BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Player Boards => Fan Articles => Topic started by: marauder648 on 16 June 2018, 04:40:05
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The Hound - Something old in something new.
A product of the tiny Filvelt Coalition the Hound is a product of pride for the small nation and a much-needed boost to its outdated and small military. Whereas Coalition factories had only produced RetroTech Mech’s and equipment to quickly and cheaply bulk out their military the new Mech was a completely new design and featured more modern equipment.
The Hound came along at the right time, entering service during a serious upswing in Pirate activity and raids and the new design helped stave off Pirate attacks whilst also potentially being a useful source of income by selling the Mechs to the beleaguered Federated Suns as it came under attack from the Combine and Confederation.
Design
When I say there’s new technology in the Hound, its still incredibly limited and by modern standards the Hound is comparatively basic. But this definitely has its plusses. The Hound is easy to repair and maintain and parts are easy to come by because the only advanced equipment in its construction are some of its weapons.
Yep, that’s right, in the 3145 era this thing is startlingly basic and could easily be used in a REVIVAL era line up, or even a 3025 one if you swapped some weapons around. It uses a standard engine, normal skeleton and basic armour, and even uses standard single heatsinks. At 70 tons the Mech’s quite a big one and moves at a very familiar 64kph and lacks jump jets.
Shielded by a nice, solid 13-tons of standard plate armour the Hound has near max protection with all sections at their fullest save some armour saved on the legs and a tiny bit on the chest. One thing of note, the Hound has thick back armour, probably a nod to its slow speed and concerns about backstabbing. Even the side rear torso’s can take a PPC blast, whilst frontally being able to repel an AC-20 shot.
The armament mix is also a combination of new (ish) and old whilst fifteen standard heatsinks keep it all working quite well although you will overheat with full alpha’s, its nothing a player who’s more use to older designs won’t be troubled with and isn’t too brutal.
Pride of place is a LB-10 autocannon, which is blessed by the accurate weapon quirk, so if you’re using quirks in a battle, that’s a nice -1 to hit. The LB-10 is a damn good weapon and with 2 tons of ammunition you don’t have to worry about being forced to choose between ammo types, allowing you to deliver solid punches or clusters of shots looking for holes you’ve already made.
The Mech’s main long range armament comes from a pair of light PPCs, which by the standards of the time are not that modern but are modern enough. The PPC’s whilst not the hardest hitting weapons, give the Mech a useful long range weapon without too great a cost in heat, bulk or weight, and you can easily drop one of the light PPCs at shorter ranges and still fire everything else and move without any heat build-up.
Close in weapons are also classic standbys, an SRM-4 with 1-ton of ammunition and a standard Medium laser. The weapon mix is almost like someone took a Warhammer and a Orion and bashed them together until it worked as it’s a real multi-tool of a Mech.
Sadly though the ammunition isn’t protected by CASE, probably the biggest drawback of the whole design, as a single ammo hit WILL kill the Mech as somewhat worryingly, all 3 tons of ammo are all safely housed together in the same spot, making quite the ammo bomb (so 3025 players will again feel right at home).
Thoughts
Tough, well-armed and DIRT cheap the Hound is a very good first touch by the Filvelt Coalition and should the Coalition survive the coming years and keep producing more Mechs like this I won’t complain. Did I say this thing’s cheap? Its CHEAP! BV wise you’re looking at a BV of a mere 1389 points compared to say, a Black Knight 5H which costs a ball numbing 2423 points, and if given the opportunity, I’d take two hounds over a single Mech of equivalent cost.
With its standard engine the Hound either needs an ammo hit or coring to fully put down and its solid enough and well-armed enough that fighting one is not just a case of waving your hand at it and it falls over. The Hound also has another thing going for it, it’s, in my opinion a very handsome Mech, the art for it depicts it as a solid yet fairly sleek design its weapons all happily on display, giving it a solid 3025 era kind of look. And hell, just replace that LB with an AC-10 and the paired light PPCs with a large laser and you’d have a perfectly fine 3025 design!
The only major criticism I have is that 3-ton ammo bomb with it all stored together under the LB, made worse by the lack of CASE, but this aside, this is an all-round solid Mech.
(http://cfw.sarna.net/wiki/images/0/02/HD2F_Hound.png?timestamp=20130606232312)
As always, thoughts, comments etc are most welcome! Sorry its not a big article, but there's only one base design for the Hound and its a solidly good Mech and one that don't have too many flaws or bad design decisions to hoot about.
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Wonder why they never updated the thing.
I guess being cheap and simple was it's main draw even when industry and know-how picked up?
In the 3145 Preview MotW (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,29056.0.html) it was likened to the Thunderbolt and Cataphract 2X.
Though it doesn't look like there's actually any news regarding this mech since then? ???
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I wonder if the thinking with the ammo bomb was "If any of these get hit, it's going to be very messy, so we might as well put them in the same place, so that hits elsewhere are safer."
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Wonder why they never updated the thing.
I guess being cheap and simple was it's main draw even when industry and know-how picked up?
Well, its a 3145 product so not a surprise . . . still, its sold to a lot of mercs and along with the Hawkwolf and Merlin makes that area of the Periphery interesting for picking up replacement gear. IMO its a mech made for aftermarket . . . salvage a bunch of DHS? put them on the Hound. Salvage or buy a ERML? Replace the standard ML. Capture some FF armor? Wooo, slap that on instead of standard and mount some RLs in the free space!
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Wonder why they never updated the thing.
I guess being cheap and simple was it's main draw even when industry and know-how picked up?
In the 3145 Preview MotW (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,29056.0.html) it was likened to the Thunderbolt and Cataphract 2X.
Though it doesn't look like there's actually any news regarding this mech since then? ???
Who says they have the tech to upgrade it? Filtvelt is a backwater, and Periphery powers generally don’t tend to be able to build mechs, especially advanced ones, without assistance. Designing and building a 70 tonner that makes limited use of new tech is pretty surprising. At any rate, it came out in the TRO 3145 series. There hasn’t really been much timeline advancement since then. Where would news have come from?
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Well, they could've put a upgrade in the NTNU section of the consolidated 3145 or 3150.
The MUL has it being produced in 3098, so that's 40-50 years where it could've gotten an upgrade, even if it had gone sideways in tech, rather than forward. Such as a simple weapons swap, that if they able to design and produce a Mech, surely they're able to do that much.
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Out of curiosity, is there anything else in the location with the ammo, like heat sinks or a weapon, that could potentially soak crits, or is this like the MAD-3R, where a critical hit there dooms the 'Mech?
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Out of curiosity, is there anything else in the location with the ammo, like heat sinks or a weapon, that could potentially soak crits, or is this like the MAD-3R, where a critical hit there dooms the 'Mech?
You've got the LB-10 and then the ammo all under that, so very much a Marauder situation.
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Well, its a 3145 product so not a surprise . . . still, its sold to a lot of mercs and along with the Hawkwolf and Merlin makes that area of the Periphery interesting for picking up replacement gear. IMO its a mech made for aftermarket . . . salvage a bunch of DHS? put them on the Hound. Salvage or buy a ERML? Replace the standard ML. Capture some FF armor? Wooo, slap that on instead of standard and mount some RLs in the free space!
I really like this idea :) Basically these things are Corellian Freighters :D
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Really like the Hound. Simple yet effective, well though out design made for affordability. Reminds me allot of the Marshal in that aspect.
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The mini is pretty nice too, but the arm's posts into the torso are a bit tough. I have one that does not want to stay on I need to ask about getting pinned.
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You've got the LB-10 and then the ammo all under that, so very much a Marauder situation.
Nope, that's way better than a Marauder. The MAD-3R has the AC/5 in the right torso, but the autocannon's ammo is in the left torso all by its lonesome with nothing else there, not even heat sinks.
Penetrate the left torso on a Hound, and you may hit ammo, but you're twice as likely to hit the LB-10X. Penetrate the Marauder's left torso, it explodes.
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None of the factions I regularly play as or against use this so I've never paid much attention to it...but looking closely, I really like it! This is EXACTLY what you build when you've got the resources to build only one design. It's cheap so you build a bunch, it's tough so you don't have to keep replacing them. Despite the lack of flashy tech or really big guns, it has the firepower to hurt even the most modern stuff(especially considering the cost, you're going to be able to field several Hounds at once), and best of all, those guns are VARIED. Mechs, tanks, fighters, BA...you don't need any specialized stuff to counter anything, the Hound can effectively engage it all. No dedicated anti-infantry guns, but I can't imagine Frag SRMs to be all that complex or expensive and you only need one or two Hounds in your force to carry the stuff for you to consider that angle covered.
Any idea what Filtvelt's relations with the Brotherhood of Randis are like? If you can import even a few Shadow Hawkwolfwolves, one or two is all you'd need to deploy your Hounds under solid fire support.
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I’m pretty sure they’ve undertaken joint anti-pirate actions on occasion, if nothing else.
Edit: Yes, the Hawkwolf TRO entry begins with this sentence: In 3100, Grand Knight William Dirac’s gov- ernment negotiated several economic and military pacts with both the Calderon Protectorate and the Filtvelt Coalition, the Fiefdom of Randis’ closest allies.
It goes on to say that those pacts enabled them to produce modern armor plating, among other things. And then the Deployment section is all about Operation TRIDENT, where Filtvelt, Randis, and the Calderons got together to attack Tortuga. So yeah, full steam ahead, Periphery Uberallies and all that. Go nuts.
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Every time I see it, I think what a handsome design it is.
I actually think it's well designed, but I really want to throw
endo and DHS onto it and add CASE.
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Only changes I'd make is strip out the medium laser, add CASE and half a ton of armour.
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DHS alone gives you options.
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DHS alone gives you options.
but takes away from the flavor of the Mech.
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Who says they have the tech to upgrade it? Filtvelt is a backwater, and Periphery powers generally don’t tend to be able to build mechs, especially advanced ones, without assistance. Designing and building a 70 tonner that makes limited use of new tech is pretty surprising. At any rate, it came out in the TRO 3145 series. There hasn’t really been much timeline advancement since then. Where would news have come from?
They have endo-steel at the very least from the Cal-Boeing facilities over Lackland per page 189 of FM 3145. With Coalition Armory said to be the main buyer.
I've played around with the Hounds design a few times for an AU me and a few others have worked on...
The Hound came along at the right time, entering service during a serious upswing in Pirate activity and raids and the new design helped stave off Pirate attacks whilst also potentially being a useful source of income by selling the Mechs to the beleaguered Federated Suns as it came under attack from the Combine and Confederation.
What upswing? I don't exactly remember anything about an upswing when it was first deployed?
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Well, its a 3145 product so not a surprise . . . still, its sold to a lot of mercs and along with the Hawkwolf and Merlin makes that area of the Periphery interesting for picking up replacement gear. IMO its a mech made for aftermarket . . . salvage a bunch of DHS? put them on the Hound. Salvage or buy a ERML? Replace the standard ML. Capture some FF armor? Wooo, slap that on instead of standard and mount some RLs in the free space!
I really like this idea :) Basically these things are Corellian Freighters :D
Really like the Hound. Simple yet effective, well though out design made for affordability. Reminds me allot of the Marshal in that aspect.
All you folks size up the Hound fairly well. It gives a good baseline package with plenty of points to jump off to as better technology becomes available to the buyer. The only thing that ever bothered me about the Marshal is that the base model was equipped with FF armor to a force where the supplies may not be readily available to replace damage.
Thanks for the write up Mad648.
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The armament mix is also a combination of new (ish) and old whilst fifteen standard heatsinks keep it all working quite well although you will overheat with full alpha’s, its nothing a player who’s more use to older designs won’t be troubled with and isn’t too brutal.
Using single heat sinks is a great decision IMHO. Those MechWarriors are going to understand how they can push their heat envelope much better than MechWarriors trained on double heat sink equipped 'Mechs.
The other thing is it has two hand actuators, which means it can carry stuff. In the Filtvelt Coalition (and the Periphery in general) that means it can help with homesteading/civil engineering tasks.
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I like the low tech mix on the Hound. As mentioned by others, if I had to go one "high" tech addition, I would lose the medium laser and spend the ton on CASE II. Since money is at a premium, I can see the wisdom in investing in CASE II production to save the number of Hounds that would be completely gutted by 3 tons of ammo exploding at once.
If no Case II, I'd second the previous motion of CASE and 1/2 ton of additional armor.
I don't have any books handy, would the addition of CASE or CASE II drastically increase cost on this mech?
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A nice feature of the Hound is how good an export product it is. The Filtvelt Coalition is right next to the Fed Suns who are in need of 'mechs, and it fits the Davion style quite well. The jump jets and LB-X play to their tastes well, and the most obvious upgrades are all very easy. The laser is the most basic field refit, and the armor and heatsinks can be swapped in a 'mech bay.
Its an impressive feat to build a 'mech that fits the needs of so many markets so well.
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Wonder why they never updated the thing.
This is the upgrade. It was originally designed with a ppc and ac10. I then looked at what could be easily upgraded from this leftover from Davion traders. Options were the lbx with a snubby and, rac5 with twin lppc were the options I came up with. Obviously we swapped them around and dropped the original.
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That's sort of interesting fluff. Good to know.
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I like it, the art great. I do understand the feel for it needing have character, frankly it's attractive me to having design based on the needs of the parent faction building it vs optimized to be perfection machine. It's cheap what is nice. I'm not normally fan when the main gun autocannon with only couple mediums backing you up and some SRMs.
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Just curious on how the name "Hound" was selected? Is there any additional fluff on that?
When I think that name - Hound - I go to Ian Davion, and it seems strange that a renegade Davion outback nation would select that.
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Ian Davion has been in the grave for eighty years at that point and as much as he stands out to us, he may not be that prominent to Filtvelt eighty years later. I'd expect Hanse, whose actions and children had a massively disproportionate impact for a House Leader, to be someone they'd be more interested in avoiding references to.
"Renegade" is also not really the right term to describe Suns/Filtvelt relations, either. They get along better than that implies and given that they continue to cooperate and some of the Filtvelt worlds went back over to the Suns during the Republic Era, there really wasn't a hard cultural break or massive polarization in relations to shape them toward creating one.
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Eighty years is not that long, especially in a monarchy. His niece was still on the FedSuns throne when the Hound was designed (I think. Not sure we’ve ever been given a year for Harrison’s accession, but he’d have only been 28 in 3098). Considering the lifespans on people in the 31st century, and how central the Davions are to FedSuns culture as well as politics, I really doubt he’s been forgotten just yet. I mean, if you name something the “Bull Moose” in the US today, a lot of folks are going to take it as a reference to Theodore Roosevelt, a figure who died a similar(ish) number of years ago.
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I will still go back to what Moonsword said about their differences not being too great- after all the Filtveltians put together a Expeditionary Force to march against the Dracs.
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Right, but that’s exactly why they’d remember Ian, the same way Americans revolutionary era might remember Queen Anne. Except that there were probably significantly more living Filtvelters at the time who had been alive during Ian’s reign.
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Well he have vehicle designs like the Patton/Rommel, Von Luckner and Zhukov all named after people dead for thousands of years, so 80 years is a drop in a large bucket.
If there isn't any additional information, that's fine was just curious.
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This is the upgrade. It was originally designed with a ppc and ac10. I then looked at what could be easily upgraded from this leftover from Davion traders. Options were the lbx with a snubby and, rac5 with twin lppc were the options I came up with. Obviously we swapped them around and dropped the original.
PPC and AC10? I would have thought LL and AC10 myself.
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Who says they have the tech to upgrade it? Filtvelt is a backwater, and Periphery powers generally don’t tend to be able to build mechs, especially advanced ones, without assistance. Designing and building a 70 tonner that makes limited use of new tech is pretty surprising. At any rate, it came out in the TRO 3145 series. There hasn’t really been much timeline advancement since then. Where would news have come from?
Filtvelt's mortal enemies Tortuga have produced varients of the Brigand equipped with: Mace's, Endo-Steel, XL engines, Medium X-Pulse Laser's, Angel ECM, Double Heat Sinks, and Improved Jump Jets. And I believe all of that equipment is produced on Tortuga itself (Or in orbit for the Endo-Steel)
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Only changes I'd make is strip out the medium laser, add CASE and half a ton of armour.
drop the lppcs, add the large back and case
granted I would prefer to swap the srms for an LRM5
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Filtvelt's mortal enemies Tortuga have produced variants of the Brigand equipped with: Mace's, Endo-Steel, XL engines, Medium X-Pulse Laser's, Angel ECM, Double Heat Sinks, and Improved Jump Jets. And I believe all of that equipment is produced on Tortuga itself (Or in orbit for the Endo-Steel)
The StarCorps Dossiers, which describes Vengeance Incorporated, describes their facilities as a cluster of repair bays, and indicated that they are not making its components themselves, just assembling stuff they had obtained through other means. in fact, the only component called out as locally produced is the standard armor.
all of the systems it uses are things that are in fairly common use at the time the variant appears, and could easily have been obtained through the black market or raids on supply ships. we also don't know how common most of those variants are relative to the standard model, which only has DHS and MPL's as its advanced tech.
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Yeah, most of the Brigand advanced tech is stolen. There's a specific note to that in the (now unaccessible) 3067 MilSpecs articles.
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Makes me think of a heavy Shadow Hawk minus jump jets.