Gunslinger. The lovechild of an Awesome and a Battlemaster.
During the election lull in the clan invasion, FedCom and DC engineers helped Rasalhague move a factory. On their off-hours, the groups found time to design a battlemech. Somehow. Guess there were too many of them or they were goldbricking. When they parted ways, both groups kept a copy of the plans.
At eighty-five tons, it is at the low end of the assault spectrum, and while it is superficially a min-maxed dual gauss boat, the original model has some really odd/wasteful features on second inspection.
Movement profile is fifty K an hour max. It has a real hard time making its target movement mod match the attacker movement mod, but it’ll get where it wants to go eventually. Two jump jets mean you can hop small buildings or streams and they give your actuators some padding. On the other hand, one more jet would have put it over an TMM threshold, and they’re in the legs so you can’t jump out of water.
Two medium pulse lasers are in the legs, facing the rear. At first this seems odd, but then you realize that they’re always facing rear, even after a torso twist. It means that you can shoot that backstabbing bug with two MPL and a gauss. This is one of two features that make taking one from the rear a relatively unappealing prospect.
The other anti-backstab measure is the armour layout. It shares the Awesome’s bias towards rear armour. Everything on the back can take a large VSPL without internal damage, something I’m sure a few pilots appreciated during the jihad. Only the front center torso and legs pass the dual gauss test, and neither by much, while the side torsos and arms all can soak three inner sphere large lasers and still have tinfoil left. I’d prefer to move around a couple points to add some protection over the gauss rifles and XL engine, but what we have isn’t bad.
Electronics wise, this thing looks like it was designed to be part of a Steiner Scout Lance; a beagle probe means it can find the enemy, and a guardian ECM prevents them from reporting you. Combined with enough guns to pulverize anything it runs into, it really is well designed for that philosophy. More seriously, it can disrupt C3 and gets a slight bonus in woods when in medium laser effective range.
Offensively, there are, as mentioned, two gauss rifles with five tons of ammo. One viable tactic is to pretend you’re an Awesome – find a sniper perch, and send steel watermelon downrange. It's enough ammo to take a few shots against long odds without being excessive.
Secondaries are four torso mounted medium lasers, similar to a Battlemaster. This is respectable, and while dated by the 3060s, it can be worth moving up so you can use them in any era. It also runs cool, with excess sinkage on a jumping forward alpha.
End analysis, one of the best inner sphere mechs in TRO:3055, even with the odd bits.
Moving on, in 3062 both the Combine and Fedsuns roll out the
GUN-2ERD. This deletes the rear medium pulse lasers, the small laser, and beagle probe. This is generally acceptable. For this it gains third jump jet and a C3 Master. The medium lasers are upgraded to ER mediums. It makes the mech run hot, but can get you a couple more hits; I consider it a sidegrade. If you aren't running a C3 net the choice to take the new or old model is debatable in BV balanced matches.
End analysis, it loses little it truly cares about and gains better mobility, range, and a whole new role on the battlefield it is well suited for.
Post jihad there is the
-2ERDr, basically the same thing exchanging the ECM to boost the C3 master. End analysis, the worth of this compared to the -2ERD depends on the electronics environment you operate in and against .
Last we have the
-1ERD (Jared). This isn’t a Gunslinger, it’s a frankenmech with the body and legs of an original Gunslinger. The rifles go with the arms. The biggest drawback of the thing is the massive amount of ammunition unCASEed in the arms. Three tons of LRM ammo give decent endurance to two LRM 15s, and sixteen streak tubes make getting in next to it an unattractive prospect. The short range bracket can be a bit short for the 3060s. If you’ve got a great gunner or a streak on the dice it can run hot, but that isn’t likely.
End analysis, this last 'variant' is a bit of an oddity that is circumstantially decent for the BV. Plays more like a Stalker than a Gunslinger.
How do you fight one? In all variants, the front torso armor is a bit thin over an XL. Shoot it lots and hope you manage to dig a hole into the squishy bits. The arms have similar armour and explody gauss in them. Big guns followed by critseekers is, as ever, the ideal recipe.
UPDATE
OK, new gunslinger in RG27, the
-3ERD. Somebody looked at the previous gunslingers and said to screw the electronics, make it tough.
They succeeded. Armor is the same – just in Ballistic Reinforced. Case II on the gauss rifles means that after one goes off the atacker still has to tear through any remaining arm internal structure. A clan-tech XL engine massively increases the average lifespan by itself. The loss of the ECM means that it is fractionally more vulnerable to a couple things and an XL gyro increases the chance of bad luck being really bad... but I’d expect an IlClan era Gunslinger to be active turns after an invasion era one would have fallen.
Speaking of Clantech, you remember the medium or ER medium lasers on the old versions? They’re now clantech ER mediums, a massive increase in both range and damage. The old smol laser on the -1ERDs head becomes a small X-pulse, for eXtreme infantry clearing, and the rear leg lasers become a pair of same; mooning an infantry platoon is a reasonably practical tactic, especially as SRM infantry are going to have a nigh-impossible time getting through the armor.
You lose a ton of gauss ammo for 16 turns of fire, run hot with only 10 DHS, there are no electronics, and BV goes up by hundreds of points. I still think I’d take the upgrade version.
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