'Mech of the Week: HellstarSorry about the article timing. The last couple of weeks have been occupied dealing with the end of the semester around campus and things were something of a madhouse there for a bit. Anyway, without further ado, here's the
Hellstar!
A product of the same cooperation that produced the
Cygnus, the
Hellstar was developed jointly by the Hell's Horses and the Wolves-in-Exile. The
Hellstar was built on a 95 ton chassis derived from the somewhat older
Cyngus and shares a number of components with it, probably including the 380-rated extra-light fusion engine that drives it to 64 kph and certainly the targeting and communications systems, and entered production in 3079. While the Exiles are still building it at WC Site 1 on Arc-Royal, the Horses have decided to put it into production at Csesztreg Industrialplex Alpha on their capital world of Csesztreg. While I don't have any evidence one way or the other, it's possible that the Horses have also moved
Cygnus production here from their Transitional Facility HH-Beta mobile factory. Slightly more heavily armored, the
Hellstar mounts 18.5 tons of standard plate arranged very sensibly. It takes three Gauss or heavy particle cannon shots to strip the front CT, two on the sides with two points left on the arms, and a redoubtable 40 points on the legs. The rear has 10 on the sides and fifteen on the rear. Clearly, neither Clan involved wanted this thing going down quickly short of freak hits. The heat sink load looks obscene with no less than
30 doubles... and then we come to the real power of this beast, no less than four Ripper Series A1 extended-range particle cannons, each of them with all the power of a Gauss rifle and none of the explosive critical aftertaste. The
Hellstar is a monster - with good endurance, high damage, and good cooling, it's a starkly dangerous take on the concept of an
Awesome IIC, sort of a horrifying Clan nightmare amalgamation of the AWS-9M and 9Q models. Oddly, the arm housings have been seen being used as melee tools to kill downed Blakist 'Mechs in the hands of the Exiles, but with little further information, it's hard to comment.
Two variants have been spotted to date. The first one really works that
Awesome comparison hard by returning to a more traditional heat curve by dropping five freezers for a targeting computer. The accuracy makes up for the loss in sustained punch while the fourth ER PPC still provides a reserve against little things like limbs being torn off in combat. I think I prefer the simplicity of the baseline but the
Hellstar 2 is definitely nothing to sneer at. The
Hellstar 3 treads a little further from the norm. The particle cannons were removed entirely, instead mounting a quartet of Series 7A extended-range large lasers for ranged punch (and at ranges equal to the Inner Sphere's light Gauss rifle at that), with two Kolibri Omega Series medium pulse lasers in the center torso for additional close-range mayhem. The targeting computer is still there, too, although a bit smaller, and the partners added ECM and an active probe for electronic support. Twenty-eight double heat sinks provide a heat curve nearly identical to the original's, although when playing sniper games, a
Hellstar 3 is going to run quite cool. What it lacks in punch it makes up for in accuracy and utility. Especially dealing with the Word of Blake, I really like this model, but it's a good general combatant. In general,
Hellstars are sort of like
Eisensturms - big, nasty, and nothing you want to deal with without a lot of friends along for the ride.
In broad strokes, using a
Hellstar involves picking an enemy and grinding them into dust, then finding another target and repeating the process. The first two, lacking advanced electronics, aren't especially subtle but at 4/6, they're every bit as maneuverable as the standard heavy 'Mechs of the Inner Sphere. Don't rely entirely on your armor, either - watch for things like partial cover or forest hexes to gain cover as you stalk your prey. The
Hellstar 3, with ECM, can do jamming or, under advanced rules, counter-jamming (mainly useful for colleagues with Artemis IV and not always worth it) and ghost targets to improve your defensive modifiers. You're tough but every bit helps and considering the BV you paid to put it down on the table, you don't want this thing going away any time soon. The active probe lets it both detect distant targets and assist in searching for close-in ambushes although you need to watch for infantry, which no
Hellstar is going to have an easy time eliminating. Make sure the pilot is up to snuff -
Hellstars draw attention, which means sustained, voluminous fire, which means PSRs. Losing one because some idiot butterfingered the controls and critted his own cockpit is going to be embarassing.
Countering a
Hellstar is a tall order and involves firepower and a lot of it. There's no explosive ammo or Gauss weapons anywhere and they're packed full of heat sinks, so there's plenty of stuff to soak hits and keep the weapons intact. I still recommend using them but mainly for the hope of dinging the head and making the pilot black out or possibly popping the cockpit. Word of Blake players would be forgiven for whipping out the nukes, but you'd better use an Alamo or larger - a
Hellstar has a good chance of weathering a Crockett if it doesn't land in the same hex. Unless you've got a good reason (zell being the only one I can think of), don't try to fight a
Hellstar one on one. Focus fire on it and bring it down hard, pulling out every dirty trick you can get your hands on. Consider whether or not there are supporting elements you can eliminate quickly, though - comparable forces can weather a
Hellstar's fusillade long enough to squash ankle biters and get them off the map as soon as possible. Headcappers need to be a large part of your problem-solving strategy. Generating potential cockpit snaps is always good but, more importantly, you need the penetration. Try to make sure you force a PSR every round - it may only inconvenience the pilot but between catastrophic potential and the way it forces them to slow down (and thus burns away their TMM), a fall can only work to your advantage. Incendiary tactics can annoy
Hellstars but generally won't cripple one - all of them have simply enormous heat sink numbers and can quite readily absorb temporary spikes. TAG it and focus Arrow IVs and semi-guided LRMs, Narc it (aside from the 3, which can shut Narc back down), whatever you can do - they're big, they're bad, and they're going to make a real mess before they die. (Author's Note: Last time around, there were serious suggestions about infantry, which is difficult for
Hellstars to deal with decisively.)
That's my take, anyway. What do you guys think?
Image Reference: The
Master Unit List shows the artwork and also just how pricy these things really are... and how far they've spread in the Republic era, showing that people are still willing to pay for quality products. CamoSpecs has but a lone example from
the Horses' Kappa Galaxy.
