So the post about the proposed "Guardian" mech got me thinking. I come from a long Unreal Tournament background, and loved when they added vehicle-based gametypes.
This got me thinking about another vehicle from UT, the SPMA artillery, and that gave me an idea for adapting that weapon type to a mech.
The Fusilier: B class mech with a secondary howitzer type artillery weapon. It's basically a 105mm gun barrel with a simple breech loading mechanism. I picture the loading animation as something like loading an M79 grenade launcher, only turned upside down. In other words, the barrel breaks upwards, ejects the empty shell down onto the ground, and then the loading mechanism rams the new shell into the breech, the barrel snaps back downwards into firing position. This can be fired upwards, the shell explodes and and hot, jagged, steel rain comes down on distant enemies with great range and accuracy, high heat and slow rate of fire. You can also point it horizontally at enemies that get near you, the weapon is less effective and builds even more heat when used in this fashion, to discourage tanking with it like a mega-heat cannon or something. Primary weapon would be, I dunno...SMC/SA Hawkins/Heat? Weapon utility would switch between two types of ammunition, small cluster-bomblets that carpet an area like EOC pucks, or a straight-up high explosive that explodes on impact, and makes craters, does massive, something like 300 damage on a direct hit, and has a large splash radius, but slow projectile speed. Of course a direct hit would only happen if you choose to ignore the loud whistling noise of the incoming shell, and there could also be an electronic warning similar to the incoming Hellfire warning.
Ability would be Rangefinder, similar to the Predator's ability, in that you can see where enemies are through walls and across the map, but you also get the range needed to target them with artillery. The HUD would have a rangefinder that changed with angle/declination so you could match up the range of the target with the proper angle at which to fire. The drawback is that Rangefinder only lasts a few seconds and deactivates if you move (not swiveling your view, I mean walking/boosting jumping only). Somewhat rapid cool-down time though. Also, make it so that when teammates call out enemies, you can somehow use that map marker to target enemy positions, or maybe be able to see where your shots are coming down on radar to help aiming.
Give the mech slow walk/boost speed to make you choose your positions well, but high armor to give it survivability. The tactical possibilities with a weapon like this are great with a co-ordinated, communicating team - send in a squad to push enemies into your fire zone and cut off routes of escape, turn open spaces into a death trap, denying areas entirely. Obviously not the best mech for indoor areas with low ceilings.
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