Stooping Hawk – What happens when angry space hobo’s flash the cash.The history of Clan Blood Spirit is one replete with tales of survival against the odds, of making the best out of a bad situation, and of living frugally. With the Stooping Hawk its almost like they won the lottery and went on a big spending spree.
The Blood Spirits, always short on resources made extensive use of standard Mech’s who’s main design philosophy seems to be potent, reliable, cheap. The Clan also had a love affair with the LRM-15 and the ER Large laser (see the Blood Kite as the ultimate expression of this tale of star crossed weapon systems.)
But the resource (and friend) poor Clan featured very few Omnimech’s, probably with most of theirs being the ones they salvaged from their enemies or took in Trials. And then in 2970 the Spirit’s first home grown Omni came onto the scene and it breaks nearly every rule for Mech design the Clan had traditionally favoured and had been laid down by a Khan who had decreed that Spirit Mech's were to be built cheap and simple.
The history of the Stooping Hawk’s a bit convoluted. With the introduction of Omni-technology the Khan’s of Clan Blood Spirit quite rightly realised that trials for this new technology would escalate until they simply could not bid for the tech. It took the intervention of Clan Fire Mandrill to help the Spirits get the tech.
The Mandrill’s had their hands on ‘Prototype A’ a Ghost Bear Omni-design and offered the Spirits a trial. If they won, then they would get the Omni-technology, in exchange for territorial rights.
Bidding well and fighting hard the Warriors of Clan Blood Spirit achieved victory and the Clan finally had Omni-technology. This was then given to the Scientists who threw themselves into the design with the fervour of an alcoholic who's broken into the Jack Daniels distillery.
DesignAt 55 tonnes the Stooping Hawk joins the illustrious Stormcrow in that weight category for Clan Omni’s and whilst slower, at 86kph its still as fast as the standard Clan Omni battle line heavies and can keep up with Inner Sphere mediums and heavies without breaking too much of a sweat.
Usual Spirit designs featured very little in the way of advanced materials, save their weapons and heatsinks they often had nothing advanced in them out of a desire to be able to produce the machines themselves and be self-sufficient. Nothing is known about ‘Prototype A’ other than it was a Bear design that they dropped in favour of what would become the Mad Dog. We can assume that it was a 55-ton design but then again designs can go up and down in weight whilst in the prototype stage.
The Spirit Scientists took the Mech and developed it to its full extent and lavished it with an endo-steel skeleton as well as 9 tonnes of Ferro-fibrous armour plate. But still they could not go the full monty. Cost and production issues meant that the Mech’s engine would remain a 275 rated standard one instead of the far more resource intensive XL engines. This is still enough to push the Mech along at 86kph.
The Blood Spirits also avoided any of the trap falls of the 3050 Omni’s and didn’t fit any equipment, absolutely everything weapon or mobility wise was modular and it comes with the 10 double heatsinks built into the engine as standard and that’s basically it.
As mentioned, the Mech has 9 tonnes of Ferro-Fibrous plate protecting it, the use of Ferro a real extravagance for the resource strapped Spirits. But it does give the machine a nice solid hide.
9/21/29/21 (5/7/5)
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Which really isn’t bad, its got a lot of armour where it counts and can even take a AC-20 to any forward facing on the chest which is something the Stormcrow can’t boast.
VariantsPrime – The Prime is a mid to short range brawler, quite unlike the ER large/LRM-15 obsessed Spirits, the Prime’s built to mix it up with the enemy. For this it has an Ultra AC-10 fed by a very generous 3 tonnes of ammo all sat together in the right torso. This is a large amount of ammo for a single weapon of its type and barring any jams it gives the Mech’s primary weapon good battlefield endurance. Each arm mounts an ER Medium laser and a Medium pulse laser which mesh well with the range of the Ultra. Finally, the Spirits fitted 5 jump jets giving the Mech a 5/8/5 movement profile, making it easily capable of keeping up with the usually fast and agile Omni's of other Clans.
Well-armed for a medium the Stooping Hawk's firepower is roughly equal to a Stormcrow Prime's, all be it in a short to mid-range brawl and with double tapping the Ultra. But with 3 tonnes of ammo, you can do that.
Alfa – The Alfa takes the mid-range brawling and throws it out the window. Out go all the weapons and in go two ER PPCs, one in each side torso and an additional 7 tonnes of heatsinks spread around the body. The jump jets are also retained. This falls more in line with the Spirits designs, and is a dedicated sniper and is very cool running. Simply pick a target and blaze away until its removed, and no one will approve of two ER PPC firing at them. Putting a good gunner in this thing will yield great results and you basically want to treat it like a much larger Puma Prime. All be it one that can actually use both PPC's without starting to pan fry the pilot at the same time.
Bravo – This one screams I AM A BLOOD SPIRIT MECH!!! Stripping out the jump jets and dropping down to the engine mounted heatsinks everything is put into weapons. An ER Large laser is mounted in the head of all places, whilst a trio of LRM-15’s each with Artemis IV are mounted in the left and right torso and the last one in the right arm. Somewhat worryingly though, only 4 tonnes of ammo are fitted and with 3 launchers, you’re going to be going through that at a rate of knots. Still there’s few Clan or Inner Sphere medium Mech’s that can boast being able to fire 45 LRM’s at someone and whilst the barrage won’t last too long, whatever you’re shooting at will want the missile spam to end sooner. Although not jump capable its quite nippy for a missile boat and can use its speed to dictate the range. Still the biggest problem is that limited ammo supply so you might want to husband your shots, then again, that's what the ER large laser is for.
Charlie – Also VERRRRRY Blood Spirit it goes back to their beloved ER Large laser. It fits two of the weapons, one in the head and one in the chest. And thanks to its standard engine, you’ve now got a VERY nasty 55 tonne zombie that’s also well protected. Other weapons include a pair of ER Mediums, one mounted in the left arm the other the right torso and the jump jets are once again fitted for maximum mobility. But then the Mech breaks the Blood Spirit ‘cheap and cheerful’ by slapping in a 2 tonne targeting computer to make all these weapons more accurate.
Finally, an extra 7 heatsinks are fitted, making this a 55 tonne Thor/Summoner D.
Yet its better because the damn things a Zombie with its head and chest mounted ER Large lasers and the standard engine. Able to run and gun all day, and only movement will add anything to the heat scale making this a very nasty scalpel of a Mech. Because of its head and chest mounted weapons you MUST core this thing or rip a leg off, it can lose both torso's and still be blazing away at you.
Delta – New toy time, which was something you’d not expect the Spirits to really fall for except they also went “Me love you long time!” with the heavy laser system. Not quite to the extent of the Star Adders who were almost into full blown fetish territory with their obsession with the heavy lasers, but still the Spirits did make use of them.
This could be purely because it was a weapon developed by the Adders, the Spirits hated rival and basically childish Clan ‘anything you can do I can do better!’ thinking.
More akin to the Prime the Delta is a mid to short range brawler although an ER Large is fitted in the head for long range fire.
The jump jets were also removed so mobility goes down but firepower goes up. Two ER Mediums and an ER Small live together in the left arm whilst a trio of Heavy Medium’s live in the right arm. An additional 11 tonnes of extra heatsinks are added and these help to keep the Mech running cool although a full alpha and movement will start the heat scale rising, you don’t suffer any catastrophically high heat spikes, which lets this thing use its array of weapons quite well once the range drops.
Echo – I’m not sure about this one, it’s a mixture of new toys and a take on the Prime, sans the jump jets. Out goes the Ultra and in goes an LB-10X fed by a 2 tonne ammo bin. A pair of ER Mediums are mounted in the right arm whilst the left has a pair of ATM-3’s and another ATM-3 is mounted in the left torso. These three launchers share 3 tonnes of ammo between themselves. Really the Echo’s another mid-range brawler, the ER ammo on the ATM’s and the small number of tubes mean that at best its going to be plinking Mech’s, but it could be useful against vehicles, where the LB-10’s cluster shots could also come in handy. So is this a brawler, or a vehicle and BA killer? I’m not sure. I would also assume that of the variants this was probably VERY rare as ATM ammo is quite advanced and more resource intensive.
Foxtrot – An extremely mobile backstabber and close in brawler the Foxtrot is seemingly built with an eye towards long ranging deployments thanks to its weapons fit.
A pair of Heavy Mediums live in the left arm, a pair of Medium pulse lasers live in the right and just for added trolling a pair of Streak 4’s live in the chest and a heavy small laser is mounted in the head. The Streaks share a tonne of ammo between them but the final flourish comes in 8(!) improved jump jets giving the Foxtrot a huge 240 meter jumping range (5/8/8 in game terms) which makes it the envy of more than a few light Mech’s. Whilst the short weapons range means that you must live dangerously and with only two extra heatsinks this variant can run hot, if you can get behind a target, you can eviscerate their back armour and fill it with missiles before they can even get a shot off. The huge mobility provided by the jump jets also would lend themselves to this variant in a city fight or built up terrain. I can't think of any Mech off the top of my head that can jump as far as this one save I think a variant of the Kuma, which this thing then outguns.
Golf – The oddball of the Stooping Hawk family the Golf also employs new toys and was the last variant to see production. Built around a trio of Protomech AC-4’s (one in the left torso, two in the right) which share 2 tonnes of ammo between them the Proto-AC’s can take advantage of advanced ammo types that were introduced, and precision ammo could come in handy, all be it at the cost of smaller ammo bins.
For ammo-less firepower a quartet of ER Mediums are mounted, two in each arm but this variant can’t jump and only has 2 extra heatsinks fitted, making it a bit warm running, but nothing too untoward. I see this as a panic built variant. With the rapidly escalating crisis in the Homeworld’s prior to the Wars of Reaving the Spirits were using anything and everything they had. They loved Proto’s and embraced them, and with leftover Proto AC’s they started fitting them on Stooping Hawk’s to try and use every resource at hand with the Spirits now trapped on York and quite able to see the writing on the wall. This is only a head-canon theory mind.
Still of the variants its probably the most..’meh’. Proto-AC’s are not that long ranged and their damage isn’t great but the ranges work well with the ER Mediums and being able to use advanced ammo does add flexibility to the machine, and if all three hit the same area 12 points of damage isn't something to wave off.
Thoughts
For a Clan that didn’t make Omni’s the Blood Spirits made a superb machine with the Stooping Hawk. Whilst not that fast, its fast enough to be a cavalry design and with jump jets its quite agile, or absurdly agile if you take a Foxtrot due to that absurd jump range.
Weapons mixes are generally very good with the Golf being the weakest of the lot (in my view) and they don’t run overly hot, avoiding the usual Clan Omni issue of overheating. The Stooping Hawk is quite the gun boat of a design and 'despite' its standard engine it does not suffer from it due to it being smartly designed and not having any fixed equipment. The result is a very flexible machine, although each variant does seem built to do a certain role, and then do that role very well. This is in contrast to the 3050 Omni’s and more than a few later designs who retain a very generalist feel with weapons for every range. The Stooping Hawk’s variants go “I am going to do THIS ROLE and ONLY this role.” Which to me makes sense, you need a city fighter, make it into a Foxtrot, then once that battles done, 30 minutes later its now a Bravo and giving fire support for an attack. The 3050 Omni's were generally jack of all trades or tried to be, not quite the case of 2 x LB-2Xs (with 1 tonne of ammo) then six SRM-6's and a rear firing flamer, but close. The Stooping Hawk on the other hand does its job, and it does it well, but can't perform as a generalist outside the role of its variant.
Fighting one is more dependent on what variant you’re facing, but they for the most part have the movement profile of an IS 55 tonner so should not be something too new to encounter. But this machine does have quite the slap to it, and if you let one dictate the fight, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble.
Sadly, the Stooping Hawk almost certainly died along with its Clan. I doubt the surviving Homeworlder’s would bother rebuilding this Mech even if it was a potent fighting force, and save for some that were salvaged by the remaining Clans in the Homeworld’s or grabbed by bandits the Stooping Hawk is pretty much extinct, with perhaps a handful surviving at best, salvaged from the ruins of York.
EDITIt turns out that Clan Stone Lion has captured facilities to make the Kingfisher, Blood Kite AND Stooping Hawk and is producing them to bulk up their Tourman because the three designs are not resource intensive (for the most part) and the Lions prize their durability, so it turns out the Stooping Hawk is not quite so extinct!
But on the table it’s a good machine, very good, and its odd to meet a Medium Zombie but the Charlie and Foxtrot are just that, the Charlie more so thanks to its two centrally mounted ER Larges. Role wise its closer to the 55 tonner classics of the Inner Sphere than it is to something like the Stormcrow. But if you think ‘should I take one’ then yes, this Mech is not a dog’s egg and will do you well in pretty much any role you put it in.
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/images/8/86/Stooping_Hawk.jpg - lovely design even if it does look like something piloted by an angsty teen with HUGE hair, possibly prone to giving overly dramatic speeches about how he MUST DESTROY YOU!
As always thoughts and comments are most welcome!
