Inner Sphere Standard Battle Armor - Technical Readout 3058U page 27
The Inner Sphere Standard Battle Armor, the "almost" suit. It was almost the first Battle Armor introduced into the game, but was beaten to the punch by the Elemental. It is almost as heavily armored and armed as the same Elemental, but not quite. It was almost the first Battle Armor in regular service in the post-Star League Inner Sphere, but that honor instead goes to the Infiltrator Mk I, with the Sloth and both the Gray Death Standard and Gray Death Scout also serving ahead of it. It is in production in almost every Inner Sphere state, but after 3058 the Federated Suns switched over entirely to the Cavalier.
Okay, that is being a little mean to the IS Standard, but unfortunately it cannot help being what it is: a plain vanilla trooper suit built in response to and inspired by the Elemental, while suffering from the technological limits of what is still a comparatively new area of military technology for the Inner Sphere. Perhaps more than any other Battle Armor design, the IS Standard has also endured a series of alterations due to rules updates, with various abilities slowly being stripped away. Even its name has undergone change, with its first appearance not really given a designation at all.
Introduced in the original Technical Readout 3050 as little more than a footnote in the Elemental rules, the first version of what would come to be known as the IS Standard Battle Armor was actually more capable than the design we know today. Effectively an Elemental with just nine points of armor instead of ten, the design had the same armament as the Clan suit and did not suffer a mobility penalty due to the missile launcher, unlikely similarly equipped Inner Sphere designs under the current rules. While not specifically mentioned, it was also assumed that Inner Sphere Battle Armor was immune to flamers, the same as Elementals at that time. Even the unit organization was different than what we now use, with it being noted that they were "not always organized on the Point principle", indicating that they were often organized in units of five, although it also noted that an Inner Sphere unit could contain as few as one suit.
In 1991, ClanTroops - the update to the infantry-scale BattleTroops game - notes for the first time that Inner Sphere Battle Armor (called power suits in those rules) possess only a single weapon and explicitly states that they are immune to flamers, confirming the above assumption. However, three years later, The BattleTech Compendium: The Rules of Warfare was released and not only are the IS Standard's armament changes in ClanTroops applied to the BattleTech game, Battle Armor in general lose their default immunity to flamers - a trait that was not to return until the fire resistant armor of Clan Fire Mandrill's Salamander. A major difference from the current rules was that a Point of Battle Armor required only a single ton of cargo space to be carried inside a vehicle, which meant that even the lowly Pack Rat or the Warrior VTOL made viable Battle Armor transports.
The same year as the release of The BattleTech Compendium: The Rules of Warfare, the 1st Somerset Strikers graced (soiled?) our screens and the Clans quaked at the might and wrath that is the Sloth and Infiltrator Mk I, so we at least knew the IS Standard was no longer alone, although we lacked any game stats so that we too could enjoy these two new and painfully ugly designs. The following year both the 1st Somerset Strikers sourcebook and the Mechwarrior Companion were published, and between the two books we got both the BattleTech and the RPG stats for all three Inner Sphere suits, with the IS Standard called the Standard Inner Sphere Battle Armor at this stage.
The Mechwarrior Companion's IS Standard entry also showed a picture that is later used for the Gray Death Heavy design instead, as well as noting that the suit could carry either a single 'Mech-scale weapon or a pair of Anti-Personnel weapons. At the time, AP weapons had no effect in the main BattleTech game, so the latter option was only of use in Mechwarrior and ClanTroops games, while under the current rule set it would actually require a variant design that replaced the Modular Weapon Mount with a pair of Anti-Personnel Weapon Mounts.
The first Field Manuals came out over the next three years, introducing more Inner Sphere (and Clan) Battle Armor designs. They were followed by the BattleTech Master Rules in 1998, that finally settled upon squads of four as the standard Inner Sphere unit size for Battle Armor, while consolidating all the Battle Armor designs published to that date into a single book, with more following as additional Field Manuals were produced. The cargo requirement for carrying Battle Armor inside vehicles was also changed to one ton per trooper, the same as the default Total War rules, ending those heady days of Karnovs being able to offload no less than six squads.
At the turn of the millennium, we got the next two pieces of the IS Standard puzzle with the publication of Lostech, that at last called the design the Inner Sphere Standard and finally used the same image as is shown in Technical Readout 3058U. The evolution of the IS Standard was still not over though, since the missile configuration in Lostech is noted as being a single-tube SRM with 4 shots, while the modern version is a one-shot SRM 2, and the suit still retained the ability to carry a pair of Anti-Personnel weapons without the need for a variant. The latter issue was effectively addressed once the Battle Armor construction rules were published in Classic BattleTech Companion, although we had to wait until Technical Readout 3058U presented us with that confirmation and thus the final iteration of the Inner Sphere Standard Battle Armor, more than a decade after its first appearance.
That long, convoluted path was how the IS Standard was introduced into the game, and now we will cover its in-universe inception. Upon encountering the Elemental in Operation Revival, the various Inner Sphere militaries were extremely interested in obtaining this new weapon system for themselves, however getting hold of intact samples proved something of a problem. Frustrated with the lack of examples to work upon, researchers dug up what limited information could be found about the SLDF's Nighthawk and began experimenting to see what they could produce themselves. Two results of this early work were the AFFC's Infiltrator and Sloth designs, both of which were rushed to the Clan front while efforts continued to develop better designs.
The Kuritans were the first to get their hands on some Elementals, but with NAIS already hot on the trail, the DCMS were again left in the AFFC's dust with the release of the first IS Standard suits, that themselves were preceded by two designs developed by the Gray Death Legion using early NAIS prototypes. The FedCom did not keep their lead for long and soon all the Houses were producing the IS Standard, with rumors of industrial espionage explaining away the remarkable similarity between each state's production. That might be a little hokey, but it does mean for the player that you can get the same design in every Inner Sphere House - the only Battle Armor that earns that distinction - and given that more have been built than any other Inner Sphere design, you can also get a lot of them.
While research continued on creating better designs, the IS Standard was fielded throughout the Inner Sphere, earning its name as it gave the Houses’ armed forces a reasonably solid trooper and a tool to help develop their own Battle Armor doctrine. In later years, the design remained in widespread service across the Inner Sphere - although the Suns eventually switched production to their Cavalier design - and it could even be found in mercenary and law enforcement commands, such was its easy availability and low price. While the IS Standard is often overlooked by some players because of its lack of national character and relatively unimpressive design, within the universe it would be the most commonly encountered Battle Armor in the Inner Sphere. Although four of the Houses eventually built, or at least fielded, later trooper designs, the Capellan Confederation has yet to acquire a potential replacement - the Fa Shih (Support) comes close, but has even lighter protection, while the standard Fa Shih is too specialized and the Ying Long lacks key features such as jump jets and the ability to perform Swarm attacks.
Although less capable overall than the Elemental, the equivalent trooper design in the Clans' Toumans, the mobility and Battle Claw of the Spheroid suit are identical in performance, but its armor is marginally weaker and, more importantly, crosses a threshold of protection. Although on a typical battlefield Battle Armor might suffer attacks from a variety of weapons, perhaps inflicting as little as 1 or 2 points of damage, and so might be destroyed by accumulative damage, there is also the danger posed by those weapons that can inflict a one-shot kill, even against pristine armor. Unlike the Elemental which mounts the maximum armor available for a medium chassis, the IS Standard has made itself vulnerable to instant kills by Autocannon/10s, standard PPCs, and other such common weapons that can inflict 10 points of damage. In addition, given the widespread use of Medium Lasers as secondary weapons, the suit is also at greater risk of being destroyed by just two shots, even while the enemy ‘Mechs also engage larger targets with their main armament. Forced to accept this lower level of protection due to the Inner Sphere’s early technological limitations, the IS Standard has also set a psychological precedent among the House’s Battle Armor manufacturers, who appear more than willing to accept lighter protection than the maximum the chassis can hold to enable them to cram in some other feature.
When the suit was first fielded, it shared the same trinity of gun configurations as the early Elementals, while also adding a Short Range Missile configuration to compensate for the lack of a built-in launcher. The latter configuration has varied in type over the years with the current canon version a highly questionable one-shot launcher; unable to inflict Swarm attacks and lacking any weaponry once the salvo is fired, it is a horrible choice and desperately needs to revert to the multi-shot launcher that is still used by the derivative Cavalier and Gray Death Standard suits. The Small Laser, Machine Gun and Flamer configurations really represented the only effective options for the early IS Standard suits and the short range common to all three tended to make the suit much more reliant upon supporting units than the Elemental, although it was still used in a similar manner. Eventually, the IS Standard gained a Light Recoilless Rifle configuration, which greatly improved the suit’s overall combat effectiveness. First wielded by Capellan IS Standard suits in the invasion of the St Ives Compact, the Recoilless Rifle can be viewed as the IS Standard’s "AP Gauss Rifle", with its combination of range and dual capability typically a greater advantage than the higher damage of the shorter-ranged Small Laser. For a short while, the IS Standard could have been said to have finally acquired a factional flavor, with a Light Recoilless Rifle-wielding suit recognizable as Capellan, but the weapon soon proliferated among the other states, leaving the design once more indistinct.
When used defensively by itself, the IS Standard's protective bubble is generally smaller than the Elemental’s, although it shares the same threat of an Anti-'Mech attack within a three hex radius. If however, they have some artillery, air support or indirect fire on call, they can extend their zone of control to all visible hexes, with their own weapons retained for self-defense against close quarters assaults. While this is true of all Battle Armor designs, the IS Standard is one of those that can benefit from such support more than others. On the offensive, the suit is again going to struggle more than the Elemental when operating independently, but when provided with transport this is perhaps one area where the Inner Sphere design can not only achieve parity, but even draw ahead of the Clan suit, thanks to the sheer volume of available transports.
Initially lacking a plentiful supply of OmniMechs to support Mechanized Battle Armor tactics, the House militaries already fielded large numbers of Armored Personnel Carriers in their frontline forces, ranging from slow and armored tracked vehicles to swift hovercraft and troop-carrying VTOLs. By using these vehicles, the Spheroid forces are potentially capable of deploying their Battle Armor faster than the Clans, and can even traverse terrain that would at least slow down if not block an OmniMech entirely. With a greater capacity to concentrate their available troops, Inner Sphere forces can use quantity to compensate for the lower individual quality of their Battle Armor. Exploiting designs like the Ferret Light Scout VTOL (in the pre-BMR years) or the Karnov, Spheroid units could easily and quickly drop companies of IS Standards close to the battlefield or even behind enemy lines.
With the IS Standard's gun-armed configurations just as capable of performing Anti-'Mech attacks as the Elemental, an Inner Sphere force confronting Clan troops can fight fire with fire by using the plentiful transport options available to them to inflict the same high-low punch employed by Clan OmniMechs and Elementals. Such combined arms battlefields can make for an exciting and hectic scenario as the Battle Armor duel each other while tanks and 'Mechs fight around and over them, forcing the dilemma of whether you hold your Battle Armor back to protect your heavier units from close quarters assaults, or whether you send them out to attack those same units fielded by your foe. The IS Standard troops will typically suffer higher casualties than their Elemental foes assuming all other factors are equal, but being outperformed as it does its duty is a familiar story for the design, having benefited little over the years as the Inner Sphere developed new technology.
Despite the changes that have effected the IS Standard due to the re-balancing of rules and the plethora of more advanced designs that have followed in its path, only one canon variant has been produced, albeit in such low numbers it may as well be unique. The IS Standard "Hive" from Experimental Technical Readout: Gladiators is used by a Galatean gladiator team called "Four Myths and a Funeral". Only four examples are known to exist, and each has been modified to replace the Modular Weapon Mount with an armored glove, while a David Light Gauss Rifle is slung under the right forearm. The most significant modification is the Battle Armor C3 System that the team supposedly obtained from Blakist stores, using this to provide targeting data for their teammates, although the high mass of this equipment cost the suit a large proportion of its armor.
It is now decades, both in-universe and in the real world, since the IS Standard was first introduced. It still lacks the fancy technology of later suits, instead remaining a simple and humble workhorse, the filler in the Spheroid ranks that is overshadowed by its less numerous successors, and forever outshone by its inspirational parent, the Elemental. After enduring changing rules and losing most of its initial abilities, and even being abandoned by one Inner Sphere state, the IS Standard has soldiered on, proving itself a design that refused to be a mere footnote in the history of Battle Armor.
Next up:
- Infiltrator Mk. I
- Sloth
- GD Scout
- GD Standard
- Raiden
- Kage
- Kanazuchi
- Gnome
