Battletech's Panther, the Light Trooper of the Dragon! 

The beauty of the Succession War era is that this was produced in such a large amount that it became a game changer.

The Panther is a "trap" mech. Looks great on paper, performs well against lighter garrisons and pirate forces up until it's being ran down by Phoenix Hawks and Griffins.

I give it a LXpulse or erppc with gecm making it a JJ sniper.

Ever since the Solaris DLC, that PPCX on anything is freakishly destructive, might have to make a 4 pack.

You ignore it and you have a sniper that can then Crit seek with a SRM. You focus on it, you have a Dragon or a Warhammer bearing down on you.

@@ProfessorHeyTeeEn Me in my Archer: *grins maliciously while sending 40 LRMs at the little shit before I brawl with his bigger brother*

And I enjoy you enjoying them. It's important for me to make things people like!

You made an expensive Griffin. I like it.

@@WolfHreda oh god you’re right, I didnt even realise it

I think the Wolfhound is the superior trooper light between the two, but the Panther works well when teamed up with fast light cavalry, like the Jenner and Spider.

Lorewise the explanation may be fine but gamewise the 10K has a terrible heat problem. The slight increase in range isn´t worth it.

they didn't have enough manufacturing capability in 3050, officially. they were last to the party before most of their new manufactored units could be built with freezers...

@@tehpw7574 I fully understand the lore explanation for this stupid design but it is still a stupid design. If you can´t mount double heat sinks, don´t mount ER-PPCs. It is very simple.

The problem with the Griffin is that all its weapons have a minimum range AND are built on the same side.

People wouldn't like my opinions on the Urbanmech.

@@ProfessorHeyTeeEn Is that because you, yourself don't like it or because you might not like the responses that people may give you? I mean there are enough variants that some of them aren't abysmal. I realize the great houses can get tight fisted when it comes to money to actually make the mech better.

Surprisingly, pink camo is rather useful in a number of situations, especially when dealing with some light from some stars.

Cheap fire support with decent mobility and good armor. It's cheap both on BV and Cbills.

@@TheManyVoicesVA I prefer an Awesome if Im going for cheap. Its lower costing than 3 Panthers.

@@ChaosTicket Eh, I kinda see what you leaning towards and I love me a good assault mech. But that one Awesome can't be in three places at once like the three Panthers, cannot jump in tight situations and get vantage points, and, from a narrative standpoint, cannot be as easily mass produced and ya have to have the facilities to make it.

@@fedupN An Awesome has about 3 times the firepower and double the armor(6 times as powerful) of a Panther for 2.5 times the cost. You really dont want to go into custom mechs because after seeing a post about an Optimized Warhawk being for villains I went into Mech Factory to make Jumping Awesomes. The only real downside to focusing on fewer better mechs is the Mobility Checks for taking 20+ damage in a turn. If anything it leads back to my preference for light mechs to be fast. A Wasp's kick is more deadly than a Panther's PPC.

​@@ChaosTicket I wouldn't really count custom mechs as a general rule, since that isn't the mechs as expected to be seen. That also sounds like a video game version with unlimited playing around with things. Almost not point in mech chassis if it can be tooled up to be any mech. It also breaks heavily with establish in universe lore. See: MWO lighting fast urban mechs. That can lead us into very unhelpful territory of "Why don't the houses would totally just make fast urban mechs by hoping into magickal mech lab and give it all double heat sinks and XXXL Magnum Dong Condom Engines!" On the table top, three panthers allow you great mobility in both speed and with jump jets. They allow you to hit multiple objectives at once, flank for rear shots, take advantage of various cover points, always be firing three PPC shots, and then can fire off SRMS to seek holes in armor. Sure, there is the activation advantage too but blech. Additionally, in some cases they can be more "durable" beyond merely the armor. One of them falls downs, the others keep firing. Bit of bad luck on the dice rolls and you slag some left arms and it doesn't slow the incoming fire. In universe, there are alot of reasons to have numbers, from production availability to covering all your territories. All that said, the Awesome is great. It does alot of things better than the Panther which has its own limitations. But having multiple mechs that can mass produced, hit really freaking hard, and can work well at range or urban terrain has advantages.

Medium version is the Vindicator.

​​@@ProfessorHeyTeeEn Heavy would be the grand dragon. Or a PPC Thunderbolt if you want to keep the speed.

They made due with the parts they had. All their double heat sink kits were going straight to Grand Dragons at the time.

@@ProfessorHeyTeeEn If you are not able to install double heat sinks, you should not even think about installing an ER-PPC. The 10K gains a bid of range but loses at least 1/3 of it´s firepower because it needs to cool down all the time. This is a bad trade-off.

In the TRO:3050 there is quite some competion for the title of worst "upgrade", e.g. the Grasshopper 5J, Blackjack BJ-2, Griffin 1-DS, Hunchback 5M or Quickdraw 5K.

@@hermes7587 Oh gods the 3050 Hunchback is such a terrible machine...

@@hermes7587 Okay that blackjack before the Errata is worse than the 10k. I will admit that. "Hellow, would you like to go up 14 on the heatscale?"