The Ryoken

Before I get into the normal review of my choice for this week, I want to say a little about the pic I have chosen as a visual for this edition. My friend Mechnut, a mechwarrior from the great state of North Carolina 'makes' mechs, or I should say, he makes 'mech models' from game screen shots. I cant give you the details, but you can see the finished product here. I have my very own Victor! It st stands about 14 to 15 inches tall and looks like you reached inside your monitor and pulled it out. I keep my near my monitor at all times. Mechnut is very detailed right down to the exhaust for the jump jets!
IF you live in the U.S. and you are interested, make a post on here of what mech you want and I will pass it on to him, or you can send the details to him via email.
Mechnut@earthlink.net
They are very nice. His price is very reasonable considering each model is hand made and takes 2 to 3 weeks to complete.
Anyway, on with the review!


The StormCrow as it was known in MW2 days, is a 55 ton, medium class, Clan Tech, semi-omni mech. This piece of machinery is one of the Clan’s most potent weapons. It offers many pluses for the drop commander or star commander when choosing his load out for the impending battle. I want to take a close look at the Ryo as we know it today and maybe even give you a story or two about how these things became a feared weapon in league play.

Lets start by giving you the vitals and then move on to what the Stormcrow / Ryoken can do for you. From the Clan Laboratories, this mech comes loaded with BAP, 11 heat sinks and a pre-set speed rating to 84kph. Loaded with 8.5 tons of Ferro Armour, the Ryoken has a pretty nasty load for a medium mech. Each arm is loaded with an ERLarge Laser and an ERMedium Laser, while the torsos are each loaded with a CLRM15 missile pack.

Removing the heat sinks, weapons and all the armour yields some 37.6 tons of free weight to build your nasty config. Maxing out the armour (using Ferro) shows us that the Ryoken will hold 11.1 tons. I suggest that you go ahead and strip away .1 ton leaving you with 27.5 tons of free weight for speed and weapons.

The Ryoken offers Jump Jets and Enhanced Optics along with the BAP. I like the Jump Jets (for 3 tons) but the EO is a personal preference. I don’t use zoom very often so the extra ton for me is better spent on a heat sink or speed upgrade, but Enhanced Optics are great for you snipers or missile heads out there, allowing you to pin point a certain spot on your enemy and hit it over and over from a good distance.

The speed of the Ryoken varies from 64kph to 105kph. The speed increases are relatively cheap and this is due to the fact that the Ryo is built on an endo steel frame. This makes the body of the mech very tough and it seems to take a lot of damage before breaking, but once it breaks, the damage spreads internally very quickly like gas spilled and lit on hardwood floors.

During the NBT days, the Ryoken came to fame as a (jump or pop) sniper mech for the Clans. This little puppy could hold four ERLarge lasers with jump jets and enough heat sinks to keep it cool. At 800 meters, it was a tough bird to bring down and it was fast enough to stay at range and never let an IS unit close enough to fire at it. You never saw just one. There were always 2 or more. One would jump and fire and as it started coming down another would jump up and fire at the same target. This would go on and on until the target was dead.

I stole my favourite Ryo config from a team known as Red Legion. Some of you may remember those guys. They were good, damn good. The config I used from their armoury was pretty basic and simple. Four ERLarge lasers with jumpies and BAP, 7 heat sinks, all set to a 91kph speed. This config works and it works well. Keep yourself hidden using favourable terrain and jump snipe the crap out of anyone that you pick up on radar using your BAP. The speed is fast enough that if an ECM equipped enemy closes, the BAP will pick them up around 600 meters (I think) and you can quickly move away while still hitting them with a full alpha.

The Ryo climbs very well and moves very well. The torso twist is great for jump sniping back away from you while you continue to put range between yourself and the target. But, jump sniping is not all this mech can do. If we look at the slots, we see that each arm holds a 2-slot energy rack and a 2-slot omni rack. The right and left torsos each hold a 2-slot missile rack. This mech, loaded with BAP makes a great medium missile platform capable of carrying four of the Clans most deadly missile system, the ATM12Es. Im not going to give you the specifics for this load out because we all ‘shave’ our armour a little differently depending on our own style of play, but, this mech will hold 4 ATM12Es with decent speed and BAP. If you don’t like the ATMs, but you still want range, The Ryo can hold four CLRM15s and two ERLarge Lasers while maintaining (almost) full armour, jumpies and BAP all at a good speed.

The missile abilities for the Ryo is outstanding for a medium class mech. The Ryo can be used in a support role as a jump sniper as we touched on or as a jumping missile mech. This mech can also do other things. Load in a couple of CLBX10s, two Heavy Medium Lasers and a pair of CStreak 4’s and you having a jump capable brawler that can knock you around pretty good.

I am sure many of you (if not all of you) have played the single player campaign a time or two. Solaris is where the Ryoken meets you (if I recall correctly). Some name player has a Ryo loaded with CStreaks and so much ammo he never seems to run out. I also believe he has reactive armour, but I could be wrong. All I know is, he does die, but he is tough to kill. Again, I haven’t played the single player in sometime, but it seems like if you continue to play the Solaris medium matches, you run into a few more Ryos and one of them is a brawler loaded with CUAC10s as well as a couple of ERMedium lasers. Again, another nasty that does die but is hard to bring down.

During our (The Blood Pearls) time on NBT, we faced many teams using Ryos. Red Legion was probably the best (not to knock any one, but to give credit where credit is due). The Clans seemed to know how to use the Ryos probably better than anyone. That four ERLarge version is simply a great config. I know that on some of the colder maps, the Clans would switch their armour from Ferro to Reflective making the Ryo even tougher to returning fire from our lasers and PPCs. Being pirates, we did manage to steal a few of these and even salvage some. One of our own pilots, AC, became very adept at using the Ryo as a jump sniper and I would have to say that he was just about as good as any of the Clansmen we faced.

I personally was never as that good with a Ryo, but I have always like the mech for the way it handles and the performance. When the Lt.PPC came out, it actually gave some new life to the mech allowing the pilot the splooge effect as well as an extra 75 meters of range. I can pilot one and I can do alright with one but there are many who can do better.

Back in the MW2 days, it took me awhile to take to the Stormcrow. I simply didn’t like the way it looked. The load out ability was great and I could pack a lot of weapons on it with really good speed. It seemed to handle well enough, but it just looked funny to me. OF course, I was a Nova fan in those days. The Nova, the Summoner and the Timberwolf were my favourites. After I played a few mission using the Stormcrow, I began to really like it. I think the MW4 version looks a lot better but I don’t think I can pack as much on one as I could in MW2.

The weaknesses of the Ryoken are obvious. The Arms hold the majority of the weapons for this mech and if you don’t protect them, they get blown off right away. People know that’s where the power is and they target those arms. The secondary weakness is the legs. The Ryo has long legs and they are very easy to hit. Even when fully armoured, the legs will come off easy enough slowing the Ryo down to where it can be killed much more easily.

I like to see battles with weight restrictions for the team. Not per pilot, but for the entire team. What I mean is, to see a map come up with a 400 ton limit for the team. This forces the use of smaller mechs and if done correctly, most will be in mediums or heavies. Yes, you will see some lights and even some assaults, but they wont dominate the drop dec. This does a couple of things. It makes assaults more like assaults, something big and powerful and hard to bring down. It also makes the regular fighting last a bit longer because you don’t have 200pt alphas blazing across the battlefield. You take damage and you maneuver to inflict damage, it takes more than 3 shots to kill something. IT brings out the strategy in the game. To me, that is fun. You don’t see that on Sunder because everyone likes to take the biggies, and those that don’t, end up taking bigger mechs more so to stay alive than because they want to. Don’t get me wrong, Sunder is a blast and mission play is its own style of play that I certainly enjoy as much as anyone, but I do miss the weight leveled battles of league play.

Back to the Ryoken. This Clan beast is a very good mech. IT has weaknesses and it has it strengths. It doesn’t take very long to learn to use a Ryo, but it does take a bit to learn to be effective. I suggest you try one out, maybe ol’ Prawnie it make it mech of the month soon. They are a hoot to use and they can be deadly. I give the Ryoken a 3 to 3 ½ minutes rating. Very good for a medium mech. This thing is powerful and deadly when used correctly. Try one today.