I won't lie. This is a short article, and that's by design. I have requests that will take me longer to get typed, but between helping a friend move today, two late nights in a row, and a very bad week at work, I figured a small article means I can get to bed that much sooner. Apologies if this feels a little less comprehensive than usual.
We all know how the Capellan Confederation works in the Dark Age era- stealth armor, mines, all the dirty tricks. We also know that when it comes to scout units, the Cappies know what they're doing- after all, the Raven has been the premiere super-scout Mech for over a century at this point. But what do you use for those scout formations that aren't Mech-centric? How do the armored forces of the CCAF detect hidden units without their own Ravens? Simple- you build a Raven without the legs, and call it a Luduan. Let's take a look.
The Luduan, in an era of complex and multi-role units, is nice and simple- it's an electronics hauler, pure and simple, and anything not related to its role of quickly moving those systems to where they need to be is minimized. The unit really serves the role the Raven does, albeit with a bit less in its toy chest than most Raven versions. The lightweight hovercraft fits in a small vehicle bay without any trouble, making it easily moved with even smaller raiding forces- no small consideration.
The 25 ton Luduan starts with 145-rated fusion engine, moving the odd-shaped little monster at a lively 11/17 movement curve. This means that the electronics systems that the Luduan relies on are quickly moved to where they're needed, even over water obstacles. While a fusion engine isn't cheap per se, in the post-arms reduction era it probably was easy to find use for these engines while Battlemech production was 'lessened' (or in Liao's case, just hidden). An experiment by this author in tinkering in a fuel cell engine was intriguing, but not really worth the effort.
As so many Capellan units do, the Luduan features stealth armor for its shell, which combined with the high speed means hitting a Luduan is going to be a challenge. In this case, that's good, because as one can imagine on a 25-ton craft, large-caliber hits are probably going to go badly. The three tons of armor are split fairly evenly overall, with twelve points in front, ten to the sides, and eight points on the rear and in the turret. Speed and stealth are your real protection- if this armor is getting tested, you're using your Luduan wrong.
This 'using it wrong' treatment goes for the weaponry- if you're shooting, something went awry. Three Magshot guns- perhaps a tweak at the Federated Suns?- are mounted in a small turret on the starboard side of the vehicle's forward glacis. Fed by a ton of ammunition, these weapons should pretty much never really be used except in an emergency- you're not here for gun-toting. You have other jobs, so focus on your real work.
That real work is to provide electronic support, as I've mentioned before, and you have no shortage of tools for the job. Hidden in the turret with those useless Magshots is a TAG system, always a handy thing to have for artillery support. You'll know where to aim that TAG because nothing hides from the Bloodhound probe in the body- find a target, TAG it, drop Arrow rounds on it, laugh maniacally, repeat. Your stealth armor needed an ECM suite to run, and while the old Guardian would have worked fine, here we find the mighty Angel ECM suite instead, making it even harder to hit a Luduan with things like Streaks. Did I mention this is a nasty customer to deal with? A stealthy scout making life miserable with that TAG system and exposing all your dirty tricks, and you can't hit it to get rid of it? Ugh, no wonder Liao is knocking on New Avalon's door.
No variants exist, but a few ideas are obvious. As I said, a fuel cell was intriguing, but didn't really go anywhere for me that the fusion engine didn't do better. The Magshots are pretty forgettable here- again, if you're firing them, you made an error. Popping them off for a couple of ER medium lasers and another half-ton of armor would be a better use of that tonnage, but even then it still shouldn't be firing them except as a 'hell, why not?' shot. Otherwise, this really is scout-tank perfection. Enjoy it- and fear it, because if you neighbor the Capellans, this is going to be a frustrating sight in Capellan armor formations.
