The Cougar

The Cougar

Vettie’s Views bring you the Cougar. A Clan Light Class Mech with lots of fun included. Weighing in at a mere 35 tons, the Cougar can toss a bit of punch at you and it can be one of the better scout mechs in the game. Lets move in for a closer look.

The Clanners designed and built a rugged scout mech to counter the Ravens and Osiris they had encountered and its looks like they did a decent job of it. They managed to keep the weight down and still give the Cougar more firepower than its counterparts. That was the idea behind the Cougar. Do you think they succeeded? Maybe so.

From the Clan factories, the Cougar has BAP and Jump Jets at a top speed rating of 96kph. Additional electronics are offered such as LAMs, Enhanced Optics and Advanced Gyro. The Cougar has an interesting weapons load also. Each side torso comes with a CLRM10 pre-loaded. The right arm has an ERLL while the left arm has 2 ERML installed from the factory. The Cougar has an Endo-Steel frame loaded with 4.5 tons of ferro fibrous armour.

The speed range of the Cougar is quite varied from 76kph on the low end all the way up to 131kph on the upper end of the scale. The slots are also interesting. Each side torso has a 2 slot missile rack. The arms have a 2 slot omni rack and a 1 slot beam rack. This allows for some variations in the load out of the mech.

As a scout mech, you can install 4 ATM6Es in the mech and still have BAP and Jump Jets. Using BAP, Jump Jets, LAMs and AG, you can install 4 LRM10s. For close encounters, 4 or 5 CStrk4s are nice. IF you have to go into a brawl you can always trim the wings and load in 2 LBX10s or 5 ERMLs and 3 or 4 CStrk4s (add heat sinks to your liking). Either of these are very nice in close and not always expected from such a small mech.

For longer ranges other than missiles, an ERLPL in each arm is nasty. IF you prefer, you can add more speed, less heat sinks and replace the Pulse Lasers with an ERLL in each arm. Still need more range? Drop the ERLL and replace them with a Lt. PPC in each arm. I don’t really suggest trying to load the Cougar with ballistics in a puretech setting because it can only hold a couple of CUAC2s (for long range) and 2 just doesn’t seem to be enough. I recommend keeping the Cougar as a missile mech or an energy platform, at least for long range use.

During our time in NBT, the Blood Pearls rarely used a Cougar. Our main light mech was the Wolfhound. OF course, we were Inner Sphere Pirates so Wolfies were available to us, a lot more so than Cougars were. However, I remember using one on a drop on RoyalGuard Pro. I don’t exactly remember the team we were facing but I do remember I was the one driving the Cougar.

Our team had decided to go looking for the enemy team (we may have been facing the Hanseactic Rangers). We started back behind the palace and they started in the eastern city. The basic plan was to circle around the palace and head for the front gate. I was to head east and stay inside the wall and see if I could pick them up on radar using BAP or get a visual on them and report back to the team. I wasn’t much of a scout and other than Wolfhounds, I didn’t care much for light mechs, but it was a team effort and I knew I would do my best. I loaded the Cougar with reflective armour and 2 ERLLs along with BAP and Jumpies and off I went.

I made it to the east gate and did a jump to have a look. There they were, the whole damn team heading right for me. I let the jumpies re-charge and jumped again. The leader was in Raven and he was probably about 900 meters in front of the rest of his team, but they were all headed the same direction. I announced contact on comms and gave the general info. Of course the rest of the Pearls were as far away from the bad guys as possible at that moment. I jumped back up and turned slightly to the left and fired both ERLLs directly at the Raven. Before I shot, I was not sure if the Raven had seen me yet as I was passive and still some 700 to 750 meters from him. When I fired I made a direct hit. I did not see the damage I did until the next jump I made and went radar active to draw him and the rest of the Rangers my way so the Pearls could circle behind them and take them down by surprise.

I hit the jet gas and as I rose I flicked on my radar and saw the Raven now some 500 meters away and just standing there, not moving. I fired again and locked my radar on him to see that my 1^st shot had hudded him. He did return fire using a Large X-Pulse Laser but I am not sure if he hit me or not, as I mentioned I had reflective armour, because I showed no damage on my bars. I figured now was a good time to go passive and start running some because I did not see any of the other Rangers while I had my radar on.

I decided to jump again and fire before running to a new location and I did, this time breaching the armour of the Raven on his left torso. I took a gauss slug to my rear armour as I turned mid jump and it nearly took all my armour out on the rear. I ran up the east ramp of the palace and got behind the 2^nd wall announcing to my team that I was doing so and that I knew the Rangers were heading for the east gate and that at least 1 of them was only about 100 to 200 meters from the gate. I eased my little Cougar to the corner of the wall and waited for one of the bad guys to come around the corner of the gate.

Patience paid off and the Raven stuck his mech just around the corner of the gate and I opened fire with both ERLLs nailing him right in the busted torso. Boom! His Raven exploded with enough splash to shut down a Hunchback that had made the run with him. My weapons recharged and I fired at the Hunchie as it was coming out of the heat arrest. I hit him searing off an arm but he found me and popped me with a heavy gauss. That damn thing knocked my mech over and took out my right torso. As I was trying to get up, the Hunchie ran up the ramp to get a secondary shot on me. Luckily for me, he ran right in front of my fallen mech and I was able to fire while trying to right my mech. The dual ERs were enough to blow out his heavy gauss rifle. He did fire some medium lasers at me but they had little or no effect.

I got my Cougar to its feet and started to run. I decided to turn and fire. I don’t know why. I thought I had the Hunchie damaged enough where I could take him out and I did, but I had not planned on the Marauder and the Loki that were now topping the ramp where the Hunchback was standing and smoking away. I turned and jumped heading right at the Hunchback and as my lasers recharged I let them loose on the poor Hunchback.

Now let me say that a Cougar is relatively tough and sometimes can be hard to hit because of its speed and small size. However, if you present the front of the Cougar, with a blown out torso, and you are airborn, the combined firepower of a fresh Loki and Marauder are more than enough to send your escape pod all the way back to the drop ship.

You know how playing on line sometimes when you kill a mech and another mech kills you at the same time, the one that killed you gets credit for killing its team mate, even tho you did it? Well, that’s what happened here. My shot was enough to kill the Hunchback, but the Loki must have fired his lasers and gauss rifles at the same time because he got credit for killing me and the (team mate) Hunchback. I will say that the site of a cougar blowing up in flight is pretty cool to look at…

Anyway, The rest of the Pearls managed to close on the Rangers and take them down without losing any more mechs. I ‘registered’ one kill in the Cougar although I know I got two. Most important? I had fun.

That’s what this is supposed to be about, having fun. The Cougar was fun to drive and I enjoyed it. Today’s Cougar is not much different. Its fun to drive, it has speed, it can carry decent weaponry to the fight and it can take a lick or two before going boom!

It climbs, it jumps, it makes milkshakes and margaritas and it hits big mech from a long way away. Its easy to drive and it gets great mileage on a tank of nuclear fuel. In fact, the fuel mech will probably be blown up long before you have to refuel the reactor.

Why not pile in one today? Rate the Cougar at 2 to 2 ½ minutes. Not too bad for a light mech. The arms get blown off too easily and that’s where the big guns are unless you use missiles. It gets knocked down too easily too. Other than that, or if you use AG, it’s a decent light class mech. Run Passive and use your BAP. Tell your team mates where the bad guys are and then run from them!