Inside the Thug's Hatch with the Chieftain
Open with
the Chieftain standing between the legs of a 'Mech.
"Today we're going to be having a look at one of the stalwarts of the SLDF's Dragoon and Heavy-Assault regiments."
Camera pans back and up, revealing the 'Mech in all it's glory.
"This is the Thug, to be precise it's a THG-11E which was the most common variant used by the SLDF. This particular 'Mech is in the regimental museum of the Kestrel Crucis March Militia, which is a great place to visit if you get the chance to look at it. Lots of First Succession War history is preserved here, you've got to remember that back in the 2790s right here was the frontlines between the Draconis Combine and the Federated Suns, which gives you an idea of how bad things were for House Davion at the time."
"Going back to the Thug, this one was captured by the AFFS in a DCMS repair bay during a counter-attack in late 2796. The owner, who some of you may have heard of, had been called away to a little place called Kentares IV due to a death in the family. The Kestrel CMM consider this to be the prize of their collection and there have been fourteen attempts over the years to steal it back for House Kurita, thus the armed guards."
Pan briefly to four fully armed AFFS infantry standing at attention around the 'Mech, which is standing in the middle of a repurposed hanger with various other exhibits visible in the background.
"Anyway it's not the 'Mechs' fault who piloted it and this one never went anywhere near Kentares." The Chieftain walks around the large feet. "I believe the reactor had been pulled when it was captured and never got put back, but otherwise it's in pretty good condition. There was actually some talk about putting a new engine in it at one point, but obviously someone thought better of that."
"The Thug was developed by the Maltex Corporation back in the 2560s and 2570s when a little thing called the Star League was still being put together. The Hegemony Armed Forces were looking at folding into the new Star League Defense Forces and handing some of their older equipment down to planetary militias, including much of their fleet of Warhammer heavy 'Mechs. This had been a standby of their heavy regiments for about fifty years, and it had handily countered House Davion's Hammerhands and Battleax heavies, but it was beginning to look a bit long in the tooth." Chieftain pauses. "Which is a bit ironic now, but they looked at things a little differently back then."
"With a lot of components being standardised at the time, to keep the SLDF's logistics from being more of an absolute nightmare than they were inevitably going to be, it really looked like a good time to take a fresh look at the Warhammer's role and see what else could be offered for the heavy-trooper role. They'd had plenty of time to see what worked and what didn't, after all."
Pan up to the Thug again.
"The most obvious thing to retain was the Particle Projection Cannon - PPCs, as most abbreviate that. Twin PPCs were a pretty ambitious undertaking, they build up a lot of heat,and the Battleax and Warhammer had been about the first 'Mechs to seriously try to operate with a pair of them and it was clearly a strain for both of them. But the pay off was that frequently they would wreck anything they hit. You have to remember, standard plating wasn't very standard at the time - a lot of second-tier units still used primitive or industrial plating and a PPC had a decent chance of not just ablating away more than half a ton of the stuff, they also had a nasty habit of causing the interior of the protection to spall - which was really good at shredding any systems - or crew - behind the plating."
"Throw in the fact that the secondary effects could impair electronics if your shielding wasn't right on point and taking even a single PPC hit tended to cause a significant emotional event for the people on the receiving end. And these bad boys were running around with two of them?" Chieftain winces. "Anyway, the issue was the amount of heat being built up. Maltex had access to the new endo-steel materials that let them lighten the frame and more importantly, to include next-generation heatsinks - what we call freezers. They fitted the Thug with more or less the same tonnage of cooling jackets, heat exchangers and so forth as the Warhammer, with the result that firing both PPCs barely spikes the temperature at all."
"Maltex didn't go for the same Donal PPCs that had been used on the Warhammer, instead they opted for these Tiegarts. Common 'Mechwarrior wisdom was that Donals do a little more damage, while Tiegarts are a fraction more accurate, so the decision makes sense. The Warhammer couldn't maintain a sustained barrage from both PPCs, so pilots wanted every hit to count, while the Thug could pretty much hold down both triggers with bricks and step away for a mug of coffee so it was more useful to make sure those shots hit. Ironically, of course, Tiegart was a casualty of the Succession Wars so a lot of later Thug's use Donals anyway."
"Now if you look down at the forearms, you can see another improvements the Thug offered over its predecessor: it's got hands. I really can't overstate how useful this made them. You could use them to help lift and carry supplies, drag damaged 'Mechs off the field, pick up salvage or an ejected pilot - even punch someone with a greatly reduced risk of damaging your PPCs. You can imagine how frustrating it is to find yourself having to get out and rig some sort of strapping so a Warhammer or Marauder can be useful for those circumstances, while in a Thug the mechwarrior could just reach out and do it."
"Moving in towards the centre of the 'Mech, you can see the secondary weapons. This is the same place the Warhammer mounted its distinctive cluster of lasers and machine guns, but the Thug sweeps those away and doubles up on the Short-Range Missiles that were always something of an afterthought on the Warhammer. We can only see one of them here, up on the right, because the cover is closed on the left one. Those panels just slide back to reveal a second launcher... well, that's the theory. In practise they had a nasty habit of getting jammed open, leaving the launcher uncovered, or closed - so you couldn't use it - or even half-way, which was the worst of both worlds."
"This is only the second biggest complaint about the secondary weapons though. The first is that without the machine guns, there's no dedicated anti-infantry capability. Maltex argued - and the SLDF agreed actually - that this could be left to supporting infantry units and dedicated anti-infantry 'Mechs. As people later found out, the real world isn't always that convenient. The common fix was to replace one of the two bins of SRMs with fragmentation missiles, which were certainly effective in an anti-personnel role, but they're not all that much use against armoured opponents, At least you could keep the other bin for conventional missiles."
"The other major change from the Warhammer is that the Thug is ten tons heavier. That's not always the best choice, because it means you need a stronger internal structure, a bigger engine, and in this case a more than thirty percent increase in the size of the gyro in order to maintain performance - and the Warhammer was pretty average in that respect as it was. But in this case I think Maltex made the right call because they had endo-steel structure which offset most of that extra weight anyway and it let them pack in another five and a half tons of Mitchell armour plating and fit both ammo bins with cellular ammo storage."
"Now as a mechwarrior, I'm always in favour of the last part, because having your 'Mech explode is always a bit traumatic. But the former was a huge improvement over the Warhammer. Back when that was brought in, around the start of the twenty-sixth century, ten tons of standard armour was considered perfectly acceptable but times had changed and heavier protection now seemed like a good idea. The Thug actually carries slightly more armour plating than the famously sturdy Awesome that was also being developed at the same time."
"Right, that's enough about the outsides, let's see what it looks like inside."
The Chieftain starts climbing a ladder hung down from the cockpit. "It certainly makes it easier when..." Pauses for breath. "When these are in 'Mech bays with gantries. I don't really miss this part of active service." Pauses again. "With the cockpit down between the shoulders, it's not really higher than a Warhammer's cockpit even if the 'Mech itself is a bit taller."
"Okay then." He lowers himself down the cockpit. "Normal layout here. Command seat at the front and," he cranes around, "just enough room for a passenger behind the seat if they're not too large. Just pray that you don't have to pull the ejection lever while there's someone back there."
"Two control sticks where you'd expect them and the pedals work the same way pretty much every 'Mech since the Mackie has. No jump jet controls, since no one was trying to make one hop around like a Victor. Which I imagine a lot of people are grateful, not least the designers because that would mean shellhorning in around... well, the HildCo Model 12s on a Victor weigh in at about three and half thousand kilograms if I recall correctly." (Camera blips slightly.) "Four thousand and change kilograms, I should say. Well, close enough for government work if you're a Capellan."
"There's just enough power here to bring up the systems, that's a line from the museum because, as I said, the reactor's not in this thing any more." The Chieftain hits the reactor power switch and several side-displays light up. "In fact, here on the damage display you can see it's telling us this right here. Auxiliary power only. Here on the left is the communications, a Colmax 90, which got the job done. And on the right, behind this panel should be a..." Pauses, looks at the empty space. "On loan to NAIS. Well, hopefully they mean New Avalon not Noius Archipelagus. Anyway, the TharHes Area-5 targeting computer, which got a lot of credit for the Thug's accuracy with the PPCs. As I mentioned earlier, it later turned out to mostly be the Tiegart's better focusing, but that doesn't make the Area-5 bad and who knows."
"One last thing." He indicates the damage display. "Down here are the capacitors feeding electricity from the reactors to the PPCs. These are the same basic units found on contemporary Warhammers and unfortunately completely slagged here. Which is a shame, because Star Corps lost the ability to make those years ago and we've since standardised on the competitor, as used on the MAD-1R Marauder - the later twin PPC heavy 'Mech of the Star League Defense Forces, and can't quite handle the same load. If anyone does have a mint-condition set of original capacitors, you're sitting on something that would probably net you more than the cost of the attached 'Mech these days. Good luck."
"So, that's the Thug. I'd love to take one out on a gunnery course, but as mentioned this one has no reactor and Maltex's Errai factory hasn't made any since the factory was destroyed in 2835, although not before providing a replacement to same Mr. Jinjiro we mentioned earlier. Earthwerks had licensed the design, since Maltex wasn't quite prepared for the popularity of the Thug and they build about a dozen THG-10E models - without the advanced endo-steel and cooling systems, unfortunately - on Keystone but unless I can scrape together jumpship fare to get across to the Free Worlds League, this is probably the closest I'll get. Which is a shame."
"So that's it from the tour of the Thug. Hope you found it interesting."
