Vehicle of the Week: Patton TankTowards the end of the Succession Wars, Defiance Industries embarked on a program to create a new tank design to take up some of the slack from the BattleMech on defense and worked to develop a design that wasn't based on older Star League concepts. Opting for a smaller silhouette thanks to a low turret that also improves the ability to maneuver in cities, the “Desert Knights” development program was rumored to be the target of infiltration attempts by Combine and League agents and part of a double program with the related Rommel heavy tank. The program was a triumph of both engineering prowess and raw industrial might as the Lyrans set up an entirely new fusion engine plant to power the vehicles. After a very arduous field test with Hansen's Roughriders (now best remembered for their nuclear-punctuated roaring rampage of revenge that made both a shambles and a mockery of the Taurian Concordat's defense establishment after the murder of their dependents), the Patton and Rommel entered production in 3027. While the Rommel has three fairly different variants (not counting the prototype Howitzer model), both variants of the Patton are solid, competent line tanks.
Built on the same 65 ton tracked chassis as the Rommel, the Patton also shares its 260-rated standard fusion engine, giving it a similar 65 kph flank speed. The differences start with the armored shell. Where the Rommel's 11 tons give it a solid level of protection on par with the Manticore or Po, the Patton is an archetypal brick at 14.5 tons of standard plate, enough to out-armor any heavy 'Mech and not an uncommon level among smaller assault 'Mech designs. The layout of 51/46/38/51 emphasizes the forward arc heavily, and all I can really find to suggest is shaving a couple of points one way or another to beef up the rear to withstand a pair of AC/20 hits. The armament is a little more well-rounded than the Rommel, with an AC/10 fed by two tons of ammunition and an LRM 5 with a single ton in the turret supplemented by a forward-fixed small laser and a flamer facing aft to keep infantry from having any tail gate parties.
The version from Record Sheets: Upgrades, now found in Record Sheets 3058 Unabridged's Inner Sphere volume, is a solid upgrade to the whole design that doesn't try to get fancy and doesn't need to. The main gun is now an Ultra/10 with three tons of ammunition. There's pros and cons to that - foremost among the latter, if it jams, you're out all your mid-range striking power and most of your firepower overall - but the Ultra/10 is a solid enough weapon that used conservatively, you're going to get a lot of good mileage out of it. Among other things, the extra three hexes of range is handy since the LRMs are gone. Instead, your secondary weapons are a pair of medium lasers in the turret and a trio of machine guns, two forward and one aft, fed from a single half-ton ammunition bin. They paid for the upgrades by swapping the armor for ferro-fibrous - your overall protection is the same but you save 1.5 tons doing it.
Honestly, the Patton is one of those units that is really very simple to operate, so I'm going to cover the basics after pointing out that lone LRM 5s are always an opportunity to annoy someone with creative ammo choices. First of all, try to avoid exposing your flanks. While the armor is quite thick, the critical and motive hit charts are even less forgiving in the side and rear arcs, so there's no reason to take chances. Pick your terrain, get in it, and then maneuver with a purpose to give yourself advantages and deny the same to your enemy. With the Ultra model, stick to standard fire rates unless you've got good numbers or good reason to expect the tank's going to die anyway - jamming your main gun is really going to suck.
Unless you manage to pop something important with a through-armor critical (like, say, the crew), you're not going to kill a Patton without a fair degree of effort spent drilling through the armor. Crit-seekers are important - they make tanks slow down or even stop moving, which both makes them easier to hit and increases your tactical options - but you need some bigger guns to cut through the armor plating and actually punch it out. PPCs or AC/10s are a great choice in 3025 but large lasers aren't far behind; later on, you've got Gauss rifles and various advanced flavors of the above to consider. Other than that, there's simply not really any tricks. They aren't myopic like older Rommels were and they don't have range minimums on anything other than the LRMs. If you want to try for quick kills, a dusting of Inferno gel works decently, and artillery or mines can be used to either hem them in or convince them to get out of a fire trap.
References: The first stop is always the
Master Unit List, and like last week, there's a variety of units over at
CamoSpecs.
