Superheavies!

First, I haven't done much the last couple days.  The cards mostly work, but I'm having to think up how to do the new cards.  I think I have it now, but gotta spend time on the designing of them.

Anyway, played around a bit tonight...


So I welcomed superheavy mechs.  Unlikely most games, where the new bigger thing would be uber-munchy, these aren't.  Tripods or Bipeds, it doesn't matter, you don't get a very good design.  This is mostly as engine weights over 400 are just too much, so they are just slow lumbering beasts.  I spent a couple hours trying to see how good I could get one, you know, to see if they are useful....

Here is my monster.  As these are large targets (the Omega right now has "LG", so I presume all superheavies would) they are going to be easy to hit, always, by everything.  That just has to be accepted, they *will* take damage.  The good news is you can make one take a freaking LOT of damage.  Up to 42 armor with hardened, though I chose Ferro-Lamellor and 25.  I also went with a standard engine, giving it roughly 15 structure (I'm not 100% sure, they didn't update Strategic Operations conversions to include superheavy designs).

So, here is the rundown:
200 Tons
Inner Sphere, but of course most stuff on it is Clan, so its Inner Sphere Mixed
1/2 Movement (just sit there, really, no point in moving)
39 tons, 624 points, of Clan Ferro-Lamellor armor.  25 armor points.
Standard engine with endo-steel structure gives it about 15 structure, though again I can't be 100% sure.
12 Clan iATM9s with a total of 133 shots of ammunition
It has 37 Clan double heat sinks.
Clan Laser AMS, Clan ECM, and 2 C3 Booster Master computers
No slots, actuators, or tonnage left.

This is a whopper, check it out for yourself:

Now, the point value I completely guessed at.  I have no idea, I didn't tally it up.  But it'd be up there, ATMs are BV expensive!  Ignoring the point cost I think it is *extremely* close to a valid design.  I'm not 100% sure on the IATM5 ability, and had to guess at it based on the Turkina Z.  The CR is given because of the Ferro-Lamellor, MHQ12 for the 12 tons of C3 Boosted Masters.

So, at long range, this kills pretty much anything except an assault mech, and many of those.  At medium range, well, it dies with 1 hit.  At short range, heck, there is so much firepower there, that even most support vehicles die.  It sucks doing that much damage, as most of it is overkill.

I would take a company, or battalion of these mechs, toss them in a high thrust cargo dropship and leave them at strategic jump points.  When you get word of an invasion, they jump into the system, do a high-G burn to the planet, and land outside of your important bases.  They are essentially instant build pill boxes.  A dozen (all in a single C3B network of course!) could easily hold off an assault battalion, or most mech regiments.  Heck, a dozen of them would have 144 battlefield intelligence points, and pretty much guarantee a never lose initiative bonus for you as well!

This mech should have like a -1 gunnery or something to account for the 3 crewmembers.  I tried some configurations with a dozen medium lasers instead of the 2 C3BMs, but the heat spiked up, overall damage reduced >4 points at short/medium, and overburn was 4, so it was pointless.  I could probably tweak it a bit more, reducing ammo for a missile or two and still allowing rounding to get me those high numbers, or maybe dropping a couple heat sinks, but this is a legit design I'd take in a heartbeat in any BattleTech game.  I wonder if we'll see the tripod miniatures???

If anybody wants to let me know the BV I'll update the card (I may knock it out tomorrow).  If anybody knows what the IATM# ability does and how to calculate it I'd appreciate that too.