Mech of the Week: Cuirass
Hello everyone and welcome back to Mech of the week. The last article I did was the Saggitire, and appropriately enough this week's MOTW article features another proud Robinson Mechworks product
The Cuirass first appeared in Mechwarrior: Age of Destruction, for Mechwarrior Dark age, as the mech Aaron Sandoval piloted, sometime in early 2005, however, we'd not see it's Battletech states and fluff until TRO: 3085 supplemental in 2010. As it appeared in the digital supplement for TRO 3085 it's something of a sleeper mech, and admittingly like many of the other mechs in it, isn't perhaps as well known as it should be. Which in someways is a pity as the design's a nice looking one and fills a decent niche in a AFFS flavored force. With that out of the way let's look at the mech in more detail shall we?
First introduced in 3086, shortly after the Jihad ended, by Robinson Mechworks, the Cuirass, was yet another mech built on the same reliable frame as the Sentry and Watchman, (except the Cuirass is endosteel ) massing in at 40 tons and designed to fill a light Cavalry role. The design is fluffed as being a direct challenger/competitor to the Legionnaire that gained fame during the Battles of New Avalon during the Jihad. With an Engine Propelling the Cuirass to 97 KPH the Cuirass is fast but slightly slower then is considered "ideal" for a light cavalry design (at least if you accept TRO 3085 Supplementary fluff on what's ideal) slower then the competing Legionnaire but making up for that with Jump jets, an XL gyro is also used to save on weight.
For weaponry the Curiass mounts a RAC 5, ER Medium laser and a sword giving it respectable firepower for a 40 tonner, however the mech only mounts single heat sinks, which means a Cuirass pilot is going to have to manage his heat carefully, still it's mostly doable, as each RAC 5 shot is 1 heat, the ER ML is 5 and the jump jets are 6 heat, over all either not firing the RAC 5, or simply not firing the ER ML, when jumping should keep your heat down fine.
The sword feels largely pretty useless, not gonna lie, I've never been a huge fan of swords in general, you basically trade hitting on the punch table for a -2 to hit and an additional one damage. not really worth the two tons that could have been used a number of other ways, but leaving that aside, the Cuirass doesn't feel like a mech I'd want a sword on anyway, it's speed combined with the RAC 5's reasonably good range makes me feel like it should keep it's distance and pour that fire on, still the sword might come in handy if a fast light mech makes the mistake of getting into melee range with you. Over all, not the best mech, but if I random rolled one I think I could use it. Over all I'd say the mech is best used as a "heavy light mech" deployed with a scout lance. it's not going to win any contests but it'll bully light mechs well.
TRO 3145's New Tech New Unit's section gave us two new variants of the Cuirass,
The first of these new variants, introduced in 3119 is intended specifically as a spotter for C3 lances, employing a boosted C3 slave, the Spotter Cuirass is designed to take full advantage of a Boosted C3 network, and these are almost certainly seeing heavy deployment alongside the new Fenneic with the Boosted C3M, For weaponry is packs 4 Magshot Gauss rifles supplied with a single ton of ammo, 2 Medium X Pulse Lasers, an ER small lasers, and the sword is upgraded to a Vibroblade, all cooled with 10 Double Heat Sinks, over all this is actually a really neat variant, the Magshots single ton of ammo seems a bit.. off, but that's about ten turns fire for each of them, and frankly given this mechs role requires it to get nice and close, that's probably longer then it'll last. over all though I'd say this is a pretty decent mech for what it is. get in close, lay some hurt on, and cackle as your lance mates drop hyper accurate fire power at your target from long range. The Mag shots are an odd choice, but clearly the designer was trying to match the "multi barreled look of the art work in a new way. It's quirky and I kind of love it.
Lastly 3134 saw the introduction of the 2X model Cuirass, the Vibroblade upgrade to the sword remains, but the techs at Robinson Mechworks realized that the FedSuns had a bit of a problem, the Dracs had clued into the whole "Davions love auto canons" meme, and started packing Ballistic reinforced armor into an awful lot of their mechs, employing it on a whole wack of mechs. This lead to the decision to replace the RAC 5 with an energy weapon, in this case a heavy PPC, an odd choice considering Robinson Mechworks was clearly capable of building mechs with Clan ER PPCs, but I suppose they had limited stocks and wanted to keep using them on the Black Knight and other larger mechs.
Still the end result is a 6/9/6 machine with a Heavy PPC, a vibroblade... and a Re-engineered Small Laser.. ok, I've come around to accepting RE lasers as actually pretty viable weapons, but if you're going to bother with one you need to go into them a bit heavy, I mean... what's the Cuirass going to do with a single RE Small laser? Tickle a Shiro? But over all, it's not a bad variant, and anything that moves this fast with a headcapper has a definite place.
Sadly this design couldn't prevent the fall of Robinson to the Draconious Combine in 3144, and during the 5 years of occupation the design spread to the DCMS.
Per the MUL the Cuirass is Fedsuns exclusive during the early and late Republic eras, becoming available to both the FedSuns and Combine from the Dark age on.
