Jengiz - 80t, TRO3055
Originally posted 31 Aug. 2005. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread. A Ghost Bear design first flown in 3032, the
Jengiz is perhaps the newest of the OmniFighters in service with Kerensky’s Clans. In fitting with its creators’ adulation of things ursine, the
Jengiz is outwardly fairly slow and cumbersome... but believe you me, anybody who pokes a finger at it will
lose that finger.
At the shoulder. :o
Now, for Clan technology an eighty-tonner thrusting at 5/8 is a little underwhelming at first glance... but a 240XL engine leaves that much more podspace, remember? ;D The fuel-fraction is only four tons, which I can’t call reassuring, but it beats out disappointments like the
Sabutai and the last-ditch interceptor
Batu. 13.5 tons of ferro-aluminium armour, 85/63/48, renders the
Jengiz immune to first-shot thresholding by Clan medium lasers across its nose and wings, which is no bad thing; even better, it’s immune to TACs from
Inner Sphere MLs from all angles. }:) The chassis comes hardwired with twenty DHS - a fairly common design compromise amongst the Clan mediums and heavies, it seems, and certainly worthwhile with the wicked heat-profiles generated by Clan energy weapons - and the rest of the spaceframe, some 43.5 tons (almost 55% of the
Jengiz’ all-up mass!) is devoted to pod-space. One could make the case that the
Jengiz is thus a tad over-gunned, but as a wise carbo-silicate amorph once said: “There is no ‘
overkill’. There is only ‘
OPEN FIRE!’ and ‘
Keep whimpering - I’m reloading!’†;D }:)
Jengiz Prime looks like a Medium-to-Short range utility player to me. The nose houses an LB-10X autocannon with a single ton of ammo(???), an ERPPC, a medium pulse laser, and an ERSL (because, as always, the designers had a stray half-ton to deal with ::)); each wing supports a large pulser, a medium pulser, and an SRM-6 with a ton of ammo per launcher; aft, we have an MPL to brush off the light-fighters and an ECM module(!) to knock back Artemis missile-guidance systems (and, under
StratOps rules, foul other fighters’
standard fire-control suites, as well! }:)). This is a bloody bruiser and no mistake: while this configuration runs decidedly hot if you’re not careful (+19 on an alpha-strike of the forward weapons!), all those -2 pulse-weapons can make life very, very unfun very, very quickly. The ERPPC is there purely as a ‘token’ Long-range weapon, but token or not, you have to respect its hitting power; as the range closes, you leave out the ERPPC (which has served its purpose) and the ERSL (which is something of a joke) and all your other forward guns for a heat-deficit-per-turn of a mere +2, which is still unpleasant but can be handled by only firing the nose MPL every second turn. ;)
As I said, this one is a utility player, well-able to provide fire support to an aerial fight, but its true calling is ground-attack. Strafes with a C/ERPPC and all those pulse-lasers would tear huge chunks off of even the heaviest ’Mech, leaving it open to the follow-up Strike when the ERPPC would stay silent, letting the LB’s cluster-rounds and the SRM salvoes look for the (many) gaps in the armour to exploit and break important stuff beneath. }:) Not that it’s any slouch in the anti-shipping role, either: a full Star’s worth has an amount of throw-weight anyone within shouting distance of sanity should truly dread....
ERPPC: 15 Capital (out to Long range)
Nose pulse bay: 7 Capital (at Medium or closer)
LB-10X bay: 10 Capital with slug rounds, 6 Capital (at -1 TH) with Cluster
Two wing pulse bays: each 10 Capital at Long range, 17(!) at Medium
Two wing SRM bays: each 8 Capital
Jengiz Alpha is described as the only dedicated ground-attack variant, though I’m beggared if I know why when the
Prime is just as brutal in its own way. :D ::) Wiring in seven additional DHS, the
Jengiz Alpha puts the token ERSL aft and installs paired energy weapons elsewhere - twin ERPPCs in the nose, and a brace of large pulse lasers in each wing.
Alpha’s not especially cool-running either, but careful bracket fire can handle that - and if you get into a dogfight in one (which I doubt you’re silly enough to do), you can lay down sustained fire with the nose PPCs and the closer wing-lasers pretty much indefinitely.
The fluff is right about this being a good strafing config, though: with sufficient time to cool off between runs, two C/ERPPCs and four C/LPLs can all but obliterate a target in one or two passes. :o And the anti-’Shipping power is rather more concentrated here, with a Star of
Jengiz-A putting out a 30-Capital PPC bay and two 20-Capital LPL bays - enough to give even the hideously hard-hitting
Sabutai C a healthy run for its money in this role. :o
Jengiz Bravo is more of a fire-support platform than the preceding two loadouts, but ‘fire-support’ != ‘useless in a close fight’. ;) The nose houses a Gauss Rifle with a generous three-ton ammo bay (no danger of running out of bullets on
this primary weapon! ;D) with a pair of ERMLs backing it up; each wing mounts an ERPPC and an Artemis’d LRM-20 (though there’s only one ton of ammo per launcher); once again, the afterthought ERSL watches your back. Careful heat-management is still necessary with this loadout, but then again, the brackets are pretty explicit: the Gauss and the LRMs for ‘softening up’, and when the ammo runs out you revert to your energy armament (all forward guns = +0 heat) to either move in for the kill or go home for more bullets, as seems appropriate to the situation. That same heat-neutrality-on-energy-only makes this a pretty nasty Strafing platform too, I might note, and what it can do in the anti-shipping role... jeepers, two LRM bays for 16 Capital, a 15-Capital Gauss bay, two 15-Capital ERPPC bays and a 14 Capital ERML bay at Medium range? :o
(Odd fluff-based note: the readout/HM:A claims that when empty, the LRM racks can actually be jettisoned to pick up some extra accel. Certain rules clarifications may have briefly made this legal before
TW nixed it again, but I don’t think this would actually work out in play; nonetheless, it’s a nice fluff-based touch. ;))
As it says on the brochure,
Jengiz Charlie is armed with weaponry that has sharply limited reach by comparison with other Clan systems (reaching only Medium range); it is said to have developed from a Goliath Scorpion loadout... which is curious, since I was under the impression that the Scorpions were addicted to ERLLs and TarComps, not short-range weapons. ??? ::) The nose houses three(!) Streak-6 racks, each with its own ton of ammo; each wing houses an LB-20X with two tons per gun; aft, we have that vestigial ERSL and an SSRM-4 with twenty-five salvoes. In the air-to-mud role, this is perhaps one of the most savage crit-seeking configurations you’re likely to find, in the air
or on the ground. (
Crossbow Bravo? Feh - what a piker! ;D) It also has the rare distinction of being an
over-sinked Clan design; generating only 29 heat on an alpha, which its integral 20 DHS will barely notice, the
Jengiz-C can’t possibly overheat unless it takes a succession of heat-sink and/or engine crits. ::) The lack of reach concerns me, especially since it can only be partly offset by teaming the
Charlie with longer-ranged configs as the fluff mentions, but if it gets into firing range of a ’Ship,
LOOK OUT! A Star’s Streak bay can deliver a whopping
36 Capital damage, which will clear
anybody’s sinuses, and the two 12-Capital LB-20X bays aren’t to be sneezed at either - especially if the Star’s commander thinks to order the use of Slug ammo, which makes for two 20-point bays instead. :o
TRO3055U gave most of the Clan OmniFighters
Delta loadouts, most of those with newtech, and the
Jengiz is part of both subsets. Dropping in nine extra DHS and putting the ERSL aft, it packs the nose with twin Heavy Large Lasers and an Artemis’d LRM-20 with two tons of ammo, fitting each wing with ER lasers (one large, one medium) and an SSRM-6 (the Streak launchers sharing a single ton of ammo). On the face of it, this is a nice ‘punch-holes/find crits’ combination for air-to-mud work, but the heat-balance requires a conscious effort to bracket-fire your weaponry - the ERLLs and LRMs at range, HLLs/ERMLs/SSRMs up-close, and even
then you need to leave out one of the Streak launchers every second turn! - otherwise the needle will start climbing into the red all too quickly. It’s also
very good at tearing chunks out of DropShips (the HLL bay alone comes to 32 Capital in the pre-TW ten-ship Stars! :o), but again, the natural impulse is to ‘tape down the trigger’ when you’re Dropper-chopping, and
Jengiz-D doesn’t let you do that. :( It could be worse; by the same token, it could be
better. :-\
The
Jengiz’ external load is nothing too special, the usual ten tons at 3/5, but you’ll note that it would allow the use of external tanks to more than double the
Jengiz’ operating range; you just have to remember to keep the escorts close and punch off the externals when things start getting warm.
In all honesty, the
Jengiz strikes me as the most ‘Inner Sphere’ of all the heavy Clan OmniFighters, in that it doesn’t have too many real quirks or tricks to its use and it can be deployed in IS fashion with minimal changes in mindset; it doesn’t have the quixotic thin armour and truly obscene firepower of the
Sabutai, the tactical eccentricities of the
Kirghiz, or the combination of speed and hitting power of the
Scytha, which makes it kind of... featureless, IMO. On the other hand, that might just make it a good ‘transition’ spaceframe for those used to IS1-style play.
Remember the mantras is about all I can say for players fielding them: keep your escorts nearby, watch each others’ backs, and ‘get in - hit hard - get out!’
Defending against
Jengiz on the Clan end is almost ridiculously easy; almost every other spaceframe they have can out-pace or out-turn it, and most of them pack Clan guns which can cause TACs from almost any angle. That perennial favourite the
Visigoth, the Clans’ defining ‘go-to guy’ in the ASF field, will make a meal of a
Jengiz one-on-one... as long as it stays out of its forward fire-arcs, anyway. :o
Spheroid players dealing with the
Jengiz are probably going to be either ComStar/Rasalhague, Dracs, or FedCom/LyrAll, since (according to its readout) the
Jengiz was restricted to the Ghost Bear and Wolf Clans at the time of Operation: REVIVAL. You need to be able to out-turn the thing, with enough armour/reach to offset its (minimal) tail-guns and enough firepower to generate threshold crits across its tail and aft; this puts birds like the SYD-Z4
Seydlitz, F-92
Stingray, and SL-17
Shilone ‘on deck’, as it were. That new IS
monstrosity marvel the
Eisensturm is
more than a match for the
Jengiz, making for something of a rarity: an IS type which actually outperforms a Clan machine in all aspects of the game. Admittedly the EST-R3/-O has fifteen tons on the
Jengiz, but still.... :o (From an IC perspective, this is a ruthless mismatch and should be sought and exploited without remorse; OOC, however, you might not want to reflex to EST-Os every time you see a Clanner across the game-board. An IS player being the focus of ‘munchkin!’ cries may be a good case of ‘what goes around comes around’, but it’s still no fun to be called a lamer to your face. :()
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,3201.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcripts of previous runs of this thread contain numerous reader-proposals for variants. I’ll try to change those out for ‘sanitised’ versions of those threads when I can, but I can’t promise it’ll be soon - that’s a lot of ground to cover. ;)
