Sea Fox Amphibious Armor - Technical Readout 3145 Federated Suns page 7
The Sea Fox Amphibious Armor is a highly specialized battlesuit intended for aquatic operations, if the name wasn't enough of a clue for you to guess that already. Appearing in Technical Readout 3145 Federated Suns, the Sea Fox continues the Suns love for both advanced technology and battle armor, giving them a suit that fulfils a role unique among the Inner Sphere Houses and only contested by Clan forces.
The first light battlesuit to enter AFFS service since the original Infiltrator Mk I AKA Waddle AKA That Hideous Pile, the Sea Fox is very much a niche design in game terms. Although it'd no doubt have great utility within the game universe, given that humans do have a tendancy to live near water, you're obviously only going to be able to get some use out of the suit in scenarios that have a significant amount of water hexes, and not just the occasional one- or two-hex puddles.
Like most AFFS battle armor, the Sea Fox is a stealthy design, in this case mounting the lowest standard, with five points of Basic Stealth plating. That puts it at the minimum armor level for a full-sized battlesuit in my opinion, allowing it to take a Medium Laser or Autocannon/5 hit and to still keep rocking. The stealthiness will hopefully help the Sea Fox avoid some hits, but don't expect much unless the enemy is at long range, or is suffering some other serious targeting penalties.
The mobility is unique within the battle armor world, and can provide a small amount of those aforementioned targeting penalties. First up is the ground movement mode, which allows the suit to shift along at a respectible three Movement Points. This is enought to inflict a +1 Target Movement Modifier on enemy attacks and also makes the Sea Fox a decent urban fighter. As has been mentioned in many articles before this one, the inability to use jump jets inside buildings means that a high ground speed is vital for good mobility in and around buildings, or indeed any other enclosed space.
Next up is the aquatic capability provided by the Underwater Maneuvering Unit. This is a piece of Clan technology that the Suns originally obtained back in 3069 when Clan Diamond Sharks sold them a number of Undine Battle Armor. The Undine helped form the basis of what became the Hauberk, but the heart of the Clan suit, the UMU, remained unused and forgotten. Indeed, the suit's name was in part intended to be an acknowledgement of its Clan origin, as well as a nod towards
the Fox, Hanse Davion. Later, it occured to me that the name also mimicks that of the Rabid Foxes, the premier black ops unit of the Department of Military Intelligence. (As HUMINT specialists, the Stealthy Foxes are unlikely to need battle armor directly.)
Also able to propel the Sea Fox at three Movement Points, the UMU allows the suit to freely move around underwater like a submarine, unlike the majority of battle armor designs which would be stuck on the bottom. This superb underwater mobility allows Sea Foxes to dance around most enemy ’Mechs, that are limited to walking very slowly and carefully on the sea/river/lakebed. As any of you who have suffered through an underwater scenario will know, many ’Mechs will end up killing or crippling themselves without even seeing an enemy. The number of piloting roles required to move across the bottom of a body of water will almost always result in multiple failures, and with damaged compartments at risk of flooding it's not impossible to have both sides die without firing a shot.
Unique among battle armor, the Sea Fox has a third movement mode, in this case a token jump capability provided by the installation of Mechanized Jump Boosters. Observant players may even recall me clarifiying with The Powers That Be some months ago that a suit could mount both the Boosters and the UMU: that was when I was first tinkering with various design options for an amphibious battlesuit. One feature of the Boosters is that unlike normal jump jets they can be used while underwater, allowing a Sea Fox to spring from the depths and onto dry land. This image of a riverine ambush formed a lot of my early concept, plus the synergy between the two movement systems was appealing. Although the jump distance isn't enough to provide a Target Movement Modifer, all jump movement provides an extra modifier, which means that the Sea Fox can generate one when using any of its movement modes.
Sadly, the payload restrictions of a light chassis means that the Sea Fox isn't capable of doing much to an enemy unit underwater. A solitary one-shot SRM launcher can be loaded with a torpedo round and represents the only ranged underwater attack available to the suit. Of course, with the possibility of flooding an enemy compartment this might be enough, but in truth Sea Foxes are really at their most dangerous against enemy ’Mechs, being able to inflict Leg Attacks thanks to their twin armored gloves. This isn't without risk, as many ’Mechs are armed with energy weapons that will allow at least some ranged capability, albeit at greatly reduced reach. Against boats, submarines and amphibious vehicles Sea Foxes don't even have the option of melee combat, although larger, slower vessels could be at risk of boarding actions.
With the proliferation of Clan technology, perhaps one day the Sea Fox could be adapted to fit a multi-shot Clan launcher, but perhaps even more useful would be access to Clan Multi-Purpose Missiles, which can be fired as either torpedoes or missiles. Not only would this grant greater operational flexibility, but it also allows for the ability to attack surface and land targets while still underwater, without any risk of return fire.
The main weapon of the Sea Fox is only usable out of the water. The shoulder-mounted Light Machine Gun allows the suit to snipe from beyond the range of the old fashioned Small Laser, Flamer and Machine Gun that armed the early generations of battle armor, and the small bonus against conventional infantry is also a boon, but the damage output isn't that great. One benefit the Light Machine Gun does provide is when using the marine boarding rules, where any burst-fire capable weapon gives a +1 modifier, with a further modifier gained from the installation of the Cutting Torch on the right arm. Altogether, this gives the Sea Fox a total of 3.25 Marine Boarding Points, making it marginally superior to the heavier IS Standard with a Machine Gun or Flamer configuration.
Thanks to the armored gloves, the Sea Fox can also wield a variety of infantry weapons. If using the optional rules, I'd select a Man-Portable Plasma Rifle for extra punch, or perhaps a M42B for superior anti-infantry firepower, but even under the default rules an attack equivilant to Ballistic Rifle Infantry is still usable at close range, if only just.
Mounting the Light Machine Gun on the torso was a deliberate choice: suits equipped with UMUs cannot Swarm, so there's no need to mount direct-fire weapons on the arms for that, plus my original image was of a Sea Fox rising up out of the water with just the gun and head exposed to blast an unfortunate foe. This was directly drawn from various media that I've seen of SBS, SEALs and other such real world sneaky types coming up out of the water in similar poses.
This image, and the focus on boarding operations, reveals the intended in-universe role for the Sea Fox. It's not meant as an aquatic combat unit as such, but instead it's a special operations suit that just happens to be capable of moving in water. My original concept emphasized this further, being based upon the Infiltrator Mk II with only a single UMU Movement Point, matching the speed of unaugmented frogmen. Jymset persuaded me to switch to the current size and speed, although this did sadly cost the design a lot of combat performance in the form of a sixth point of armor, three extra shots for the SRM launcher, plus an AP Weapon Mount to replace the capability lost by switching to twin Battle Claws.
Rounding out the suit's equipment is a flavor piece typical of many canon designs, in this case Extended Life Support. Such equipment typically has little to no use in BattleTech scenarions, but would within the game universe. The suit does have 5kg of unspent mass, but with no more slots available this is sadly wasted. A searchlight would have been ideal here, evoking images of minisubs deep underwater.
While on the subject of deep water, it's worth mentioning an obscure feature of UMU-equipped battle armor, which are actually able to go deeper than ’Mechs and Protos. The latter have to start making crush checks for every hex entered at Depth 15 or below, while battle armor only need to start checking at twice that depth. Submarines are still the masters in this environment, but it does give UMU-equipped battlesuits a role that cannot be matched by ’Mechs and could be used to escape heavier foes.
The Sea Fox is best used as a scout and raider, ideally limiting the latter to soft targets. The ability to pop up in unexpected locations and just as quickly escape enemy retaliation is a key strength to help mask the suit's limitations. These guidelines should help you decide how to use the Sea Fox in scenarios, although you could at a pinch just ignore the aquatic capability and deploy it as a light urban combat unit, with Infernos or standard SRMs replacing the torpedoes.
This suit is very much a flavor piece, with only limited utility for the typical game, especially in its current form. It makes sense within the game universe, particularly for a House so invested in battle armor and with access to technology no other House has available. There will be some who will no doubt delight in finding ways and means to use the Sea Fox to confound their opponents at the table top, but I do fully expect the suit to mostly remain a foot note in players' memories.