More than just a couple of people have requested this article... three to be exact. ;) But that's enough to get my attention. So... here we go. My last attempt at a super-heavy vehicle went poorly (the Destrier), and this one sadly didn't allow for much testing either- but, being a more straightforward vehicle, I'm hoping that this will be a little easier to run regardless. Apologies in advance for any errors, as my experience with superheavies is limited.
Now, with that in mind... We all know the old laughs about House Steiner- "we can outmaneuver most fortifications", "Zeuses are scout Mechs", on and on. It's old cliche, and we know that the Lyrans actually build some very impressive units below 80 tons. But... the cliche was born from a kernel of truth, after all. And no unit perhaps embodies that mentality better than the enormous monstrosity known as the Gulltoppr... and yet, ironically, it isn't even Lyran-built, technically!
Born of feeding a steady diet of steroids, black coffee, and hatred to a Heimdall chassis, the Gulltoppr is a superheavy ground monitor intended not to so much hold a defensive position as to BECOME that defensive position. Few units in Battletech simply dominate a battlefield the way a Gulltoppr can- assuming that it's on the battlefield to begin with, as it's not exactly easy to move around. The modular nature of the unit gives it great flexibility in payload, but it is incapable of bringing the fight to the enemy- so one can only put it where that enemy needs to go, and make them suffer for it. Built on Arc-Royal by the Exiled Wolves for use by their Lyran allies (and using all-IS tech), the unit is shipped in portions to the duty location, where final assembly is completed and the unit is armed with whatever is available- which means that no two Gulltopprs are equipped alike, interestingly- the configurations listed below are likely just a couple of examples of a near-endless variety.
Cracking open the engine, we see a 380 XL engine, no different from what a typical-sized assault tank might carry. Here, of course, it propels a 190-ton leviathan to a... stately... 2/3 movement curve. While a superheavy can ignore some terrain issues, under even the most ideal conditions this is a unit that can't really go anywhere fast. As we noted with the Davion-built Destrier, there are no vessels out there that have superheavy vehicle bays as of the current canon, but if such units are out there (I noted then that a Triumph-class vessel would be an ideal platform), moving Gulltopprs via in-atmosphere hops is probably a better idea than actually driving somewhere.
At 190 tons you would expect a massive amount of armor on the unit, as with the Destrier. 44 tons of hardened armor qualifies, no doubt- seven tons more than its Davion cousin, in fact! Killing a Gulltoppr takes some serious work. The front has a mighty 68 points (and remember, that's hardened, so it is the equivalent of double of that basically), with the front-sides each having 52 points. From the rear, we see the rear-sides with 45 points, and the rear has 32 points of welded frustration to pound through before one can see effects. Then there's still the turrets- yes, plural. The front turret has 33 points, the rear turret 25- which sounds weak, but due to the odd quirks of Battletech these mounts aren't hit nearly as often on average as the body of the vehicle anyway. Worth noting is the CASE built into the vehicle from the ground up, saving the cast and crew of these behemoths in the event of ammunition-based problems.
EDIT: Unfortunately, there's this: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/errata/technical-readout-3145-lyran-commonwealth/msg789202/#msg789202 - that pretty seriously changes things here in terms of that armor. The author was made aware of this at the time of the request, and flat-out forgot about it. The short version is that hardened armor cannot be mounted on an Omni unit, and obviously the Gulltoppr is one. There's no good excuse for this mistake other than sheer forgetfulness, and I apologize for the error. Treat this armor as standard plating- which greatly changes the durability of the unit from 'oh my god' levels to 'I can shut that thing up'.So we have an immobile brick of armor. Great. Now what? Well, as noted above, Gulltopprs are armed with whatever is available at their duty location, so it's hard to say what all is out there. 61.5 tons of pod space is plenty enough to cause some pain, right? (Note: the forward turret can hold 30 tons of this gear, and the rear turret another 25 tons) The book gives us a few ideas to look at.
The 'Prime' (and again, how often any configuration shows up is hard to say) starts with the forward turret getting two Gauss rifles- very Lyran-feeling, isn't it? Fed by four tons of ammo, this makes a Gulltoppr a pain in the ass to deal with... and that's the front turret. The rear turret has an even less pleasant surprise for enemies... a Long Tom cannon. A couple of rail guns wasn't fun, well, have an artillery shell to boot! With three tons of ammo, the Gulltopprs big gun makes life hell on anything in the impact zone- your battle armor won't be happy with this. The rear turret also has two anti-missile systems sharing two tons of ammunition, lest stray SRMs disable the tracks, and a Guardian ECM system finishes the fun. Impressive, no?
Configuration 'A' then is one that we can safely assume is brewed up by the Wolves for their own Gulltopprs. That front turret has a pair of Gauss rifles again, but Clan versions this time- which doesn't do a thing to make them less painful, just saves six tons of weight. That weight got put immediately into a five-ton targeting computer (oh god), with the ECM suite (now a Clan version) parked with it. Where the Long Tom used to sit, however, there is now a sobering display consisting of three Clan LRM-20 racks, each with an Artemis V computer to help them. Eight tons of ammunition should be enough to make life miserable on someone for a while, right?
The 'B' is a command version, it seems- with a few nasty surprises of its own. Two boosted C3 master units coordinate an entire array of forces into one network, with the usual Guardian system mounted along with them. The Long Tom cannon in the rear mount is back from the Prime, with the front turret now holding... yeah, a second Long Tom. Oh god. Eight tons of ammo are mounted, and should make enemy troops very, very concerned if ordered to attack.
Now, again, I stress that any number of ideas can be crammed in here. Gulltopprs are, as I said, mounting whatever is handy at their deployment site, so they may be crammed full of just about anything- Clan, IS, whatever is handy. Brew up whatever you want on these things- Arrow launchers, maybe? LBX cannons for an AA pillbox? Rocket-spam? The possibilities are limitless.
Go nuts- try out Gulltopprs and let me know how it goes, and see what fun you can come up with for your own versions.
