Ravager Assault Battle Armor - Technical Readout 3085 Supplemental page 11
Another unit to be inherited from MechWarrior Dark Age, and another developed by jymset, the Ravager is the first Battle Armor to be designed by a Periphery state and not only that, it also comes in at the top-end of the Battle Armor weight classes. Oh, and it's very, very ugly.
Published in Technical Readout 3085 Supplemental, the appearance of the Ravager is what might be known as offensive to the eyes. Kindly described as a trashcan on legs by one acquaintance, although personally I think that's unkind to trashcans, such levels of ugliness have not been seen since the Infiltrator Mk I or the face pulled by a bulldog licking urine off a stinging nettle. I can only assume that the designers at Marian Arms Inc were hoping that opponents would be so visually stunned and horrified by what they were seeing that they'd forget to shoot, or that they would feel sorry for the trooper inside and refuse to inflict any further harm to them. Either way, it's Ugly.
Now that I've got that out of my system...
First introduced in 3084 by the Marian Hegemony, the Ravager indirectly owes its existence to the Word of Blake, with its life story technically beginning as far back as the late 3050s. As part of the assistance offered by the Blakists in return for the Marians switched their long distance call provider, Marian Arms had its facilities refurbished with technology that they could have only once dreamed of having. The implication in the 3085 Supplemental is that the factory on Horatius was actually intended for producing Battle Armor, although if this is so, then the intended design to be built there isn't known. Whatever the original intentions, the Blakist's plans to establish another manufacturing center in the Periphery came to naught when Julius O'Reilly kicked them out and signed back up with ComStar in 3065. The Word had the last word when their agents neutron bombed O'Reilly and his capital city in 3071, but luckily for the Marians, that wasn't the end of Julius' ambitions.
The next drop of good fortune for the Marians came in the form of Dr Dafyyd Rou, a former employee of Irian Technologies, who was fleeing both them and the Blakists. By happy providence, Dr Rou happened to not only be an expert in designing Battle Armor, but was also able to assist Marian Arms to finish building their facility on Horatius. Presumably recognizing the price his nation would have to pay to develop their own homegrown Battle Armor project, the current ruler of the Marian Hegemony, Cassius O'Reilly, directed Rou to produce a design that would be suitable for export, with the resulting suit eventually finding its way into the hands of mercenaries and even former states of the fractured Free Worlds League.
Dr Rou's ambitions apparently matched those of the O'Reilly's, and although his design is austere, he chose to build as large a Battle Armor suit as possible. Dubbed the Ravager - I can't help feel that a more Roman name would have been more appropriate - the design weighs in at 2 tons, of which nearly half is devoted to armor, which is about as simple and primitive a technology as you can get.
Equipped with 900kg of Standard armor plate, that provides the Ravager with the maximum eighteen points of armor allowable for an Assault suit. Against many opponents, that level of protection works wonders for keeping the suit alive, and thus cutting down on replacement costs; no doubt the troopers inside appreciate that training costs for replacements will be low too. Unfortunately, such levels of armor practically beg for the enemy to break out the one weapon that doesn't care about how tough Battle Armor may be, in the form of the Inferno. As stated before in prior Battle Armor of the Week articles, Infernos are incredibly powerful when used against Battle armor that lack Fire Resistant armor, something that is a purely a Clan technology. For every three Inferno missiles that hit a squad, one suit is automatically destroyed, and those Infernos can accumulate from multiple attacks in a Turn, so if one attack hits with five and another attack with four, then that's going to be three dead suits. Another point in favor of the efficiency of Infernos against Ravagers is that in effect you're killing a nineteen point suit with just six points of damage.
Of course, the Ravager isn't alone in that vulnerability, the same is true of all Inner Sphere suits and most Clantech ones as well, but heavily armored Assaults are the ones that most often draw the attention of that form of counter, which means they better have the firepower and mobility to deal with their attackers. Unfortunately for Assaults, moving quickly isn't really one of their strong points compared to the lighter weight classes of Battle Armor. They can be designed to match the average speeds of designs like the Medium-weight Inner Sphere Standard or Grey Death Standard, but they pay an excessively high cost in mass to do so. For this reason, it's generally better to leave them relatively slow, so that they concentrate on the forte, namely high payloads and thick armor.
In the case of the Ravager, it has a modest level of mobility enhancement, boosting its ground speed to twice that of foot infantry, thus giving it two Movement Points per Turn. That's not enough to generate a Target Movement Modifier, but it does help the suit run down Inferno-armed foot infantry, or run away from them, as appropriate. Although the image of a two ton suit pounding up the stairwell in a building might seem bizarre, this increased ground speed is very useful in urban combat, and the extra protection offered by heavier buildings can make the already tough Ravager almost insanely difficult to kill with direct fire.
Obviously, as an Assault suit, the Ravager is incapable of performing Mechanized Battle Armor operations - or Anti-'Mech attacks for that matter - despite possessing a full-sized Battle Claw on its left arm. That means that for any form of strategic movement, and in some cases when moving on the battlefield as well, you're going to need to assign it an APC to transport it around. The basic Total War rules do allow Assault Battle Armor to be carried for just one ton per suit, but personally I prefer the optional rules that the full two tons per Assault suit. In the case of the Marian Hegemony, that fields five-suit squads, which means a vehicle with a hefty ten ton bay is required, of which there are few and far between.
Having provided the Ravager with an impressive level of protection and above average mobility, which together with the basic chassis require over three-quarters of the two ton capacity of an Assault class suit, unfortunately that doesn't leave much for armament. Having first appeared in MechWarrior Dark Age, it was known that the Ravager had to have a large Gatling-style gun on its right arm, and so jymset gave it the largest ballistic weapon available for the Inner Sphere, in the form of a Heavy Recoilless Rifle. The multiple barrels have no effect in the game and its fluffed that they're simply there for battlefield redundancy in the case of damage, and perhaps also as a holdover from research by Dr Rou into a true Battle Armor rotary cannon.
As a weapon, the Heavy Recoilless Rifle is a powerful hitter, with a modest boost in range brackets compared to its Medium version, which can be very useful in some situations. Able to inflict extra damage against conventional infantry, which does at least help when encountering those pesky Inferno-armed SRM troops, but the seven hex range does fall short of that of the missiles, so the Ravager is still likely to be looking at mutual destruction at best. Even with the five-suit squads found in the Marian Armed Forces, the Recoilless Rifle won't be anywhere near enough to inflict a Piloting roll on an enemy 'Mech, even if all five Rifles hit, but the Ravager's armor does provide it with endurance, and over time those three-point hits can mount up.
Personally, I would have preferred a Medium Recoilless Rifle, thus leaving more mass for the secondary weaponry, at just a small cost in range, but the Heavy needed some face time and its larger size does perhaps better match the original visual imagery. Sadly, it does only leave a mere 50 kilograms available for the backup armament, and given that the Dark Age models show a torso-mounted missile armament with more than one tube, there was really only one option available using Inner Sphere technology. Luckily, the choice of Rocket Launchers neatly fits in with the Ravager being a Periphery design, although in my opinion, that's where the luck stops.
Rocket Launchers do have a couple of advantages compared to the more typical SRMs, in that they're lighter and longer ranged. Unfortunately, they're also less accurate, do half the damage per missile, lack multiple warhead types and are only available as one-shot versions. For larger unit types, that can afford to mount larger launchers and more of them, Rocket Launchers are perhaps more useful, but for Battle Armor they're best avoided if possible. Obviously, for the Ravager, that's not an option, and at least it doesn't have to worry about being unable to jump until they're detached, but as a firepower boost, they're a mere token and it doesn't really harm much if you forget about them all game.
The Ravager has proven to be an export success, with willing buyers across the Inner Sphere and Periphery tempted by the simplicity and toughness of the design. Perhaps this will indeed one day lead to new variants, as suggested in the write-up, although for now it seems that the Marians are content with what they have, perhaps just wanting to recoup their high project costs. Admittedly, without advanced technology or a significant shift in design theme, the relatively limited payload would restrict options, but some useful armaments are possible.
Overall, the Ravager is a design that fills a niche, providing a contrast to more advanced suits developed closer to Terra. When used against opponents who aren't obsessed with Infernos to the point that even pyromaniacs get uncomfortable, it can be a major annoyance of the battlefield, leveraging its endurance under fire to throw a roadblock in the enemy's plans. It's rarely going to be a battlefield winner by itself, but it does enough to help other troops win the fight. And did I mention that it's sinfully ugly?
Next up:
- Gray Death Heavy
- Gray Death Strike
- Warg
- Kopis
- Gorilla