Combine Omnis

[17thRecon]

Curious of peoples opinion of the Draconis Combine's omni mechs (Firestarter, Owens, Strider, Sunder, Avatar, etc...all the ones that came out in the same TRO, can't remember the date) and how they perform in the game. I have never had the opportunity to use them so any and all information would be great. Just looking at the stock and stock variants, not any custom mods, etc. What has your experience been with any/ all of them? What are they particularly good at individually, what are major drawbacks/ issues, that sort of thing?

[Iron Mongoose]

Its a hugely mixed bag.  Some remain quite usable, especaly with some of the newer veriants that have come out for them.  The Raptor and Avatar are my picks of the bunch, but the Sunder, Firestarter, Blackhawk and Blackjack are not to be disrespected.  I don't personaly like the Blackhawk and Blackjack since they move the wrong speeds, the Blackhawk is too big to be that fast and the Blackjack is too small to be that slow (especaly with its XL) but they're omnis, which are pretty hard to come by, and they're eminantly usable.  The Blackhawk just ends up working like a medium mech (which was pretty much the idea anyway) while the Blackjack has enough pod space to work like a glass jawed heavy, which many people don't really mind.  Once its on the field, it works well enough, but I hate having to pay for all its guns, and then relegate it to a support role because of its armor.  Plus, its not the best BA teammate, which I do look for in my omnis, because of that problem.

On the flip side, the Owens, with its SHS and fixed electronics, is very problematic, and the Strider is quite nearly unusable.  The Owens at least has a lot of speed, so it can be a BA taxi or a scout mech, but it can't fight worth a damn, and the Strider is so slow and so cripped by its SHS that it can't really do anything worth doing.  Even their Clan tech Dragon Roars veriants only bairly make them worth looking at, and the Strider's is still a close ranged veriant that's hard to use. 

[Men Shen]

I always thought the owens looked cool so i got two for the Dracs and two for the CapCon, boy was  i bummed out when i found out that they suck, at least i can use them for TAG and transporting Yin Longs and what not. [rockon]

[17thRecon]

Thanks. Anything you like any particuler one for, or a particular variant you like better? Also, which ones have Dragons Roar variants ( that supplement is on my wish list, I don't have it at this time)?

[Ian Sharpe]

I like the Blackhawk KU best, followed by the Sunder, Avatar, and Firestarter.  The Blackhawk is overweight, but its tough, well-armoured, and is pretty good in the medium role.  More importantly, it should be replacing loads of old Quickdraws, Champions, and old Ostroc/sols.  Works very well as a taxi too, as everything is arm mounted.  The Sunder is pretty solid, though the configs leave a lot to be desired.  The Avatar used to be my favourite, but aside from the B, I never really used it often.  I like the Firestarter a great deal, but it loses so much podspace for hardwired equipment, that it drops a little in my book. 

The others are a mixed bag.  The Strider desperately needs DHS and it could be a serviceable mech.  The Owens is highly specialised, perhaps too much so, but has a place in recce units.  The Raptor is useful but too lightly armoured to be much more than a picket.  It is going to be crippled, esp against Clantech.  The F is IMO the best.  I rank the Blackjack low...big guns, low speed, average armour.  Priority target.  Useful as a fire support design, but every shot will be at medium range or further.

[VhenRa]

The problem with the Owens is... the chassis is decent... all It needs is DHS and the damn electronics moved over to Pods and it would be an awesome light Omnimech.

[Snake Eyes]

I bought an Avatar mini for my merc unit.......i haven't used it in a game though......i just bought it because it looked cool

[sandstorm]

Raptors work wonders if one has an old Jenner/Locust based unit they are updating for the post-3050 field.

[Iron Mongoose]

The Raptor and Owens are the only two that can hit +4 (at least with out IJJ, which could be used to give the Blackhawk or Strider that ability, if you were strange) so they can work as fast lights.  The existance of the Raptor F is a huge boost for it, of course, but many of the others are servicable.  Its a bit frail, but its 25 tons, so its bound to be a bit frail, and for me it lasts pretty well.  It reminds me a lot of the Fire Falcon, which I adore, and that's part of the draw.

As for the Dragon Roars, all the Combine's omnis got a veriant with mostly Clan tech (some got more mixed, some got the full Clan treatment).  They now exist as "R" veriants for each.  Some are really excelent (the Raptor looks like a Fire Falcon B, with ER LLs and a TC) some are mixed (the Avatar gets a Clan GR and ER LL, but also an IS MRM40, which is cool if you like big damage, but not so great if you like accuracy) and some are still useless (the Owens gets three Clan ER MLs, which is always a good start unless you've got single heatsinks, and blows the rest of the tonnage on a MRM10  #P ).  They came from opperation Bulldog salvage, and I belive to be semi-common in units with high Clan and omni ratings.

One of the things that they and other new veriants are good for is really milking the omni advantage to make up for a key weekness of the first generation of IS omnis: antiquated configurations.  While 3058 saw a giant leap in design philosophy that saw the outbreak of twin gauss monsters, it didn't see any new tech, and so as a resualt the 3058 omni class tends to have pretty low tech configurations.  The Sunder Prime uses all level 1 guns, and key configurations in all the omnis are saddled with older tech weapons.  No ER MLs, no big Ultras or LBs, no RACs or TCs or stealth or any of the really fun stuff.  So some of the best veriants tend to be new ones, like the Avatar F, which is basicly a retred of the Avatar A, but with an LB20 in place of the old AC20, or the Raptor F, with its 7 jumpjets and 5 ER MLs.

[LastChanceCav]

Both the Blackhawk-KU and Sunder operate like mechs from the next class down - the BHKU is an overgrown medium and the Sunder is an overgrown heavy. I like both of them OK. I'm also a fan of the Firestarter omni which I treat as an omni version of Phoenix Hawk. Almost all of the 3058 omnis suffer from too much fixed equipment, with the Raptor being one of the best at maximizing flexibility and making intelligent use of advanced construction materials. As has already been mentioned, one of the biggest limitations was the original weapons configurations when using the canon versions. Building your own configurations can make them a lot more potent.

The only omnis I really dislike are the Strider and Owens, mainly because single heat sinks are such a major limitation on what they can mount.

Cheers,
LCC

[Nightsong]

It may sound strange, but in my current campaign I've been running a Raptor that's kinda configured like a Hussar that traded off speed for some backup guns and scanning capacity (ER PPC, 3 Medium Lasers and a Beagle). And really, except for the backup guns, you should play it just like a Hussar. With that kind of armor, you really don't have any reason to close in, so just snipe away with the particle cannon all day. with that kind of movement modifier, it should keep you alive.

The Avatar I mostly chose for a heavy C3i unit (Avatar-E) in my ComStar LII. It's also the only 'Mech I've ever liked the Ultra-series guns on (Putting 30 points out to 18 hexes is a pretty decent clout, and It seems to be the only 'Mech I have luck on ultras, with the funniest being a drawn out MegaMek game in which I emptied all the ammo bins and only jammed on the last two shots, which I found rather amusing.).

I've also played with the Sunder (Used the C3/MRM/Streak boat in a Martial Olympiad and did fairly decently) and the Nova Clone. I can't really see why people can complain about the armor of the BHKU, since that's the major improvement the IS made when they copied the Nova, in taking advantage of the higher mass to give it a couple tons more armor. It's hard to say its underarmored, since it's only a sliver away from the max the chassis can hold anyway (And doesn't even commit the sin of wasting half a ton for that last point either). True, most of the KU's configs made the mistake of trying to copy the Clan configs (Especially any with missiles), but the Prime's actually decent if the terrain's built up enough to be able to get into range since it can do what its Clan copy can't: fire all its weapons without building more than a movement penalty. The D configuration isn't that bad either if you don't look at it as a copy of a Clan config but rather as a rather mobile fire support unit (An LRM20 and an ER Large is fairly decent, at least able to force PSRs out to 19 hexes on average, and the range brackets match fairly well.