THE RIFLEMAN | The best of a really bad situation: Battletech lore

If Harmony Gold wasn’t a bag of sausages we’d have a better art design.

Nah. Not a Pizza Hut. Taco Bell

Great video as always!!

I'm just assuming these tiny lasers that keep popping up are for infantry. Not big enough to justify using against other mechs and no ammo so you should be able to just turn it on and swing it around till the squishy guys are dead

I don’t know where you guys hail from but, as an ex-school bus driver I can tell you that here in RI the safe speed around schools is 20mph. So the Rifleman can get a ticket! Lol

I like all the Robotech mechs. Rifleman kix ass.

The Rifleman is Immortal. Don't diss it too much.

Rifleman development be like:
"We need an air defense mech!"
<<slap the best fucking targeting system we've got on it, damn everything else!>>
"It's armor is literal paper!"
<<Scale it up and give it shotguns!>>
"It's even slower than before!"
<<FOOKIN JUMP-JETS!>>
"It runs out of ammo whenever you look at the triggers!"
<<Take all the guns off and swap them with energy weapons!>>
"It's constantly overheated!"
<<Tell the pilot to deal with it!>>

IDK about you guy but With Mechlabs I got an entire lance of Urban mech Running at 70+Kph Packing Two Heavy Rifles Two medium Lasers with 400 points of Armor.

Fun fact - MWO got riflrman lore - friendly. XD

You know what, I want your opinion is a blackjack. It is just a smaller rifleman that is somehow better or a disaster? A not too hot, good amount of ammo, has equal parts cannons and lasers at long and short range, jump jets to escape, and is more maneuverable, making it an okay mech.

"Wait, it's all Detroit?"
"Always has been"

The rifleman is not a bad mech, the problem is on tabletop people want to play rock em sock em robots. The design has merit, in particular the autocannons allow for alternate firing and its movement is rather bog standard for military maneuvers. Double heatsinks is the only lost tech it needs to become rather devastating. I also have a level one mod were i take out the large lasers and add 2 mediums and add more armor, ammo and a pair of heatsinks so i can face roll the weapons when a target closes in.

Don't bash my baby, he does his best :<

Colonial Tractors reminds me of International Harvester in World War II.

I personallly really like the Rifleman... It's a terrible mech in it's stock configuration, but with just a little work, it can become a fantastic mech... And it looks great too...

Ah yes the mobile flak gun that is the Defender Destroid.

I have been running a twin light guass build in m.w.o. it does ok. 20 points of damage from the other side of the map. It's very annoying to the other team. A few matches I had to run from lights sent to get me.

A school zone compliant pizza hut.

The Riflemen. If looks could kill, then the Riflemen would be deadly... To someone other than the pilot.

Because I'm a sadist... Take a Rifleman 2C, strip out the pulse and small lasers, strip out the jump jets, up the engine for a 4/6 run, slap on 4 ER clan large lasers, load up the remaining free tonnage with heat sinks (24 doubles total). More speed, better heat sinking but not perfect if you run. 2 heat per run/alpha 50/48. Chain fire the large lasers and you could have a pretty good time.

the more i watch these videos of the Battletech lore ... the more my Monke Lizard brain wants to build them in Lego form

cant even have detroit in detroit

The Rifleman has persisted because it is cheap and cost effective at performing its intended functions: anti-air and fire support. It has a poor reputation because it is a specialized mech with a lot of flaws that has too often been used as a generalist in a pinch. So no, I would disagree with the idea that it has lasted this long because it isn't too bad at anything. That's more like the Centurion.

With Lostech, replacing the heat sinks with Double heat sinks improves it so it doesn't suck. The double heat sinks allows it to perform as a support mech, but the armor makes sure you still should keep it from frontline duty.

On the whole if given a choice, I'd rather use a lighter Blackjack instead. Its a 45 T medium mech armed with AC2s, but it has 8.5 tons of armor, 11 heat sinks and jump jets so its not a deathtrap.

The lore

Sheesh. An Alpha strike with this piece of junk would generate heat about three times the capacity of the heat sinks. I never used these things. And don't get me STARTED on the armor.

There's just somethin' about mechs with boomsticks for arms :D

Clan one looks like a Tau suit..

What writers work on Battletech lore? I want to personally know which genius wrote the most absurd backstories to these big stompy tanks!

To be fair the the rifleman. Since aerospace does take some time to set up a new attack run, the rifleman is supposed to be cooled down when the attack aircraft makes another pass and shoot it down.

Of course this is the idea behind the heat issue. But on the battlefield this turned out to be rather useless. Since all you need to ruin the parade of the rifle man is a second aircraft.

Honestly in the recent battletech strategy game from harebrain I had one of these set up with two rotary AC20’s and two AC2’s and it made a really good mid game mech.

Two ways that i fix the Rifleman without lostech is either drop the medium lasers and swap in two more heatsinks, or swap the large lasers for 2 more mediums and use that extra tonnage for armor, ammo, and heatsinks.

Correction: The Rifleman IIC is a Battlemech and NOT an Omnimech... it's armed with 4 Large Pulse Lasers and the ER Small only and that is it.
Each of the 'variants' of it listed at Sarna (IIC 2, IIC 3, IIC 4 etc.) are limited production runs of Battlemechs just like IS mechs, they cannot configure them on the fly.

They thought of everything including the children.

I think your videos would have many many many more views if you got rid of the audio track visual. It’s distracting, jarring, and adds nothing to the video. Sad.

i fell in love with the rifleman when i first saw BT and I always wanted one

The Rifleman is a misunderstood designe... Is literally a SPAAG on legs, and people had been using it as a tank on legs. And SPAAGs are essentialy defensive vehicles, not meant to operate far from supply lines, nevermind the front lines.

I guess you mixed something up with the speed, RFL makes 40/60 km/h, like most heavy, assaults are more at the 30/50km/h

All the IIcs were not omni mecha. They were 2nd line mechs.

Please do the trash can of battle tech the stupid funny urbie mech

I did my own take on a production Rifleman III once, with the head cannon that the Republic of the Sphere improved the original design and made a limited production run as a last line of defense when fortress republic fell. Not only could my version move as fast as other assault mechs, it could also jump, and I replaced the null-sig system with a void signature system and Angel ECM. So it was basically more mobile than the original, could turn invisible, and all it's ballistic variants had ample ammunition thanks to using every space and weight saving piece of tech available in the Dark Age.

Oh yeah, Did I mention that I also built it as a mixed tech omnimech, and it's best variant was built around four HAG 20s?

Tex did it better

I'm not sure if either of you know this but it would be interesting to see you guys go over the lore in Warframe. Considering in that place you have a war going of with ship engagement that number in the millions and millions of soldier casualties in any battle and all the factions just can absorb those catastrophic sides casualties with no problems it's interesting.

My variant attempts to solve most of the problems of the Rifleman: I replace the 2 large lasers with 2 medium lasers (one in each arm). Then I add an extra ton of autocannon ammo. I then move the ammo to each arm (1 ton per cannon). The next step is I add 4 more heat sinks (14 total) and 3 tons of armor. This variant solves the autocannon issues, heat issues (it can now fire all its guns without overheating if it stands still), and has enough armour to survive in a second line role. Sure it lacks the punch of the large lasers but it can now fire all its lasers continuously. The main problem is that it’s a mid-close range trooper mech instead of a true fire support design.

The arm flip has taken out experienced players and still does even today now and then. An arm flip with an 8M makes confetti really good. Rifleman did amazing in its roll but outside of strategic level games they get gutted because a normal game is too small to get any legit use out of most variants of this classic. I have 9 different variants in miniatures and at least 12 total minis of this mech.