Gas Bandit Hates Your Mech, Part 1 of 2

This one's going out to all my Mechwarrior Online buddies.

Hello, you disgusting mutant pimple!  I'm the Gas Bandit, and we've only just met, but I hate you. More than that, I hate your mech.  Why?  SO GLAD YOU ASKED.  Let me go down the list of mechs I hate.





1) The Locust

A Locust? Are you brain damaged?  There's one thing a Locust has to recommend itself, and that is it leaves the minimum amount of smoky debris to clutter up the scenery when it inevitably explodes.  It doesn't matter what variant you pick, you haven't got enough tonnage to mount anything much more powerful than a flashlight.  The Locust is the mech to drive when a pilot has decided he's tired of life.

2) The Commando

Things are not improving.  In fact, I'd say they're getting worse.  The thing about the commando is, it's a locust for people who can't stand mechs that don't look like people.  THIS IS IDIOCY.  There's probably no less efficient way to build a mech than to constrain it to the shape and proportions of a human being.  Plus, the Commando has a hero mech variant available!  The Death's Knell, for people who want to pay to get stepped on!

3) The Spider

You don't have to take my word for it, just ask around.  Do a couple drops.  It's a statistical impossibility you won't run into a spider, and everybody hates them because spiders are bullshit.  The internals of the Spider chassis are comprised entirely of hammerspace and bags of holding - there's no other explanation for how this anorexic little shit doesn't snap like a twig under its own weight, let alone burn to a crisp when the first medium laser gently caresses across its spindly little limbs.  The spider is the only mech to mount HyperAdamantine armor by default.  As long as the spider is moving and jumping and twisting and whatnot, it takes the concentrated firepower of 4 assault mechs to bring it down despite all sane reason telling you that should not be the case.  Of course, spider pilots tend to be the smuggest, most self-assured pilots out there - because naturally they credit their own (cough) skill (cough cough) rather than the gamebreaking ridiculousness of their mech for their wins.  Everybody hates them. Everybody.

4) The Firestarter

What do you get when you have a light mech chassis entirely comprised of guns welded to guns welded to guns?  A Firestarter.  Held together by sheer denial and insecurity, the Firestarter is the mech middle age pilots buy like guys in midlife crises buy vintage sports cars and toupees.  The official mech of NAMBLA.  From a distance one could be forgiven for mistaking a Firestarter for a closer Commando, due to the typical complete lack of originality in the design of mechs that look like humans.   At least this one comes with something of an intelligence test - the test being, did you remember to strip off the flamers and put something of actual use on the mech?

5) The Jenner

ALL HAIL GRAND KING ASSHOLE MECH.  Jenner pilots are the worst people.  Yeah, your mech runs faster than sound, jumps higher than skyscrapers and mounts enough firepower to core out an Atlas' back in one alpha strike.  GRATS ON YOUR EASYMODE, you filthy distended rectum.  Swarms of Jenners infest almost every single drop because GOD FORBID we have any balance in the game.  The Jenner is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with light mechs.  For example, IT HAS A WAIST.  One of the balancing factors of the original game that kept bullshit from happening was that mechs like the Locust, Jenner and so on didn't have torsos to twist... but here, Jenners can practically twist all the way around to shoot behind them as they run.    Because god forbid aiming weapons on a light, fast mech have any sort of drawback.

6) The Raven

Ravens are mechs for emo iconoclasts who think they are snipers.  These smegma chewing douchenozzles always load up their Raven-3L with ECM and an ER Large Laser or two and to find something high to stand on that is far away so they can attempt to snipe from safety.  Trouble is it never quite works out right.  Snipe loadout or not, a Raven is still a light mech and that means standing still is death.  Maybe if these pilots could turn down the Dashboard Confessional and brush their shoe-polished bangs out of their eyes for 10 minutes they'd see they're not doing anything of consequence.

7) The Cicada

What do you get when you feed a Jenner too much and let it sit on the couch all day watching soaps?  A cicada, that's what.  No jump jets, weaker armament, slower top speeds and a bigass silhouette to shoot at - that's a Cicada for you.  Despite its 40 tons classifying it as a medium mech, the Cicada clearly performs like a light - but not as well as most other lights. Anyone going up against a Cicada is aided by its coffee-table torso shape that allows any mech taller than it (or just with jump jets) to hit any of all six of its torso hitboxes at will from any angle The only thing a Cicada really has going for it is the fact that nobody takes a cicada seriously as a threat... so if he gets lost in among other, more fearsome mechs, he might actually get to keep shooting long enough to do some damage.  But one on one, just about any other light or medium will beat a cicada.  Except for Locusts, of course.  Nothing's THAT pathetic.

8) The Blackjack

A 45 ton mech mounting an AC20?  Talk about a tryhard.  The Blackjack is your kid brother trying to pick up a 40 pound shovel and prove to Dad he can work with the big boys, too, if he can just keep from falling over.  Blackjacks want SO BAD to be a main line battlemech, but they just can't take the punishment.  The false confidence given by being able to mount one of the most unbalanced weapons in the game will make them try, though!  With its forward facing knees and shoulder-mounted weapon structure, the Blackjack looks reminiscent of a person forever engaged in the act of surrender.  Hands up! I yield!  Probably the smartest thing you did all day, Blackjack pilot.  Only way you could have been smarter is to NOT HAVE DROPPED IN A BLACKJACK.

9) The Centurion

Oh, you poor pitiful piece of crap.  The centurion is the epitome of style over substance.  Its sleek lines and stylish mohawk fail utterly to compensate for a mech that has the armament of a Cicada and the speed of a Dragon.  It's also the first mech coming up the weight spectrum to have armament disassociative disorder.  Energy! Missiles! Ballistics!  It can mount them all!  But only on a 50 ton frame so you're going to have to make some hard choices or end up with a wide variety of pea shooters and colored lamps.  You can maybe fit one really good weapon on it, but chances are you're going to want that weapon to be ballistic, which means it's going to be on the right arm (the left arm is too busy being occupied with a completely useless and ugly hand actuator to mount any actual equipment).  This means everybody knows the quickest way to neuter a centurion is to blow off the right arm.

10) The Hunchback

Well, speaking of easily neutered mechs!  Don't let the startlingly large amount of weapon mounts for a medium mech fool you - this misshapen misbegotten misanthrope of a mech might as well be wearing a big neon sign on its right torso shoulder saying "SHOOT ME HERE TO MAKE ME IRRELEVANT."  Favored by balding, potbellied former high-school athletes who can't let go of the glory days, the Hunchback catered especially to its pathetic demographic with its Grid Iron Limited Edition hero variant, which had the added bonus of spelling out the whole name "GRID IRON LIMITED EDITION" above its head on the display of anyone who happened to look its way.  This, of course, translated into the minds of every enemy mech as "SHOOT ME FIRST BECAUSE I'M A PONCE."

11) The Trebuchet

There is no mech with as bad identity issues as the Trebuchet.  This is SUPPOSED to be the first "real" indirect fire (read: LRM) platform, but how much Lurmsauce can you cram in a 50 ton mech? Furthermore, why would you want to, when you could get yourself a Catapult 15 tons up the chain?  The end result is that the Trebuchet is a completely bland, generic and utterly forgettable mech driven by boring people. Trebuchet pilots are the ones at the party explaining that if you're going to spring for the 20 weight napkin, you might as well go whole hog and put down the extra for the 22 weight napkin (despite the fact that they metaphorically did the exact opposite with their own choice of mechs).

12) The Griffin

What do you get when you stick 5 Spiders together and hammer them into one mech?  A Griffin. The griffin is probably the most bullshit easymode mech in the entire medium weight class.  Despite having a big, idiotic looking bubble for a cockpit on top of its head, which in any SANE universe should pop like an overripe zit at the slightest damage, the Griffin is too fast to escape, too agile to hit, too armored to blast through easily and too well armed to ignore.  The only hope this thing had of being balanced was being easy to headshot, but we can't have THAT, can we PGI? Especially not when this is one of those mechs you had to pay to get access to ahead of all the other schlubs!  Zip up, you hacks, your pay-to-weenus is showing.  You disgust me.

13) The Kintaro

Let's just get this out of the way.  If your mech of choice is the Kintaro, you willingly fellate Satan nightly.  The Kintaro has one job.  That job is to make every mech lighter than the Kintaro curl up into a ball and cry.  Well, that and to find Lucifer new boyfriends with pretty mouths.  So two. The Kintaro has two jobs.  Light-hunting and devil cocksheath providing.  The hero Kintaro mech is called the Golden Boy.  Could it BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS.

14) The Shadowhawk

The Shadowhawk is the hipster of mechs.  It's enigmatic and confusing and gangly and awkward.  It's got lots of hardpoints for every kind of weapon, which means no matter what situation you're in somebody's set up their shadowhawk to capitalize on it.  Inexplicably, whoever designed it decided to put the ballistic hardpoints RIGHT UP IN THE FACE, next to the cockpit, so it blocks out any peripheral vision you have to the left, and with most loadouts, blinds you with muzzle flashes every time you fire. AND YET IT WORKS PRETTY WELL.  HOW IN THE HELL. It's a Shadowhawk thing.  Other pilots just wouldn't understand.  Somewhere there's a mechbay where Shadowhawks congregate so their pilots can sip grande vente triple mocha latte frappuchinos and chortle quietly into their plaid fringed scarves as they use them to polish their horn-rimmed glasses while they think about how the rest of us are just so clueless and we don't get it.  Where is this Shadowhawk mecca?  It's pretty underground, I'm not surprised you've never heard about it.

15) The Wolverine

Somebody at PGI hates marvel comics.  The wolverine is the 55 ton mech nobody's afraid of.  Poor, poor Wolverine.  Despite looking just as good on paper as a Shadowhawk, Griffin or Kintaro, the Wolverine never seems to get respect.  Jenners and Cicadas and even Centurions routinely go toe to toe with Wolverines and win in a straight up brawl, against all logic.  I'm convinced that one x-men hating PGI code-monkey smuggled explosives into their design of the wolverine and hit it next to the engine compartment, set to go off if the mech gets jostled too much.  Save your money.  Anyway, we're just about to get to the heavy mechs, where your money would be better spent anyway.

To be continued, with the heavy/assault class...