Vote Results:
We decide to send the Adder over to the Kurita guys. We're keeping the large pulse and two ER medium lasers, though, in addition to a clan-spec double heat sink (the rest of the remaining ones are integrated into the engine). We are nice enough to fix some defects that our mechs had "introduced" to the center torso. Our tech team has a few issues getting the large pulse laser dismounted - apparently one of our astechs is not particularly bright and keeps re-connecting all the wires. One smack upside the head from the lead tech a couple of hours later sorts him out, and the Adder is wheeled out onto a flatbed and handed over to a practically salivating Kurita crew. We're sure they'll get a kick out of working with that XL engine, the endo-steel structure and advanced ferro-fibrous armor.
----
"Look, Mr, uh, Moneyshot." El Guapo says to the new recruit. "I understand attachment to a mech, believe me. I've had my Marauder for a few years now." he knocks on wood. "But you do understand that you're asking us to trade crazy clan tech for a mech that can be found in pretty much every planetary militia, right? Not to mention the most important part of the mech has been blown up."
Moneyshot chuckles. "Yes, I do. I just like my chair."
"You can... bring the chair? We've got a bunch of spare Hunchbacks you can drive, we just have to have some tech time to refit them to the correct model." El Guapo replies. "By the way, which one is the correct model?" He asks, expectantly.
"The 4G, obviously. It's not a Hunchback if it doesn't have an AC/20." Moneyshot replies, deadpan.
El Guapo smiles and extends his hand. "Welcome to the First Octopus Overlords, private."
----
"Phew." Leraje lets the air out of his mouth, looking at the Warhawk. The long, bulbous legs (with one foot completely fried) serve to hold up a relatively squat torso, flanked by two arms. Well, theoretically two arms. There's only one actual arm, equipped with twin PPCs - the other one has been removed. Battle ROM footage indicates that there were two more PPCs on the other arm, along with an afterthought LRM/10 launcher. Now, the left arm is laying on the ground next to the mech, its left torso wrecked all to hell. Not to mention that the mechwarrior punched out, leaving a giant hole where the cockpit ejection set was.
"You're welcome." Wolf states, standing next to Leraje. "That was not an easy target to take down."
"No, I imagine not." Leraje replies. "Four of those extended-range PPCs, though, that's pretty crazy. You'd shut down, firing all those."
Wolf nods in agreement. "Perhaps. You'll have to tune it up a little... and the techs say there used to be a specialized targeting computer in there." the mechwarrior points at a large tangle of wires in the 85-ton mech's right torso.
Leraje scoffs. "Mechs already have a targeting computer, what do they need another one for? Can't they just shoot straight?"
Wolf shrugs. "You can always shoot straighter."
Leraje nods. "Fair enough. But now we have to figure out what else to stick in that space."
---
We set up a large hangar space in the Jumbo's cavernous cargo bays where we start stripping the salvaged clan mechs that we aren't going to keep for parts. Generally, the plan is to keep armor and ammo, weapons, heat sinks, etc; we can trade some stuff away on a case by case basis.
Major refits will have to wait until we get to Outreach and the factories there. The Dragoons took some major casualties on Luthien, so they're going to be running their factories day and night, but, because we fought and bled alongside them, we get an equal crack at what comes out. We don't need much, just some head assemblies for a hundred ton mech that's never been manufactured in the Inner Sphere.
Travel time winds up being a little over four months. The parts market is a little crazy right now, with way more demand than supply - the resumption of Clan hostilities has everyone clamoring for everything from gauss rifles to foot actuators.
The idea of trading some clan weapons and equipment for high-end Inner Sphere equipment has been brought up, and we will be doing that on a limited basis: for example, a lot of the mechs we salvaged have LB-5X autocannons, for which nobody makes ammo and they also just don't pack a very big punch. The chassis, though, without the equipment, aren't worth too much.
Some of the repairs on the clan mechs are just too complicated for the "transport bay" conditions in transit - the technology is just too different and even our normally elite techs are scared of screwing around with it. When we get to Outreach, we'll have access to factory-quality facilities, so we'll be able to custom-fabricate some parts as necessary and have the tools to carry out the refits we need.
There's one amusing oddity - a couple of our mechwarriors observe the mech techs all standing around a particularly beat-up looking heat sink. There's not a single pipe on the device that hasn't suffered some damage - most are either dented or have had obvious patches welded onto them. Normally, we'd just toss it, because who the hell wants something like that in their mech, breaking every five seconds and leaking coolant everywhere? But it's a double heat sink. So we keep it, and the mech techs have made it almost a ritual to, every week, take it out of whichever mech it's mounted in, polish it up, and run the full battery of tests on it to make sure it won't burst in the next battle.
---
Four months later, when we do get to Outreach, one of the first things we do is take one of the clan mechs to a firing range to familiarize ourselves with the weapons' range brackets. To our great surprise, the clan ammo-based weapons *are* compatible with Inner Sphere weaponry. For the most part. Stuff like the class 20 ultra autocannon, nobody makes the ammo for, is still going to be tough, but the standard LB-10X, UAC/5 and LRMs work just fine. This makes retaining the ammo-based clan mechs a lot more viable in some cases.
One of the mechs we manage to get working without factory intervention is the Nova. Mostly because the only "core" fancy components are the 250 XL engine and the double heat sinks. This mech has twelve, count 'em, twelve clan-spec extended-range medium lasers. This generates a whopping 60 heat, plus 5 for the jump jets, while the heat sinks can only compensate for 36. Even our battle-hardened Inner Sphere mechwarriors, who are used to managing heat, are kind of terrified of riding around in a machine that can just shut itself down while firing lasers.
The jump jets and some of the heat sinks are fixed, so our techs are reluctant to touch those, even in factory conditions, but plugging lasers in and out is trivial. The modification proposed is pretty straightforward - remove four of the lasers, and add four more double heat sinks. This will give us a peak heat rating of 45 while sinking 44, which is much more reasonable.
Or, we could just give the mechwarrior who drives it a bandana to soak up the sweat and some bottled water and tell them to suck it up.
[] Reduced-laser-count Prime configuration; less lasers; good heat management
[] OMG LAZER PEW PEW PEW; [shutdown initiated]
The Hellbringer will be next, once we fix the actuators. The one we salvaged is a 65-ton mech with 13 double heat sinks. For weapons, it packs an LB-5X autocannon, a gauss rifle, a small laser and twin SRM/6 launchers. The LB-5X autocannon is problematic without ammo, and nobody cares about small lasers. Armor load is a little light, too.
There's also the Prime configuration, which we've seen pretty often. Twin PPCs, a targeting computer (which we don't have), clan ECM and active probes (which we don't have), anti-missile system (which we don't have). And uh, anti-personnel pods on the legs. In case... in case infantry swarm the mech. But the twin PPCs and triple medium lasers are pretty neat. We can install those, then ditch the rest of the crap for more armor.
What do we do as the base configuration?
[] Prime; Twin PPCs, three ER medium lasers, a bunch of other equipment we don't have anyway
[] Stick with B config; Gauss rifle, LB-5X, small laser, 2x SRM/6 launcher.
The Dire Wolf goes to El Guapo. It's a monster, no question about it. Four ER Large Lasers, four medium pulse lasers, twin ultra AC/5s and an LRM/10 rack. LRM count is a little low, but armor is near maximum. We could probably swap something out for a couple of extra heat sinks (assuming we have extra clan-spec double heat sinks), or just leave it as is.
[] Leave as is
[] Swap one or more of the guns out for more heat sinks, assuming we have spare heat sinks
Warhawk goes to Leraje. It's got... four PPCs and an LRM/10 launcher. Firing all four PPCs and the LRMs at the same time while running will shut you down almost every time. Our techs discover that this mech is one ton underweight for some reason, and, "luckily", the targeting computer got blown out, so that's five tons of scrap we can take out and replace with six double heat sinks for significantly improved heat management (4 PPCs, alternating with 2 PPCs + LRM launcher). Alternately, we could change the clan-spec ferro-fibrous armor out for standard armor, which will still let us add three more double heat sinks for a similar heat management profile (although, really, don't fire all four PPCs at once).
[] Replace targeting computer wreckage with 6x double heat sinks
[] Replace targeting computer wreckage with standard armor and 3x double heat sinks
We'll be able to get two Timber Wolves working - an A Config and a Prime. The Prime is the iconic design everyone knows and loves - two large lasers, two medium lasers, two LRM/20 racks on the shoulders, a pulse laser and two machine guns. Reducing the excessive MG ammo count to half is a no-brainer, but the real problem with both of these is the endo-steel structure and ferro-fibrous armor. Nobody in the Inner Sphere makes the clan-spec versions of these, so we'll be running out of spare armor real quick, thus we'll have to downgrade the armor (or we'll basically have enough spare armor to use it for one battle and *then* have to downgrade the armor in the field). This means we have to free up two tons to maintain the same level of protection.
One obvious option for the Prime to ditch the machine guns, but that only frees up 1.5 tons, so then we'd have to reduce armor protection or use Inner Sphere ferro-fibrous armor. Another option is to drop the medium pulse laser - it's rarely used and the mech's heat profile isn't that great.
Timber Wolf Prime downgrade:
[] Drop pulse laser
[] Drop machine guns, ammo and use Inner Sphere ferro-fibrous armor instead
[] Other proposal
The A variant packs two PPCs, three medium pulse lasers, a streak SRM/6 (with only 8 shots) and a small laser. Again, we're looking to drop two tons somewhere. The small laser is half a ton, medium pulse laser is two tons, streak SRM/6 is 4 tons and nobody makes ammo for it, so we could sub in some Inner Sphere weaponry.
[] Drop a pulse laser
[] Drop streak SRM/6 and replace it with slightly inferior IS weaponry
[] Use Inner Sphere ferro-fibrous armor instead, only have to drop one ton
[] Write-in
We've got one Summoner (and some spare parts), flagged by Moley. Again, we'll need to downgrade the armor, which means dropping two tons from somewhere. The Prime config packs an LB-10X autocannon, an extended-range PPC and an LRM/15 rack. The LBX only has ten shots, while the LRM/15 rack has twelve shots, so the combat endurance of the mech is limited. The only immediately obvious place to shave off weight is to remove a double heat sink, as the mech generates a maximum of 27 heat while bleeding off 28. Using Inner Sphere grade ferro-fibrous armor makes it so we only have to drop one ton instead of two, so that's a possible solution. As for improving combat endurance, we could drop another heat sink to add another ton of LBX ammo.
[] Drop heat sink and use IS ferro-fibrous armor
[] Drop two heat sinks, use IS ferro-fibrous armor and add an extra ton of LBX autocannon ammo
[] Write-in
We've got a fully-intact Mad Dog Prime (and spare parts). Four pulse lasers (two large, two medium) and twin LRM/20 launchers, but only twelve shots between the two of them. It's a good mech, but the ferro-fibrous armor will be a problem. We'll have to down-grade to Inner Sphere variety; also, having only six salvos of LRMs isn't that great. Dropping heat sinks isn't really an option on this heat-intensive mech, so we can drop a pulse laser, or maybe downgrade the LRM launchers.
[] Drop a medium pulse laser, use IS ferro-fibrous armor
[] Downgrade LRM racks to 15s, like the Catapult did back in the day
We've got an Executioner (C-Config). This 95-ton monstrosity has basically two guns (and a small laser). The first gun is an ultra AC/20. That's right, two shots of AC/20 goodness, with a surprising three tons of ammo for reasonable battlefield endurance. It's also got an LRM/20 rack with Artemis, a targeting computer and MASC to close rapidly with the enemy so you can but that UAC to use. And jump jets in case you need to hop behind someone to core them out. It's like a Highlander on steroids. The only problem - between all our salvaged clan mechs, we've only scraped together three shots for the UAC/20. Womp womp womp.
Oh, and it's got ferro-fibrous armor. Clanners just love that stuff. So, we gotta drop a ton of weight somewhere (we can drop three, four or even five - it's got too many heat sinks). Also, (and this brings a tear to the eye of any mechwarrior listening) we have to ditch the UAC until we can source some ammo for it. We've got the standard line-up of good quality Inner Sphere weapons: Gauss rifle, LB-10X autocannon and AC/20. The gauss rifle is objectively superior to the other two, except in raw damage output at point blank ranges, where the AC/20 is king. Some mechwarriors would prefer the LB-10X instead as it's easier to hit things with the cluster rounds, but it puts out a lot less damage.
Executioner downgrade
[] Gauss Rifle
[] LB-10X
[] AC/20
Last, but not least, we've got two or three Stormcrows (' worth of parts). The question is which ones we re-construct. The Prime variant is the most common one, featuring two large and three medium lasers, and heat sinks that handle the load easily. We can even downgrade the armor on those, drop a heat sink, and not really suffer any drop in performance. The A config has four pulse lasers, an LRM/20 rack and twin streak/6 racks. Ammo count is good, but people don't make streak SRM/6 ammo in our parts. The B config has six medium lasers and an ultra AC/20 with ten shots, but, uh, well, ultra AC/20 ammo. The D config is a weird one, it's got 40 LRM tubes, 4 SRM tubes and a NARC launcher. Ammo count is pretty good (in fact we could ditch one of the SRM 2 bins).
Each one, we'll have to drop some tonnage to downgrade the armor so we can use it without risking running out of armor mid-contract.
Pick 3
[] Prime: All Lasers, All Day
[] A config: Lasers, LRMs, streak SRMs, limited streak SRM ammo available
[] B config: Lasers, UAC/20, will have to downgrade the UAC/20
[] D config: LRMs, SRMs, NARC pods
Note that all of these will be used as general guidelines, and we'll try to make them work based on what spare parts we actually have.
So, if anyone wants to drive one of the un-claimed clan mechs, now's the time to choose, as well as any customization requests. We'll have a limited amount of spare clan parts, and a limited amount of high-tech inner sphere parts.