Oh sweet. Maybe the Jade Phoenix Prime was made to ape the Hierofalcon Prime.
As Jal mentions, the Jade Phoenix already existed. In fact, it is the oldest original creation in the RecGuide series, having rested in my "for future reference" pile since at least 2015. When I was made aware of the creation of a slew of Wolf IlClan Mechs in around 2018 and then combined them all for the "Cutting Edge" portion of the RecGuide, it was clear that the Wolves needed an equally representative foil in the Falcons.
Though most of the units had been fleshed out in development, the Hierofalcon was a rare case of Jal being tasked with both writing and unit creation. Now, this didn't entail complete freedom, I Set some basic parameters - but I am not sure it was more than mass and the wings and maybe basic speed. I was floored when this happened:
One of the most interesting things about the design process was that I was unaware of the existence of the Jade Phoenix at the time I made the Hierofalcon, yet I somehow made a Prime config that perfectly apes the Prime Jade Phoenix. As the Hierofalcon was intended to be a smaller Jade Phoenix anyway, this worked out. Just one of those funny little things.
I can confirm the parallels of the Primes were complete coincidence! And this is what reaffirmed my idea to tie the winged CJF Mechs together at the hip. In the editorial process, basically all submissions were tweaked for whichever the multitude of possible reasons.
So fessin' up here, I designed and wrote this thing. I originally made it with standard fixed jump jets because I was getting tired of IJJ on everything, but I was overruled. I am not responsible for inflicting the A config one players, but the rest are mine.
No, all of it was yours. The major tweak was un-fixing the jump jets and adapting one config for ijj (which may have changed your baby beyond Recognition) and another for ground mvmt. That way, it was thematically linked to the Jade Phoenix. A few things that come to my mind in that regard:
- the Hierofalcon also did influence the Jade Phoenix. That design, otherwise untouched since 2015 (this side of newer configs D+E) received a tweak in itself, with a slight adjustment of the torso armor allocation - to synch up with the Hierofalcon's!
- the jj tweak, like the absolute majority of all dev edits, was an aesthetic choice, and not one born of a desire for optimization. There are enough examples in the RecGuides with fixed jet Omnis, be they third party creations (Stormwolf) or my own (Ion Sparrow).
An unrelated tidbit was the Hierofalcon's name. It was basically the most difficult unit to name, and is more zoological than the norm. While it was on a short list, we initially discarded it because it was too long and difficult to combine with an attribute or color, as is generally seen on many Clan Omnis. Well, it jumped right back top when I saw the illustration. With IMO similar lines to the Black Lanner, the family label that includes gyrfalcons and lanners seemed super appropriate; and Hierofalcon sounds fairly fantasy-ey without an added attribute, anyway.
