The Fortune, while opening the door for more Lyran money jokes, is no laughing matter itself. Yet another rolling Lyran brick of overcompensation, it's highly effective.
Wheeled chassis for those relaxing skeet shooting cruises downtown, two big cluster guns with plenty of ammo, and fourteen tons of armor. What more could Thomas Hogarth's kids want upon getting their driver's licenses?
All jokes aside, the Fortune is a deadly urban assault/defense platform. As an "alley basher", the 3/5 movement rating is no big deal. And the wheeled chassis is fitting, all things considered.
Armor protection is very good. The 14 tons of standard is allocated fairly well, with superb coverage. The aft is a little lacking when compared to the rest of the vehicle, but thirty five points is still what I consider acceptable rear coverage in an urban environment.
What makes this beauty sweet isn't just the twin LB-20X ACs in the turret. What's really nice about this thing is the size of the magazine. It isn't often that a unit toting a Class 20 BFG is this generously fed. Eight tons gives players some options in what kind of "mix n' match" they want in terms of munitions. In my player group, the usual division is four tons Cluster munitions and four tons of HEAP. A fairly even, but still versatile, loadout for the guns.
The Fortune has some issues, however. One minor nitpick on my end is that all of the weapons are turret mounted. There are no hull mounted secondary weapons, which can be a real pain in the event of turret lock. Secondaries would also allow for better coverage in the confines of a city.
The other glaring flaw is the lack of crew protection from ammunition explosions. In urban AOs, ammo explosions are a common problem. The absence of a CASE system is strange, from my POV.
The C3M variant is nice, insofar as it finally brings CASE to the design. And the classic LB-10X isn't a bad substitute in an urban combat vehicle. Unfortunately, I don't have much use for C3 in city ops. But it's worth taking just for the CASE system alone.
We haven't tinkered with the design much here at home. The only mod common is dropping a half-ton of armor for CASE on the base Fortune, and upgrading the armor to standard ferro-fibrous. But only 25-30% of Fortunes played are modded to this standard. Most are standard models, or on occasion, a C3M variant.
As good as the Fortune is, it has never taken the place of the "classics" used in urban fun and games. The are still plenty of Hetzers, Devastators, and Demolishers used, making up the bulk of urban AFV TO&Es. But there is room for the newcomers, because the more, the merrier.
Just my two cents worth.
