Gladius Medium Hover Tank - 40t, TRO3060, RS: 3060
The old article hath vanished into the aether, and this neophyte got the nod, so I thought I'd cover this little tank. If I ape better, wittier posters, it's because I've always appreciated these articles.In many ways the
Gladius is like the
Sai aerospace fighter: good old-fashioned Introtech assembled into a new form to fill a much-needed gap, at a time when new tech was just coming out, but little else was available locally.
Here, the Marian Hegemony Armed Forces gained (with some help from the Taurians) a cheap BFG on a fast ICE platform. VTOLs were probably too fragile, tracked would give up far too much mass for a large engine, wheeled has further drawbacks, so, hovertank. The concept goes all the way back to the
LTV-4 and its PPC, and was continued in the form of everyone's favourite floating Claymore mine, the
Saladin.
In terms of looks, Nielsen's art in
The Periphery hearkens back to the old Mad Max days; it's a slab-sided, brutally-functional tank rushing straight towards you, shots bouncing off and around, cavernous chatter-cannon spewing fire. It leaves no doubt as to what it was built to do: raiding and conquest. This
Romani is not going
domum till they've
wrecked you.
Vohwinkel's
TRO3060 illustration is more sedate, but shows off the sloped upper armour front and back. In both versions I can't help but wonder if the driver or commander is literally riding the cannon to see through the view slit. (There is precedent.
Ill-advised precedent.)
The
Gladius takes a slightly different tack to the
Saladin, keeping the 8/12 speed but scaling down the cannon to a Pontiac 50 AC/10, and increasing the size of the chassis to 40 tons. This, and the lack of turret, lets the 5 tons of standard armour it could have worn increase to 6, and go a fair bit further: 30/24/18 makes it able to withstand an AC/20 from the front or sides, and maybe survive a blast from the rear. I can imagine Alphard's garrison forces in the rockier, hillier parts of the planet (i.e. most of them) grumbling about their new national symbol of statehood, but any Legion commander out on campaign must have breathed a sigh of relief at not having to write so many condolence letters to the families of exploded
Saladin crews. I'd skim a point off the sides and add it to the rear to fully protect it from its spiritual little brother, but no-one asked me. :-P
The 5/10/15 range band for the autocannon means it can stand-off a bit better, but the lack of turret means you have to plan ahead, or lose your valuable movement points and +3 TMM rotating when brought up short by terrain. Twenty rounds is not great, but not bad either; you should have enough spare to try for medium-range shots.
The backstory is interesting. Canonically, they're the first native Marian vehicle, produced in 3042, and as part of Marian Arms Incorporated's trade deal with Sterope-Defense Industries that equipped them with their autocannon, the Concordat took 25 percent of the built vehicles. The Taurians were happy with the arrangement until Jeffrey Calderon said otherwise and cut trade, apparently leaving the TDF with the majority of the vehicles in the Inner Sphere; the Marians had trashed most of the one hundred
Gladius' they had built
obeying Lord Humungous invading Astrokazy and, later, conquering the Lothian League. This leaves it defunct until a change of management round Taurian way finally got round to reopening trade in 3066, restarting production. The Mk. II they began building alongside the original is... different, but I'll get to that in a minute.
As for usage, despite the name, you're not a sword for a front-line soldier, you're cavalry with an explosive lance. Whoosh into range, preferably with a partner or three, fire at someone in your front arc, and vwoom back out of reach. If you've survived, charge in and do it again. Your preferred prey are light 'mechs and vehicles that have forgotten to move, the backs of medium 'mechs that are preoccupied with your own 'mech forces, and anything else that won't like a couple bursts of AC/10. Then circle round as you wait for your prime movers and cargo carriers to load up anything that's not nailed down. Hanging out the window making the sign of the V8 is optional, but hilarious.
The armour means you can take a hit, the range means that you can stay out of the short range of a
Saladin or
Hetzer and return fire, BUT. While there are very few hover platforms beyond the
Drillson that mount equivalent main weapons, you're still vulnerable to motive crits from LRMs, SRMs and medium lasers, all in abundance on faster, lighter Periphery vehicles with turrets. Likewise for AC/5s, which can still hurt if enough shots land.
You're not half as manoeuvrable as JJ-equipped scout 'mechs, either, what with needing to turn like a WW1 fighter to shoot behind you. You will also hate VTOLs for being able to skip over all those forests and hills while plinking away at you.
Fortunately, you can bring all of these friends with you too. On the 'native-built' front, Alphard Arms Inc. is noted to build
J. Edgars in the '50s, perfect for counter-harassing those nasty plebians. (It doesn't say if they're the ICE variant, but were I running the table I'd allow a handwave and say they got help from the Taurians for the Standard.) What I've said applies equally well to the TDF, but replace "
J. Edgar" with "
Plainsman".
In short, keep together, watch your threes, sixes and nines for
J. Edgars,
Harassers and
Strikers, keep in the medium or long range of any
Pegasus and maybe pack a ton of Flak for
Warriors.
Pikes are your natural enemy: fairly abundant, indigenous to one of the Marian's preferred raiding targets, long-ranged enough that they can snipe before you get into range and tough enough to tank two or three of your own shots. If you have some of those parked on a hill when you drop, try to look unimportant, then make all speed towards their rear if no-one else can. (This might explain why they lost so many...)
This leads us on to the Jihad variant in
Record Sheets: 3060, imaginatively called the
Gladius Mk. II, and it's an oddball. Same chassis and armour, a Light AC/5 in the same place as the AC/10 (possibly the same LAC/5 installed in the
Clint) and the same two tons ammo, the newly-perfected Rocket Launchers in two packs of fifteen, front *and* rear, and the final touch is a quad Light Machine Gun array in the front with 100 rounds total. Phew.
The
Gladius Mk. II might seem like it was dipped in a parts-bin of Periphery tech and swirled around, but there is some logic to it. Given the L2 opposition the Marians could face (units with Gauss Rifles, ERLLs and Pulse Lasers, both Star League and Blakist, oh my!), they had to change tack again, and its LAC/5 is practically engraved with "Armour-Piercing and Precision ammo delivery system (TM)" next to the proof-mark. Two tons of both/either lets you - with luck - jar something loose in anything too tough for the BattleMechs. The RL15s continue the critical-seeking, as does the LMG array, though if you're in range to use the latter you're also in range of all the short-range weaponry of the day. Keep it at range 4, don't die and hope you hit the head. The rear-mounted rocket launchers strike me as deterrents for anyone homing in on its backside, but also serve as parting shots for a well-executed drive-by: fire everything at 4, move 8 past your target, fire again behind you. For fun, execute this tactic with a conga line of two or three of these.
Because of the reorganisation of the Legions, you'll have five of these in your lance; use them like the double-ended, double-barrelled shotguns they are, and you won't go far wrong. They play well with their older brothers, who can also benefit from Precision ammo. Taurians can do the same.
...That is, once Marian Arms and the Marian leadership (but I repeat myself) recovered from the Wobbie's neutron-bombing of Nova Roma; its intro date in the MUL is 3073. Very poor sports, those Blakists.
Opposing them is basically the same advice for all hovercraft, whether you're dirtbag militia fielding LRM/SRM Carriers supported by
Scorpions and
Goblins, Canopians pulling out a couple of
Pikes on a hill or a lance of the nastiest
wunderwaffen the Wobbies can dream up: cripple with motive crits and blow through the armour. In L2, blunt the speed advantage with pulse lasers or take long-range shots with Gauss or ERLL, otherwise they'll do a fair amount of damage before they go down. Same goes for the Mk. II, though they're a lot more all-or-nothing. Do not let them finish their attack run, and if you do, find a way to let them spend their missiles uselessly.
In conclusion, the Gladius is a fairly cheap counter/complement to the Saladin, a good accompaniment to any cavalry force and as it's tougher and longer-ranged, the 906,000 C-bills per vehicle (minus import tax) should go even further. At 586 BV, or 774 with a 3/4 crew, it's fairly easy to find a place for these on your force. The coming-and-going boomstick that is the Mk. II is more specialised, more expensive at 1,087,500 C-bills, and a little harder to squeeze in at 613*/809 BV, but still good fun.
If you want to imagine what else might be done while they were waiting for more autocannon (and I can think of a few things) head over to the Gladius Workshop thread:
https://bg.battletech.com/forums/combat-vehicles/vehicle-of-the-week-workshop-gladius-medium-hover-tank/MUL:
Gladius,
Gladius Mk. II.
*
The MUL may be off: MegaMekLab gives 638 BV for the Mk. II. Tweak needed?
