Conceived during the some of the darkest days of the Capellan Confederation, the Advocator was designed to be an even lower cost version of the Vindicator, with highest possible degree of parts commonality with the larger design.
Had it been mass produced, the ADV-1R would have made use of the LTV and GM 160 rated fusion engines used in the Locust instead of the rarer 180 rated fusion engine of the Vindicator.
The Advocator's design process would begin in the early 3010s, in the aftermath of the unveiling of the Merlin and the resulting political pressure for new Capellan 'Mech designs. With the Capellan Confederation Armed Forces having steadily lost ground in the previous century, there were significant industrial and resource limitations to consider.
This environment of frugality meant that one particular Ceres Metals Industries team put focus on attempts to modify existing designs to use less materials and to require less shipping, rather than any expensive and time consuming attempt to create a truly new 'Mech.
In the end, the Vindicator was chosen as the development platform being an in-production design while still possessing significant firepower for its relative size.
Fundamentally, the chassis of the Advocator was little more than a crudely shaved down Vindicator one, with an additional reduction in internal spaces to further save weight. This wasn't without consequences, as the later declassified period documents and reports recovered by the Federated Suns Department of Military Intelligence indicate.
The most common complaint from testing staff was that the Advocator's cockpit was cramped and had worse ergonomics than the parent design, which would result in worse survivability in case of armor breach and greater fatigue for the pilot respectively. The test prototypes also had issues with ejection safety, despite the medium laser having been relocated since the housing for it hadn't been actually eliminated entirely.
The CCAF evaluations did not consider said characteristics to be a significant problem, however. In the final evaluation report before design finalization 3019, these issues were 'addressed' as follows; "-while the test design has lower available volume for the MechWarrior than standard,
the use of slimmer and smaller personnel can compensate for this minor issue. Additionally, it is the professional opinion of the testing board's medical specialists that no serious long term health concerns should arise with the ADV-1X even with personnel of baseline stature, based on currently available data."
Maintenance of the prototypes was also more time consuming though still not particularly difficult, as the tighter spaces required more effort to work in. Compounding this, the legs of the initial ADV-1X models proved prone to stress cracks and bending, as the amount of subtracted material proved excessive.
After few variations of the leg skeletal structure, a sufficiently robust design was discovered via brute force trial and error as calculating the exact thickness proved unexpectedly unreliable. The design team would claim that it had been caused by the differences between each Vindicator production batch, presumably due to shoddy quality control. The emergency production quotas set in 2983 requiring shortcuts in quality control are a probable cause in hindsight, based on other unrelated reports and documents on the overall readiness state of the CCAF circa 3020s.
Nonetheless in 3021, the intended production variant emerged from design and testing and was given the official designation of Advocator ADV-1R
Initial preparations were made in late 3025 to begin conversion of the Locust production line in Ares to switch over to the Advocator by 3035, with optimistic estimates of an annual production of 24-32 units by 3031.
Unfortunately for the CCAF, these plans would never come to fruition. Mass production of the Advocator would be foiled not by technical issues or any critical flaws in the finalized design, but by the disaster that was about to fall on the Confederation. Following the Fourth Succession War, with every 'Mech plant needed to replenish the hollowed out shell of the Capellan military, the conversion of the Locust production line was cancelled due to the disruption it would've caused to the desperately needed supply of war machines. Only a few years later with the proliferation of the Helm Memory Core and the reintroduction of Star League technologies designs such as the Vindicator would fall out of favor all-together, utterly dooming the Advocator into historical irrelevance.
With the mass production plans shelved, the Advocator would remain limited perhaps a dozen of pre-production and proof-of-concept units produced around a fifteen year period. This obscure design would eventually become extinct by 3050s, with all known examples used up as substitute replacements for Vindicators.
Much like the Vindicator, the Advocator had a design top speed of 64.8 km/h which would have given it similar mobility as most heavy BattleMechs of the era. Four jump jets gave it the same jump capability of 120 meters as the Vindicator, while eight tons of armor resulted in an armor protection marginally lesser than its predecessor. Using same weapons as the Vindicator, the ADV-1R would have ditched the problematic head mount for the Ceres Arms laser and instead would have mounted the medium laser in the left arm, eliminating the small laser entirely. This was intended to correct the unfavorable ejection characteristics of the Vindicator and to further save resources and funds.
The Advocator carried the Ceres Arms Smasher PPC in its right arm, with the innovative cooling jacket intact, while the Sian/Ceres Jaguar LRM-5 was mounted on the 'Mech's left torso sustained by one ton of ammunition.
With only fourteen standard heat sinks to cool the long range weaponry, the use of jump jets while firing both weapons would rapidly accumulate heat. For close range self-defence, the Advocator relied solely on the Ceres Arms medium laser and physical attacks.
Advocator ADV-1R
Mass: 40 tons
Chassis: Ceresplex IV
Power Plant: GM 160
Cruising Speed: 43.2 kph
Maximum Speed: 64.8 kph
Jump Jets: Anderson Propulsion 30
Jump Capacity: 120 meters
Armor: Starshield
Armament:
1 PPC
1 Medium Laser
1 LRM 5
Manufacturer: Ceres Metals Industries
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communication System: CeresCom Model 21-Rs
Targeting & Tracking System: C-Apple Churchill
Introduction Year: 3021
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-D
Cost: 2,816,613 C-bills
Type: Advocator
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Tonnage: 40
Battle Value: 939
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 4
Engine 160 Fusion 6
Walking MP: 4
Running MP: 6
Jumping MP: 4
Heat Sink 14 4
Gyro 2
Cockpit 3
Armor Factor 128 8
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Head 3 9
Center Torso 12 18
Center Torso (rear) 5
R/L Torso 10 15
R/L Torso (rear) 5
R/L Arm 6 10
R/L Leg 10 18
Right Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm
Left Arm Actuators: Shoulder, Upper Arm, Lower Arm, Hand
Weapons
and Ammo Location Critical Heat Tonnage
Heat Sink LL 1 - 1.0
Jump Jet LL 1 - 0.5
2 Jump Jet CT 2 - 1.0
3 Heat Sink RT 3 - 3.0
Medium Laser LA 1 3 1.0
3 Heat Sink LT 3 - 3.0
LRM 5 Ammo (24) LT 1 - 1.0
LRM 5 LT 1 2 2.0
Heat Sink RL 1 - 1.0
Jump Jet RL 1 - 0.5
PPC RA 3 10 7.0
Features the following design quirks: Rugged (1 Point), Cramped Cockpit.
Notes: Basically a slightly suckier and cheaper Vindicator that makes use Locust engines that should be lying around in every Great House military gathering dust.
Should be pretty easy to mass produce for the Capellans. I may or may not have foisted pair of these on my friend as a 'reward' by the Capellans.
