1
Ground Combat / Re: Favorite hauler for assault BA (Inner Sphere, Clan, and Comstar/WoB)?
« Last post by Charistoph on Today at 12:17:28 »It's too bad we don't have the option I'd say is most logical from a cost/investment perspective; An armored flatbed truck with reinforced benches. Battlesuits come with their OWN armor, the problem has always been moving them fast enough to use them, and most of the vehicles for doing so, are enclosed and prevent them from both using their weapons while embarked, and slows down deployment at the arrival since they have to go through a door.
Take something like the old M3 or the german half-tracks from the 2nd World War, give it a bigger engine to go faster, and a pintle mount support weapon-you could even have the cab armored with a turret, but the key cost here would be converting a commercial truck with an armored skid-plate, steel benches and sidewalls that let the suits hop over 'em (or drop to form ramps).
NOBODY does this, not in the fiction, not in the game, but it's the most obvious choice, since you only need a Prime Mover and a few minutes to hours with a welding kit.
(admittedly, done right, this gives you a 'transport' vehicle for your suits that costs less than any one of the suits it's carrying...)
Part of the reason is that if that Flatbed Truck is shot, it will be destroyed. That leaves a 33% chance of the Infantry unit inside of dying for what the Damage of a LRM-5 or an LRM-10 can provide (Total Warfare pg 223-224).
If one can provide a reasonable assumption that Flatbed Truck would be unmolested till it reached the Deployment point, it's a perfectly good idea, but anyone who knows that cheap and fragile vehicle is carrying an annoying/terrifying squad of nigh-immortal BA (relatively speaking) will put more than enough fire in to wiping it out leaving that BA either hoofing it, or dead in their transport.