine you've been charged with designing a dedicated assault-class command mech, built to include a powerful Tacticon B-2000 Battle Computer and intended to be used by a Frontline General to coordinate his troops on the field of battle. How would you design the default version of such a machine? Something with heavy armour that's equipped with long-ranged weapons to allow the commander to stay back out of harm's way and lend fire support in between issuing orders, yeah? Nah, make it a Glass Cannon with most of its weapons being intended for knife-fighting range, most of which will explode if it gets hit in the torso too hard. No wonder there are barely any left which retain their Battle Computers...
• Lost Technology: Besides the high-end Battle Computer that can help coordinate an entire brigade, the primary production facility for the 'Mech itself was destroyed late in the Amaris Civil War, meaning spare parts were exceptionally hard to come by, which was made worse by the design's relatively light armor and being seen as a priority target.
• Support Party Member: The Cyclops's hat, being able to streamline a 'Mech Lance's communications while firing at priority targets. Battle Computers and Collapsible Command Modules provide a bonus to initiative, while C3 Computers let 'Mechs substitute firing ranges with their allies to allow for more accurate attacks.
• Too Awesome to Use: The Battle Computer that the Cyclops was initially designed around lets it lead an entire Battalion on a planetary surface, but they're also LosTech so they're virtually irreplacable. Any Cyclops has a massive target painted on it, and all it takes is one lucky shot to the cockpit to throw entire invasion forces into dissaray.

Fafnir FNR-5

It hasn't got subtlety, agility or endurance. What it does have going for it, is two very big fucking guns.

Production Year: 3063
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

Shortly after the Clan invasions, someone in the Lyran Commonwealth asked the question "Could we take the biggest weapon we can possibly mount on a BattleMech and stick two of them in an effective design?" Nobody stopped them, so the Fafnir was designed. An extremely Lyran design, it's slow, heavily armored, and hilariously over-gunned.

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• BFG: The biggest non-artillery weapon in existence. Two of them, in fact, along with plentiful ammunition stores. The Heavy Gauss Rifle is so powerful it can't be mounted in an arm or a turret, because the recoil would rip it off.
• Chest Blaster: Its chest is pretty much entirely dedicated to the humungous weaponry.
• Close-Range Combatant: Works best at knife fighting range, as the Heavy Gauss Rifle faces a sharp drop-off in damage as range increases. The later -5x variant swaps them for Improved Heavy Gauss Rifles, which do slightly less maximum damage but do consistent damage across all ranges.
• Difficult, but Awesome: It is not an easy task to bring its two cannons to their most effective range, especially in such a large and slow moving 'Mech, but if it manages to, it turns into death incarnate.
• Made of Indestructium: Understanding that the Fafnir is a rather easy target, given its size and speed, the designers gave it so much armour that it's almost comically hard to kill it. Even if everything else is blown apart, it still has a medium pulse laser mounted on its head, so it can be annoying to the enemy to the very end.
• Mighty Glacier: Being an Assault 'Mech, it's not fast, and it's not agile. It is, however, extremely heavily armed and armored, with two eighteen-ton weapons and 19.5 tons of armor.
• One-Hit Kill: Its specialty, given the size of its guns. Anything smaller than an assault 'Mech that takes a double barrel blast from its main weaponry in a vital component is almost guaranteed to immediately cease functioning, explode, or cease functioning shortly before exploding.
• Urban Warfare: As the Fafnir isn't very agile, it excels in fighting in an environment where its targets don't have much room to maneuver.

Great Turtle GTR-1

When the best offense is a good defense

Production Year: 3067
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

Unquestionably the toughest BattleMech ever produced, the Great Turtle takes defensive warfare to a new extreme. Combining advanced Hardened Armour, a Torso-Mounted Cockpit and the stability of a quadrupedal design, this BattleMech is capable of shrugging off blows that would fell an Atlas. This focus on survivability comes at the expense of weaponry, with the 'Mech carrying only a Large X-Pulse laser and a trio of Medium-X Pulse Lasers in the head and torso.

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• Beam Spam: Both versions of the Great Turtle carry an all-energy loadout in order to increase the 'Mech’s survivability.
• Cephalo Thorax: It is difficult to notice due to the Great Turtle being a quad battlemech, but its cockpit is actually located in its torso rather than its head. This gives it the somewhat creepy ability to keep functioning even if its head is destroyed, albeit with penalties to gunnery and piloting due to the loss of its head-mounted sensors.
• Crippling Overspecialization: As noted elsewhere, the Great Turtle is the toughest 'Mech in the Inner Sphere by a country mile. In exchange, it has a sluggish top speed and carries fewer weapons than most medium 'Mechs.
• Gradual Grinder: The Great Turtle is equipped to slowly wear its opponents down, chipping away at enemy 'Mechs with its highly accurate pulse lasers while shrugging off any return fire with its unparalleled armour.
• Losing Your Head: As mentioned above, the Great Turtle can keep fighting even if its head is blown clean off. However, the 'Mech is so heavily armoured that destroying its head is actually quite difficult; the Hardened Armour means that only a point-blank shot from a Heavy Gauss Rifle is capable of decapitating it in a single hit.
• Made of Iron: The Great Turtle boasts forty tons of armour. That’s the same weight as an entire Assassin battlemech.
• Min-Maxing: The GTR-1’s weapons loadout, while anaemic by Assault 'Mech standards, is surprisingly optimised. It uses X-Pulse Lasers, whose innate accuracy bonuses are boosted by both a Targeting Computer and the Great Turtle’s Improved Short Range Targeting design quirk. At close range this results in a cumulative -4 bonus to hit, which is absolutely enormous and means the 'Mech will rarely miss its target.
• No-Sell: The Great Turtle’s Hardened Armour nullifies special armour-piercing munitions, including Tandem-Charge Missiles, Armour-Piercing Autocannon Ammunition and Battlemech Tasers.
• Removed Achilles' Heel: Most battlemechs, no matter how strong, fast, or powerful, can be felled with a lucky headshot. The Great Turtle’s Torso-Mounted Cockpit removes this weakness, forcing enemies to take it down the hard way.
  • The Great Turtle’s lack of mobility is also somewhat lessened by the addition of Jump Jets.
• Stone Wall: The Great Turtle takes this trope to extremes, almost to the point of being Nigh-Invulnerable. It mounts forty tons of Hardened Armour, which reduces all incoming damage by half, reduces critical hit rolls and nullifies the effects of special armour-piercing munitions. Its cockpit is mounted in the torso, giving it the almost unique ability to keep fighting even after being decapitated, and it uses a standard engine so losing a torso section won’t result in a mission-kill. Being a quad battlemech also makes the Great Turtle far more stable and resistant to being knocked over, and it can lose one leg without being impeded too much. It carries no explosive components, and its Compact Gyro is difficult to score crits on. The result is a 'Mech that can endure a truly staggering amount of punishment, far more than even the vaunted Awesome and Archangel.
• Sub System Damage: The alternative GTR-2 version goes out of its way to counteract this, dropping the Hardened Armour of the original in favour of directly armouring the 'Mech’s internal components. The result is a variant that is more vulnerable to direct damage, but is even more resistant to critical hits than the standard version.

Highlander HGN-732

Airborne delivery incoming, 90 tonnes of Brave Scot arriving on scene.

Production Year: 2592
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 90 tons

The Highlander was the Star League Defense Force's most well-known 'Mech, excelling at being a defensive stalwart in urban settings and for its infamous innovation of the "Death From Above" maneuver. However, an original Highlander is all but impossible to find in the 31st century, as its original production facilities were devastated during the Succession Wars, and modern Highlanders trade the advanced tech that it used to have for armor and heat sinks.

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• Arm Cannon: The right arm, where whichever BFG this Highlander model sports is installed.
• BFG: The right arm consists almost entirely of either a Gauss Rifle or AC/10 or AC/20, depending on available tech. The 733P variant slots a PPC in there instead, bringing the BFG of energy weapons to the fight.
• Chest Blaster: Two medium lasers in the right breast, and an LRM-20 rack in the left.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Another design commissioned exclusively for the SLDF, which proliferated throughout the Inner Sphere in short order. The SLDF Royals got their own version with double heat sinks and better missile guidance systems; this was the version used by the Royal Black Watch Regiment, the First Lord's own elite bodyguards.
• Goomba Stomp: One of the few assault 'Mechs with jump jets as standard equipment. The "Death from Above" attack (jumping and attempting to land your 'Mech on an opponent) even gets a specific designation when used in a Highlander: the Highlander Burial. When playing with Quirks the Highlander has the "Reinforced Legs" Quirk, taking half damage from DFA attacks.
• Jack of All Stats/Lightning Bruiser: Somewhat between the two, keeping in mind that as an assault 'Mech it is already firmly in the 'bruiser' category. The Highlander is not pigeonholed into a specific combat role like the brawling Atlas or the sniping Awesome, instead fielding a selection of weapons for both close-range, medium-range and long-range combat and has some indirect fire capability. It has fairly impressive endurance thanks to its many heat sinks, generous armour and decent amount of ammunition. While its Alpha Strike is fairly mediocre, it also seldom overheats or finds itself without anything to do. Also, with three jump jets standard, it has unusual mobility for an assault 'Mech and options for approaching or moving away from enemies that ground-locked assaults cannot take. For instance: where the heavier Atlas needs a pair of rear-facing lasers to deter backshooting because it's too cumbersome to turn around in time, the Highlander can simply use the jump jets to air-pivot around (since jumping incurs no movement point cost to turning) and bring its full arsenal to bear on the would-be backshooter.
• Jump Jet Pack: The heaviest 'Mech to have Jump Jets at its creation, the Highlander was the second jumping assault 'Mech introduced to the game after the Victor and the first to pass 90+ tons (In-Universe the Emperor, another 90-tonner, held this distinction first but it was not introduced to the game until some time after the Highlander).
• Lost Technology: Both Highlander factories were decimated in the Second Succession War and their production lines ruined, meaning no new Highlanders (only spare parts) were made between 2860 and 3030 when the production line was restarted. The HGN-733, as the new model was called, featured less advanced weaponry in return for more armour and heat sinks.
• Macross Missile Massacre: Carries an LRM-20 in the left torso and an SRM-6 in the left arm.
• Midseason Upgrade: Mechanically the Highlander is essentially an upgunned version of the SLDF's older Shadow Hawk medium 'Mech, having the same jump distance, similar battlefield role and the same weaponry (autocannon, LRM launcher, SRM launcher and medium lasers) but with everything turned up a notch or two.
• Not the Intended Use: The Highlander was originally given Jump Jets to function as an urban defence 'Mech. Pilots quickly discovered that said Jump Jets made for a fairly good weapon in emergencies.
• TV Head Robot: The Highlander's signature boxy head is, technically speaking, an extra layer of armour plating (it has the "Cowl" Quirk, adding extra armour to the back and sides of its head), but with the antennae on it very much resembles an old CRT TV.
• Wave-Motion Tuning Fork: Its right arm is often depicted with a pair of prongs, though they're really just armored plates to protect its main gun.

King Crab KGC-000

Pure, walking dakka.

Production Year: 2743
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

The Crab's bigger, angrier brother, requested by none other than Kerensky himself to be able to reduce a 'Mech to slag in a single salvo, and he got exactly what he wanted: the King Crab is a terrifying, hard-to-kill Command 'Mech of which one's only hope of surviving is hoping it runs out of ammo, which may not matter in the end.

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• Arm Cannon: The arms are entirely filled with an Autocannon/20 each.
• Awesome, but Impractical: It has two AC/20s. As Kerensky asked, that's enough to put most Mechs down in a single salvo. However, it only has a single ton of ammo for each cannon, and the only long-range weaponry it has are an LRM-15 (also with only a single ton of ammo) and a single Large Laser, meaning past the effective range of the autocannons it has almost nothing in the way of teeth. It also comes in at a cool ten million C-bills, making it more expensive than an Atlas.
• BFG: Boasts two AC/20s, and not much else.
• Close-Range Combatant: Its main weapons have dreadfully short range. If an opponent can stay out of it, they can take the 'Mech down without much trouble. If they get in that range, well. . . they probably won't be there very long.
• Crippling Overspecialization: With two AC/20s, even at 100 tons the 'Mech has little room for anything else, even sufficient ammo for its main guns. Its backup weapons consist of an LRM-15 and single Large Laser, to plink opponents outside the range of its massive autocannons. That Large Laser is also the only ammo-independent weapon the 'Mech has, which can leave the 'Mech very vulnerable in longer engagements if the very limited ammo supply for the autocannnons and missile launcher runs dry.
• "Instant Death" Radius: More than six squares away, you're generally ok. Closer up... Not so much.
• Lost Technology: By the end of the Amaris Civil War, the King Crab was pretty much extinct, with Kerensky taking the remaining models with him on the Exodus. ComStar were able to secure some of them, and place them in storage for future use.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: The King Crab was meant to be a Command 'Mech, with the ability to destroy any opposition in a single salvo. To be fair, it was pretty darn good at that last part, but its role as the centerpiece of a battle formation was ultimately usurped by the Atlas, which hit basically as hard and had greater versatility and battlefield longevity.
• Shoulder Cannon: After mounting the most dakka it can in the arms, the other, torso-mounted weapons take this position. The 000 model has the large laser and LRM-15 over the shoulders, while the 010 has the PPCs on the shoulders and ringed by the SRM-6s.
• Superior Successor:
  • The KGC-010 model was a prototype designed by the Star League to be the Command 'Mech the initial version failed at. It replaces the AC/20s with LB 10-X autocannons, rolling the space and weight savings into twin PPCs and SRM-6 launchers. Aleksandr Kerensky took the entire production run with him on the Exodus.
  • The KGC-001 was designed by ComStar in the leadup to the Battle of Tukayyid. This model has an XL engine, replaces the AC/20s with Gauss Rifles, trading a 25% decrease in damage for a 200% increase in range and tripling the ammo capacity^note the base model has two total tons of AC/20 ammo, five shots per ton; the 001 has four total tons of Gauss Rifle ammo, 8 shots per ton; this equals five shots for each AC/20 on the 000, sixteen shots per Gauss on the 001, upgrading the Large Laser to a Large Pulse Laser, and adding two Streak SRM-2 launchers. After proving itself on Tukayyid, this "Clanbuster" variant was licensed for widespread production throughout the Inner Sphere.
• Superweapon Surprise: Unbeknownst to anyone else, ComStar managed to repair the King Crab factory on Mars, and had plenty of them in the ComGuards' arsenal come the Battle of Tukayyid.
  • Tukayyid offered a second such surprise when, upon seeing King Crabs on the field, the Clans assumed they could safely engage them at medium-to-long range with little issue. Only to be stunned as they began to be methodically picked apart at extreme range by the twin gauss rifles of Comstar's brand new KGC-001 variant. In fact, Comstar had specially designed the -001 to be a nasty surprise for anyone who assumed they were going up against the familiar close-range superiority of the -0000 model.

Mackie MSK-6S

The Original BattleMech

Production Year: 2439
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 100 tons

The 25th century's biggest game-changer in warfare. The Mackie first entered testing in 2439, and for centuries was the Terran Hegemony's symbol of supremacy right up until the 28th century when it ceased production. Incredibly, there are still working examples of this 'Mech in the modern day, but nobody's going to go out of their way to use it.

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• Arm Cannon: Its arms are barely more than housings for the PPC and AC/10, but they are there.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Though it hasn't been produced since the Amaris Civil War, some Mackies remained operational for seven centuries, the last known operational 'Mechs being in 'Mech Museums on Atreus and Strana Mechty in 3042.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The first test of the Mackie against four Merkava heavy tanks. The Mackie utterly crushed the opposing force, in the case of the last tank quite literally. Mackies of the Hegemony Armed Forces inflicting this as a matter of course on the conventional armies of the Great Houses lead to the proliferation of the BattleMech as the prefered weapon of war throughout the Inner Sphere.
• Flawed Prototype: The original Mackie, even in its production run, used materials and components that hadn't been refined and designed specifically for use on BattleMechs (since BattleMechs didn't exist before the Mackie). As a result, by "modern" standards it's anemically armed for a 100-ton assault 'Mech, as many of its components were heavier or larger than later designs meant to be installed aboard 'Mechs.
• Game Changer: Kicked off the spree of BattleMech design and refinement that continues throughout the franchise's history. The Mackie didn't upend the balance of power between the Inner Sphere states, but it revolutionized how those states fought each other.
• Midseason Upgrade: Later versions of the Mackie (few though they were) brought the refined "standard" technology to the design, freeing up room for more weapons and better equipment.
• Superweapon Surprise: When the Terran Hegemony first debuted the Mackie, every single Successor State was awed by the capability of this new weapons platform, and immediately rushed to buy, beg, barter, or steal the blueprints so they could make their own.
• Unusual Weapon Mounting: Who decided the two medium lasers had to go over the 'Mech's crotch? The redone artwork in the recent BattleTech: Legends does move the lasers just marginally higher up the centerline to make it seem a little less suggestive.

Mauler MAL-1R

Questionable design decisions don't matter so much when you look this good.

Production Year: 3048
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 90 tons

One of the newest Assault 'Mechs to appear just on the eve of the Clan Invasion, the Mauler is a Draconis Combine fire support 'Mech designed in response to new military research and developments from both the Steiner and Davion sides of the Federated Commonwealth. Developed from several cast-off prototypes, including a few purchased from the Capellan Confederation, the design that would eventually become the Mauler was infamous for its many teething issues. It would spend over thirty years in the prototype phase as its numerous problems were discovered and addressed repeatedly, before eventually coming out as a competent 'Mech, albeit one that perhaps looked more lethal than it actually was. Regardless, the Mauler would go on to be a staple of the Draconis Combine's heavy units, and remain popular even after the discovery of Inner Sphere OmniMech technology.

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• Arm Cannon: The enormous gunbarrel arms are an iconic part of the Mauler's design, but despite their size they are normally large lasers (of the type found clutched in the hands of smaller 'Mechs such as the Phoenix Hawk). One variant takes the 'cannon' part literally and swaps the large lasers for big LB-10X autocannons.
• Chest Blaster: In the form of four small 20mm autocannons located where the obliques would be on a person.
• Development Hell: In-Universe, the below noted span of tests and prototype mistakes took thirty-three years before the design finally left the development phase and was manufactured as a full production 'Mech.
• Flawed Prototype: Oh boy. The Mauler is infamous for having no fewer than three prototypes, all of which were some kind of mess. A flawed Capellan prototype codenamed Linesman was sold to the Draconis Combine after they failed to squeeze out tonnage for large lasers. The Combine renamed this prototype as the Nainokami and discovered that it was underarmed. They rebuilt it into the Daboku, but that particular prototype was a gross failure, prone to overheating, jamming, and ejecting pilots at inopportune moments. It would be ten years after the Daboku debacle before the Combine were able to refine the design, iron out the worst flaws, and produce the Mauler.
• Glass Cannon: For an Assault 'Mech at any rate. It has a lower-than-average amount of armor (11 tons) for its size, where many smaller 'Mechs can have up to another three tons of protection. On top of this, it uses a fragile extra-light engine, which means that losing a side torso will cause a Mauler to shut down from engine damage. In exchange, it has a lot of space dedicated to firepower.
• Inventional Wisdom: Having ER large lasers without adequate heat sinks to support them and then spending 26 tons of weight on a set of four autocannons that do a total of eight damage per salvo makes you wonder what the desingers were trying to do, other than drum up ammunition sales.
• Irony: By combining a large and slow assault-class design with mediocre armor, fragile components, and lots of lasers and autocannons, the Draconis Combine inadvertently merged the design philosophies of its longtime enemies, House Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth and House Davion of the Federated Suns. This inadvertently makes the Mauler the perfect depiction of the Federated Commonwealth alliance in BattleMech form, as created by the one nation that would have the most mutual hatred of the two partner states.
• Long-Range Fighter: Extended-range lasers, long-range misiles, and light autocannons all serve best at mid to long ranges. As such the Mauler prefers to pummel its enemies well outside of arm's reach.
• Macross Missile Massacre: All versions of the Mauler boast towering LRM boxes on either side of its head, normally putting out 30 misiles in a salvo.
• Made of Explodium: Having six tons of ammunition on-board makes it uncomfortably prone to exploding when a side torso is hit. Fortunately it has the CASE system to prevent the whole 'Mech from exploding, but it's still a bad time for its pilots when a side torso invariably takes a critical hit. (With XL engines, losing a side torso will render the 'Mech inoperable; all CASE is doing is making sure there's something left to salvage after the battle.)
• Master of None: The stock -1R variant is somewhat questionable. It has long range firepower, but overheats aggressively if its full complement is used and the damage it does is widely spread out rather than being focused on a single area to punch through armor. Said weapons are also ammo-reliant. Its armor is adequate but not enough to protect it from return fire on the level expected of an Assault 'Mech. It has a fragile lightweight engine but doesn't move at speeds faster than normal for its class. As a result it's big and intimidating without having the power to back it up. Worse, the XL engine drives the price per unit up horribly.
• More Dakka: A quad-battery of Autocannon-2s provides constant (if minimally effective) gunfire.
• Mythology Gag: The Daboku 's habit of ejecting pilots after an unsporting blow to the lower torso is a reference to the Mauler's Tyco toy, which featured an ejection feature if the 'blast panel' in the 'Mech's groin was pressed.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The English name Mauler isn't that intimidating (though remember that one meaning of "to be mauled" is "to be shredded by the teeth and claws of a wild animal"). On the other hand, the German name for this 'Mech is Schlagetot. This can translate into something like "ruffian" or "killer," but one particularly unsettling translation roughly comes across as "beat you to death," which is plenty intimidating as threats go.
• National Weapon: Strongly associated with the Draconis Combine and manufactured exclusively in their space. Despite what the BattleTech (1994) cartoon might suggest, it has no history with the Federated Commonwealth; canonically, the Mauler featured there is probably a captured prototype Daboku.
• Paper Tiger: Looks scary due to its size and numerous weapons, but isn't really that frightening once you take a look at its stat sheet. A single penetrating hit to a side torso can take the whole 'Mech out of action outright, often with explosive results.
• Shoulders of Doom: It has huge, boxy shoulders that eclipse its own head, packing a large LRM launcher in each.
• Vertical Mecha Fins: The 'Mech's arm baffles are similar to the Awesome, rising up past even the huge shoulders to counterbalance the large lasers in the arms.

Stalker STK-3F

It's not flashy. It's not the cutting edge. It just. Keeps. Coming.

Production Year: 2594
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 85 tons

One of the lighter Assault 'Mechs going, it's not exactly going to break any land-speed records, but it's remained a staple of Assault 'Mech formations due to the sheer amount of firepower it brings with it. It's also noteworthy in that there are many variants that dropped it from the Assault-Class down to Heavy-Class due to the sheer stress of its guns on its skeleton.

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• Achilles' Heel: Beyond ammo explosions, a danger to any 'Mech not purely-energy, the Stalker's weaponry are immensely heat-generating. An Alpha Strike will quickly cook both it and its ammo stores.
• Boring, but Practical: Nothing about the base Stalker is advanced technology, and like the Awesome it revolves around a simple philosophy - tank hits and drown the target in fire until it stops being a problem. While the Awesome relies on PPC fire at long range, the Stalker blasts away with missiles and lasers until it boils over.
• Chicken Walker: Zigzagged. Original artwork of the Stalker had it with normal legs, while its later appearances (like in Mechwarrior Online) gives it chicken legs.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Like many other 'Mechs, the Stalker had an upgraded version for the SLDF Royal Regiments, which added an ECM package and upgraded the heat sinks, the missile guidance, and the long-range missiles and large lasers, but dropped the short-range missiles.
• Feeling Their Age: Odd for an inanimate object, but many older Stalkers had to be downgraded or rebuilt as 75- or even 70-ton 'Mechs (down from their normal 85) to reduce stress on the 'Mech's skeleton.
• Glass Cannon: The Stalker has a lot of weapons on it, and at point blank will match even the Atlas in sheer offence, but it has a lot of ammo-hungry weapons (and a lot of heat problems) that renders it prone to ammo explosions.
• Implacable Man: The Stalker is designed to slowly creep up on the foe, slowly amping up the firepower by activating more and more of its weaponry.
• Macross Missile Massacre: It packs two LRM-10s and two SRM-6s, allowing it to hammer a target at any range with more missiles than they know what to do with. The 3H variant drops the Large Lasers and upgrades the missile launchers to LRM-20s to take this even farther.
• Meaningful Name: The Stalker was commonly employed in Urban Warfare, powered down until an enemy passes by the building it's hiding in before emerging and unleashing its weaponry into the unaware opponent.
• Mighty Glacier: According to the lore, one of the slowest 'Mechs ever constructed, though in-game it's as fast as any other assault.
• Walking Tank: Perhaps the most notable example in Battletech, the Stalker doesn't even have arms. It's just a fuselage glued on a pair of legs, with guns on it. Lots and lots and lots of guns.
• The Workhorse: The workhorse assault 'Mech of the SLDF, more Stalkers were built than of most other assault 'Mech chassis combined, and even the Succession Wars couldn't stop it from remaining the most commonly used assault 'Mech in service. By 3025, over 2000 Stalkers — around a third of the total number of assault 'Mechs — were still stalking the Inner Sphere and beyond. It even managed to remain in continuous production during the Succession Wars, which few other designs (let alone assault-class designs) managed to do.

Victor VTR-9B

Because jumping into some poor MechWarrior's face and murdering them qualifies as "support."

Production Year: 2508
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 80 tons

In 2508, the Terran Hegemony contracted HildCo Interplanetary to build them a jump-capable support 'Mech. HildCo decided to approach this problem in a different way than usual: while most support 'Mechs possess long-ranged armaments to hammer at enemy forces from afar, the Victor instead "supports" friendly forces by rapidly closing with the enemy and blowing them away with its impressive short-ranged firepower. Basically, HildCo was asked to make an assault-'Mech version of the Catapult, and instead made one of the deadlier brawlers in the Inner Sphere.

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• Achilles' Heel: Durability. The Victor is at the bottom end of assault 'Mech tonnage, so would be fragile by assault 'Mech standards anyway, but the price for its relatively heavy armament and jump capability is shedding more armor than most assault pilots are comfortable with. Assorted variants have addressed the problem mostly by using advanced technology to free up tonnage for armor. Notably, the 9A and 9A1 variants remove armor to add anti-infantry flamers and/or machine guns.
• Arm Cannon: The main armament of the standard Victor and most of its variants is a massive AC/20 mounted in the right arm.
• Beam Spam: The Ace Custom Li variant used by the Combine warlord Li Dok To replaces the AC/20 with a massive ten medium lasers (filling the entire right arm's slots with medium lasers), more than doubling the baseline variant's damage at the cost of a horrific overheating problem.
• Close-Range Combatant: None of the standard Victor's weapons have a maximum range greater than 270 meters, and all of them are most effective within 90 meters. Most variants of the Victor follow this pattern, though there are a few that buck the trend by swapping the AC/20 for a Gauss Rifle.
• Equipment Upgrade: The 9D model uses Star League technology to up-gun and up-armor the Victor with an Endo-Steel chassis, while the Clan refit of the classic 9B model increases the firepower with Clan-Tech weaponry that's lighter and more effective.
• Fragile Speedster: With a top speed of 64.8 km/h and four jump jets, the Victor is speedy and maneuverable for an Assault 'Mech, and with its powerful AC/20 backed up by Medium Lasers and SRMs, it can quickly pound lighter 'Mechs to scrap. The tradeoff is that the Victor only carries 11.5 tons of armor, which would be mediocre protection for a 'Mech ten tons lighter.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The preferred method of fighting with a Victor: use its speed and mobility to get in close, mangle or destroy an enemy 'Mech with overwhelming firepower, and retreat to cover before remaining enemy forces can bring their guns to bear.
• National Weapon: The Federated Suns captured the only factory capable of building Victors during the Second Succession War, and the 'Mech quickly became associated with their armed forces. Even after the Draconis Combine retook the factory in 3039, many House Kurita MechWarriors refused to pilot a machine that was now considered to "belong" to the enemy.
• Situational Sword: Best employed in short fights such as ambushes or quick strikes, as it is not well equipped to hold out against prolonged fire, but its weapons allow it to be brutally effective at blasting apart most 'Mechs its own size or smaller before things get dicey.

Viking VKG-2F

Your gods can't hear you over the sound of 70 missile tubes fired at once.

Production Year: 3059
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 90 tons

From the dawn of human warfare, there has never been a desire greater than tossing nasty, very deadly things at your enemy to put them down at a safe distance. 'Mech warfare is no exception to that maxim, from the early Helepolis with its massive cannon, to the venerable Archer, the thirst of tactical and strategic planners for 'Mechs that could safely support close-range combatants through a barrage of unending fire could never be truly sated. It was from that thirst that the Viking was born. Intended to replace the aging Bombardier, the Free Rasalhague Republic designed it with help from Comstar and created a 'Mech that was cheaper, tougher and harder hitting than its predecessor. Equipped with 4 Long Range Missile racks, totalling 70 missiles fired per volley, it was the final solution to anyone seeking a long range assault platform.

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• Achilles' Heel: Besides the minimum range on the missiles, the Viking only carries twelve salvos worth of ammunition for the various launchers. While one might think that 840 long-range missiles with Artemis IV guidance would be plenty, most battles tend to go about fifteen rounds.
• Boring, but Practical: The Viking is more or less a bigger, badder Catapult, but anything that can launch that many missiles is still a very dangerous foe.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Possesses the Multi-Trac quirk, meaning that it doesn't suffer any penalties for dividing its fire among multiple targets in a single round.
• Irony: It is the single deadliest long range battlemech the Inner Sphere ever put out, built for supporting fire, and, somehow, someone chose to name it after a type of warrior renowned for their skill in either brawls or formation melee.
• Leg Cannon: The Viking carries a quartet of machine guns mounted in the legs as defense against infantry.
• Long-Range Fighter: The main objective of the 'Mech was to be able to drown out the opposition with missiles from a long range, and it is damn good at that.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Macross Missile Massacrest 'Mech of them all. A single volley from all of its LRM launchers at once can put up to seventy missiles on a single target.
• Mighty Glacier: It's an Assault 'Mech, so it won't be setting any speed records, but god can it lay down some serious hurt.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: Should anything manage to survive the massive salvos of missile fire long enough to close within their minimum range, all the Viking has for close-range defense is a pair of Small Lasers.
• Shoulders of Doom: Where the bulk of its firepower is stored.
• Superior Successor: Was one for the Bombardier and had its own with the VKG-3A, which replaces 2 of its launchers with Arrow IV missile artillery, making it a straight up strategic theater weapon.

Zeus ZEU-6S

Prepare for divine punishment.

Production Year: 2787
Weight Class: Assault
Mass: 80 tons

The Zeus was built by the Lyran Commonwealth at the start of the First Succession War as a long-range, hit-and-run-capable Assault 'Mech. It excelled in this role and in others, earning a strong reputation among Steiner and mercenary MechWarriors, and ultimately became one of the Commonwealth's most beloved 'Mechs of the Succession Wars era.

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• Achilles' Heel: Armor and ammunition. While the AC/5 has plenty of ammunition with a single ton, the LRM-15 only has enough for eight rounds. Some pilots pragmatically noted that by the time the LRM ammo was expended, the armor was probably breached anyway, and additional ammunition would pose an explosion risk.
• Chest Blaster: The Zeus carries a trio of lasers in its torso — one Large and two Mediums, one of which is rear-facing — for use against targets at short-to-medium range.
• Fragile Speedster: In terms of speed (64.8 km/h at a run) and protection (11.5 tons of armor), the Zeus is more akin to a slightly-oversized Heavy 'Mech than a "traditional" Assault.
• Jack of All Trades: While ostensibly designed as a Long-Range Fighter, the Zeus packs a variety of different weapons that make it deadly at all ranges. Other variants take this further, swapping out various weapons to suit the Zeus to different range brackets. The 6A variant replaces the LRM-15 with three SRM-6 launchers to give it a nasty close-range punch.
• Lightning Gun: Ironically enough, averted for the "standard" 6S model. The designers wanted to include a PPC as a primary armament, but problems with the magnetic shielding made the weapon unreliable, and they ultimately went with a simpler autocannon instead. Technological advancements following the Third Succession War allowed them to fix this problem, and the PPC-armed 6T variant effectively became the new standard going forward.
• National Weapon: The Zeus is strongly associated with the Lyran Commonwealth and House Steiner. This actually caused some friction during the early days of the Federated Commonwealth, as some Davion MechWarriors refused to pilot the thing, and likewise some Steiner officers became very protective of the 'Mech when it seemed to be in danger of being replaced.
• Reliably Unreliable Guns: The one problematic component of the Zeus is its complex, barrel fist-mounted LRM-15 (meant to allow that arm to be used as a bludgeon), which is prone to malfunctions if not constantly maintained.
• Robot Antennae: Two, placed on top of the 'Mech and somewhat back from the forward-slung cockpit.
• Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: The two Zeus prototypes got an abrupt test on Hesperus II as the Draconis Combine was attacking the Defiance Industries factory. Between the long-range firepower, using relatively advanced technology, and the novelty of being a new 'Mech design, the two prototypes manage to stall the DCMS advance long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
• The Workhorse: The Zeus is another one of those designs that survived three centuries and four Succession Wars because it was built using simple, tried-and-true technology rather than advanced components that would become LosTech as conditions in the Inner Sphere deteriorated.

Superheavy Mechs

Ares ARS-V1

Pick a god and pray.

Production Year: 3136
Weight Class: Superheavy
Mass: 135 tons

One of the vanishingly small number of Superheavy-category 'Mechs, the Ares was produced by the Republic of the Sphere as a powerful defensive weapon in the waning days of the Republic, particularly its Fortress Republic era. The 'Mech itself is unique in that it is tripedal, using a large turret-style waist balanced on top of a tripod leg arrangement to navigate in either a two-forward one-aft or one-forward two-aft leg configuration. Its benefits are obvious: it is intimidatingly large (towering above even the Atlas!), carries extremely heavy armor and firepower, and is tall enough to simply look over cover and blast enemies who thought they were safe. Unfortunately, this also makes its weaknesses quite obvious as well: it is a high-priority target, moves at a glacially slow pace, and is rather complicated to operate and maintain to boot. The design proliferated slightly after 3150, but never very far, and most who used it did so as a defensive weapon or in the infantry-support role, usually partnered with the various Battle Armor types that are unable to ride along on 'Mechs. Interestingly, it uses Omni technology but names its configurations after members of the Greek pantheon rather than a standard alphabet system. However, even this titan could not preserve its masters, and the failure of the Ares in defending the Republic may well serve as an object lesson in the hubris of naming your weapons after notoriously fickle gods.

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• Achilles' Heel: Sheer size. Being as big as it is, everyone can see it, everyone can shoot it, and it won't be moving fast enough to dodge shots any time soon. It's got over 28 tons of armor, but even this protection is still a finite amount and certain weapons can penetrate even pristine armor to damage the components beneath.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Superheavy 'Mechs usually fall into this trope by nature - they carry astonishing amounts of weaponry and armor, but they're extremely expensive as a result, and rarely worth the expense of development, production, and maintenance - and the Ares is no exception. Its sheer scale scares the pants off most people who have to face it (in gameplay terms, it gets the "Distracting" perk) and it carries enough armor to absorb repeated rounds of fire from even Clantech weapons, but it's so slow that it can't mount a meaningful pursuit, and barely manages to establish a mobile defense. This plays in with the weapons loadouts as well - being an Omni design allows for extreme reconfigurability, but a surprising amount of weaponry is permanently fixed on the chassis. It has 41 tons of pod space, which is only slightly more than the Hauptmann that comes in at seven-tenths the weight of the Ares.
• Beam Spam: The Hephaestus configuration favors a lot of energy weapons and comes with the heat sinks to use them.
• BFG: The Hera configuration focuses all of its throw weight in the sheer terror of an Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle. Because the 'Mech is so huge, this version can mount Heavy Gauss weapons in its arms, allowing it to rapidly retarget the Gauss rifle onto foes who may not have expected it to be able to point behind it.
• Cephalothorax: And not just one head merged with the torso, but three! A frontal cockpit seats the gunner, a median cockpit seats the pilot, and the uppermost cockpit is for the tactical/systems officer. All three are cramped into the sloping hull in a configuration somewhat reminiscent of the Soviet Hind helicopter.
• Chest Blaster: A pair of medium lasers under the 'chin' of the 'Mech's fuselage serves as a mid-ranged defensive staple.
• Crew of One: Averted; the size and complexity demands a crew of three to actually use effectively. At the bare minimum it needs a crew of two, with a dedicated pilot and a dedicated gunner.
• EMP: The Hades configuration features a Tight-Stream EMP cannon, allowing it to interfere with enemy electronics or shut down enemy units on a lucky shot.
• Frontline General: Intended to command major defenses and deliberately designed to allow a separate tactical officer to sit up top and direct battles. However, to think that it is defenseless is a mistake, as it carries more than enough armor and firepower to make even Assault 'Mechs think twice about engaging. The Aphrodite in particular is a potent command 'Mech thanks to its twin C3 computers, allowing it to direct an entire C3-enabled company by itself.
• Gatling Good: The Aphrodite is a firm believer in Gatling-based firepower, with a Clan-built rotary autocannon as its primary weapon.
• Guy in Back: The tactical/systems officer is the guy in back to the pilot, and both of them are the guys in back to the main gunner.
• Large and in Charge: The largest canonical 'Mech in the game to see production status at 135 tons (there are two 'Mechs larger than it, the 150 ton Omega and the 200 ton Orca, but neither went past the prototype state) and designed specifically for command operations. Though it can fight, its intent was for officers to sit in the tactical/systems seat and give orders to other units.
• Leg Cannon: As if the tripedal arrangement wasn't strange enough, the Ares is one of a very few designs to put a number of weapons there, featuring a selection of lasers and missile launchers in its knees, and anti-infantry claymore mines in its shins.
• Lightning Gun: The primary Zeus variant relies on two Clantech ER PPCs for ranged firepower, and even in 3150 these are still fearsome weapons.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The Zeus variant has an eighteen-count box of Streak SRM launchers stacked together for close-range defense. The Hades features twin MRM launchers for a total of 40 missiles per salvo.
• Mighty Glacier: Extremely powerful, thanks to its arsenal of weapons and 28 tons of armor, but god-awful slow at a mere 32 kph top speed. It will slaughter just about any unit it encounters in a straight fight, provided they don't simply escape it first.
• More Dakka: The Hades features an Ultra AC-10 in one arm for as a primary weapon, while the Aphrodite variant packs a rotary autocannon in the same role, and both employ very similar tactics: drown opponents in lead and add some missiles afterwards for support.
• National Weapon: For the Republic of the Sphere, as they were the only producers for a good ten years. Though Clan Wolf would later capture some, and the Wolf's Dragoons would later gift Ares schematics to House Marik to spite Clan Wolf, a number of complications kept the Ares from seeing wider use and it remained primarily associated with the Republic.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon: The Ares has emergency leg weapons in the form of lasers and SRMs to deter light units such as Battle Armor and infantry at extreme close ranges, and a pair of integrated chest lasers for targets slightly further away.
• Tripod Terror: One of the few tripod 'Mechs in the game. It lacks the tall, spindly legs of the The War of the Worlds (1898) tripods, but otherwise fits the bill with banks of energy weapons, an alien gait, and the ability to step over or simply crush most obstacles underfoot. It even has the wide, semi-rounded hull described in the original book.
• Situational Sword: Excellent when tasked to command a defense or rearguard action. Not much good on the assault due to its poor speed, and even less use in pursuit for the same reasons.
• Walking Techbane: The Aphrodite packs a powerful Angel ECM suite, shutting down almost every type of advanced communications, sensors, and missile-based fire control equipment in its 180-meter radius.

Matar SAM-RS2

Amaris's Folly

Production Year: N/A (Project cancelled in 2775)
Weight Class: Superheavy
Mass: 110 tons

As Aleksandr Kerensky’s forces began to dismantle Stefan Amaris’s empire, the mad dictator assembled his engineers and weapons designers and demanded they produce a battlemech capable of turning the tide. The task was a daunting one; the 'Mech had to be an army in and of itself, able to destroy entire SLDF companies without taking serious damage in return. With the outcome of the war hanging in the balance, Amaris’s best minds set about building the Matar, the largest and most formidable war machine the galaxy had ever seen...

...Or at least, they tried to. Designs were drawn up, and a colossal prototype was eventually produced, but when the time came to actually put the Matar through its paces the actuators in its legs could not support the tremendous weight of the machine. Despite three separate redesigns, this problem proved intractable, whereupon an enraged Amaris had the entire design team executed for ‘treasonous incompetence’. The project was cancelled shortly afterwards, and the Matar was consigned to the history books as ‘Amaris’s Folly’.

Ironically enough, later history would prove the principle behind the Matar to be viable. The Clans were able to shave ten tonnes off the Matar in order to produce the slightly more sensible Stone Rhino, and in the thirty-first century, the Word of Blake would use the blueprints for the Matar and their own advanced technology to produce the Omega, the galaxy’s first true superheavy 'Mech.

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• Achilles' Heel: Quite literally, since the nonfunctional leg actuators were the ultimate reason why the Matar never saw active service.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Like all superheavies, the sheer size and cost of the Matar meant putting an awful lot of time, money and resources into a single unit that could only be in one place at once (and move extremely slowly between places thanks to its speed and bulk) even if it didn't fall apart on its own. This would have made it lethally vulnerable to artillery, air strikes and being bypassed or flanked and worn down by lighter 'Mechs using Hit-and-Run Tactics.
• Bigger Is Better: Subverted. Amaris's techs found out there is such a thing as too big, in this case "too big to function."
• Expy: Of the various Wunderwaffe programmes initiated by Adolf Hitler in the dying days of the Second World War. In both cases, the aim was to produce a superweapon that could turn the tides of the war, and in both cases the projects ended in failure due to the end products being too slow, heavy and resource-intensive to make a difference.
• Flawed Prototype: Very flawed, since in the end it didn't actually work at all. The Matar ultimately serves as the prototype for all Superheavy 'Mechs, being the first time anyone actually tried to build one.
• Master of All: The Matar was intended to be able to engage entire companies of 'Mechs and vehicles and come out on top, and its armaments reflect this philosophy. A pair of Gauss Rifles and an ER Large Laser give it an extraordinary long range punch. Faster units that manage to close the distance have to contend with a pair of Large Pulse Lasers, while a pair of flamethrowers deter infantry assaults. The Matar is also outfitted with enough Double Heat sinks to fire its arsenal continuously, and a Guardian ECM to counter any advanced munitions the SLDF might deploy. Unfortunately for Amaris, the sheer weight of all of these components prevented the machine from moving and doomed the project.
• Mighty Glacier: If the Matar had actually been able to move, it would have been this. Its intended speed was a sluggish 30 km/h, meaning it couldn't even outrun an UrbanMech. On the other hand, its formidable arsenal and impenetrable armour would have made engaging it a daunting proposition.

Poseidon PSD-V2

The Republic's trump card

Production Year: 3136
Weight Class: Superheavy
Mass: 125 tons

The Poseidon is the first superheavy tripod battlemech produced by the Republic of the Sphere. Designed and developed in secret, the first prototypes saw action during the Senate's Rebellion in 3135, when a pair of Poseidons routed a contingent of rebel battlemechs in Serbia. The Poseidon carries a mixture of Clan and Inner Sphere technology, including a brace of powerful Clan energy weapons. Its armour weighs more than some entire Light 'Mechs, and its enormous 375-rated XL Engine allows it to move with surprising speed.

The Poseidon shares many design similarities with the Ares superheavy battlemech. This is not a coincidence; the Poseidon served as a test bed for many of the technologies that were later used to produce the Ares, making the Poseidon something of an Ares prototype. As such, many of the tropes that apply to the Ares also apply to it.

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• Achilles' Heel: Sheer size, as is usual for superheavy units.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Like all superheavy 'Mechs, the Poseidon is heavy, slow and expensive to run and maintain. In exchange, it is also extremely tough and carries an enormous arsenal of weaponry.
• Crew of One: The original Poseidon prototypes were single pilot units, but this caused issues with its fire control systems. Later models increased the size of the crew to three, a system that would be inherited by the Ares.
• Lightning Gun: Like the Ares' Zeus variant, the Poseidon's primary weapons are two Clantech ER PPCs.
• EMP: Like the Hades configuration of the Ares, the Poseidon mounts a Tight-Stream EMP cannon that can shut down enemy battlemechs.
• Mighty Glacier: Downplayed in this instance, since the Poseidon is actually the fastest superheavy 'Mech, able to run at top speeds of 54 km/h. By way of comparison, this is about as fast as most assault 'Mechs.
• Tripod Terror: Like its successor Ares, the Poseidon is a rare example of a three-legged battlemech.

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