#battletech #mechwarrior #battletechlore Welcome to the Official Channel of Flanagan's Repair and Refit, located on Artru (Aurigan Trade Alliance), and their head engineer, The Prof. I put out video content for 'mech enthusiasts and 'mech lovers, along with engineering tips and tricks for your work on battlemechs. I also enjoy building Alternate Settings for Battletech in my spare time. I also talk about comics, play retro video games and sometimes rant a bit.
The Raven was a surprisingly solid light mech in MC2, and always had a home as a spotter or utility mech in my lances, especially when outfitted with a long range fire support loadout. It lasted well into the mid game as an EWAR/sniper unit until I replaced it with a Men Shen, and then later a Cyclops for the same purpose.
The Raven is a very cute light Mech and wish I had more chances to use it but to be honest it is not a very effective Mech design. It tries to do too many things at once and is good at non. For a light Mech it is not fast and it is very squishy. The weapon load is sufficient for self-defense but due to the slow speed and low armor the Mech is better of hiding behind cover while doing it´s EWAR things. The Narc Beacon is a waste of tonnage. The TAG and the ECM can be useful in certain situations but there are better platforms available today than the Raven.
The failure of the Raven project had an unexpected silver lining. While coreward the Raven did not do near enough to shift the balance of power, rimward access to such technology in a relatively cheap package made a huge difference. There was a special look of shock on House faces whenever they headed into our territory. Often thier OB is for overwhelming strength, an electronic war is the last thing they expect.
Critical Rocket did a virtual tabletop Solaris match with 3 of his guys and one of them ran the "Thunder Chicken". Raven with an AC20. It brawled to the very end against a Hunchback 4P and almost won. I think it did head cap a heavy mech right before the finale with the HBK. The dice was in his favor that day.
An absolute showcase of House Liao's dedication to preserving the integrity of the state by any means possible. Not always the smartest led nation (Wacky Max wasn't always in a good state of mind, and Romano was straight out of it at all times), but certainly dedicated. And it was under Maximilian's rule that both the Cataphract and Raven were born, complimenting the Vindicator's capabilities by supporting them with utility and greater firepower.
Can I just say that whoever made the 2K stats, made a mistake. I don't think it was ever supposed to be the PPC plus LRM-5. If you look at the original TRO it simply stated that the 2K replaced the Autocannon with a PPC and added 5 heat sinks. It never specified what the other weapons were. Now as you stated in the video it is oversinked. However if you leave off the LRM-5 and keep the medium laser and SRM-2 instead, you have the same tonnage but now the mech is perfectly heat neutral when jumping and firing all weapons. That makes way more sense.
I always loved the Shad, to the point that I added both a Marian- and a primitive version to my Fanmade TRO: Marian Hegemony! Both feature a bevy of Rocket Launchers and...... Rifles instead of autocannons 😊
The invasion era shadow hawk with a large laser and 5x streak 2 launchers is one of my personal favorites. Until some dark age machines come along ita one of the best variants imo.
The shadowhawk is a weird one for me. It's basically a worse wolverine or dragon. That said, it can work well if you use the lrm/ac5 to pepper the target at long range and use streak missiles + medium lasers for dps or as a pseudo hunchie with srms and a rifle. But what really makes the shadowhawk stand out is stealth. It can run a null-signature system even better than an exterminator 4D thanks to its superior heat management. An angry juggernaut punching you to death.
Back in Battledroids it was far easier to lose heat sinks, the big advantage of the Shadow Hawk is that it generated little heat so it could survive longer even when it did lose enough heat sinks to cripple another mech.
I like Fang of the Sun Dougram, but I don't like the Shadow Hawk in Battletech. Its not a moderate Jack-of-All-trades, its a low quality Master-of-None. It had Jump Jets, but too few so it ends up mismatched with the walking speed. That makes them wasted tonnage. It has too many Heat Sinks to cool it down so even when firing all its weapons in even when its impossible for them to hits its still cool, so theyre wasted tonnage. A lot of the work with the Shadow Hawk is about immediately modifying it, like take off a Single Heat Sink to add 2 Jump jets. Maybe take off the AC-5 and replace it with a PPC, or remove the LRM-5 to add Medium Lasers or 2-tube Short Range Missile launchers. The one game where the Shadow Hawk is actually good is the 2018 Battletech PC game. There with some modifications it does indeed get much better. In that case its kind of "Cheating" because that game heavily buffed the Autocannon-5. Maybe the single greatest issue is the iconic shoulder-mounted Ballistic cannon. In battletech Ballistic Weapons usually have a huge tonnage cost. As a fast medium mech the Shadow Hawk doesnt have much tonnage to spare for the gun, so you end up with very low firepower. The Centurion is a slower mech with no jump jets, but its cannon and Long Range Missile launchers have twice the firepower.
The only points I dislike about the Shadow hawk are the ammo bins being on both torsos and that head mounted launcher (I think the only head mounted weapon should be an AMS, so you notice the clunk when it runs dry.). Thing is there is that completely empty left arm where both SRM and LRM launchers could be mounted putting all the ammo on the left side and letting the Mech warrior shield and shoot with the right arm and its med laser, yet no Shadow hawks are set up to do this.
Newtown Industries has a pair of refit kits for the 2H, serving as the flagship products of the company at its founding in 3010. The SHD-2NI-L removes the SRM2 and its ammo for a second LRM5 in the head, while replacing one heat sink with some additional armor plating. The SHD-2NI-S removes the SRM2 and LRM5 and replaces them with a pair of SRM4s with one ton of ammunition. Again, they trade the twelfth heat sink for additional armor plating.
@@matthewneuendorf5763 Most common thing I saw people do with the extra heat sink is ask us to put 2 extra jump jets in. Then again, we offer ferro-fibrous kits to everyone showing up here ...
The real strength of the 2D and the SHawk in general is the modability of the chassis and the location of the hardpoints. It has a shoulder mounted ballistic and laser points on the arms. Perfect. Drop a smaller engine and add a bigger gun, you have a heavier Hunchback. Drop the ballistic and add two LLs you have a heavier Crab 27. Truly a great option predating omnitech. And much cheaper even when you have it.
The thing about the shadowhawk, is it’s a mech that is comparable to an ancient Terran Honda civic. It’s basic, reliable, and you don’t care about if your son crashes it as much as your usual car. Also the fucking aftermarket is mad. Personally I prefer some of the lyran variants of the griffin, but that’s because my family grew up with a griffin 6S in the post jihad era.
I always wondered why someone didn't merge the ideas but not the execution of the davion and drac succession war variants to get a Shadow Hawk with a Large Laser, a SRM-6, a LRM-5, and 2 medium lasers for the weapons and 9.5 tons of armor along with 5 jump jets and the same 12 single heat sinks of the 2H. More punch, more mobility, assuming you bracket fire a decent heat curve and just as tough as the 2H arguably more so since its got less ammo to potentially go boom
Mechforce UK designed the SHD-2N back in the late 80's, which removed the AC5 and replaced it with a Large Laser. The saved weight allowed the LRM5 to be upgraded to an LRM10 and the SRM2 to be upgraded to an SRM4,it also retained the original Medium Laser. You could easily leave the SRM2 as standard and instead increase your Jump Jets to 5. This version does run hot as you only have the stock 12 heat sinks. BV:1264(5/8/5) Cost: 4,854,032 C-bills.
Space and weight was becoming an issue as I was playing with the design. While the torso mounted cockpit would make sense in following the original design, I couldn't afford to use it.
I doubt this thing is capable of utilizing a weapon right off a truck, let alone a RAC/5 with any amount of ammo even with TSM. More than likely, you are either swindling some investors or utilizing a Modular or Jettison-Capable Weapon mount and overhyping its capabilities, the former of which can be replaced within an hour while the latter can be reattached within ten minutes, but still requires a whole two hours to modify the package like a normal Battlemech. Arguably the only weapon package that could somewhat satisfy such claims, Mech Handheld Weapons, are limited from ten to twenty percent of the mech's tonnage, the latter also requiring active TSM. Thus, precluding a fifty-ton mech from carrying a ten-ton weapon with two tons of ammo.
No, that makes sense. The over-spect prototype took three shoots, at point blank range, just to blow a hole in the face plat of an opposing mech. Let be on record that the opposing mech was using a new prototype armor; and it was the lightest armored one of the five.
