The Mauler

I have tried very hard to like the mech that I am going to talk about today, but I just cannot find a good reason why. The thing is 90 tons, it comes stock with specialty armour, it has a reasonable electronics load out with BAP, LAMs and Advanced Gyro as options, but I just do not like the thing.
The Mauler is today’s subject. I went to the mech lab to look this beast over. I built a few configs and took it for a test drive. The Mauler appears to be tough as nails, and seems to have a good weapons load, but for some reason I am not a fan.
Let’s see what we find in the mech lab. The stock version has 22.5 tons of reactive armour. LAMs are standard equipment from the factory as well with the speed set at 60kph, a bit slow in my book. The weapons that come from the store are a varied mix with 4 Medium lasers, 2 LRM10s and 4 UAC2s. The missiles and the UACs give this mech some reach, and the mediums are a nice touch once you get in close.
After playing with the mech for a couple of hours, I came to the conclusion that the Mauler is best suited for long range, mostly running passive. It is a very tall mech and easily spotted from a distance. Having BAP on this mech is essential even if you elect not to load missiles. You can switch between passive and active radar long enough to get a fix on the enemy position(s) and try to get into a good location to snipe them as they come looking for you. The reactive armour adds to the mechs value, in my opinion, as it gives it a longer life span against Gauss or Light Gauss rounds, as well as most auto-cannon shots. I struggled to find a good weapons load out for this mech, even though it can hold 2 PPCs or 2 Gauss rifles or 2 Light Gauss Rifles, or a couple of Arrow Thunderbolts. Adding your choice of auto-cannons also seemed ok, but I found that the Mauler did not stand up well when exposed to multiple fire rounds, and even with the advanced gyro, the incoming knock was enough to throw off my aim. I tried RACs, and Acs, as well as LACs and UACs, and all these worked, until I became the target of focus.
Defensively, I have already touched on a couple of things, like the use of reactive armour from the stockyard, and the height of this animal. The design of the Mauler, again, in my opinion, is lacking, and is probably the weak point of this mech. The height of the Mauler is up there, one of the tallest of all mechs. But it is not the head of the mech that stands so tall; it is the Missile Racks and the Arm Shields that tower so high from the ground.
The missile racks are placed in a near “V” shape with the vertex of the “V” being the head or cockpit of the Battlemech. The Arms are mounted high, which is useful for firing over hills without exposing your lower torso, but the missile racks and arm shields protrude very high exposing over half the mech. The missile racks were recently changed (or may be soon, I am not exactly sure) so that they are in fact, special slot one and two, where they used to be part of the torso of the mech. This has helped in the battle longevity, but not very much. Damage transfer once the missile racks are destroyed go right into the center torso, or so it seems. The arms and legs of this Battlemech are as tough as any and hold up well under most conditions. The center torso is tough, but not as tough as other mechs of lesser weight. This mech has standard internals, so even after a panel is destroyed it still takes damage before biting the big one.
The handling of the Mauler is more or less what you would expect from a 90-ton beast. I did notice that the faster you make the mech, the better it handles. It tops out at 85kph, but that doesn’t give you much tonnage left for weapons. Even if you switch to ferro Armour, at top speed, you will only find 29 tons left to issue for weapons. Most configs for this beast are set in the 70kph range. The machine seems to handle well at that speed and you still have 39 to 40 tons (if using reactive) for weapons.
I tried the mech as a brawler and came to the conclusion that brawling was not this mech’s forte. The ballistic slots are mounted in the right and left torsos. These quickly get blown out if your opponent(s) shoot at the CT or missiles racks. This then leaves you with only energy weapons.
The Mauler does not play well with heat. Two Large Lasers run okay, but after 3 shots on a 100% heat efficient map, you will find a need to flush or hold off on use of energy weapons to allow it cool down. Needless to say, the 2 PPC config will need some heat sinks to help out with the cooling.
As many of you, I have from time to time, run into one of these beasts in the open. At first, they seem hard to kill, or not to take damage, but as the battle wears on, they seem to wither away. One of the animals with 6 AC5s or CUAC2s or 5s can put a serious hurt on you from a distance. The problem here is that it must stay exposed to issue that punishment. While the CUAC2s don’t have much knock, the AC5s or CUAC5s do, and it can keep you rocking while you try to return fire. Get in cover and use you energy-based weapons first. Even if the Mauler pilot switched to Ferro Armour, energy based weapons seem to work very well against it. PPCs or Flamers are great against it because the Mauler doesn’t have a good tolerance for heat. Once you shut it down, or get the pilot to begin flushing, you can lay down ballistic fire, or missiles or whatever and watch it explode while you move on to the next target.
Missiles work very well against the Mauler because of its profile. Its huge and easy pickens for most missile boaters. The LAMS option does not appear to give it that much extra protection as the missiles zero in on the massive structure.
Like I said when I started out, I wanted to like this mech. I cant and I don’t. In my opinion, there are better options at smaller tonnages.
I guess I have to rate the mech. That is what this post is all about, my thoughts and my ratings. It is tough to be objective about something you do not like. Remember that I tried to like this one, and that I set out in the beginning to like it? Well, I don’t. Its tough enough, but I just don’t like it. I’ll be as fair as I can. This one falls in line with the Zeus.
Vettie’s rating 2 ½ to 3 minutes. Its tough at first but withers fast. Spend the tons on something else.

Mauler or Maulee?

I really need to check the MP3 version of this big ol’ heap of armour, but just going with the belief that nothing changed except the turning radius and the Hit Boxes, I have to say that this is another of those mechs that will not see much use.

I do know that the Missile Racks were made into specials, that is, they are now their own damage section and no longer part of the right and left torsos. Does this help? The basic answer is yes, it helps. The true answer is, not very much.

Being their own section, the missile racks can be blown out with little or no effect to the rest of the mech. IF you do use the Mauler for missiles, it wont take enemy units very long to destroy the racks unless the pilot of the Mauler is very good at avoiding incoming shots, and I mean very good.

Other than the change in slots, not much else changed with the Mauler. Its still big, it cant hide and it doesn’t do heat well. The best weapons will still be located in the arms or the torsos and will require this big lunk to expose a lot of itself when firing.

As we go through some of these mechs, more and more it seems, the original Vengeance models become shelf mechs. There are still some that are very good, but many are finding their way to the pages of history rather than the battlefields of today. The Mauler falls into that category. I am not sure what can be done to save it. IF it had ECM, it would be more of a threat and it would last a bit longer simply because it could sneak up on some of its prey. The problem with that is that the Cyclops already has that ability, plus speed, a better weapons layout and it is simply a tougher mech. I ask you, want to take a Mauler or a Cyclops next round?

Sure the Mauler has some uses, but there are others that do it better. Cyclops is one. Enter now the Highlander. It may not be the missile boat, but it can jump, it has ECM and it can mount a heavy gauss rifle or a HVAC 20. The Mauler is a better missile boat than the Highlander, but the Mauler is far from a missile boat mech, especially with the introduction of the Archer (at 70 tons).

I don’t think you will see many Maulers on the battlefield, maybe one or 2 every now and then and I think that as time moves along, you will see even less of them.

I verified through the Mech lab that nothing else changed on the Mauler. I was right. The Mauler is still the big ol’ sad hunk of metal it was before. It cant carry CapPPCs or 4 large lasers. The missile racks are 3 slots, in fact, all the slots are 3 slots, 3 missile, 3 ballistic and 3 energy. PPCs in the arms are very hot and force you to use up tonnage on heat sinks. Lots of ballistics in the torsos use up the tons and you get nothing left for the energy or missile. Come to think of it, the best config for the Mauler is simply take the stock config and drop the missiles. Use that tonnage to increase the armour or replace the medium lasers with a large one in each arm.

I don’t even like this mech on no radar maps. Its so big and those missile racks are so tall, this monster can be seen from a long way away. Its like a huge walking bulls eye, screaming, ‘here I am, shoot me, I dare you.’

Vettie’s original rating stands. 2 ½ to 3 minutes. I hate to be the cause of a mech going to the shelf, but I say if you have 90 tons, use it on a Cyclops or Highlander or 2 Hollander IIs.


Mauled

Since these were written I have gone back to the mech lab and went thru the fun of creating some new Maulers. Let me say this before I get any deeper into the subject, I could spend hours in the mech lab and often do. On Sunday mornings, many times I get up early because I do all week so my body is programmed to 5.30 or 6.00a. I go down the stairs to the war room, uh, I mean my office and I start up a couple of machines. I do the weekly backups and the virus checks, the defrags and the spy-ware checks. Then I set up my server. Next, I launch Mercs and go into my server to piddle in the mech lab.

I will build a mech and then look it over to determine if I can use it. I might save it or scrap it and do another one. Often, people will come into my server and chat with me and I never know they are there because I am wrapped up in mech layouts.

I have watched Pain and a few other players use a Mauler with some success. I know Pains mech is primarily set up as a brawler and he uses it on team only or no radar maps. I have seen a couple used with missiles and a long range ballistic. Again, I have seen them used with some success. Seeing this and knowing the Mauler was up for Vettie’s Views, I thought I would build a few and give it a run.

I am a firm believer in the theory that certain mechs work better on certain maps and under certain conditions. Believing this, I had to choose very carefully the maps I piloted the Mauler on. I think the map needs small hills to ‘hill hump’ or lots of ground formations that you can use the ‘roll up fire roll back’ routine. I also think night time, or some sort of fog is in store because this big ol’ hunk of mech does not have IFF and can be seen from a long way.

The Mauler is slow (most load outs will render a 65 to 70kph speed) but more importantly, it FEELS slow. The torso twist is not as fast as some other mechs close to this size, which also adds to the overall feeling of slow.

I talked about the size and shape of the Mauler before. It’s huge. As I mentioned previously, It’s as big as a building an almost as agile. It’s slow to respond to direction changes (front to back or back to front).

Well, I have to say, I loaded the Mauler with some HV2s and ALRMs and took it for a ride on Delta Base with light fog. I did ok, but not as good as I have done in other mechs. The missiles are enough to knock an enemy around while the HV2s rip away at the armour. With HV2s, you have to keep moving or the smoke will eventually block your vision. Slowly moving forward and pounding on mechs the Mauler did ok. Problem is when the Mauler becomes the target. When that happens, it really doesn’t seem to last very long. Even with reactive armour, ballistics seem to knock it around and gouge chunks of the armour away very quickly.

Another thing that I think is a bit off in our game is machine guns. It seems reasonable to me that machine guns are a ballistic weapon, if nothing else, a very small version of a HV2. I recall that machine guns are in the ballistic section of the weapons in the mech lab and can only be placed in a slot where a normal ballistic could be installed. IF that is all true, I wonder why reactive armour doesn’t seem to give you any better protection against machine guns than it does.

Reason for that is that I was Mauled by a Tenchi with machine guns and it ate my Mauler for lunch. I could not get away from it, I could not twist quickly enough to return many shots and the darn thing killed me in just a few seconds.

Back to the mech lab, I tried several configs, arrows, TLRMs, no missiles, HV5s and HV2s. HV10s, Gauss Rifles, PPCs and well I tried a lot of different configs. IF you can stand off and fire, stay in cover and avoid return fire, this mech is good. IF you go brawler on limited radar (or passive) and you get the 1st shot in, it’s a good brawler. If you get spotted in the open, you wont make it back to cover before taking lots of damage or getting killed on the run. In a brawl you really need to get the 1st shot in whether you use LBX20 or AC20 and some sort of lasers. It’s simply not agile enough to fight off a tough enemy.

One thing I will say for the Mauler, using reactive or ferro armour, IF you don’t skimp on the legs armour, the legs hold up pretty good making it a hard mech to leg.

Im open to suggestions or alternate configs, but the rating for this mech would top out at 3 minutes.