The Crossbow (IIC?) Oh..just the Crossbow then.
BackgroundThe Crossbow started life way back in the late 2800s during the Clans Golden Century. Designed by Clan Steel Viper who wanted to kickstart their OmniMech production, with them being newcomers to the field they were aided by group of Clan Snow Raven Scientists that had been captured and claimed by the Vipers.
The design itself was hardly innovative, and could be called extremely conservative, featuring very little in the way of advanced technology in its construction and limiting the pods to the arms. These arm pods are quite unique, more like a detachable turret with a plug and play link up, the arms can be swapped out and replaced with new pods very quickly.
Later variants did change this slightly with the addition of weapons to the torso but the Mech’s arms are where you will always find the primary armament.
Still, despite these drawbacks the 65 ton Mech is far from useless. Its dirt cheap to produce, uses little resources but is tough and has a potent targeting system that, if you get into short ranges becomes lethally accurate.
DesignAt 65 tons the Crossbow is very much a heavy Mech and its 325-rated standard engine let it hit typical Clan heavy Mech speeds of 86kph at a full run. The designers didn’t try mounting jump jets and no advancer materials went into the Mech’s construction. So that’s no endo-steel and no ferro-fibrous armour, and with a large and heavy standard engine, it cuts down on what the Crossbow can carry.
But this also makes the damn thing very tough, and 12 tons of armour give it good protection, with a hide thicker than that of a Mad Dog or Loki (admittedly a soggy biscuit has more protection than a Loki) and the Crossbow boats similar protection to the wildly popular and successful Summoner.
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But all this heavy standard equipment does bite into what the Crossbow can carry, and a somewhat meagre 16 tons of pod space are available. Still despite this the Vipers and their Raven Scientists did manage to make it a viable machine, one that saw a lot more variants than one would think for a Mech that had clear design limitations worked into its hull.
And that tends to be simple but effective design choices and pairing up weapon systems of the same type.
One other thing was that the Crossbow design is VERY handsome, at least in my mind, its sleek and elegant, lots of artfully worked curves, not the brutalist styling of Clan Omni’s seen in REVIVAL, but something that’s more…1930’s sports car elegant.
VariantsPrime – The simple but effective weapon mix starts here. A pair of LRM-20’s with Artemis IV fire control, each fed by a 2-ton ammo bin and that’s it.
Under gunned for a Clan 65 tonner but still not bad, 40 missiles are a whole lotta spam, and the Artemis is a nice touch, less useful later on with the proliferation of ECM though. Still 2 tons per launcher gives you adequate endurance by Clan standards, and of course, the Clan LRM’s don’t care what range you’re at when fighting so don’t be afraid to get close.
Alfa – An attempt at a multi-role version the A is very much a jack of all trades and master of none. A pair of LRM-5’s gives some long-range firepower but at best it’s a tickle, so if you can, load up with other ammo, but this is Clans, pre-REVIVIAL so they won’t.
The A is instead much happier at close range, a pair of Medium pulse lasers and SSRM-6’s gives it a good punch, but it’s still very weak for a 65-ton machine. The good thing is that its BV is dirt cheap so that’s a plus for sure. The Streaks and pulsers let you deal with faster foes and this thing can quite happily bully a light or medium, but its outgunned by many heavies.
Bravo – The B takes the A’s “I’m a jack of all trades” approach and throws it out the window. A quartet of Streak 6’s, two in each arm are what the Bravo packs and each has their own ton of ammo, so, thanks to them being streak launchers, you’re not going to have the typical Clan ammo problems any time soon. Whilst it lacks a knock down punch, the B can sandblast a Mech’s armour off whilst also making a serious threat to tanks and Battle Armour. This may well be its role as the missile spam can cripple Elementals outside of the battle armours effective range to reply. Still, you don’t want to let this thing get close, and its fast enough to do it considering the period that it was encountered by the Inner Sphere.
Charlie – New toys time and of course it’s not a H so we all know what that means, ATM time. This time it’s an ATM-6 in each arm with a nice and generous 3-ton ammo bin per launcher allowing full use of the ammo types available.
The Charlie also features the first torso mounted weapons in the form of a pair of Heavy Machine guns, one in each side torso to help caramelize infantry forces. An ECM is added to the mix too.
The C like the B lacks a knock down punch, but like the B, it’s another sand blaster, the threat of 12 HE missiles can’t also be underestimated. The C is screaming out to be paired up as a bodyguard, its big brother makes the holes and this fills them with explosives.
Delta – A bit of a weird one, I’m not sure where this is from but it screams SOCIETY to me. Instead of missiles for support we see the newly introduced Mech Mortar get rolled out in a Crossbow variant. The D has a Mech Mortar-8 in each arm and each draws from their own 3-ton ammo bin allowing for flexibility with the ammo choices available to the Mortars.
Of course, the Mortars have their own drawbacks, they have a 180-meter minimum range and don’t do much damage. But, their range is nice, the flexible ammo types are a bonus too. Unfortunately, you only get 4 shots per ton so if you do break out the special ammo, beware you get only 4 shots of it. (Seriously, what calibre is this mortar? The largest mortar in service today fires a 240mm round and that weighs 130kg, a MM-8’s round is 250kg, is this thing a sawn-off battleship cannon?)
A pure support unit, the D is vulnerable to anyone who gets close and it can’t really fight on its own due to its limited damage. Take with friends, put friends in front of threats and rain HE down on baddies. Not your friends, it tends to irk.
Echo – The E was designed by someone who REALLY liked APGRs and had a serious hatred on for infantry. Eight, yes eight Anti-Personnel Gauss Rifles live in EACH ARM, and these are all linked into a targeting computer. This allows the E to spit out a huge volume of relatively light damaging shots to medium ranges (literally Medium laser range). Sure, if all 16 APGR’s hit the same spot that’s more damage than a double tap from an Ultra-20, but you would have to have Lady Luck and Admiral Awesome smiling upon you that day if it did happen. Oh and six tons of ammo let you hammer away.
So basically, what we have is another sandblaster, much like the Prime, A, B and C. Put this near any infantry formation though if you want them to go away in a cloud of hypersonic flechettes.
Hotel – It’s a H so we all know what that means. Finally, we move away from being a sandblaster! The big showpiece of the H is its Heavy large laser, which brings a big punch to the table. To counter the heat surge pumped out by the laser, four more heatsinks are installed. The rest of the weapons are a curious hodgepodge. A LRM-15 and its 2 tons of ammo live in the other arm and this provides cover whilst the H gets into range for its heavy laser, but then it falls a bit flat. A quartet of LMG’s with half a ton of ammo between them fill out the rest of the weapons and these live in the torso. This curiously makes the H over-sinked and removing one heatsink in favour of even a pair of ER Smalls would have been a better choice. Still it’s got a good punch and its not totally defenceless at long range.
Uniform – A product of the Wars of Reaving the U is an ultra-specialized underwater fighter, meaning that you won’t see it outside of special deployments. But its very very good at what it does, even if it is in a limited role.
To do its role the U has a pair of LRT-10’s as well as a pair of SRT-2’s for close in work. As most Mech’s that fight under water don’t feature weapons specialized for the environment, so this gives the U the ability to engage at longer ranges than most threats can return fire. Finally, a pair of ER Mediums give good, dependable firepower. The final polish on this underwater fighter’s sheen is a full group of UMU’s to allow it to move faster than a typical Mech when underwater. They have to walk, this thing can zum along thanks to its prop-pods.
Although extremely specialized, its good at what it does, but don’t expect to see this in a pick-up game.
ThoughtsA family of sandblasters, the Crossbow is under gunned, cheap but quirky. Fast and tough, with enough firepower to make it a viable threat on the battlefield but not suffering from Kit Fox-itus where you have too much firepower but are squishy and thus easily removed. The Crossbow, to me, makes a good wing-man. It can engage a distracted opponent or move in to take out a badly damaged target with its many crit seeking weapons. All but one lacks any real knock down wallop and rely on flaying the armour off with repeated strikes or relying on a lucky crit. Still they can sandblast quite easily thanks to the weapons choices. And, fortunately, there’s no donkey choices with LB or Ultra 2’s which would eat into the available tonnage far too much.
Even the Crossbow D is okay, as its built to operate in a situation where Zell’s been thrown screaming from a building whilst on fire. It’s a pure support unit and its designed to operate in an environment where it would be supported. Hint, don’t take the D out and expect to solo someone who’s not an infantry platoon.
What we get is a good support platform, but not an outstanding one. Don’t have too high expectations of it doing amazing things, but the Crossbow won’t underperform if it is allowed to do its job either.
Fighting one, go for the arms, limb one and you get rid of 100% of their firepower in most variants. Otherwise it’s a case of leg it or core it. Since all their ammo is carried in the arms, you can’t really kill them that way (also, standard engine) so it’s more a case of applying sledge hammer to object until it falls apart.
Presumably what the D's guns are based on, that's a 15-inch howitzer.
As always, thoughts and comments are most welcome.
