the shape of things to come

RA
With only 5 tons left to spare, Andrew
thinks hard about the weapons and
equipment his Mongoose will use. As
the ’Mech is designed primarily to scout,
the first choice is obvious: a Beagle
Active Probe (which, he learns from the
Weapons and Equipment Table on p. 341,
weighs 1.5 tons for Inner Sphere units and
occupies 2 critical slots in Inner Sphere
’Mechs). Deciding the Mongoose could then use some bite,
Andrew decides to devote the remaining 3.5 tons to lasers,
with 3 1-ton medium lasers and a single 0.5-ton small laser
providing the ’Mech with respectable ammo-free, close-in
hitting power. Each of these weapons occupies a single
critical slot.
With all tonnage used up, Andrew fi nds that he has to
allocate not only the lasers and Active Probe to his Critical
Hits Table, but also 14 slots each of endo-steel and ferrofi
brous armor. Deciding to mount the weapons fi rst, Andrew
places one medium laser in each of the Mongoose’s arms,
retaining their lower arm and hand actuators as well
(in case the ’Mech should need to punch or carry cargo).
Because these lasers occupy 1 slot each, and the actuators
(shoulder to hand) take up 4, there are 7 open slots left in
each arm. Andrew fi lls these remaining slots with the ferrofi
brous armor, taking care of all 14 unallocated armor slots.
Andrew then places the remaining medium laser in the
Mongoose’s center torso, and the small laser in the head.
At one slot apiece, this leaves 1 open slot in the center torso
and none in the head. The Beagle probe, which takes up
2 slots by itself, is placed in the ’Mech’s left torso, its slots
in consecutive positions for clarity. Because the side torsos
are otherwise unoccupied and there remain the 14 endosteel
slots to consider, Andrew distributes these slots—7
apiece—to these locations.
ANH-1A Annihilator, Zeta Battalion (Wolf’s Dragoons)
Because he has been building the
base chassis of an OmniMech, Brent’s
Gladiator is technically a completed
base configuration already, as long as
all its critical slots have been assigned.
The 26.5 tons left over becomes classified
as “pod space” that can be filled
with various weapons systems and other
equipment available to ’Mechs with a
Clan technology base. With its base chassis equipment
already assigned, the Gladiator leaves 7 slots open per
arm (though 2 of the “occupied” slots per arm are actually
lower arm and hand actuators that can be removed for
later confi gurations), and 6 slots in each side torso. These
slots are considered “fi xed” and should always be grouped
contiguously by location to maximize their usefulness to
later confi gurations.
Retaining a copy of the base chassis’ Record Sheet,
Brent decides to create at least one complete confi guration—the
so-called Gladiator Prime—based on the
chassis he has just designed. This version mounts a Gauss
rifl e in the left arm (necessitating the removal of a lower
arm and hand actuator), at a cost of 12 tons and the use
of 6 critical slots; 2 ER large lasers in the right arm (at 4
tons and 1 slot apiece), and 2 machine guns in the right
torso (at 0.25 tons and 1 critical slot each). Ammunition for
the Gauss—2 tons’ worth—occupies 2 critical slots (1 per
ton) in the left torso, while the machine guns carry 1 ton
of ammunition between them, taking up a single critical
slot in the right torso. Because it is a Clan-made design,
CASE—used to protect all explosive components, such as
the machine gun ammo and the Gauss rifl e—comes free
both in tonnage and in critical space, and so need not be
marked on the record sheet. (Simply noting that a design
has a Clan tech base is generally suffi cient to know that all
explosive components are CASE-protected.)
Tallying up the tonnage and space used, Brent fi nds his
Gladiator Prime has used up 23.5 tons of weapons, leaving
3 tons to spare, with 2 slots left open in the left arm (thanks
to the removal of the lower arm and hand for the Gauss
rifl e), 4 in the right arm, 5 in the left torso and 4 in the right
torso. Brent decides to devote the last 3 tons to more double
heat sinks, and places one in the left arm (which
occupies the remaining 2 slots) and 2 in the right arm
(where they take up 2 slots each). The completed
OmniMech confi guration is now ready for battle.
Compared with the other two, Chas’
Barghest has a simplifi ed weapons load.
With 28 tons remaining, he chooses to
allocate 10 tons to a pair of ER large
lasers (5 tons per laser x 2 lasers), which
are mounted in the left torso (each Inner
Sphere ER large laser occupies 2 critical slots). On the right
torso, he tries to mount a mammoth 14-ton LB 20-X autocannon,
but as the weapon takes up 11 critical slots and
the right torso includes 3 critical slots from the XL engine
already, Chas must split the weapon’s slots between the