OBT Forum

I don't know how much - or how little - this will enthuse anybody, but I guess there's only one way to find out.

I'm looking for submissions for new designs or variants of existing designs that are tailored to the AU background of the Victor Victorious timeline. The most obvious example of what I mean by that is the UNF-3R Unifier that I posted in the "Freebie Giveaway" thread, which you can find at

https://www.ourbattletech.com/forum/mechfactory/freebie-giveaway-time!-mechs-more-mechs-and-yet-more-mechs!/45/

if you haven't seen it already - a quintessentially Steiner Improved HGR and a quintessentially Davion RAC/5 mounted on the same chassis. There are a few other examples that you can find in the "Freebie Giveaway" download folder. The WLF-5 model of the Wolfhound and the TLN-6W model of the Talon are both Steiner-developed chasses which carry Davion-developed Targeting Computers and Enhanced ER PPCs that were developed jointly by Defiance Industries and the NAIS. The PNT-13K model of the Panther - which is similarly equipped - owes its existence to a DEST commando raid which hijacked a shipment of TCs and NER PPCs well within the borders of the FedCom and brought them back to the DC to be reverse-engineered.

You're not restricted to FedCom or DC designs. A 'Mech can be developed by any faction as long as it owes something to some development in the history of the AU for how it came to be. You're free to invent new minor details for said history, building on what I've already written, if you want.

A design can be introduced in any of the following timeframes: 3056-58, 3059-60, 3061-65, 3066-70, 3071-80, 3081-90, 3091-3130 and 3131-50.

You're free to use any technology introduced in any official product by FASA, FanPro or CGL: that includes tech that CGL seem to want us all to just forget about (like 4-ton Dual Cockpits and Incendiary Ammo for Standard and Light ACs), along with the experimental tech that was developed by the Republic of the Sphere RISC program in the canon timeline but could have been developed by somebody else in the AU. (I've already decided that Hyper Lasers and Laser Pulse Modules were prototyped by the NAIS and that TSEMP Cannons and Viral Jammers were developed by ComStar.) If you like Improved C3 Computers, you're free to use them after the 3071-80 timeframe, because they never went extinct here.

You can also use my homebrew Dual-Purpose Gauss Rifles and Electrical Discharge Cannons if you want. (Rules for both can be found near the end of the ReadMe file in the "Freebie Giveaway" folder.) If you have a homebrew weapon system of your own that you want to use, feel free as long as you include rules for it.

There are a couple of restrictions:

1) Light Engines aren't developed until the late 3060s (a decade later than in the canon timeline) and even then they're generally considered second best compared to XLs. A design that already incorporates an XL won't normally be modified to use a Light instead, because that's generally seen as a downgrade. (A few early bad concepts like the TDK-7S Thunder Hawk - only a rejected prototype in the AU - gave the whole idea of making that kind of switch a bad name.) Upgrading from a Standard to a Light is fine, though.

2) Nobody except backward Periphery factions should be developing new designs or variants of old ones which use obsolete Single Heat Sinks after the 3066-70 timeframe, at the very latest. After that, the development of the Plasma Rifle means that a pilot has to worry about more than just the heat buildup from firing his own weapons. (Even before that, Inferno ammo for various weapons was proliferating widely.)

Light ACs, MG Arrays and ER Flamers all become available several years earlier than in the canon timeline. X-Pulse Lasers see more widespread deployment more quickly, particularly on FWL designs.

A couple of things that should be considered guidelines rather than absolute rules:

1) In general, any design which carries explosive ammo should incorporate CASE (or, preferably, CASE II from the 3081-90 timeframe onwards) unless tonnage or crits are just too limited to allow that. This is especially true of FedCom designs: Victor Steiner-Davion and his son and successor Simon both place a high value on the lives of the men and women under their command. (By contrast, human life is prioritized even lower by the CC than it is in the canon timeline, because of how much less successful Sun-Tzu Liao was in his efforts to restore their fortunes. They and their allies in the MoC are the only factions to make much use of Small Cockpits.)

2) There's significantly less in the way of obsessive pushing by any given faction of any new technology that they were the first to develop, out of a skewed idea of patriotism, than there is in the canon timeline. For example, even the CC will think twice before insisting that an existing design must be refitted with Stealth Armor even at the cost of stripping out other valuable equipment like, say, Jump Jets.

If you have an old design that you came up with years ago, you're welcome to repost it here as long as you include a brief synopsis of how it can fit into the AU.

There are no time deadlines for when a submission has to be posted by.

Given how lazy I tend to be about coming up with fluff, it would hardly be fair for me to insist upon it being included here! A few sentences outlining the background to how a design came to be is fine.

Well, that's all I can think of for now. Good luck!