ASN-21 Assassin



 Sarna.net has an entertaining new feature called Bad Mechs. Their first victim: the ASN-21 Assassin.

I admit that this is not one of my favorite medium mechs. This 40-tonner really is significantly worse than a lot of light mechs. Yes, it’s faster and more heavily armed than a Wasp or Stinger, but that’s not saying much. Much smaller mechs such as the Commando out-gun it. The Jenner has almost as much armor, as much speed, and more firepower. A Valkyrie or Panther has more armor and is much more powerful at long range. But I have a certain affection for underdog mechs, and the Assassin is definitely an underdog. If you can win a battle while piloting an Assassin, you’re doing well.

In Mobile Frame Zero terms, I think the Assassin has a chance to redeem itself.

ASN-21 Assassin: Weight: Medium (40 Tons), Speed: Fast, Armor: Light, Laser Cannon, Antenna, Jump Jets, Missile Rack (2RD/1Y/1G/2W/1Rd8S). Against clan or advanced technology: [2RD/1G/2W/1Rd8S]

I decided to just combine the short-range and long-range missiles into one SSR for “Missile Rack.” The Laser Cannon would be most straightforward to build in MFZ. Alternatively, use Missile Racks as a 1RA/1RD weapon system in place of the Laser Cannon and don’t include the SSR. (1RA/1RD/1Y/1G/2W, [1RA/1RD/1G/2W])

ASN-101: The small lasers on the -101 are basically so small that I’d use the white dice for hand-to-hand to represent them. I’d leave the MFZ loadout the same.

ASN-23: Long Range Missile System, Antenna, Jump Jets (2RA/1Y/1G/2W). Advanced Tech

The ASN-23 no longer has short range missiles and upgrades the laser to a pulse laser. For MFZ it’s similar to the others, but I’d probably drop the pulse laser to point-blank fire with white dice and consider using a dedicated artillery system for the LRM + Artemis IV system.

An ASN-21 Assassin standing over the rubble of its defeated foes. (Not shown: the Atlas that actually destroyed the enemy.)

(The carrot is my children’s idea. I don’t understand it.)

ETA: A further thought is to say the non-missile weapons are all point-blank (i.e. hand-to-hand) and use the extra green d8 combined with the movement system for the higher speed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Freelancers didn’t happen. :-(

 The Freelancers campaign I mentioned in the last post mostly didn’t happen. I DMd one session where I had one player, John, plus my 12-year-old son and my 8-year-old daughter. I threw out most of my prep (which really needed more PCs) and sent the group against a false hydra  but it only had one head with HP. The PCs managed to usually have at least one of them who made a Wisdom save and they each got  a hit or three in before it went down. After that session I realized that I was having a lot of trouble getting into the right mindset to DM. Family troubles and challenges have been coming up left and right. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be up for DMing D&D 5e again any time soon, because I just don’t know the system well enough and I have anxiety about my kids, my spouse, and life generally. Besides that, when I never know how many players will be there I can’t really prep very well. (My original prep was for 4-6, and I ended up with two players plus one druid u...
Read more

CGR-1A1 Charger, HTM-26T Hatamoto-Chi

Image
The Charger is one of my favorite Mechs, for the usual reason that it’s a massive underdog. Seriously, the original version of this Mech is TERRIBLE. It was designed by Wells Technologies to be an ultra-heavy scout Mech for the Star League Defense Force. With only average speed and medium armor and loaded up with five small lasers with a maximum range of 90 meters, it can easily be destroyed by scout mechs weighing as little as a quarter the tonnage but having three times the weapon range and far higher speed. With such terrible prospects for survival, the SLDF stopped using the Charger and Wells Technologies was left with warehouses full of assault Mechs they couldn’t sell. So how did the Charger survive? In the First Succession War, House Kurita was so desperate for Mechs that they bought a large part of the Wells inventory and made a long-term contract to produce them. Pilots discovered that a Charger could take on many Mechs if it could get close enough to, well, charge the enemy....
Read more

QKD-4G Quickdraw

Image
  To celebrate sarna.net’s latest Bad Mechs feature, here’s my assessment of the Quickdraw . Let’s see if it fares any better in Mobile Frame Zero. The Quickdraw was designed to replace the Rifleman , but frankly is does a poor job of it. The Rifleman was designed as an anti-aircraft Mech but is also used for fire support. It has considerable firepower and great medium- to long-range damage-dealing potential, but also has paper-thin armor, has average speed for a heavy Mech (which is to say it’s slow), and tends to overheat. The designers of the Quickdraw wanted a much more versatile Mech and focused on fixing the Rifleman’s weaknesses, but this was at the expense of the Rifleman’s strengths. The 60-ton Quickdraw has SLIGHTLY more armor than the Rifleman and is 33 percent faster. It also uses jump jets for added mobility. Just these features took up half the weight of the Mech, however, and that’s not including other essentials like a cockpit, gyro, and internal structure. As a re...
Read more