Ironhold Assault Battle Armor - Technical Readout 3085 page 131
The Ironhold is Clan Jade Falcon's late entry to the world of Assault Battle Armor, which effectively owes its existence to another Jade Falcon contribution to armored infantry warfare, the incomparable Anti-Personnel Gauss Rifle. When first introduced, the Ironhold was a solid performer, but its second generation model is an absolute monster, that individually can outshoot some 'Mechs.
jymset: In this article, I'll have the pleasant duty inserting comments from the designer's side. This week's articles feature the two contributions I was graciously allowed to make by 3085's product developer, the inimitable Welshman. And unlike the Thunderbird, the Ironhold was not tied to any DA parameters, so I was free to make it my baby. Published in Technical Readout 3085 and named after the Falcon's lost capital in the Homeworlds, the Ironhold is the result of a project to match the Assault suits produced by other Clans and the Inner Sphere powers, while retaining (in the original variant) the mobility beloved and demanded by Falcon Warriors. In Jade Falcon eyes, and perhaps in earlier unseen prototypes, previous attempts to balance the speed, armor and firepower of Assault designs had been found lacking. As is often the case, a technological breakthrough provided the answer, when Falcon Scientists developed the AP Gauss Rifle in 3069, a weapon that combined good range and damage for Battle Armor in a lightweight, compact package.
First fielded in 3077, the Ironhold had a somewhat unusual development process. Codenamed Project Ferrum, the design phase itself began in the early 3070s and proceeded quickly, in part due to a Trinary of Elementals from Third Falcon Talon Cluster being assigned to assist the Jade Falcon Technicians with the testing. The Clan then sat on the resulting design for a number of years until they were finally ready to begin full scale production, rather than deploy the suit earlier, but in dribs and drabs. No doubt the chaos of the early days of the Jihad and the War of Reaving had a big influence on this decision, although the result was that the Ironhold missed a lot of the fight against the Blakists.
jymset: The naming process itself was not an easy one. As a general rule of thumb, I think the name of a unit is extremely important. It almost represents a 4th major parameter next to fluff, stats, and illustration. For the Ironhold, I wanted an elemental name, similar to the second and even some third-generation Clan suits. As I'd fixed my sights on a metal elemental, I slapped it with the placeholder Ironhold; after all, this was to be a Falcon design. While writing it, two things happened: I found no satisfactory metal elemental name, and I started to be aware of the true implications of the Reaving storyline. And suddenly, the name Ironhold became perfect for the final product. "Project Ferrum" was a nod to the fact that the name was not only about the planet, but about the element, too. The outcome of the project proves the wisdom of Gamma Galaxy Commander Amelia Icaza's decision to assign the Trinary of Elementals to help develop the ideal balance of mobility, protection and firepower. Starting with the mobility first, the original Ironhold variant, also known as the Standard, has the default ground speed of 10.8 kph or one Movement Point, but makes up for that by the installation of jump jets. Able to lift the Ironhold sixty meters or two hexes every leap, that's not quite enough to generate a Target Movement Modifier for distance moved, although the suit will obviously get the +1 hit modifier for being a jumping target. The Ironhold will still struggle with some terrain features, but it's enough to allow the suit to outmaneuver the likes of the Kanazuchi or Hauberk. The Standard could have been optimized by using a Jump Booster instead of the second jump jet to achieve the same overall capability for less mass, but that's something of a min/maxing exploit I'd more expect to see in a custom design than a canon suit.
jymset: Exactly. The basic Ironhold is already a relatively competitive design, anyway. Min/maxing is not an option on canon designs. At least in the sense that design options are used in ways that were originally not intended. In short - using a jump booster for that 2nd movement was never an option. And yes, the possibility of it was something that the 3085 project team was aware of. While not maximized, the Ironhold's armor in a solid sixteen points, allowing it to pass the Assault test and soak up a 'Mech-scale Gauss Rifle hit. There's not really much that can be said about the protection, other than noting that like most Assault suits, the Ironhold needs its heavy armor, due to the limited ability to generate Target Movement Modifiers. When able to use its jump capability, the Ironhold Standard will typically suffer fewer hits than a Golem Standard or Warg, helping keep the suit in the fight for longer. Of course, the Standard does suffer the weakness shared by most Battle Armor, and that's the vulnerability to Infernos, that can kill even the most heavily armored of suits with a mere trio of hits, in effect killing them with just six points of damage. Compared to the seventeen points required to destroy an Ironhold with standard weaponry, it's understandable why smart opponents will break out the napalm.
jymset: At the assault class, jump jets eat so much weight, that between them and the hugely heavy chassis all weight savings evaporate. The important design option then is to go with at least 15 pts of armour (as sillybrit comments on in a second), which is a considerable weight even with Clan armour, and though Fire-Resistant does not weigh so much more, there was absolutely no place on the basic suit for it, if the all-important threshold was to be retained. For an Assault suit, all the armor and speed in the world matters little if the design doesn't bring the heavy iron to the fight, and overall the Ironhold Standard does deliver. Twin AP Gauss Rifles provide a reach that many suits lack, or can only match while their missile load lasts, while a Point can inflict as much damage with their guns as a Point of Rogue Bears can with their SRM3s. Of course, the Gauss Rifles can't fire Infernos, but they make up for that with their extra damage against conventional infantry and the unlimited ammo in BattleTech scenarios. To be brutally honest, this level of firepower is a little low against armored targets: the salvo from a Point delivers fewer hits than a Point armed with SRM3s, so that means less crit chances against vehicles, and like the missiles it means that on average the twin Gauss will not inflict a Piloting roll on 'Mechs. Against other Battle Armor, the Ironhold Standard will be a dangerous foe, and conventional infantry really should think about running the other way when they spot one.
jymset: This design really would not have happened without the AP Gauss. Thankfully, the weapon newly existed, needed to be showcased on a BA, and the factions of weapon and suit matched up. The first part of the fluff text is a translation of parameters that actually existed; the Ironhold is all about the weapon it fields. The Standard is a good Assault suit, and thankfully avoids wasting mass on its manipulators, but is far from perfect. As noted above, it could have saved itself 125kg by exploiting Jump Boosters, but the biggest issue for me is the whole concept of a mobile Assault. Dropping to the Heavy class adds Mechanized Battle Armor capability and also frees up 100kg for the cost of two points of armor, which would be enough to add a SRM5(OS), for example, giving a powerful alpha strike. Of course, if you really need a mobile suit capable of withstanding a Gauss Rifle or Clan ER PPC hit, then you have to use an Assault chassis, accepting the inefficiency for the desired armor capacity. The Warriors from Clan Jade Falcon obviously were content to accept that tradeoff, at least in the first incarnation of the Ironhold, but it seems that they were also willing to learn just how Assaults should be designed and used. Mobility is all well and good, but the niche for Assault suits is armor and weapon payload, and the second variant delivers both and then some.
Introduced in 3082, the Ironhold Fire adds another of the technologies that has become a Jade Falcon signature, switching from the standard armor composites to Fire Resistant materials. This alone is a superb change, because it eliminates the vulnerability to cheap kills from Infernos, meaning that an opponent actually has to inflict the full seventeen points of damage to destroy a Fire. The Technical Readout says that the added bulk of the Fire Resistant armor forced the removal of the jump jets, but really the main reason is the doubling of the firepower.
jymset: Funny how it goes. The seed for the Fire-Resistant theme was sown by 3075's Jade Falcon variant of the Afreet. It was something to latch on to and 3085 did well to develop it. Without this theme, the Ironhold Fire may never have happened. Before the publication of Technical Readout 3085, many custom suits had appeared with multiple AP Gauss Rifles, and in my playing groups such designs were considered somewhat cheesy, reserved for custom-only games. When the Ironhold Fire appeared with its quad array of Gauss Rifles, jaws dropped, strong men fainted and women cursed. That level of firepower is worth repeating: four AP Gauss Rifles. One. Two. Three. Four! What that means is that a Point of Ironhold Fires is capable of slamming you with an average of thirty-six points of damage per Turn, every Turn, which is more than the spike damage for many designs! Enemy infantry, both armored and otherwise, simply melt away, while tank crews have to face the prospect of an average of twelve crit chances if all guns hit, and Mechwarriors know that there's a Piloting roll in their future when a Point of Ironhold Fire's lock them in their sights.
jymset: Uh yeah. What was I saying about Min/maxing before? Well, this variant does follow a rationale. I already had a design at the ready when being tasked with the Ironhold, featuring dual AP Gauss and LRMs. The Ironhold needed to jump, so between this requirement and the story developed above, the missiles needed to go. And when it was time to go flesh out the Fire variant, the story had entrenched itself: why would they mess with a hugely successful ingredient? They wouldn't!
A more candid point of trivia is that in its first incarnation, the Fire Ironhold featured a second variant that dabbled with Basic Stealth. This was discarded because it did not fit a unifying theme, and it broached an area of Clan design that was deliberately decided against for line units at that time. Instead, it went on to be a story told by the Hybrid Rogue Bear. Again, there's still room for improvement, such as with Detachable Weapon Packs, but it's somewhat churlish to say so given the performance of the Fire. Obviously, with the loss of the jump jets, the suit is less capable of navigating rough terrain and its cross country speed is halved when forced to operate independently. Once on the battlefield, the lack of hit modifier from the movement mode does mean that the Ironhold Fire will suffer more hits overall, partly offsetting its invulnerability to Infernos. Personally, I think the benefits outweigh the losses, with the doubled firepower able to compensate for the lowered ability to dodge incoming fire against many opponents. The Ironhold Fire does have to rely more upon APC transports if it's to be anything more than a barely mobile defensive bunker, and unfortunately the Falcons are limited in that regard, especially if you use the optional rules that use actual suit mass rather than a default of one ton each to track cargo requirements.
In some ways the Ironhold is so simple and - more so in the case of the Fire variant - so good that it's hard to write more about it. It is what it is; a large chunk of armor with plenty of dakka, that you had better hope you can outshoot before it kills you or you run away. There's typically little subtlety to Ironhold usage; it doesn't even need to hide as much as other suits and the nature of its armament means that it can engage any target with aplomb, with a reach that forces longer-ranged opponents to either accept lowered accuracy or to get into range of return fire. For some unit types, that return fire can quickly, even instantly, be fatal, and really the best way to deal with Ironholds is to use Area Effect weaponry and plenty of it. Shooting the hex rather than the Point eliminates the hit modifiers Battle Armor use to survive and the multi-target capability damages every suit in the Point equally.
While undoubtedly a favorite with many players, as sometimes seems to happen with such high performance canon designs, I also know players who have turned away from the Ironhold, deeming it too good and lacking the flaws that make for interesting play in their eyes. The relative newness of the design, missing the majority of the Jihad, doesn't help much either, nor does the fact that it's limited to just the Jade Falcons. According to the Master Unit List, the Falcons are the only Clan with any real access to the design all the way through to the Dark Age, and really they'd have to be insane to let anybody else share the Ironhold, at least not without some major concessions in return.
The future for the Ironhold is bright, even if the Falcons halt development of any further variants. The chassis, particularly the Fire version, has plenty of scope for changes, whether leaving the suit as a gunboat or switching to missiles for their superior alpha strike capability, such as with the superb Golem Support, but in many ways it would be variety for variety's sake. Barring perhaps an urban combat specialist with increased ground speed or adding a longer ranged weapon system such as LRMs, the two existing variants together already cover the Falcon's needs for an Assault suit. Tough and powerful, admired and feared, the Ironhold rightfully sits alongside the Elemental at the pinnacle of Battle Armor design.
Next up:
- Angerona
- Ravager
- Gray Death Heavy
- Gray Death Strike
