This guide is refreshingly lighter on record sheets than 12, so here we go with Recognition Guide: IlClan Volume 13:
Piranha 5: The Piranha concept is something we've actually already seen in a couple of other 'Mechs this series. A shitload of Machine Guns (12) , plus some additional firepower. The 5 actually has a leg up on firepower compared to most of the others we've seen, with paired Improved Heavy Medium Lasers and an ER Small Laser. This makes its heat management very simply: just tape down the triggers. Speed is good at 9/14[18], and though my danger sense is tingling at how close that comes to a new BV step, for whatever reason the 5 is fairly reasonable for a 'Mech going that fast with paired iHMLs at 1132. This is ultimately still a 20 tonner we're talking about, though, and while the armor is better than the Fire Moth that's a lot like saying a cardboard box is tougher than a tissue box. There's a full ton of MG ammo and I honestly wish we'd only gotten half of that, even though two tons is "only" good for 16 and change turns of shooting. I don't expect a Piranha at 3 hexes or closer to last that long, and it'd have been neat to have that ER Small Laser bumped into another bigger laser. It's not a variant I'm going to go out of my way to pick, but it's serviceable. C
Stinger STG-3Gb: It's thoughtful to put the best Stinger right here at the front. It's 20 tons, moves 7/11/7 with an XL Engine, has enough armor that that's only usually fatal instead of always fatal, and the armament is three Medium Lasers and a Small Laser. Not enough to force a PSR, barely, and even with the jump jets it runs cold thanks to ten doubles. The BV is the best part for a jumpy +4 TMM with a brace of lasers at 674. There are better bugs out there, there are even better Royal bugs out there, but this one is genuinely pretty good. B
Stinger STG-4G: This one is also decent. There are a few things that make it less attractive, namely we have a bit less armor here but still have an XL Engine, but we've also traded all the guns plus a jump jet to have paired Medium Pulse Lasers. I'm normally gung-ho on MPLs, but losing the +4 jump TMM is a hefty price to pay for it. Fortunately the actual price you pay for this variant is 541, which is cheap as hell. I tend to value cheap bugs a lot higher than your average player, I wager, and this is a quality cheap bug, even if I think the 3Gb is better. B-
Stinger STG-5G: See above, but Light PPC with Capacitor. The ability to put out 10 point hits, albeit only every other turn, is an interesting one, and unlike most capacitors I don't dislike this one. It's not one I'd take, partly again because of the not-max number of jump jets, but this variant is a capable skirmisher in the actually skirmishing sense of the word, rather than the trading shots at marginal advantage sense of the word. BV at 614 puts it in between the 3Gb and the 4G, but I'd probably take either of those others first. C+
Stinger STG-5M: Back down to 6/9/6 is a drag, but not unexpected. That is the traditional Stinger speed, after all. The weapons are a huge disappointment in the form of one Medium Laser, one Flamer, and an AMS with a ton of ammo. If the AMS could protect friendly units this would be an excellent pick, but it can't so it isn't. The ammo is unprotected in the right torso more because of tonnage issues than anything else. I wish you could take AMS ammo in half tons, because there's very little chance that this bug survives 12 successful missile attacks against it on 12 separate turns. We're also back to a Standard engine, but the armor isn't meaningfully improved and you're a mission kill under pretty much the same circumstances that the other variants so far would be actual kills. You also have single heat sinks, meaning if you're in Flamer range you can start getting toasty. Otherwise you still run fairly cool. The BV is the only bright spot at 432, but the drop doesn't make up for losing a lot of capability. C-
Stinger STG-6G: Back up to 7/11/7 is a good thing. We're also back up to an XL Engine to make it fit, but I've made my opinion on that clear. Having a Medium X-Pulse Laser for a main gun rules. The biggest downside is the center torso mounted half ton of ammo for the pair of Machine Guns. This would be better as almost anything else, up to and including ER Smalls and armor, so I'm fairly disappointed in it but understand why it had to be. The BV at 503 is pretty good for something that can credibly contribute from 9 hexes, and it won't overheat basically ever. Solid. B
Stinger STG-6M: Less solid. It's the 5M, 6/9/6 and Standard engine included, but now the guns are all one tech level up. ER Flamer, ER Medium Laser, Laser AMS. This does mean the ammo problem is gone, and the ER Flamer is long enough range to actually be useful on occasion (I know, I'm surprised too). All equipment activating and jumping will get your heat gauge to move (+2), but this is small enough that you can simply not use the ER Flamer - or better yet, not get shot at by missiles - to get it back down to zero. I wasn't a fan of the 5M, but this is basically the perfect upgrade to it, in the sense that it does everything the 5M does, better, longer, and it does it for only marginal cost increase. BV is identical to the 6G at 503, and honestly at that point you're picking based on mission profile. I'd still give the tie to the 6G but it's closer than it could be. B-
Stinger STG-6R: This is the fastest Stinger I think we've seen, at 8/12/8. This isn't terrible, but I'm not sold on the weapons here. We have an ER Medium Laser (fine) and two Heavy Machine Guns with a half ton of ammo. Part of this is the guns themselves - only having a two hex range is not ideal - and part of it is that the ammo is in the center torso with no CASE II. That'd solve my biggest complaint immediately. BV at 454 is cheap for something this fast, but I think I'd genuinely rather take the Wasp 5A, especially with the Wasp's heavier armor. B-
Firestorm: I... oy. There are a lot of issues I have with this 'Mech, and a lot of them are my issues but I'm writing this review so you get to listen to them. First, we have 5/8[10], which is a terrible start, and then we have /7 on top of that. I'm okay with not maximizing the Improved Jump Jets here, but that's a shitload of BV to be spending on this thing before we've even started talking about anything else. The [10] comes from the worse version of speed boosting, too, with MASC in the left torso. Armor is perfectly serviceable, even good, for a 50 ton 'Mech, and there's no weirdness in coverage except maybe the rear torsos are a bit heavy. Not important. The guns are definitely built with a purpose. We have a pair of Clan ER Medium Laser, a Micro Pulse Laser, and then we have a Clan Flamer, a Plasma Cannon, and a Plasma Rifle. The Cannon has one ton of ammo, the Rifle has two. This is the correct amount of ammo to give each gun, but it's a weird set of guns to use in the first place. The weapons are capable of forcing a PSR but not much more than that, which is a feat considering that we're paying 2330 BV for this thing. Its ability to dish out external heat is impressive, but these weapons just do not deal enough damage to 'Mechs to warrant that kind of price tag in a game I'm likely to play. The "worst" part is that there's not anything here to fix: this 'Mech was purpose built for a single role, and it does that role very well. It will burninate the countryside, even if it won't trigger maximum external heat on average for a 'Mech (3d6 + 2 averages around 13 heat). It also overheats by a fair amount if you're using all those guns, though fortunately just the Plasma Rifle and the ER Mediums is usable at a run for -2, and at a jump for what I think is -1 at a jump? I'm not certain whether 7 IJJs generates 3 or 4 heat off the top of my head, but it's definitely at least 3 so we're sticking with -1. That's workable, even if it's not ideal. This role just isn't something I find useful. D
Hunchback IIC 5: What if we took a Hunchback IIC, and we fixed the icing overheating and ammo problem? You get this. None of the other problems have been fixed, mostly because they're not problems from a logistical standpoint. It's very scary for its BV at 1534, but it will still happily run out of ammo and die very quickly. Usually after having made something else hurt real bad. Good for trading up, though a bit slow. B
Glass Spider (Galahad): Two Gauss Rifles with five tons of ammo, moving 4/6 with a Standard Engine. Armor is good for its size. There are no backup guns, and the biggest problem by far is that the left torso is completely empty so crits will immediately start transferring to the center torso if they happen. That's a pretty big problem, but it's one that comes up infrequently so it gets a bit of a pass here. It's expensive at 1825 for what it does, I think, but this is also about as cheap as you can get paired headcappers and not have them be outright crippled by heat or bad armor, so you take what you can get. You will die before overheating matters. B
Glass Spider (Galahad) 2: We've replaced the big guns with two Large Pulse Lasers, two Medium Pulse Lasers, three Small Pulse Lasers, and a Targeting Computer. Also enough heat sinks (16 doubles) to fire every single one of them at a run (+2). Might as well have a section on the front of the big dish that says "this side toward enemy". Doesn't take a lot of imagination to run, but it's effective. BV at 2038 is getting higher but this is an extremely accurate way to force PSRs and it's cheaper than most ways to do that that are as armored as it is. The secondary guns don't hurt, either. Speed is the only serious weakness it has at 4/6. B+
Glass Spider (Galahad) 4: There are things about this variant I like and things I don't like. I like HAG/20s with Targeting Computers, that part is neat. The seven tons of HAG ammo is also great, you can just hold down the triggers all day long on whatever you feel like. The secondary guns consisting of three ER Small Lasers are fine. There's also a Supercharger on here, to alleviate some of the speed problems. The downsides we've picked up are that this requires an XL Engine, sharply cutting durability, and that it's now expensive at 2309. The expense alone keeps me away from it, the Standard and 2 are just better deals. For once the speed boost probably isn't to blame for the cost issues. C
Supernova 5: Those of you who have been reading for a while know that there are a few things that I really dislike, or at least would prefer not to have. One of those things is being very slow. Another is being very expensive. A third is having a lot of overheat that prevents using a battery of similar-range weapons with similar use-cases. This variant is a large middle finger raised directly to my face, because it does all of those things and it's still very, very good. The Supernova 5 is a 3/5/3 90 tonner with a Standard Engine (this helps a lot) that is exactly three points shy of max armor. It mounts six, count 'em, six Clan ER Large Lasers. This is frankly a ridiculous amount of ER Large Lasers. There are 24 doubles on this machine meaning it can handle four of them with only movement heat generated. Oh, wait, what's this? A Coolant Pod? No, four Coolant Pods. Each Coolant Pod boosts dissipation by 1 per heat sink, meaning that when one is used the dissipation jumps from 48 to 72. Not coincidentally, this is exactly how much heat firing six ER Large Lasers generates. Meaning you have four turns, and it's your choice when you want those turns to be, of wielding the collective might of an Awesome in each hand and suffering jack and/or shit for heat penalties for it. That's nuts. And even when you are out of Coolant Pods, you are still putting four of them downrange each turn. The pricetag here is 3075 BV, and damn it all at that price it's still one of the best Assault 'Mechs in the game. S
Dire Wolf (Daishi) T: There's a lot going on here, so one minute while I list all of the guns this thing has. Two HAG/20s, four ER Medium Lasers, four Medium Pulse Lasers, a Streak LRM 10 and a Light Active Probe. There's also a Supercharger. That's a lot of Medium Lasers and frankly they're efficient enough that it's hard to be a bad 'Mech when you have that many. There are 20 doubles here and that's enough dissipation to handle the long range guns with room to spare, plus the ER Mediums, and all still end up at -6 if the Streak locks successfully. Once the MPLs enter range we're looking at something toastier, around +10, but you can drop some longer range guns to make that more palatable. There are six tons of ammo for the HAGs, and honestly some of the biggest issue here is that if a HAG takes a hit you lose basically half the offense of the entire 'Mech in one go. That's a vulnerability that can be played into, but at the end of the day you're still piloting a very large and very dangerous 100 ton Assault 'Mech. The cost here is the issue. At 3317 it's way too expensive, and that limits its use especially against one of the configs coming up. B-
Dire Wolf (Daishi) E: Ah, speaking of. Two LB-10Xs, a Streak LRM 10, and eight Medium Pulse Lasers. There's also a Watchdog here for EWAR purposes. Eight MPLs is nuts, and this thing is basically immune to strikers and backstabbers with the ability to flip its arms. Nothing is safe against eight MPLs. Heat management is also very easy, generating +4 at a run if the Streak isn't fired, and completely neutral when firing the MPLs. There are four tons of ammo for the LB-10Xs and one for the Streaks, split between side torsos. Both ammo groups are protected by CASE II. The only weakness here is how slow a Dire Wolf is, and a little bit the range on the guns, but anything within 12 hexes is about to have a very bad day. It's cheap enough to do it, too, at 2814. Not that you need to, but you can afford skill increases (particularly to piloting) to offset the odds of being knocked over and slowed down even further. This is the best Dire Wolf config, and it isn't close. A+
Dire Wolf (Daishi) X: I ain't typing all that. Go read the Tech Manual example 'Mech for this one. The short version here is that none of these guns work together at all, you have way too many tons of ammo (10, by my count), and even a low BV (2645, in this case low is relative) doesn't save you from having no purpose on a battlefield. F
'Mechs by rating:
F: 1
D: 1
C: 4
B: 9
A: 1
S: 1
Cumulative 'Mechs by rating (series):
F: 22
D: 53
C: 94
B: 79
A: 57
S: 7
