The Chimera

The Chimera

In Greek mythology, the Chimera is a monster, depicted as an animal with the head of a lion, the body of a she-goat, and the tail of a dragon. In MechWarrior 4, the Chimera is an Inner Sphere Medium Class battlemech weighing in at 40 tons.

While it may have a lion’s spirit and it seems to have lost its tail, this battlemech leaves me wanting. It is obviously an older design with a only a minor touch-up change from MekTek’s MekPak 3.

Over the years, I have tried very hard to like this mech and to make good use of it, but it or me have always come up short when paired together. Maybe after taking a closer look, I can give you a good reason. Ready? Ok then. Lets go look at the Chimera.

As I mentioned, the Chimera is a 40 tonner. This is good weight for league play where often the weight is limited. The stock config has jump jets and a speed set at 102kph. Fast and jump capable, both are things I like. The pre-loaded weapons consist of a standard Inner Sphere machine gun, a MRM20, a Medium Laser and a Large Laser. The Endo Steel frame is loaded with 10.5 tons of reflective armour.

The Speed range is from 82 to 112kph. Pre-set is 102 and this is a good speed for the Chimera. 92 or 97kph are still ok if you need the extra tonnage for that one weapon you just have to have but cant get it installed without the tonnage. LAMs are an option as well as Advanced Gyro. Ol’ Vettie suggests the LAMs especially if ol’ Lion Head is heading into missile friendly ground.

If you max out the armour, the Chimera holds 12 tons of Reflective or Reactive Armour or 8.1 tons of Ferro. Here is part of the problem, at least for me. The Chimera has proven to be a rather weak mech. Using Spec Armour improves the durability and life span but reduces the amount of free tonnage available for weapons. If you load Ferro, you have 16.9 tons and if you max either of the Spec Armours you are left with only 13 tons for weapons. There are folks that do well in a Chimera and if you are one of those, Ferro Armour is probably fine for you. For me? Well, I have to use the spec amour and hope I pick the correct one.

Let’s go with a Ferro version and a speed setting of 102kph with jump jets for now. The Chimera can make a very good jump sniper if you load a CapPPC and a Mini Gauss Rifle. You would need to shave .1 ton of armour from somewhere, but this gives a good punch from 850 meters. Whats that? You say you like the close up game better? Ok, then drop the jumpies and lower the speed to 82kph. Install a Heavy Gauss Rifle and 3 Light Machine Guns. Nasticus. Or, if prefer, load an Assault Laser and an AC20 or LBX20. Ouchies. Then there is the 4 Medium Laser, 3 Heavy Machine Gun (double ammo) SRM6 version I call the lil’ stripper. If want a little more range, you can load up 2 LAC2s and 2 Large Lasers with jump jets.

The Chimera looks to me to be an old design. When I say old design, I mean that all the weapons types are/were separated distinctly to different parts of the mech. One arm had 1 type of weapon, the torso had 1 type, but different for the arm and the other arm had yet a different type. Up until MP3, it had a 3-slot ballistic arm, a 3-slot missile rack in the center torso and a 4-slot beam rack in the other arm. After MP3, the only change to the slots was that the 4-slot beam rack was changed to a ‘D-Slot’ or direct fire slot that could hold either beam weapons or ballistic weapons. I think this was a good change in that allowed the Chimmy to carry ballistics on either or both sides of the mech.

The Chimera is a fairly agile mech. Considering it has jump jets, it climbs well even if you leave the jumpies off. The turn radius is good and relatively fast. The decel / reverse speed is very responsive. The accel rate leaves a bit to be desired, especially for a 40 ton mech. Otherwise the Chimera handles good and is easy to drive.

The problem is the body of the mech. The Arms hold the majority of the punch in most configs and they are very weak. A mere 18 points of damage takes then away. The CT and side torsos aren’t much stronger. In fact, if you don’t run spec armour, this mech dies very fast unless you completely avoid enemy fire. The Chimera is easy to strip and easy to leg. Running passive in lots of cover is its best friend. It doesn’t hold up well against its own weight class. Heavier Class mechs use the Chimera for target practice and don’t even heat up.

For me at least, the best use is as a door stop or paper weight, uh, I mean as a jump sniper. Stay away from the enemy and peck away at them choosing your shots and targets with care, Be very patient and run passive. Remember, BAP capable mechs can pick you up passive at 600 meters so stay outside of that range and zap your opponents, get closer and, well, it may be a short battle for you, it almost always is for me.

You can probably tell that Ol’ Vettie is not a big fan of the Chimera. There are players that like them and that is great. There are some folks that play well in a Chimmy and that is great too. Whether or not I like a mech ahs nothing to do with how I arrive at the rating. Remember, this is my ‘view’ on a mech. I give it a good run and I put it through lots of paces and lots of different types of fighting. I even try some of them (most) against live opponents to see how they perform and what I can do with it. This is one mech I cant do much with. Jump Sniping seemed to be the best thing I could do with it.

Rating time. As mentioned, I am not a big fan of the slots or the slot layout for the Chimmy. The best weapons would be loaded in the arms and the arms are very, very weak. If you cant protect them then you wont have any offensive firepower outbound. I don’t like this one as a missile mech because it doesn’t have BAP and it really only has 1 3-slot rack. Up close, you can put some smack on it but it cant take the return fire. Its too easy to strip and the profile, although not very tall is too wide. I rate the Chimera at 2 minutes. Poor for any mech.