Doblestnyj Assault 'Mech Dithers Downtown

Several years after the successful release of the Jove assault BattleMech, the nascent collection of friends and technical hangers-on that would eventually evolve into TEAM MELTA decided that ninety-five tons wasn't good enough for the Industrialists' flagship assault 'Mech. Only the biggest and best would do, and that of course demanded a hundred-ton chassis on par with the Atlas. By the late 3020s TME Industries was still new to the Battlemech business, however, and this up-and-coming design team wanted to actually, in their own words, reduce technical risk. This was something they would never concern themselves about later, and Industrialist historians often suggested that this proto-TEAM MELTA was just being lazy. The team's idea of reducing technical risk while still being novel was to 'take an already proven war machine and then remix it into a completely new format,' in their own words; the war machine they considered was Aldis Industries' Behemoth main battle tank.

In so doing, they aimed to outshoot and outfight the venerable AS7-series Atlas.

They were able to accomplish one of those goals.

Their preliminary mockup, "the CSU"--an acronym they never bothered to define--carried a ten-class heavy autocannon in each arm and several missile launchers and machine guns in shoulder-mounted turrets. Considering the autocannon-heavy armament to be potentially tempting to Federated Suns customers--a group the Industrialists wanted to get in good with given the political evolution of Steiner's interstellar relations--Management authorized the CSU under Project Valiant. Project Valiant's mission was to create a hundred-ton Battlemech with heavy autocannon armament, with a preference for interoperability with manufacturers within Davion space. Secondary objectives were to mature Battlemech turret technology and integrating their targeting and tracking systems with a single pilot. It had been several years since the failure of Project Skytiger and the Yulbaris aerospace fighter, so, based on the optimistic reports of the Research Department's continued investigation into semi-autonomous integrated turrets, Management considered Project Valiant to be potentially risky but not overly so. After all, they thought, it was not as though Battlemech turrets had to deal with the same aerodynamic and stability considerations as aerospace turrets.

As this was 3029 and thus nearly half a century before the STO-6X and -6S Stiletto that successfully brought Battlemech shoulder turrets into full production, students of history can possibly predict something of what happened.

Object Valiant, built as a one-off prototype technology demonstrator, suffered from numerous mechanical faults with root causes ranging from engineering inexperience to immature technologies. Resembling a scaled-up Mortus with twin autocannon in 'rifle'-type mounts, one in each hand, and distinctive octogonal turrets sticking atop its shoulder yoke, Object Valiant was arguably functional but insufficiently mechanically reliable to ever be offered for sale. Each shoulder turret contained paired five-racks of long-range missiles and a six-rack of short range missiles, intending to replicate the Behemoth's broad fields of fire. Unfortunately, feeding the missile ammunition belts between the housings and coolant lines of the two medium lasers in each overhanging shoulder led to repeated jams and Security Directorate operational tests proved that having the long-range and short-range missiles in the same turrets resulted in half of the weapon systems being pointed at the wrong enemy at any given point in time. The autocannon themselves were relatively reliable, but the use of a cassette-feed system similar to the Pontiac 100 of the VTR-9B Victor meant that feeding these cassettes through the shoulder bend not only caused jams but also linkage tearing; field modifications of Object Valiant moved the ammunition to comparatively exposed, if armored, blisters on the lower surfaces of the lower arms to allow for a more direct feed into the cannon. The structural endoskeleton, effectively a scaled-up version of the Mortus, was unsuited to the greater loads of the heavier 'Mech and the knee joints had a tendency to fail-safe into a 'frozen' structurally locked mode, even with Object Valiant's relatively underpowered 200-rated fusion engine. Nine times out of ten Object Valiant would lose in a foot race to an UrbanMech, and only half of those would be due to the knee joints failing or the actuators simply locking up from overstrain. Finally, the turrets, when they did work, tended to overwhelm any Mechwarrior's ability to effectively control them. They had two control schemes that a pilot could switch between: directed mode, where they were linked to the primary reticle, and semi-autonomous mode, where they would automatically track a designated target. Directed mode was effective, but limited their arc of fire to not much more than would be expected from torso-mounted weapons; semi-autonomous mode allowed them their full range of motion, but still required the Mechwarrior to authorize launch, which meant that she needed to know when they were on target, which meant she needed to see their separate indicators, which were often pointing in different directions as they tracked divergent targets on both flanks.

As proto-TEAM MELTA applied patch after patch to their balky machine, the Security Directorate continued its own testing of Project Valiant, operating on the assumption that the final machine would operate exactly as intended. Their conclusions were somewhat less than charitable to Project Valiant's viability. Tracking and targeting problems aside, Object Valiant did maintain a superior throw weight to an Atlas. Its dual ten-class cannon well-outranged an Atlas' single twenty-class cannon, but was inefficient in terms of mass. Twenty heat sinks limited its ability to concentrate both missile and autocannon fire against a theoretical Atlas opponent, particularly at the overlapping optimum ranges, and sixteen tons of armor, while not 'light' by any standard, meant that the Atlas could predictably wade in and take advantage of its short-range heat advantage against the slower Object Valiant. Object Valiant's comparatively prodigious ammunition supply also made it more prone to simply exploding from lucky hits, with the potential of chain explosions after hitting the relatively exposed autocannon ammunition in the outer arm.

These analyses effectively killed Project Valiant, leading Management to shelve it and retain Object Valiant as a static testbed for maintenance training and research. Meanwhile, TEAM MELTA continued to tinker with its pet project over generations. Eventually the technical challenges of 'Mech turrets and ammunition storage were at least partially solved, but by the time they were Project Valiant's arsenal was obsolete and its capabilities even more unoptimal since 'Mechs had tended to become faster and more heat efficient. TEAM MELTA simulated variations on Project Valiant's arsenals, knowing that comparative combat statistics would make or break any resurrection of it, as proved by the efforts of the Historical Revisionists. Trying to once again tweak TEAM MELTA's nose, the Historical Revisionists simply fixed Project Valiant's technical flaws and optimized its turret command software so that they had full autonomy to fire upon lead-lock. This 'fully functional Valiant' was also rejected by Management due to its predicted combat ineffectiveness.

It was not until 3089, well after the Jihad, that TEAM MELTA finally came up with an arsenal and a mission that made Project Valiant worthwhile enough for production. Retaining the underpowered standard fusion engine and low top speed, the Doblestnyj was intended to serve two roles: city fighter and tactical pivot. As such TEAM MELTA equipped it with as much standard armor as it could carry and emphasized flexibility in its armament. The turrets deleted, each torso mounted a nine-tube multi-missile launcher and enough ammunition to carry both long- and short-range missiles. The ten-class heavy autocannon were replaced with Gatling-mechanism rotary five-class medium autocannon, maintaining combat range but increasing damage output, and the ammunition bins were protected with cellular ammunition storage equipment. The joints were distinctly simplified to prevent ammunition feed problems, and the old 'cassette' system was completely replaced. Three medium variable-speed pulse lasers based on recovered Blakist technology appeared in the legs and center torso, and a small version mounted just beneath the cockpit provided some degree of point-defense capability. Twelve double heat sinks still forced the Doblestnyj to resort to salvo fire in order to avoid excessive overheating that could quickly render it immobile, though standard doctrine generally considers the variable-speed lasers as backup, reaction-fire, or point-blank weapons.