Sylph Battle Armor - Technical Readout 3058U page 43
The Sylph Battle Armor was in my opinion the most impressive of the four designs released with the Clan Field Manuals. However what impressed me was not its combat performance, but simply the fact that it could fly, a Battle Armor ability that was without precedent in the world of infantry at the time. Jump infantry had existed long before designs like the Elemental, and even submersible infantry had appeared prior to the Undine, but here we had a suit that could move in a way that was entirely new to anything less than a vehicle, and only later would rules introduce the idea of conventional infantry with flight capability.
Published in Field Manual: Warden Clans, the Sylph is a symbol of Clan Cloud Cobra's high regard for aerospace forces, developed in response to reports of the Kage and Achileus designs, but twisted to their preferences. First fielded in 3060, the Sylph Battle Armor lacked the stealth of its Spheroid inspirations, but made up for that with far superior mobility. Even compared to the fast and maneuverable Kage, the Cobra's suit was not only capable of travelling greater distances over the same time period it was also able to traverse terrain that would block the Kuritan unit entirely. The unique movement system came at a cost though, and the Sylph had the lightest weaponry and armor of the Clan designs known at the time of its introduction, and to this day it remains one of the weakest Clan suits in terms of protection and firepower. It's not unfair to draw an analogy with the Inner Sphere's Gray Death Scout Suit, since both designs paid for their specialist ability with a degree of fragility that all but cripples them in their own culture.
jymset: It is important to note that sillybrit was impressed in terms of concept and not performance. As with the two Crusader Clans suits, allow me to add just a few words on how this Clan player perceived the <expletive deleted> Sylph (and the accompanying Undine).
sillybrit initially signaled frustration at writing in length about this unit. I suggested the whole article be this:
There once was a battle armor called Sylph. Then the Night Gyr A happened. The end.
The essence of the statement will (after all!) be expanded and explained by sillybrit, but the point is: it was something that was immediately obvious to me from the first time I laid eye on the Sylph (and then confirmed by above experience when I first fielded it). The Undine, despite being made useless by its own specialisation, at least was a lot more convincing than the Sylph in that very specialisation. When FMWC came out, I had had experience with a bit of (under)water combat and quite a bit of VTOL combat, too. On the whole, VTOLs sucked and certainly sucked up BV fiercely; hovercrafts were much preferred. And the Sylph did what an ostensibly bad unit type did, but was even worse at it. The Undine may have been much more restrictive in terms of battlefield utility, but it had two bonuses - it lacked an obvious heinous construction flaw (which the Sylph's brittleness definitely is), and it also lacked convincing competition in its chosen environment. Only with the advent of 3085-ONN's Clan underwater units has the Undine stopped being the single best canon underwater unit the Clans have access to. That may not be much of a claim to fame, but it is more than the Sylph was ever able to say of itself.
The obvious impact - or lack of it - of the Warden Clan suits on the game itself was much more noticeable to this Clan player than any new expansion of performance parameters. The discrepancy between the two specialty suits and the two Crusader Clans powerhouses was as shocking back then as it is now. Initially described in the Field Manual as a reconnaissance suit, the Sylph would seem of little use in traditional Clan fighting given the ritualized way how Trials are conducted, but presumably the Cloud Cobras somehow found it useful enough in combat for it to spread throughout their Touman, becoming a highly regarded design within their ranks. Like the Undine, the design didn't evoke as much approval outside its parent Clan, a sharp contrast to the widespread acceptance of the Gnome and Salamander. Other Clans have mounted successful Trials of Possession for the Sylph, including the Star Adders, but for the Inner Sphere the most significant victors of those Trials were the Snow Ravens and Diamond Sharks. The latter two Clans only field small numbers of the suit, but those they do possess will have undoubtedly been encountered by Spheroid troops at some point in a further display of the superiority of Clan Battle Armor technology.
The Sylph's flight capability comes from uprated versions of the same jump jets that allow designs like the Elemental to merely bounce across the landscape. The incredible thrust-weight ratios we see with aerospace units should perhaps make the Clan VTOL system believable, but unlike aerospace units the Sylph does it without any apparent need for fuel or the luxury of a fusion power source, which I find makes me a little uncomfortable before I just shrug and move on. It does however raise the question as to why the Inner Sphere hasn't been able to duplicate the Sylph's feat. The thrust to weight ratio can't be the answer given that just one 30kg VTOL thruster can lift a 400kg PA(L) into the air and enable it fly, albeit slowly, while an Inner Sphere PA(L) that also massed 400kg could mount 75kg of jump jets and only be capable of leaping 90 meters. In part the answer is a meta-game issue, akin to why Inner Sphere Battle Armor are still plagued by the restrictions on torso-mounted missile launchers, together with it being an artifact of the construction rules, but within the universe the most likely answer is the issue of control, one that the background of the Sylph indicates was a major hurdle during the suit's development.
Although not known prior to the publication of the Battle Armor construction rules, the Sylph lacks the maximum aerial speed for its weight class, and could have actually been built as a Medium design, with the capability to survive hits by Clan Medium Lasers. As it is, the Sylph only has enough armor to withstand an Inner Sphere Medium Laser, so it isn't going to win any prizes for toughness by Clan standards, and those few suits operated by the Sharks and the Ravens will at least have a less arduous time than the Sylph Points that have to try to survive in Clanspace battlefields.
The armament is equally light, consisting of a Micro Pulse Laser on the right arm, together with a system unique to the Sylph: a one-shot bomb rack that can inflict an area attack that allows a full Point to inflict up to 10 points of damage on every unit in the struck hex. When first published, the Sylph was unique among Battle Armor in that it had to account for Attacker Movement Modifiers when using VTOL movement, so the pulse accuracy boost was a welcome feature. This changed with Total War, and the Sylph's laser attack is treated just like any other Battle Armor or infantry attack, although the bomb attack still suffers from the Attacker Movement Modifier, but can compensate for that by attacking the hex instead of the target directly. In another change introduced with Total War, the Micro Pulse Laser is one of the weapons with enhanced damage against conventional infantry, although with all the weapons with bonuses against airborne targets, that can easily overcome the various target modifiers a Sylph Point can accumulate, not everything has gone the suit's way with the latest rules.
Opposite the Micro Pulse Laser on the right arm is the usual Battle Claw, allowing the Sylph to make Anti-'Mech attacks and also hitch a ride on friendly Omni units, although it lacks the Anti-Personnel Weapon Mount seen on the left forearm of the Elemental. There is one other attack possibility open to the Sylph, depending upon how you wish to interpret an advanced rule from Tactical Operations. The VTOL Special Attacks rule allows VTOL vehicles to conduct strafing and bombing attacks like an aerospace unit, and given that Total War applies many of the VTOL vehicle rules to VTOL Battle Armor, there is some precedent that the Sylph could use the optional rule. As with other questionable rules, until we get a ruling on this, some players will accept it and some won't, but the one time I played in a game where it was used, it wasn't pretty for the Sylph player, who saw his Battle Armor flak-ed to death.
Although it might not seem obvious at first glance, the Sylph can be a dangerous city fighter, able to swiftly dart over and around buildings, or to even launch from inside those buildings, before pouncing upon unwary 'Mechs and vehicles, dropping its bombs or launching Anti-'Mech attacks. This is an area where the sole Sylph variant can perform well. Stripping away all the original armament, the Sylph (Upgrade) mounts a Heavy Machine Gun on one arm and a standard Machine Gun on the other, giving it a powerful capability against conventional infantry, as well as an impressive Swarming attack. Oddly, the designers chose to mount a searchlight, a use of 5kg that could have been better spent on an Anti-Personnel Weapon Mount in my opinion, but perhaps the image of Points of Sylph (Upgrades) sweeping the ground with their lights as they fly overhead in night operations was simply too irresistible. The Upgrade otherwise remains effectively unchanged, still requiring to get in close to attack, with that same requirement thereby potentially exposing it to enemy fire that it's still ill-equipped to survive.
During non-urban combat, the Sylph's fragility means that it should still try to position blocking terrain between itself and as many enemy units as possible, whether that terrain be trees or hills. Without such caution, a Sylph unit can quickly be downed due to the inability to exploit cover in their current hex. The Sylph's speed can help, as does the bonus Target Movement Modifiers for VTOL and Battle Armor movement, but pulse lasers, weapons with flak capability, and other high tech solutions to defeat agile targets can all potentially make a Sylph Point easier to hit than an Elemental unit. With its weaponry requiring it to get in close, without cover the Sylph is sometimes limited to spotting or even the ignominy of being a mere initiative sink, but with careful coordination and timing it can be possible to conduct a quick backstab or two before the suits get swatted from the sky.
After holding the speed crown solely by itself for five years within the universe, the Sylph is still the joint fastest canon design, but its competitors - the Rottweiler and Enhanced Sylph - are only capable of ground movement, and thus can be slowed by rough terrain. As previously mentioned, this VTOL movement comes at a steep price, and the inability to exploit ground cover during VTOL movement more than cancels out the Sylph's mobility advantage in my opinion. Technically, Battle Armor could even go faster than the Sylph - whether ground units with certain advanced technology, or PA(L)s or Light Battle Armor with more VTOL thrusters - but these remain only custom possibilities. It should also be noted that where VTOL movement isn't possible, the suit's speed is as limited as conventional foot infantry, and it should try to avoid such situations, although typically this will only occur when entering or moving around inside buildings.
To this day the Sylph remains the only VTOL Battle Armor, and not only is it the first of its kind but it may well be the last given that the aforementioned Enhanced Sylph has dropped VTOL movement to maximize the chassis' ground speed. Another, harsher blow to the Sylph's future may have been struck during the fighting against the Society when Clan Goliath Scorpions orbitally bombarded and destroyed a city on Brim that contained a Sylph factory. Whether this was the only Sylph factory in Clanspace is uncertain, and it may have simply been Clan Snow Raven's own factory, with the Cloud Cobra's and Star Adder's Sylphs manufactured elsewhere.
It's hard not to view the Sylph as a failed experiment. That might be a harsh evaluation, but given the sparse deployment of the design throughout the Clans, the lack of follow-on designs and the Sylph's own limitations on the battlefield it's not an opinion completely without reason. Unfortunately, the Sylph is one of those designs, like the Gray Death Scout Suit and the Sloth, that paid too much for its specialty or suffered from being a ground-breaking design, and so it often finds itself less than practical on many battlefields. The Sylph can provide some useful service with skillful guidance, but even with careful mothering it can so easily be destroyed with little or no chance to impact the game. Like many players in my experience, I use the Sylph as a flavor piece or for an occasional change of pace, but overall, despite the concept of flying Battle Armor being so tempting and fascinating, sadly for the Sylph there are much better Battle Armor designs to take onto the battlefield.
Next up:
- Enhanced Sylph
- Elemental II
- Infiltrator Mk II
- Fenrir