'Mech of the Week: OW-1 OwensIntended as a replacement of the
Jenner in light of the successful results of the
Raptor test program, the
Owens is one of the first generation of OmniMechs and, along with the
Strider, one of the two most reviled members of that group. It's curious in more than one sense, too, because the
Owens is, for a culture and military (accurately) stereotyped as being obsessed with Japan, possessed of a distinctly origin for its name, an old drinking song from Earth. Deployed in 3056, by the early Jihad, many regiments had between a lance and company of what's described by TRO3058U as a versatile machine in what may be a sign of either naïve optimism or bleak humor. While we're still waiting for the full situation to shake out as the
Objectives books get released, the future of the
Owens is a mixed picture the complete destruction of the Combines primary OmniMech plant. While Victory Weapons on Marduk is building two Combine OmniMechs, the
Owens isn't one of them. How the factories of the region formerly known as the Free Worlds League fared during the Jihad to is still mostly unknown despite some tantalizing hints here and there.
The design of the
Owens is as unusual in some ways as its origins and, for 3050s Combine light 'Mech designs, depressingly typical at the same time. At 35 tons, it equals the
Jenner in size and is built on a standard internal structure but uses a VOX 280 extra-light fusion engine to save four tons against the
Jenner's Magna 245 while still going 129 kph in clear terrain, giving you 1 MP over the original that comes in handy when you need to do things like follow a road without risking a fall. Given that we're talking about a light, the engine is neither that pricy nor really that big a vulnerability given what it gets you in terms of speed and weight savings. 7 tons of Starshield standard plate offers 112 points, another of the places where the
Owens scores good marks. The armor arrangement is similarly well done, 16 points on the center torso flanked by 12 points on each side, with 5 on the centerline rear and 4 on each side; the side torsos are maxed out. The arms have 10 points and the legs 12 while the cockpit has the maximum 9 points. Unfortunately, that's where the good news ends. 10 single heat sinks - one of only two OmniMechs so equipped - mean that your heat management is a hell of a lot more restricted than it should be. Yeah, sure, Intro 'Mechs get by, and I can do it, too, but I'd like to remind people that this 'Mech was introduced in 3056 using technology derived from captured Clan OmniMechs. This is something of a running joke with Combine 'Mechs. I'm pretty sure most of the DC fans will agree with me that's it not really that funny. The Jaguars probably thought it was funny as hell, though. In more mixed news, the
Owens also manages to carry 10% of its weight in fixed equipment and no, it's not jump jets. Instead, the
Owens was the electronics specialist of the early OmniMechs with a Beagle Active Probe, a C3 slave, and TAG. For some reason, the geniuses at LAW figured the best place to put the TAG was in the right torso. I'll get to why that's a problem later. All of this leaves you with only 7 tons of podspace at the end of the day and because you don't have single heat sinks, you can't just pile on the beam spam to maximize your tonnage efficiency beyond a certain point.
As the author of one of the two previous articles on the
Owens, both of them distinctly negative (an opinion that's only slightly softened over the three years since), I'd like to point out that this is not a well-regarded 'Mech among many players and I'm one of them. It's workable, even good, for certain purposes. But there's a lot of problems here, too, and they contribute to a debate with strongly-held views. The centerpiece of the debate is over the purpose and place of the OmniMech, particularly in the Inner Sphere. OmniMechs are expensive - slightly more so in terms of C-Bills but your real price is the industrial infrastructure necessary to build them. The potential flexibility the concept offers is incredible, the entire point of the exercise in the opinion of many. Something like a
Pariah/Septicemia can easily replace and improve upon four or five 'Mechs out of TRO3025 even using Spheroid pods. What gets people's goats about the
Owens is that it doesn't let you do any of that. It's a faster
Raven with battle armor handholds, which is about all it can be. The use of it as a battle armor taxi and as an electronics specialist - something it's admittedly quite able to do - isn't something a DHS version without the fixed equipment can't do; in fact, it can do it just as well without carrying equipment it doesn't need in place of things it could use to further the goals of the mission at hand. But there are many things the
Owens that could have been could have done, things the
Owens we have
can't do. We can make lemonade. In the right circumstances, it might even be good lemonade. Hell, considering what the spotting equipment can do, it can be
very good. That doesn't change the fact that a lot of us think we're being handed lemons. The podloads don't really help most of the time, either, sometimes suggesting they were constructed by loading a few
Avatars and then putting whatever was left on the poor
Owens.
The Prime is, despite the prominence of the small lasers, actually not that bad. In LRM 5 is mounted in each arm, sharing a single ton of ammunition, while a medium laser is in the head and two small lasers in the center torso, keeping the weapons out of the arcs covered by mechanized battle armor squads or points, although not a full six-man Level I. As a sniper or skirmisher, it's not too bad, although it was outgunned from the word “Go” by the
Mist Lynx, as usual for someone trying to match LRM counts against the Clans with even vaguely similar tonnages available for the purpose.
The A duplicates the weapon layout without really getting the utility out of the weapons. Each arm has a Streak SRM 2 with a shared ton of ammo, with the head and center torso mount dedicated to a small pulse laser and a pair of machine guns, respectively. I'm feeling more than a little underwhelmed. At the time, infantry didn't require special weapons to deal with, meaning that the utility the configuration has gained since wasn't really apparent at the time, and the Clans don't use that much unarmored infantry. The weapons load is mainly going to annoy Elementals and, if you're not using your Streaks exclusively, oblige you to get into their weapons range and giving you a good chance of being outshot by a bunch of guys in tin suits. At least the heat load is low assuming someone doesn't decide to bathe you in Inferno gel or something similarly inconvenient. (That's the great argument in favor of DHS on 'Mechs that don't need it for heat purposes, by the way. It massively reduces your vulnerability to external heat sources, something the
Wolverine II used to great effect on Circe during Klondike.) Nowadays, it's useful against infantry in ways many other loads aren't, but it's also going to be forced to get up close and personal with a unit type that can do a fair bit of damage itself. As for anti-'Mech warfare, this configuration has approximately the same impact on intact units as peppering a full-grown elephant with buckshot. You might get lucky and hit something vital at just the right angle but you're probably just leaving a few bruises and making him mad.
The
Owens B is another one of those configurations that shows a bizarre and frankly downright perverse fascination with the small laser. The right arm is dedicated to an SRM 6 with Artemis IV, using a single ton of ammo. The other two tons are given over to no less than four small lasers, three in the left arm and one in the head. Okay, seriously,
why? Leaving aside the interesting question of whether anyone remembered what Clan ERSLs can do at those ranges, what was this supposed to accomplish other than tying up small lasers you could strip down to put on Raidens instead?
In contrast, the C is one of the handful of bright spots to be found here with a left arm-mounted large laser and a pair of mediums on the right. The heat sinks don't help anything, requiring balancing a paltry 14 weapon heat, but the configuration is more than workable for most of the jobs an
Owens does.
Given the heights of 'Mech perfection LAW has achieved so far, the
Owens D is actually doing pretty well for itself. The Narc launcher on the left arm makes it clear exactly what you're supposed to be doing with yourself, although I probably would've gone for a pair of medium lasers on the right instead of the SRM 4 to get another ton of Narc ammo instead of a ton of SRMs. Still, it's not doing that badly for itself and the SRMs will let you exploit any breaches caused by the mixture of fire Narc, C3, and TAG can call down on a target.
The
Owens E was the last of the configurations covered in CoyoteWarDog's article two forums back and reminds of a vaguely upgunned
Targe. (The fact that I'm scraping that far down the barrel should tell you something.) I've long maintained that MRMs are only really worth it with the larger rack sizes and there's been some strong arguments made that they're
still not worth it. Think back to the pod space. 7 tons isn't enough to carry ammo for an MRM 20 and the launcher itself, so all you're getting on is one or two MRM 10s; LAW opted to go with one mounted in the right arm. The left is, at least not the ERSLs the
Targe boasts, instead using a pair of medium lasers, one standard, one pulse. While the lasers are passable, the MRMs are both inaccurate and not terribly powerful in terms of damage. Still, at least there's no small lasers.
New with RS3058U Unabridged, the
Owens F uses a range of equipment. The centerpiece of the armament (literally and figuratively considering it's in the center torso) is a light PPC while each arm continues the “theme” of small lasers with an ERSL. The left torso has a Guardian ECM suite to round out the electronics and instead of, say, a third ERSL, an A-pod was mounted on the right leg. Great. If infantry decides to jump on me - conventional, not BA - I can kill about 3 of them on average while their buddies, who are now really unhappy, are even more committed to pulling me out of my cockpit and providing my brain with a sunroof. At least they don't explode on a crit.
The
Owens R was one of the configurations originally introduced in
The Dragon Roars that was later repackaged into the above-mentioned unabridged record sheet volume. On the one hand, the configuration has a trio of Clan ERMLs, one in each arm and one in the head, and on the other, instead of the heat sinks to sort of
use the full firepower those lasers give you or, say, stacking on MPLs which are a little cooler, they use an MRM 10 with a ton of ammo, simultaneously offering the chance to blow the Clantech up in one go and waste four tons without significant payoff compared to the lasers.
All of that leaves the question of how you actually
make that lemonade I mentioned. The 'Mech's primary jobs are electronics spotting or scanning support (only one canon
Owens mounts ECM, remember) and moving mechanized battle armor around at speeds that are usually only legal on major highways in the United States. Within those confines, make no mistake, the
Owens is very good at its job. The armor makes it harder to squash than some of the other spotters out there and the turn of speed to pace a
Locust is damned handy in its own way. (Keep in mind you don't have jump jets - in terrain where they're necessary, you want to use something more like a
Blackhawk-KU for the transport job.) The speed and armor are where just about everyone can agree LAW did things right, so use them. Get out there, move the BA into position, and if you're running C3 or TAG-compatible munitions, you have a very good spotter on your hands. Even though I have nothing bad to say about the armor, remember that this
is a light, so don't stop moving. Keep your speed up and try to position yourself in bad arcs, especially if you have some decent weapons in the configuration you're using. A basic thing to keep in mind in the spotter role is that you can't use your TAG while carrying BA. If you're planning to both lay the red dot on someone and move battle armor, you need to drop the suits off before you start spotting. You also need to pay careful attention to the matter of what the
Owens is supporting and how it's trying to go about doing that. Many 'Mechs are capable of affecting the battlefield mainly by their own armaments and ability to get them into position. An
Owens, between the generally lackluster podloads, the single heat sinks, and the electronics, is not going to do that against most opponents. Several of them can certainly be fairly annoying to the enemy but they simply don't have the weapons to generally be more than nuisances on their own. Instead, they need to be providing targeting data or electronics support to bigger, meaner units that are fully capable of using it to good effect, and they need to use their own turn of speed to make their comparatively light armaments count by getting in someone's flanks and forcing them to either divert their attention or suffer a lot of anklebiting on top of whatever the
Owens might be supporting. Enough of that can make a nuisance a deadly problem over time even if there's nothing around for them to support. One trick you can always use is to light someone up with TAG as a distraction if they're paying too much attention to a 'Mech. Even if you don't have anything on the field that can use the data, it'll force an opponent to consider carefully whether or not you just might have some semi-guided LRMs you've been hoarding or even laser-guided bombs or homing Arrows ready to land. Hell, even when you can't possibly land something like that this turn, it might be worth doing anyway to plant the suggestion that all you're doing is playing mind games.
All told, the
Owens is a more impressive creature on defense than offense. The armor is nothing to be ashamed of considering the 'Mech's size. The speed is enough to get more than decent defensive modifiers, especially if your job at the moment doesn't require you to dash right into point-blank range. This can make squashing them a bit harder than you might expect. At the same time, players have a tendency to underestimate the
Owens because, as I've explained exhaustively, ad nauseam, the weaponry generally sucks. Something I've tried to make clear is that's really not your problem dealing with an
Owens. The problem is whatever it's spotting for and some players go straight for what's shooting instead of the light stooging around and seemingly not accomplishing much. Don't be that guy. First, you need ECM if you can get it. An
Owens should always be suspected of providing C3 spotting until proven innocent, so take the precautions necessary. Second, pulse lasers, targeting computers, or other weapons that make hitting elusive targets easier will be helpful. At a minimum, pulse lasers will keep the close-in variants on their toes, and snubbies (or Clan ERLLs) will make C3 spotting a little more nerve wracking even if the 'Mech tries to slide around your ECM bubble. Beyond that, be prepared to layer fire and swat it if it proves to be doing something unfriendly. Pay attention to what's going on, too. Fire declarations for artillery, for instance, might be your first warning that an
Owens (or other TAG spotter like a Pandion, Zephyr, or
Hitman) that's been shy up until now may be about to light you up. On the other hand, TAG
without fighters around or artillery fire is either a prelude to semi-guided LRMs (possibly from hidden units) or an attempt to make you think about it.
References: The
Master Unit List covers the
Owens in all its low-BV glory, while
Sarna has some other imagery.
CamoSpecs has several different units represented, including one from the Federated Suns.
