I guess I adopted this, so I might as well do the rec guide update.
Two new Linebackers in Rec Guide 6. They’re available to the Wolves, other Wolves, Kells, and weirdly, the Ravens. Plus anyone else who has the pods and salvaged & kept a Linebacker during the last century.
The
I has enough machine guns to make a piranha feel inadequate. Twenty of them in six arrays; four with 3, two with four. The long range token is an ER large pulse laser. A supercharger lets you get in effective range – all three hexes of it – a little faster, or around the back of slower mechs. It is also going to run iced over after two engine crits, as it doesn’t take advantage of the fixed heat sinks. Arrays mean it can’t use rapid fire mode on the Mgs so you have fifteen turns of fire. Against unarmoured infantry it is the grim reaper, and crit-vulnerable vees don’t like getting close either.
Mech on mech requires significant risk and luck to get your BV back. Your ideal turn with an I is getting behind someone (not hard with its supercharger,) stripping a torso rear with the laser, and getting multiple crits in the same spot with the machine guns. Or just vaporizing a couple infantry companies.
The
T is even more anemic in damage against mechs, but you can add battlearmor to the list of things that hate it. A sSRM 4 and sLRM 5 max out at 13 damage, well short of a PSR. Anything without a heat track (vees, infantry, protos) can expect to fry under the attention of two plasma cannons with plenty of ammo. Two hits generate between 6 and 36 damage, average 21. Units with heat tracks face a different problem. It forces choices on how many malus they’re willing to chance next turn, as two hits reach the 15 point external heat cap on average.
Both models have active probes to counter concealment and find hidden units. Both are decent team players; one can exploit holes made by friends, the other shut down firepower from its target. I think it’s one more nail in the coffin that the clans still rely on duelling.
Downside? Both cost just slightly less than an introtech atlas.