I have three theories about why the LCT-6M exists. One: Its a kamikaze variant. You don't need to shoot bullets when you ARE the bullet. Because realistically, that thing should be able to core an Atlas by just running face first into it at full speed. Two: Its the mech version of that Soviet experiment to see if they could use fighter jet sonic booms as a weapon. Three: They were hoping they could use the Doppler effect to blue shift its medium lasers into large lasers.
This little guy won me a game at a con this year. Managed to leg an enemy stinger and the resulting fall KOed the pilot. Also the 6M’s speed moves you up to 28 hexes on TT. That’s a +6 to your defence . Considering your average pilot has a gunnery of five that means in order to hit you at close range they have to roll a 11 or better.
Of course if said pilot doesn’t have pulse lasers with TC and didn’t upgrade his mech to 3/5, which I found people do to their units of choice too awfully often
I played TT Btech back in the day (original). Right after the Clan invasion, I was involved with a campaign game. I chose to run a small merc unit starting with a lance with the option to build up. I designed a 25 ton Locust variant. It had a 250 XL engine w/ masc, endo steel, 5 tons ferro-fibrous armor, a C-3 slave and 5 Clan lasers, 3 ER mediums & 2 ER smalls. Also in the unit was a Jenner with Clan weapons, 4 ER med lasers and a Streak SRM-4. The lance commander was a 55 ton Shadow Hawk with C-3 Master, a Clan AC-5 ultra, Extended LRM-5, and some ER med lasers to fill. I don't remember what the fourth mech was at the beginning, but I used a Panther, a Vindicator, (equally modded), or a duplicate Locust or Jenner, sometimes a Jenner with a LRM-5 instead of the SRM-6.
@@jackdaniels2000 in my group you are allowed one clan weapon per side. And only after 3062. To get more you have to immobilize or destroy a clan mech and control the battlefield after. Usually you sell the salvage and buy better IS mech or in my case many vehicles. Quanty has a quality all its own.
Get stuck in a Locust? Could be worse. Your boss could really hate you and put you in a Cicada: a 40 ton mech that is just as fragile, only barely better armed, and is a MUCH larger target.
Ya, I can confirm having started my mw5 service record in a fucking cicada. How ever once I entered a locust I found it fit a lot more to me. I still hate how unless I'm going 100 km an hour I can get decked under a second in mw5
Yank the 320, swap in a 280, change the loadout to at least 4 medium lasers (6 will fit), mount 6 jump jets if you want to, perhaps an extra heatsink if you can spare the tonnage and the result might actually surprise you.
I remember a TT game that ended in one turn with these. I wasn't playing but I watched it unfold. BV was set, and one side got a tricked-out Atlas and Warhammer, and a ~3060 Awesome, as I recall. The opposite side of the field was something like 26 basic Locust. The big steel player just folded and asked why he didn't just bring 200 Savannah Masters. The response nearly started a fight. "I only brought one roll of pennies" Yes, 20/26 locusts on the board were represented by USA $.01 coins.
@@alecseusalec3418 I use to have a large binder for four pilots, yes their history, piloting exploits, and even family history was in there One of my friends who piloted only a commando had a novel sized backstory, history, historical records, and detailed dates of each ancestor who piloted the commando before him. I am talking dates of birth, worlds, units, ect. Went as far back as earth before space travel was a thing. I remember that in one entry he had written "Jenna McKenzie was a frightening woman who according to myth had walked up to the cowards before they fled the Inner sphere back handed the general and called him a little b*tch and a coward." The old warrior looked at his commanding officer and placed his whiskey on the counter and spoke "She was my Ancestor who piloted a bug, they didn't have the wonderful commando back then, even so she kicked a** of mechs much heavier than the bug" Picking up his whiskey and downed the last of it and sat the glass back in the counter and added, "never and I mean never underestimate the fast bug as it could cost you dearly" The GM actually woven in that tidbit and every clanner had a burning hate for his family for that insult. I miss the old TT rpg days .
Friend of mine in MW5, made an ungodly abomination out of a pair of Locust 1Vs. Stripped everything to fit a Medium Rifle on one with a pidgeon laser, and a Heavy Cannon on the other, as its sole armament. He used that thing to snipe Heavy and Assault mech cockpits, but they'd disintegrate if looked at funny.
@@Psychoangel-d23 It has been a while since that event, so I might be misremembering it, but those things were insane in their single purpose as head-choppers. He took out an Atlas right as it dropped in.The rest of the lance(We were 4-player at the time) were trying to figure out how much fire to focus on it, then it just exploded and fell over.
Many, many years ago, I played Mechwarrior 1. I found out that the Locust was completely broken in that game. I'd run full speed at the enemy lance, doing a bit of a serpentine, get behind them, and rip the hell out of their rear armor. Occasionally, I would manage to disable a leg on an enemy mech on the way in. Because the NPCs had really bad aim, I managed to survive about 80% of the time, even against heavy mechs.
You mean MW for DOS? I still play that game, I use a still functional tandy for that game and for crescent hawk games. Did you finish the blazing Aces or opted for the endless game by ignoring the story?
@@valor1omega It has been many years. I'm not sure if I followed the story line or not. I do remember that I played it on a friend's computer in the early 90's.
lol, haven’t played that game in decades. I remember my proudest achievement was soloing both a Marauder and a Battlemaster with a Locust in one mission. Charged straight under the Marauder’s torso, using the legs to block fire while I slowly crippled it. Then circled the Battlemaster at full throttle while pinging the legs. Took a while, but escaped without any significant damage 😂
A friend of mine used that masc locust in Mech warrior 5 with the largest engine it could and removed all the weapons to that end. He named it cannonball. He one shot an Assault's torso by running into it at full speed.
@@okiemax It was in essence a armor clad engine on legs. It lost an arm on the impact. He went on to sonic dash through several mediums and lights before legging himself.
To be fair, the Locust's 4 tons of armor is near max for its weight. It literally cannot carry more. Worse still, the other 20 tonners in 3025 (the Stinger and Wasp) actually carried less armor.
It's an underrated feature of the Locust, that gives it consistency. The Locust has enough durability to take *A* hit. The Locust can get unlucky once. Good luck can mean a Locust can take 2, 3, maybe even 4 and still be mostly good to go. It doesn't immediately keel over if the "why not" Large Laser shot hail mary'd across the board due to lack of alternative targets and heat to spare hits it. It doesn't immediately have to go into passive, idle pressure if it takes two similarly casually spat out LRMs. And, if it has to, it can consider entering a risky situation of extreme value, and not immediately die for the attempt. It can, in a pinch, fling itself at the backside of an Atlas, and actually pressure it to use something besides the rear mounted laser to shoo it away, splitting its focus. It can hound a Catapult and only face death with bad, bad luck. And it can threaten and kill infantry without just dying to rifle fire, like some other, light "anti infantry" mechs tend to.
The real trick is the fact that you can pack two of the little bastards into a standard mech transport bay. Logistics and supply chain wins wars of nominally chronic naval resupply issues. The fact that it has any merits for its weight class and role besides this may as well be a footnote, good as its merits are. The locust lives in eternal fear that someone will figure out how to make an even more compact and collapsible mech, such that you can Tetris 3 of 'em into a bay.
I used to play MW5 a lot with a few friends, and our merc company was called the Ankle Biters because we got *very* good at running 4 Locusts and killing about 10 times our lance's tonnage in heavy and assault mechs every mission. Was really fun and high stakes, especially when one bad engagement where we failed to play *perfectly* would wipe half of us off the board instantly
Who remembers the original Mechwarrior game? There was a hilarious glitch where you could obliquely run into any mech with a locust at top speed and knock it over, then machine gun the crap out of its legs as it struggled to get back up. We called it the Rambo Locust maneuver. The only thing more OP was the Shadow Hawk AC5/LRM5 head shot combo from outside AI activation range.
I remember. Just as I loved to use the Marauder, especially against a Battlemaster in that game. Just put your target sight a tick or two above the standard horizon and you had it at the perfect height to take out the Battlemaster's cockpit. At maximum distance with the PPC's. Most other Mechs I took out with the Marauder by targeting their legs. The only problem were those Locusts.
In the first mechwarrior game I liked using the Locust in base defense missions. I would maneuver around behind the slowest mechanics and attack legs from point blank(the laser touching the enemy mech). I was frequently was able to kill half of the attacking lance before they engaged the rest of my lance. 2 vs 3 is never a good fight even with both sides just using Battlemasters. I was still frequently running around trying to chew a leg off.
I still use a functional Tandy to play the game. I find legit old school hardware is the best to play this game as well as for the old crescent hawk games. I liked how you could pilot a heavily damaged mech into battle should you not afford to fix it completely or ammunition issues.
The Locust has one TT advantage over most other light mechs: 8 leg armor. The ability to take a hit from a large laser and not get a mobility crit ups the survivability massively. It's also a dedicated scout, so skirmish at your own risk or go pick up a Jenner and the BV associated with it.
@@sablevo all locust variant i think are the best scout in the game if you are actually scouting. You look for the enemy. You find the enemy. You let your team know where the enemy is located and you run around before the enemy can hit you. It not design to actually engage the enemy. You use commandoes for that.
Light mechs, especially the Locust, really shine in objective based games and long-term campaigns, which are admittedly rare in most Battletech games. But in a group of mixed tonage mechs, or mixed units with vehicles and infantry, these little beauties shine. I used to run a lance in a campaign with a Warhammer, a Catapult, a Locust, and a Trebuchet, all with C3, with the Warhammer being the command unit. Taking advantage of terrain and cover, I could sneak the Locust into that magic 7 hex range of just about anything on the board in 1-2 turns. I once kept a locust parked behind a parking garage (city map) and some heavy trees and within range of 2 objectives on the board, and I was able to hold both with most of my lance halfway accross the map. I only got to play in that campaign for a few games, but damn that was fun.
Ah yes, the "im gonna try to close and play chicken with the annihilator lance looking straight at me from across the valley" mech. Easy scrap and creds fodder is what i call them.
Them Locusts doing it wrong. Gotta let the main force hit one another while the Locust is outflanking and trying for rear shots. You must have been fighting Capellans or Kurita. Or stupid pirates. God there are so many stupid pirates.
I always loved the locust! Back in the late 80's, we'd play large planetary invasions. I'd always have one solid company of locuts which I'd send out behind enemy lines, then split into lances. I'd order them to hulk smash anything and everything they came across. There is no better mech to cause absolute chaos than the Locust! ❤
This is one of the few Battlemechs that would be actually useful in a real (land) war or conflict. It's small enough to conceal itself in a hull-down position, it can run away from indirect fire and it's fast enough for hit-and-run tactics. But most important of all, it's cheap and expendable if the war drags on...
Technically speaking, the Locust has some of the best armor you can get for a 20 ton design. It's only a half ton off its maximum. Except the LCT-1M which is almost literally armored with hopes and dreams, totaling a single ton of armor (16 points) spread (very thinly) over the whole 'mech. Fun fact: This means that a single medium laser hit to a leg will shear it off entirely.
If you are going to pilot a 20-ton mech in the first place, the Locust is better protected than a Wasp or Stinger; as noted you are near max armor. Under 3025 rules you can make it a little more durable, presuming that you are not going to have to deal with infantry, by pulling the machine guns and ammunition and adding more lasers (and maybe that last 1/2 ton of armor); you might get a +1 heat buildup with an alpha strike on the run, but nothing that can't be resolved (even if you are stuck in continuous combat that long and are still intact).
@@stuartwald2395 If you can playing with Quirks, the Locust's narrow/lowprofile quirks means that sometime it can eat large weapon hits and still be fine (can eat an AC/20 and still have a leg, will be internal but still there)
I often did a tally of all the values (top speed, jumping, armour, max damage, range, heat sinks etc), added them up and then divided by the weight. Until Clan tech got involved the Locust was the most "efficient" of the lot. Highest numbers for its weight ratio. I then averaged that by the heat ratio and the Locust stayed at the top, where Crazy Clan designs got hoisted by their own very poor heat management. Not saying the Locust is good in absolute terms, just that it has surprisingly high values for a 20 ton machine.
*Happy Locust Noises* I do so enjoy this mech. First one I really piloted in MC5. Speed helps keep me alive while my friends can take larger tonnage mechs. Because who doesn't enjoy sneaking up on an engaged enemy and hitting them in the back or blowing up their base while no one is looking? Thanks for putting up this video SCI. Its always enjoyable to listen to you.
@@robrib2682Whenever my friends and I play, at first I was just being the Locust to allow them to take heavier mechs. Then I came to really enjoy the speed and ability to scout the map for loot or targets. Then they fight the main target, and I could swing in behind the enemy. Destroying bases, getting rear shots, grabbing quest critical items, and even getting to the evac zone quick when things got bad. On the table top I usually take at least two to escort my Rakshasa. Especially since their max walk speed is the Rakshasa run speed.
The Locust has armor expertly engineered to prevent breaking an actuator if it stumbles and scrapes a knee... that's about it. My favorite is the 1E model. Give up the volatile ammo for a second medium laser, and swap the MGs for small lasers? Almost double the damage, and I am safer? Yes, please!
It makes sense for your behind the lines raider mech to not rely on ammo anyway. Personally, I'm of the opinion that because lasers are so efficient tonnage-wise, any mech that doesn't have the ability to overheat itself yet should add more lasers until it does.
-1V and -1E are actually excellently armored for a 20-tonner. They can take a Large Laser hit anywhere except the rear without suffering damage to internals. Important threshold what with the Phoenix Hawk being the #1 bughunter of the Succession Wars. Those two to me really seems like they were meant to work in tandem. Rear-area raiding means you're arguably more likely to run into hostile infantry around the things you want to destroy than enemy tanks or Mechs, so those machineguns can be very handy indeed.
Pretty much yeah. And ofc, practice and skill can increase your odds significantly. knowing your mechs limits and strengths means ya can better take advantadge of those lucky opportunities, like seeing an assault mechs bodyguards move just far enough away they cant stop you from doing a hit and run on the weak rear armor
In the table top game I had a friend who was able to drop an Atlas back in the lvl 1 days, It was the lct-1v. Double blind days was always fun as you never knew what you were going to run into. He started his piloting days with a 4/5 and he retired his pilot at 0/0 after many real years to get there. The fact his warrior lived that long showed how much dedication to his piloting of his favorite mech(the locust). I miss those days, him annoying heavy mech pilots and even clan players who couldn't pin him down. Personally I used a single SRM witn half ton of ammunition locust armed with only Inferno rounds and a flamer as it's only job was to set fires and make water unusable by using infernos on water in the area to prevent cool down via those water. Any infantry encountered Infernos launched to target the hex not the troops themselves directly. But mostly the "Crimson" Locust was area denial via fire and to leave.
There are exactly two versions of this mech sides the base model I use. The laser boat that replaces the MGs with S Lasers. And the one that replaces the MGs with LRM 5s
I personally like the 3v version as well. Machine guns let me better hunt down quick targets and infantry while 2 medium lasers give the little mech a bit more punch. Though I am working on getting 2 of the LRM5 variant that doesn't sacrifice all of its armor for table top. Though the small laser variant 1E ain't bad either.
Hello SC.I loved your sense of humor about the Locust. And yes, many of the things you said were true. But... But, the Locust is best used in 'Swarm' units. With the cost of each Locust being so low, and the fact that the Mech is just plain ubiquitous, they can be fielded in large numbers by any commander. When I first encountered the Locust, back in the heydays of mid-1984, I thought the unit was laughable. At least, until I found myself in possession of a dozen of them taken as my portion of the salvage from a raid. The other commanders had taken all the other Mechs and vehicles, leaving me with all the Locusts. So, only having a single Heavy, and a pair of Medium Mechs after the battle, I was sort of 'forced' to find a use for the 'speed freak' Mech. The very next battle, I fielded all of my Locusts against an enemy Heavy Lance. Yes, I lost a few Locusts. But, on the other hand, my Locusts were fast enough to get behind the slow Mechs and penetrate their thin rear armor. By never moving less than at a dead run, I was able to use my speed to generate maximum penalties against being hit, and by clever use of terrain features, I was able to add things like trees to the penalty number. Making hits on my speed demon Mechs far less likely. end result... one Heavy Lance destroyed with maximum salvage oportunities. My losses were less than a third of the cost of the lightest unit in the Heavy Lance. From then on, other players absolutely HATED seeing my Locust swarms. To the point that they 'banned' me from fielding such formations entirely. In one remembered battle, against an opponent that fielded ONLY Heavy and Assault Mechs (Lyran player), I fielded over 25 Locusts against him, and won. I lost something like 4 Locusts, with several more having damage, but EVERY unit of his was 'killed'. That player never forgave me for beating him in such a manner, Especially after he had crowed so loudly and long about how he was going to 'wipe the floor' with my unit. When the 3050, 3055, and 3057 TROs were released, I had access to all that sweet Helm Memory Core tech. Which ended up built into my new Locust design. One where the Mech mounted a 200 VLAR engine, MASC, nearly maximum FFA, Endo Steel, and a single ER Large Laser. As you can probably figure out, the Mech's movement stats were: 10(20)/15/0 (no jump jets). This made the Locust Swarms even MORE lethal. At which point my playing group demanded that I never field such swarms again, or I would be excluded from playing with them. BTW: this was the first 'nail in the coffin', since I went on to design and field other Mechs that the playing group also banned. Like a 100-ton Mech that had 17 LRM-5s. Just think on that a minute. A single Mech that outputs 85 missiles per turn of combat, and has enough ammo to fire at least a dozen salvos of such a size before 'running dry'. But, back to the Locust. When fielded in groups, or 'swarms', they can be deadly effective, and cost nearly nothing in comparison to whatever they need to face in combat. They are so cheap, readily available, and easy to repair, that one can lose as many as the battle calls for, and yet you 'win' often, and have the funds to more than replace any losses. As for pilots... well, the academies are full of newly trained Mechwarriors needing 'seasoning'. Why not have them pilot one of the fastest Mechs in the game (pre-Clan Invasion) to gain experience? Enough for now.
Lights make great "scavengers"- keep them mostly out of range until an enemy unit has broken armor and exposed vitals, then send them in to crit seek with their dinky weapons. Macineguns and small lasers are great for this, as are SRMs.
As someone who paid attention to the BattleTech deep dive lore, I'm going to burst a few bubbles here. As much as everyone loves to claim that the Locust is a scout, it is not meant for just scouting. No, its other common use is far darker. After all, it was a Locust that fired the first shots of the reunification war. And those shots were not fired in a military force, but a crowd of protesters by a Combine MechWarrior. You see, the other, far darker roll of the Locust, is that it excels at brutal population suppression tactics. After all, a single Locust gives one soldier the firepower of a platoon of infantry. In the darker side of BattleTech, a Locust is often used to keep populations suppressed under the boot of a tyrant. Be it at the hands of a pirate, or two bit dictator. As without military grade firepower, it's almost impossible for a man on the ground to kill a mech. It's elevated firing positions allow it to shoot down over cover, and it's armor, wall light for battlemech standards, is more than sufficient to shrug off small arms fire. Because of this, and because of how cheap they are, locusts are favorite of pirates, and raiding forces. You can also fit two Locusts into a single mechbay due to their small size. Allowing you to bring a sizable scout detachment in a raiding force.
That was basically the gist of the entire video. That the mech is more as a raider, and only plays a scout in so far as 'how many things were shooting at me' before it decided to leave the area. And of course it was a Combine soldier. Kurita exists to insure that people can't have nice things without war and death being a part of the course. The downside of the mech bay squeezing two mechs in. In theory it could do it, but if the Locusts are damaged or need any kind of maintenance, it makes it much harder to fix the mechs. The automated systems and tech that's used to maintain the mechs wouldn't work fully with two mechs in the way. Desperate commanders could try it, but it would lead to all sorts of maintenance and logistical issues. The Locust is otherwise the 'poor mans' scout. Its so easy to get parts for it and maintain it compared to the more complex sensor based mechs that its easy enough to throw at said roll, even if it isn't truly meant to be a dedicated scout. So you really aren't popping bubbles I think. Even the video we watched agreed with your assessment.
I used a modified Locust my friends nicknamed the crimson locust because I used a lance that mounted two SRM 2s with half ton of inferno ammunition and a flamer minus half a ton of armor. It's only job was to set fires to water with the infernos, set trees on fire with the flamer and any infantry found firing the srms to target the hexes to set the ground on fire. The mech prevents enemies from cooling off in water and forces enemy units to wade through fires. In level one games this was a brutal tactic. My locusts never actually fought enemy units outright unless it was cornered.
Honestly, the two mechs per bay thing can kinda be the beginning and end of the conversation of its use cases. The Locust is logistics advantage. It's a mech that can be in two places at once, a mech that can die killing an opponent, yet still come home, and is a spare for an extra pilot that had their main ride blown up, or that you found. It can run errands at half opportunity cost, it can provide target saturation, and it can be thrown at niche side objectives.
Locust pilot in MW5 here, biggest mech I've bagged was a stock Victor. My favorite moment was when I full speed hit a gully and went flying into the air and through a building. I recommend it, great fun.
I imagine Locusts sound like TIE Fighters when they run. Not because of the engine noise, though. Because the pilot can't stop screaming. Is he screaming in terror? Probably. But he might also be screaming like you do when you ride a good roller coaster. Locust vets be crazy like that.
Wouldn’t be surprised if Toyota in future make one and calls it a hilux locust and in true hilux fashion it somehow has a shot for some poor Schmuck on the back thus making it a mech technical.
When I play MWO with a few friends of mine I love running a LCT-1V with a top speed of 165kph and a single large pulse laser. Its the assist king, ignore it and get your rear armor shredded or pay attention to it and get smacked by its much bigger friend.
The Locust 5V has 2 medium lasers and 2 Rocket Launcher 10s; it is great! I pair it with a King Crab, Marauder or other mech with heavy armor piercing weapons to dash in and crit seek like crazy.
I'm still getting the hang of the tabletop game, but thus far I've been using the 3V version, two of them, to run escort for my Rakshasa in smaller games. The heavy is one of the few that can keep up with the Locusts when they aren't running, and can provide a good screen and rear shots while the Rakshasa tries to play medium to long range.
Looks like a 40k fighter craft that some one bolted legs to. Also it can run at 300 mph?!? Tha hell? Imagine watching that thing just blur past the battle lines and kick over all your buildings with its face while you lumber at it in what from it perspective must be slow mo.
A long time ago, feels like a lifetime ago honestly, I played BTMUX, a text-based battletech MMO type thing. I loved piloting my LCT-1E, i blazed around the arena typing in commands at the speed of sound as I blitzed the enemy. I credit those experiences with why I am so good as a typist now, lol.
I clicked on this video and it brought back memories of playing the original MechWarrior as a kid on my family computer. I loved the Locust because you could run right up to the bigger mechs, getting under their guns, and shoot out their legs before moving on to the next big lumbering mech.
This was hilarious, all speed, all memes. I hope someday he gets to the Ares, I'd love both his and Steve's opinion on the world's dumbest tripod. So bad but so good.
@@barrybend7189 Depends on the situation. An Urbie is good for defensive fighting and has a good kick, but its helpless in most other situations, or at least at a huge disadvantage. It is about the cost of a Locust with better armor, but don't expect more than garrison duty or problems coming to you instead of the other way around. At least parts are about as common as for a Locust. The Ostscout is a better argument. The mech is as fast, heavier, rugged, and great for a support mech. But its also 2.3ish times the c-bill cost of a single Locust. Also, you need to find a pilot who will just scout and ok with having next to no weapons. For a long while it was also hard to find this mech outside of Great Houses and Comstar with all of its fancy tech intact. So I wouldn't say they are 'better'. But can provide alternative options.
@@shade8816 I once bolted a HGR to an Urbie for fun, had almost no armor(half a ton at best) a 1/2/1 speed and half a ton of ammunition. It was never meant to be a actual use mech, just wanted to see if I could. There was a back story to it too. Couple of techs got drunk, made a bet that the other tech couldn't fit an HGR on the Urbie and still make it work. The tech fired the Urbie and was knocked off it's feet and rolled downhill and in the process tore the HGR off of the mech. By the time the Urbie was stopped by a building he said he needed a change of underwear and that he won the bet. A few months after I showed the joke mech to a friend he added two lances to his unit. To this day I still don't know why he added them.
If you find yourself in a fight with someone who willingly got in a locust, then you are going to die. It is simply not a machine you put yourself in if you don't already know you'll be fine.
The Locust and the Urbanmech have a lot in common - they're dirt cheap and they're not great against other mechs, but they're mechs, and when you have mechs with small lasers and machine guns and the other guy has PBIs, you tend to win. It's what makes the Locust work as being believably fucking terrifying in Decision at Thunder Rift.
Ah, I remember having done a only light mechs start on Battletech Advanced mod for Harebrained's BATTLETECH, and got a Locust 1E as one of my starters. So, I slapped 4 medium lasers on it. And in one missions I managed to get an ECM unit and an XL Engine as salvage. Into the Locust it went. Now, you see, in the vanilla game, light mechs were useless, because evasion was useless, due to any shot taken at a mech costing a mech a pip of it, and you always fought outnumbered. In the mod, evasion is only lost via either taking stability damage, which means being hit in the first place, or being dumb enough to get melee'd. OR via sensor lock. Thanks to the ECM, my locust could not be sensor locked. So I had this stupidly fast fucker that was never below 8 pips of evasion, and that had 4 medium lasers it could dump into the asscheeks of hostile mechs, then zoom away. It was a fun mech, until it ate a lucky hit from a Hunchback's AC20.
The other reason light 'mechs were useless was you could only bring four 'mechs period. I'm a known light 'mech hater, but even I'd run a couple if I could just have a second lance- just a couple Fleas or something cheap to replace to spot for LRM boats with.
Light mechs are not useless in that game, evasion is pretty powerful, especially when combined with terrain. You don’t want to position yourself where all enemies can hit you. However, the 4 mech limit definitely hurts their utility. Why bring a 20 ton mech when you can bring an 80 ton mech? Having a light mech among medium lances can be useful, but once you get to heavier lances… you kind of need to know what you are doing to make a light mech work, and making it work better than a heavier mech requires less common skill. Though I think you could just run it around enemies and hit targets with 3 missile boats. Never stop running unless its behind terrain and then its locking targets through the pilot skill.
I think TheB33f should be the exemplary locust pilot considering his demonstration of almost single-handedly assassinating the entire opposing team in his tactics video.
My first introduction to the locust was in Crescent Hawks Revenge where they would routinely kick the legs out from under your mechs if you let them get anywhere near you. I learned to have a lot of respect for those little buggers from that.
I haven't laughed this much watching a video in a long time. 30 years of playing BattleTech off and on was perfectly represented in this video. Your nerd humor is perfect. Thank You. I admit to having modded the Locust in many ways trying to make the little bugger work. I even fielded 15 of them once. 5 normal, 5 LRM versions, and 5 triple Medium Laser versions. Almost won that one. It started going wrong when the Atlas did a perfect Torso shot with the AC 20 to the lead of the full tilt screaming attack wave, when he needed a 12 to hit. Ah well. It was fun.
Back in the 80s or 90s, I forget what edition of Battletech, there is one version of the Locust that was extremely deadly. If you saw it, and correctly identified it for what it was, you better kill it. Right away. In fact, it's a priority. I don't remember what this version was called, but it was armed with a targeting laser, used to paint a target for artillery or air strikes. You can have this thing hide in trees, or get to some high ground, and it could laze targets across the map. Once it painted a target, there would be like a few turns go by before all hell broke loose, and you might lose even an assault mech in one turn. When you combined artillery and aerotech to the game, it really changed the game up, substantially, to the point where, back then, we questioned the military viability of battle mechs at all, given their sheer cost, compared with tanks, infantry, and aircraft. When you've got Long Toms, aerospace fighters, and other artillery out there, that means that mechs are big, slow, expensive targets. I'm sure, long ago, they had to have corrected this. After all, Battletech is supposed to be about the big robots fighting each other.
Won a game of MWO in a Locust one time. I managed to find the enemy assault lance and escort out away from the main forces and singlehandedly dogged them for five minutes straight trapping them in a ditch while the other six mechwarriors ran straight into a line of eleven battlemechs. Another time, i managed to slip behind enemy lines and started picking off their rear line one by one timing my large pulse so that it would hit them square in their rear CT the same time salvos from our LRM boats landed causing massive damage without revealing that i was ever actually there.
The locust, the best target for a rifleman in the absence of air targets to mop, otherwise known as that mech hard countered by jeeps with machine guns or any jeep with anything bolted to it. Like in some short story they took one down with harpoons
I remember this little monster from MW4! Loaded it up with super short-range, high caliber burst autocannons, then sprint into hugging distance of other mechs and wreck them while they were trying to turn fast enough to score a hit. Good times. Good times.
That's my most distinct memory of MW4 too. I probably wasn't that effective with it, but it was a fun meme to run up to other mechs four times my size and try to shotgun them to death.
You know what, that periphery variant with the rockets actually makes perfect sense in an irl warfare setting. The locust is fast, and vulnerable; it SHOULDN'T be in protracted combat ANYWAY. You don't want them in the fight long enough to need a backup weapon. What you want is for them to move up, unleash their entire payload into some poor lumbering bastard, then retreat with all speed back behind friendly lines to rearm with more inexpensive, dumb rockets that were very powerful to go out and deliver with precision in another strike. It's the exact same concept as helicopter based CAS, you see it with Apache's, Alligators, etc. Fly in, fire the rockets or missiles, then return to base to rearm and refuel before the next sortie/ambush. It's perfect for hit and run warfare. Except a locust mech has the advantage of being able to take cover and be overlooked, crossed with the disadvantage of needing to run rather than fly straight back. Same principle though
i had a pair of 1vs in my old merc unit that had been refitted with 2 medium lasers in the R/L arms, a small laser in the CT and adds an additional half to n of armor - giving it max protection. Their main job was to punch through and track down things like LRM carriers (the chap i use to game against loved LRM carriers and the like in his support units, This was all 1st SW era. They used the full rotation of their arms to do run bys... hit them coming in and going out... another good vid mate
@@shade8816 Yep. The creator, S.L. Lewis, had been with a band of Star League facility hunters when they hit the jackpot and found a depot that had been hermetically sealed with the contents carefully packaged in storage lubricants so as to pass the test of time with little degradation. Among the equipment, they found a stockpile of 2,000 Omni 25 small fusion engines. Lewis opted for the engines as his share of the take and the rest, as they say, is history. A total of nearly two thousand Savannah Masters (and their variants) were produced, slowly, by Lewis's tiny company over the next decade. It remained rare for over a decade until the spread of the Star League memory core (suck it, ROM) allowed Edasich Motors to start producing a licensed reverse-engineered copy of the engine. Even then, Savannah Masters remained relatively rare as weapon technology was progressing to the point where it's primary defense (speed) was starting to wane.
@@Vulpine407 Aye. Alas, too many played the 'lawls horde' without figuring how they would have so many units. Logistics is really a nightmare at times isn't it? I don't mind a good combined arms force, but I prefer ones that make sense. A Light lance here, a command lance there, some helis and infantry with transports... One step at a time though right?
What's fun with the Locust and it's variants is that you can run well-rounded teams of just one chassis, and you could still justify it with their numbers.
In Battletech the PC game, I have a fav configuration with 2 medium and small lazors all in its center torso. I named it the 'Biting Locust' and it began as a filler for my lances. But against my friends it became a absolute thorn in their sides. Ignore it, and its scouting and pinging the enemy, focus on it, and often the rest of my lance is positioned they can take advantage. Had nothing but armor on its side and arm sections allowing me to use them as armor plates effectively. Allowed one to eat a AC20 hit once (friend got lucky) and keep on truckin. Just with a third of its torso gone XD Wish I had saved a screen shot of one getting the killing blow on a knocked down highlander. It walked up to the assault met, and stomped on it, funny thing is, the assault mech looked to have more metal in its crippled leg then the locust had entirely lol. As a fav line of mine says in the Solaris arena in mech warriors 3. "Sometimes that annoying tap in the rear is the last thing you know."
It's really more of cavalry mech rather than a proper scout. It does screening and raiding operations. In the Battletech game by HBS there's a variant of the Locust that replaces the machine guns with 2x LRM5s. It doesn't do much damage but it's a long range harasser that can be hard to get rid of because of its speed and range.
In MWO I stuffed a Snub-Nose PPC on my 1V. Endo-Steel, Light Ferro, XL160 engine, reduced armor in the arms and head since there's nothing important in them, 6 double heat sinks and the snubby PPC in the center torso... I call it Short PeePee.
@@ornerylurker8296 cursed, but it slaps. Maxing out the cooldown and heat related skills on top of the -50% Energy Cooldown quirk cuts the SB PPC's cooldown from 4 to 1.52 seconds. Makes for an effective hit and run anklebiter that I am having a blast in.
@@ornerylurker8296 Snubby is just a normal PPC but a ton and slot less at the cost of range. But yea, how consistently I'm able to tear shit up at best and confuse and annoy other players at worst is phenomenal. AZ1:20D0|2d|I@p@0|i^|i^|i^q@0|i^|i^|i^r00s00t@0u@0v50w404040 Here's my specific build, but it's not really all that unique or hard to make.
Note regarding the Locust's armor: 4 tons is pretty much the most armor a 20-ton battlemech can carry, so while not durable overall, for a mech of its weight class coupled with its speed, it's actually probably the most survivable battlemech of its kind. If you want something a bit more survivable you might want a Cicada, which is basically a bigger Locust (twice as big in fact), and has enough carrying capacity that if you're willing to put in a slightly smaller engine you can actually put some pretty respectable firepower onto it.. Unlike the Locust, there is a variant of the Cicada with a PPC, the CDA-3C, which was actually pretty successful. Also, the variant of the Locust generally regarded as the best in Introtech is the LCT-1E. This one ditches the machine guns in favor of a second medium laser and two small lasers, and puts everything in the arms so that way you can alpha strike at stuff behind you while running away. Overall, the Locust has the potential to become a really nasty knife fighter in the right hands.
its a good enough scout mech especially with its quirks letting you bring 2 for 1 oscout in both price and mechbays but using it for other stuff is a bad idea. still better than the wasp and stinger though
The base Locust-1V and 1-E are actually extremely solid and basically the yardstick for what makes a good scout in the Succession Wars era. Cheap, extremely fast, enough armor to take a large laser hit without internal damage anywhere but the back, and enough firepower to scare off other lights and in case of the -1V make obnoxious infantrymen regret their life choices. (Why is taking a Large Laser hit important? Because the Phoenix Hawk exists, and it's the apex predator that 3025 scouts have to worry about.) And if you take design quirks into account, it has excellent quirks including the unique Compact Mech quirk that is stupendously powerful in terms of logistics.
I got my son into Battletech tabletop. He HATES when I field a Locust. It is so annoying to him. He spends so much time trying to take it out I'm able to hit his 'mechs with my main force. Always liked them.
I actually don't mind this little monster. As an unapologetic tinkerer for the tabletop game, I actually pulled out the machine guns and some armor and increased the engine to a 180 fusion plant to increase its top speed to over 140 mph. I then and added either 2 more medium lasers or 4 small lasers to make it a more credible threat. I have also embraced my insanity by creating a variant with the commonly available 200 fusion giving it a top speed of over 180kph. The machine guns and 1.5 tons of armor were sacrificed. Two small lasers were added. Note all these variants only use 3025 tech level equipment.
I know you did a reunification war episode about a year ago, but as a proud concordat citizen, I wanna see an episode of the Taurians alone!! But if you do or don't make a vid about the concordat, keep up the great work!!
The locust 6m is objectively best version. "If god can't catch me what chance do you have?"
Hey... what if we took a 6M, and somehow gave it Triple Strength Myomer, in addition to everything else?
@@misone01 Just get rid of the armor. It won't need it anyway.
*laughs in 1V2*
How long dose a Locust last after being punched by a Charger.
I have three theories about why the LCT-6M exists.
One: Its a kamikaze variant. You don't need to shoot bullets when you ARE the bullet. Because realistically, that thing should be able to core an Atlas by just running face first into it at full speed.
Two: Its the mech version of that Soviet experiment to see if they could use fighter jet sonic booms as a weapon.
Three: They were hoping they could use the Doppler effect to blue shift its medium lasers into large lasers.
This little guy won me a game at a con this year. Managed to leg an enemy stinger and the resulting fall KOed the pilot. Also the 6M’s speed moves you up to 28 hexes on TT. That’s a +6 to your defence . Considering your average pilot has a gunnery of five that means in order to hit you at close range they have to roll a 11 or better.
Of course if said pilot doesn’t have pulse lasers with TC and didn’t upgrade his mech to 3/5, which I found people do to their units of choice too awfully often
I played TT Btech back in the day (original). Right after the Clan invasion, I was involved with a campaign game. I chose to run a small merc unit starting with a lance with the option to build up. I designed a 25 ton Locust variant. It had a 250 XL engine w/ masc, endo steel, 5 tons ferro-fibrous armor, a C-3 slave and 5 Clan lasers, 3 ER mediums & 2 ER smalls. Also in the unit was a Jenner with Clan weapons, 4 ER med lasers and a Streak SRM-4. The lance commander was a 55 ton Shadow Hawk with C-3 Master, a Clan AC-5 ultra, Extended LRM-5, and some ER med lasers to fill. I don't remember what the fourth mech was at the beginning, but I used a Panther, a Vindicator, (equally modded), or a duplicate Locust or Jenner, sometimes a Jenner with a LRM-5 instead of the SRM-6.
The real crazy tech is you get to the back and start to kick things that are bigger than you to try to make them fall over.
My point exactly. My favorite 20ton mech.
@@jackdaniels2000 in my group you are allowed one clan weapon per side. And only after 3062. To get more you have to immobilize or destroy a clan mech and control the battlefield after. Usually you sell the salvage and buy better IS mech or in my case many vehicles. Quanty has a quality all its own.
Get stuck in a Locust? Could be worse. Your boss could really hate you and put you in a Cicada: a 40 ton mech that is just as fragile, only barely better armed, and is a MUCH larger target.
Ya, I can confirm having started my mw5 service record in a fucking cicada. How ever once I entered a locust I found it fit a lot more to me. I still hate how unless I'm going 100 km an hour I can get decked under a second in mw5
The PPC Cicada is good, better sniper than the base Panther.
Cicada is a terrible mech without that ppc.
@@shade8816 I do actually prefer the MW5 hero Cicada, with M lazers and SRMs.
Yank the 320, swap in a 280, change the loadout to at least 4 medium lasers (6 will fit), mount 6 jump jets if you want to, perhaps an extra heatsink if you can spare the tonnage and the result might actually surprise you.
I remember a TT game that ended in one turn with these. I wasn't playing but I watched it unfold. BV was set, and one side got a tricked-out Atlas and Warhammer, and a ~3060 Awesome, as I recall. The opposite side of the field was something like 26 basic Locust. The big steel player just folded and asked why he didn't just bring 200 Savannah Masters. The response nearly started a fight.
"I only brought one roll of pennies"
Yes, 20/26 locusts on the board were represented by USA $.01 coins.
The magic of model-agnostic game
We usually forced people like that to write one page backstory for each pilot.
@@alecseusalec3418 I take that as a challenge.
@@alecseusalec3418
I use to have a large binder for four pilots, yes their history, piloting exploits, and even family history was in there
One of my friends who piloted only a commando had a novel sized backstory, history, historical records, and detailed dates of each ancestor who piloted the commando before him.
I am talking dates of birth, worlds, units, ect.
Went as far back as earth before space travel was a thing.
I remember that in one entry he had written "Jenna McKenzie was a frightening woman who according to myth had walked up to the cowards before they fled the Inner sphere back handed the general and called him a little b*tch and a coward."
The old warrior looked at his commanding officer and placed his whiskey on the counter and spoke "She was my Ancestor who piloted a bug, they didn't have the wonderful commando back then, even so she kicked a** of mechs much heavier than the bug"
Picking up his whiskey and downed the last of it and sat the glass back in the counter and added, "never and I mean never underestimate the fast bug as it could cost you dearly"
The GM actually woven in that tidbit and every clanner had a burning hate for his family for that insult.
I miss the old TT rpg days .
@@alecseusalec3418
Copy pasted capellan conscripts, assemble!
Friend of mine in MW5, made an ungodly abomination out of a pair of Locust 1Vs. Stripped everything to fit a Medium Rifle on one with a pidgeon laser, and a Heavy Cannon on the other, as its sole armament.
He used that thing to snipe Heavy and Assault mech cockpits, but they'd disintegrate if looked at funny.
And here I thought fitting 2 light rilfes was already pushing it... But it was a fun knee capper.
@@Psychoangel-d23 It has been a while since that event, so I might be misremembering it, but those things were insane in their single purpose as head-choppers.
He took out an Atlas right as it dropped in.The rest of the lance(We were 4-player at the time) were trying to figure out how much fire to focus on it, then it just exploded and fell over.
Many, many years ago, I played Mechwarrior 1. I found out that the Locust was completely broken in that game. I'd run full speed at the enemy lance, doing a bit of a serpentine, get behind them, and rip the hell out of their rear armor. Occasionally, I would manage to disable a leg on an enemy mech on the way in. Because the NPCs had really bad aim, I managed to survive about 80% of the time, even against heavy mechs.
You mean MW for DOS?
I still play that game, I use a still functional tandy for that game and for crescent hawk games.
Did you finish the blazing Aces or opted for the endless game by ignoring the story?
@@valor1omega It has been many years. I'm not sure if I followed the story line or not. I do remember that I played it on a friend's computer in the early 90's.
I had that same experience. Super effective due to the rest of my lance piloting Battlemasters, and distracting the OpFor.
lol, haven’t played that game in decades. I remember my proudest achievement was soloing both a Marauder and a Battlemaster with a Locust in one mission. Charged straight under the Marauder’s torso, using the legs to block fire while I slowly crippled it. Then circled the Battlemaster at full throttle while pinging the legs. Took a while, but escaped without any significant damage 😂
A friend of mine used that masc locust in Mech warrior 5 with the largest engine it could and removed all the weapons to that end. He named it cannonball. He one shot an Assault's torso by running into it at full speed.
How the hell did it survive that? I've stepped on locus with a heavy in that game and killed it out right
@@okiemaxI've done this too. It does not survive.
@@okiemax It was in essence a armor clad engine on legs. It lost an arm on the impact. He went on to sonic dash through several mediums and lights before legging himself.
That's just a Celerity minus the drone controller...
@@okiemax that's the neat part, it didn't
"The Leeroy Maneuver" is my new favorite tactical term
To be fair, the Locust's 4 tons of armor is near max for its weight. It literally cannot carry more.
Worse still, the other 20 tonners in 3025 (the Stinger and Wasp) actually carried less armor.
Even worse, many variants of the commando (a mech 5 tons heavier) carry less armor.
It's an underrated feature of the Locust, that gives it consistency.
The Locust has enough durability to take *A* hit. The Locust can get unlucky once.
Good luck can mean a Locust can take 2, 3, maybe even 4 and still be mostly good to go.
It doesn't immediately keel over if the "why not" Large Laser shot hail mary'd across the board due to lack of alternative targets and heat to spare hits it. It doesn't immediately have to go into passive, idle pressure if it takes two similarly casually spat out LRMs. And, if it has to, it can consider entering a risky situation of extreme value, and not immediately die for the attempt. It can, in a pinch, fling itself at the backside of an Atlas, and actually pressure it to use something besides the rear mounted laser to shoo it away, splitting its focus. It can hound a Catapult and only face death with bad, bad luck. And it can threaten and kill infantry without just dying to rifle fire, like some other, light "anti infantry" mechs tend to.
The trick with the locust, is that with enough of them, you can both be everywhere at once, and all at once anywhere.
Light cavalry tactics for the win.
The real trick is the fact that you can pack two of the little bastards into a standard mech transport bay.
Logistics and supply chain wins wars of nominally chronic naval resupply issues.
The fact that it has any merits for its weight class and role besides this may as well be a footnote, good as its merits are.
The locust lives in eternal fear that someone will figure out how to make an even more compact and collapsible mech, such that you can Tetris 3 of 'em into a bay.
I used to play MW5 a lot with a few friends, and our merc company was called the Ankle Biters because we got *very* good at running 4 Locusts and killing about 10 times our lance's tonnage in heavy and assault mechs every mission. Was really fun and high stakes, especially when one bad engagement where we failed to play *perfectly* would wipe half of us off the board instantly
Who remembers the original Mechwarrior game? There was a hilarious glitch where you could obliquely run into any mech with a locust at top speed and knock it over, then machine gun the crap out of its legs as it struggled to get back up. We called it the Rambo Locust maneuver. The only thing more OP was the Shadow Hawk AC5/LRM5 head shot combo from outside AI activation range.
I remember.
Just as I loved to use the Marauder, especially against a Battlemaster in that game. Just put your target sight a tick or two above the standard horizon and you had it at the perfect height to take out the Battlemaster's cockpit. At maximum distance with the PPC's.
Most other Mechs I took out with the Marauder by targeting their legs.
The only problem were those Locusts.
In the first mechwarrior game I liked using the Locust in base defense missions. I would maneuver around behind the slowest mechanics and attack legs from point blank(the laser touching the enemy mech). I was frequently was able to kill half of the attacking lance before they engaged the rest of my lance. 2 vs 3 is never a good fight even with both sides just using Battlemasters. I was still frequently running around trying to chew a leg off.
I still use a functional Tandy to play the game.
I find legit old school hardware is the best to play this game as well as for the old crescent hawk games.
I liked how you could pilot a heavily damaged mech into battle should you not afford to fix it completely or ammunition issues.
There is a free online version you can play in a browser
The Locust has one TT advantage over most other light mechs: 8 leg armor. The ability to take a hit from a large laser and not get a mobility crit ups the survivability massively. It's also a dedicated scout, so skirmish at your own risk or go pick up a Jenner and the BV associated with it.
Agreed. It might seem fragile, but it actually has more armor than most other 20 tonners.
@@sablevo all locust variant i think are the best scout in the game if you are actually scouting. You look for the enemy. You find the enemy. You let your team know where the enemy is located and you run around before the enemy can hit you. It not design to actually engage the enemy. You use commandoes for that.
Light mechs, especially the Locust, really shine in objective based games and long-term campaigns, which are admittedly rare in most Battletech games. But in a group of mixed tonage mechs, or mixed units with vehicles and infantry, these little beauties shine. I used to run a lance in a campaign with a Warhammer, a Catapult, a Locust, and a Trebuchet, all with C3, with the Warhammer being the command unit. Taking advantage of terrain and cover, I could sneak the Locust into that magic 7 hex range of just about anything on the board in 1-2 turns. I once kept a locust parked behind a parking garage (city map) and some heavy trees and within range of 2 objectives on the board, and I was able to hold both with most of my lance halfway accross the map. I only got to play in that campaign for a few games, but damn that was fun.
Oh look a bunch of paper powered by the go fast juice.
Ah yes, the "im gonna try to close and play chicken with the annihilator lance looking straight at me from across the valley" mech.
Easy scrap and creds fodder is what i call them.
They just the footmen of the mechs.
Them Locusts doing it wrong. Gotta let the main force hit one another while the Locust is outflanking and trying for rear shots.
You must have been fighting Capellans or Kurita. Or stupid pirates. God there are so many stupid pirates.
I always loved the locust! Back in the late 80's, we'd play large planetary invasions. I'd always have one solid company of locuts which I'd send out behind enemy lines, then split into lances. I'd order them to hulk smash anything and everything they came across. There is no better mech to cause absolute chaos than the Locust! ❤
This is one of the few Battlemechs that would be actually useful in a real (land) war or conflict. It's small enough to conceal itself in a hull-down position, it can run away from indirect fire and it's fast enough for hit-and-run tactics. But most important of all, it's cheap and expendable if the war drags on...
I love the locust. It lets me down at every opportunity
Technically speaking, the Locust has some of the best armor you can get for a 20 ton design. It's only a half ton off its maximum.
Except the LCT-1M which is almost literally armored with hopes and dreams, totaling a single ton of armor (16 points) spread (very thinly) over the whole 'mech.
Fun fact: This means that a single medium laser hit to a leg will shear it off entirely.
If you are going to pilot a 20-ton mech in the first place, the Locust is better protected than a Wasp or Stinger; as noted you are near max armor. Under 3025 rules you can make it a little more durable, presuming that you are not going to have to deal with infantry, by pulling the machine guns and ammunition and adding more lasers (and maybe that last 1/2 ton of armor); you might get a +1 heat buildup with an alpha strike on the run, but nothing that can't be resolved (even if you are stuck in continuous combat that long and are still intact).
@@stuartwald2395 If you can playing with Quirks, the Locust's narrow/lowprofile quirks means that sometime it can eat large weapon hits and still be fine (can eat an AC/20 and still have a leg, will be internal but still there)
I often did a tally of all the values (top speed, jumping, armour, max damage, range, heat sinks etc), added them up and then divided by the weight. Until Clan tech got involved the Locust was the most "efficient" of the lot. Highest numbers for its weight ratio. I then averaged that by the heat ratio and the Locust stayed at the top, where Crazy Clan designs got hoisted by their own very poor heat management.
Not saying the Locust is good in absolute terms, just that it has surprisingly high values for a 20 ton machine.
Easily one of my favorite mechs. Especially with how it looks.
I prefer the original to be honest, or the Koto over the new ones
*Happy Locust Noises*
I do so enjoy this mech. First one I really piloted in MC5. Speed helps keep me alive while my friends can take larger tonnage mechs. Because who doesn't enjoy sneaking up on an engaged enemy and hitting them in the back or blowing up their base while no one is looking?
Thanks for putting up this video SCI. Its always enjoyable to listen to you.
I respect that, anything faster than a Javlin makes me mentally bluescreen in the cockpit
@@robrib2682Whenever my friends and I play, at first I was just being the Locust to allow them to take heavier mechs. Then I came to really enjoy the speed and ability to scout the map for loot or targets. Then they fight the main target, and I could swing in behind the enemy. Destroying bases, getting rear shots, grabbing quest critical items, and even getting to the evac zone quick when things got bad.
On the table top I usually take at least two to escort my Rakshasa. Especially since their max walk speed is the Rakshasa run speed.
The Locust has armor expertly engineered to prevent breaking an actuator if it stumbles and scrapes a knee... that's about it.
My favorite is the 1E model. Give up the volatile ammo for a second medium laser, and swap the MGs for small lasers? Almost double the damage, and I am safer? Yes, please!
It makes sense for your behind the lines raider mech to not rely on ammo anyway.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that because lasers are so efficient tonnage-wise, any mech that doesn't have the ability to overheat itself yet should add more lasers until it does.
-1V and -1E are actually excellently armored for a 20-tonner. They can take a Large Laser hit anywhere except the rear without suffering damage to internals. Important threshold what with the Phoenix Hawk being the #1 bughunter of the Succession Wars.
Those two to me really seems like they were meant to work in tandem. Rear-area raiding means you're arguably more likely to run into hostile infantry around the things you want to destroy than enemy tanks or Mechs, so those machineguns can be very handy indeed.
"safety" is as anathema to locust jockeys as it is to hunchie fanatics
So what I got from this video is that the Locust is the Zoomirs in mech form and if your lucky it can pull off miracles.
there's also the flea. and than there is the 15ton flea.
Pretty much yeah. And ofc, practice and skill can increase your odds significantly. knowing your mechs limits and strengths means ya can better take advantadge of those lucky opportunities, like seeing an assault mechs bodyguards move just far enough away they cant stop you from doing a hit and run on the weak rear armor
In the table top game I had a friend who was able to drop an Atlas back in the lvl 1 days, It was the lct-1v.
Double blind days was always fun as you never knew what you were going to run into.
He started his piloting days with a 4/5 and he retired his pilot at 0/0 after many real years to get there.
The fact his warrior lived that long showed how much dedication to his piloting of his favorite mech(the locust).
I miss those days, him annoying heavy mech pilots and even clan players who couldn't pin him down.
Personally I used a single SRM witn half ton of ammunition locust armed with only Inferno rounds and a flamer as it's only job was to set fires and make water unusable by using infernos on water in the area to prevent cool down via those water.
Any infantry encountered Infernos launched to target the hex not the troops themselves directly.
But mostly the "Crimson" Locust was area denial via fire and to leave.
There are exactly two versions of this mech sides the base model I use. The laser boat that replaces the MGs with S Lasers. And the one that replaces the MGs with LRM 5s
You sir are 100% correct with the one additional point of the LRM 5 version being superior in alpha strike rules.
I personally like the 3v version as well. Machine guns let me better hunt down quick targets and infantry while 2 medium lasers give the little mech a bit more punch. Though I am working on getting 2 of the LRM5 variant that doesn't sacrifice all of its armor for table top.
Though the small laser variant 1E ain't bad either.
Hello SC.I
loved your sense of humor about the Locust. And yes, many of the things you said were true. But...
But, the Locust is best used in 'Swarm' units. With the cost of each Locust being so low, and the fact that the Mech is just plain ubiquitous, they can be fielded in large numbers by any commander.
When I first encountered the Locust, back in the heydays of mid-1984, I thought the unit was laughable. At least, until I found myself in possession of a dozen of them taken as my portion of the salvage from a raid. The other commanders had taken all the other Mechs and vehicles, leaving me with all the Locusts.
So, only having a single Heavy, and a pair of Medium Mechs after the battle, I was sort of 'forced' to find a use for the 'speed freak' Mech.
The very next battle, I fielded all of my Locusts against an enemy Heavy Lance. Yes, I lost a few Locusts. But, on the other hand, my Locusts were fast enough to get behind the slow Mechs and penetrate their thin rear armor. By never moving less than at a dead run, I was able to use my speed to generate maximum penalties against being hit, and by clever use of terrain features, I was able to add things like trees to the penalty number. Making hits on my speed demon Mechs far less likely.
end result... one Heavy Lance destroyed with maximum salvage oportunities. My losses were less than a third of the cost of the lightest unit in the Heavy Lance.
From then on, other players absolutely HATED seeing my Locust swarms. To the point that they 'banned' me from fielding such formations entirely. In one remembered battle, against an opponent that fielded ONLY Heavy and Assault Mechs (Lyran player), I fielded over 25 Locusts against him, and won. I lost something like 4 Locusts, with several more having damage, but EVERY unit of his was 'killed'. That player never forgave me for beating him in such a manner, Especially after he had crowed so loudly and long about how he was going to 'wipe the floor' with my unit.
When the 3050, 3055, and 3057 TROs were released, I had access to all that sweet Helm Memory Core tech. Which ended up built into my new Locust design. One where the Mech mounted a 200 VLAR engine, MASC, nearly maximum FFA, Endo Steel, and a single ER Large Laser. As you can probably figure out, the Mech's movement stats were: 10(20)/15/0 (no jump jets). This made the Locust Swarms even MORE lethal. At which point my playing group demanded that I never field such swarms again, or I would be excluded from playing with them.
BTW: this was the first 'nail in the coffin', since I went on to design and field other Mechs that the playing group also banned. Like a 100-ton Mech that had 17 LRM-5s. Just think on that a minute. A single Mech that outputs 85 missiles per turn of combat, and has enough ammo to fire at least a dozen salvos of such a size before 'running dry'.
But, back to the Locust. When fielded in groups, or 'swarms', they can be deadly effective, and cost nearly nothing in comparison to whatever they need to face in combat. They are so cheap, readily available, and easy to repair, that one can lose as many as the battle calls for, and yet you 'win' often, and have the funds to more than replace any losses. As for pilots... well, the academies are full of newly trained Mechwarriors needing 'seasoning'. Why not have them pilot one of the fastest Mechs in the game (pre-Clan Invasion) to gain experience?
Enough for now.
Never underestimate the 20 ton shit box in BT. Light Mechs can be really fun.
Lights make great "scavengers"- keep them mostly out of range until an enemy unit has broken armor and exposed vitals, then send them in to crit seek with their dinky weapons. Macineguns and small lasers are great for this, as are SRMs.
Speed is Armor.
Armor is Life.
Speed is Life! Love the locust.
As someone who paid attention to the BattleTech deep dive lore, I'm going to burst a few bubbles here.
As much as everyone loves to claim that the Locust is a scout, it is not meant for just scouting. No, its other common use is far darker.
After all, it was a Locust that fired the first shots of the reunification war. And those shots were not fired in a military force, but a crowd of protesters by a Combine MechWarrior.
You see, the other, far darker roll of the Locust, is that it excels at brutal population suppression tactics. After all, a single Locust gives one soldier the firepower of a platoon of infantry.
In the darker side of BattleTech, a Locust is often used to keep populations suppressed under the boot of a tyrant. Be it at the hands of a pirate, or two bit dictator. As without military grade firepower, it's almost impossible for a man on the ground to kill a mech.
It's elevated firing positions allow it to shoot down over cover, and it's armor, wall light for battlemech standards, is more than sufficient to shrug off small arms fire.
Because of this, and because of how cheap they are, locusts are favorite of pirates, and raiding forces.
You can also fit two Locusts into a single mechbay due to their small size. Allowing you to bring a sizable scout detachment in a raiding force.
That was basically the gist of the entire video. That the mech is more as a raider, and only plays a scout in so far as 'how many things were shooting at me' before it decided to leave the area.
And of course it was a Combine soldier. Kurita exists to insure that people can't have nice things without war and death being a part of the course.
The downside of the mech bay squeezing two mechs in. In theory it could do it, but if the Locusts are damaged or need any kind of maintenance, it makes it much harder to fix the mechs. The automated systems and tech that's used to maintain the mechs wouldn't work fully with two mechs in the way. Desperate commanders could try it, but it would lead to all sorts of maintenance and logistical issues.
The Locust is otherwise the 'poor mans' scout. Its so easy to get parts for it and maintain it compared to the more complex sensor based mechs that its easy enough to throw at said roll, even if it isn't truly meant to be a dedicated scout.
So you really aren't popping bubbles I think. Even the video we watched agreed with your assessment.
I used a modified Locust my friends nicknamed the crimson locust because I used a lance that mounted two SRM 2s with half ton of inferno ammunition and a flamer minus half a ton of armor.
It's only job was to set fires to water with the infernos, set trees on fire with the flamer and any infantry found firing the srms to target the hexes to set the ground on fire.
The mech prevents enemies from cooling off in water and forces enemy units to wade through fires.
In level one games this was a brutal tactic.
My locusts never actually fought enemy units outright unless it was cornered.
Honestly, the two mechs per bay thing can kinda be the beginning and end of the conversation of its use cases.
The Locust is logistics advantage. It's a mech that can be in two places at once, a mech that can die killing an opponent, yet still come home, and is a spare for an extra pilot that had their main ride blown up, or that you found. It can run errands at half opportunity cost, it can provide target saturation, and it can be thrown at niche side objectives.
2 per mech bay means you can drop two lances on a planet and still come home with one.
Run, run as fast as you can!
You can't catch me.
I'm the Light Locust Man!
Locust pilot in MW5 here, biggest mech I've bagged was a stock Victor. My favorite moment was when I full speed hit a gully and went flying into the air and through a building. I recommend it, great fun.
I've always called this thing the Mosquito because of how much its bites piss me off
I imagine Locusts sound like TIE Fighters when they run. Not because of the engine noise, though. Because the pilot can't stop screaming. Is he screaming in terror? Probably. But he might also be screaming like you do when you ride a good roller coaster. Locust vets be crazy like that.
The hilux of mechs
Wouldn’t be surprised if Toyota in future make one and calls it a hilux locust and in true hilux fashion it somehow has a shot for some poor Schmuck on the back thus making it a mech technical.
I now need to make a primitive tech Hi-Luxust
Hi-Luxust TOY-LCT Base Tech Level: Introductory (IS)
Level
Era
Experimental
2455+ (Age of War -)
Advanced
-
Standard
2550+ (Age of War -)
Tech Rating: D/C-E-D-D Weight: 20 tons BV: 390 Cost: 406,083 C-bills Source: Homebrew Role: Skirmisher Movement: 8/12 (Wheeled) Engine: 140 Fusion Internal: 10 Armor: 40 (Standard)
Internal
Armor
Front
2
10
Right
2
8
Left
2
8
Rear
2
6
Turret
2
8
Weapons
Loc
Heat
Medium Laser
TU
3
Medium Laser
TU
3
Small Laser
TU
1
Small Laser
TU
1
Small Laser
TU
1
Small Laser
TU
1
*Cackles* IT LIVES! VROOM VROOM MF!
When I play MWO with a few friends of mine I love running a LCT-1V with a top speed of 165kph and a single large pulse laser. Its the assist king, ignore it and get your rear armor shredded or pay attention to it and get smacked by its much bigger friend.
The Locust 5V has 2 medium lasers and 2 Rocket Launcher 10s; it is great! I pair it with a King Crab, Marauder or other mech with heavy armor piercing weapons to dash in and crit seek like crazy.
I'm still getting the hang of the tabletop game, but thus far I've been using the 3V version, two of them, to run escort for my Rakshasa in smaller games. The heavy is one of the few that can keep up with the Locusts when they aren't running, and can provide a good screen and rear shots while the Rakshasa tries to play medium to long range.
@@shade8816 I would look at the Ostroc or Ostsol as a good, cheap and relatively powerful Cavalry mech. The Ostroc 2D is good.
Looks like a 40k fighter craft that some one bolted legs to. Also it can run at 300 mph?!? Tha hell? Imagine watching that thing just blur past the battle lines and kick over all your buildings with its face while you lumber at it in what from it perspective must be slow mo.
75 mph* 1 kph is roughly half a mph
1 mph ~ 1,6 kph.
A long time ago, feels like a lifetime ago honestly, I played BTMUX, a text-based battletech MMO type thing. I loved piloting my LCT-1E, i blazed around the arena typing in commands at the speed of sound as I blitzed the enemy. I credit those experiences with why I am so good as a typist now, lol.
Me and my best buddy have repulsed a plague of Locusts two nights ago in 2018 Battletech. Good times.
I love that you used PLAGUE as a collective term xD
Horrid little mech goes fast... Into our hearts.
I clicked on this video and it brought back memories of playing the original MechWarrior as a kid on my family computer. I loved the Locust because you could run right up to the bigger mechs, getting under their guns, and shoot out their legs before moving on to the next big lumbering mech.
This was hilarious, all speed, all memes. I hope someday he gets to the Ares, I'd love both his and Steve's opinion on the world's dumbest tripod. So bad but so good.
I’m currently liking the 3D for its ability to lay smoke and put incendiary where I want to be.
There was that magazine back in the 90's that billed the Locust as, "so cheap, you can read it in the name: Low Cost."
I love the locust cause as you’ve stated it’s a skill check essentially across all BattleTech media. Tabletop, Mechwarrior and MWO
Hah yes, the Capelan cannon fodder.
The 6M’s philosophy: you can’t hit me if I’m not there.
6M what are you running from?
EVERYTHING!
Oh the low-cost.
You know… sometimes you get what you pay for though…
@@Angel7black an Urbie or Ostscout is better.
@@barrybend7189 Depends on the situation.
An Urbie is good for defensive fighting and has a good kick, but its helpless in most other situations, or at least at a huge disadvantage. It is about the cost of a Locust with better armor, but don't expect more than garrison duty or problems coming to you instead of the other way around. At least parts are about as common as for a Locust.
The Ostscout is a better argument. The mech is as fast, heavier, rugged, and great for a support mech. But its also 2.3ish times the c-bill cost of a single Locust. Also, you need to find a pilot who will just scout and ok with having next to no weapons. For a long while it was also hard to find this mech outside of Great Houses and Comstar with all of its fancy tech intact.
So I wouldn't say they are 'better'. But can provide alternative options.
@@shade8816
I once bolted a HGR to an Urbie for fun, had almost no armor(half a ton at best) a 1/2/1 speed and half a ton of ammunition.
It was never meant to be a actual use mech, just wanted to see if I could.
There was a back story to it too.
Couple of techs got drunk, made a bet that the other tech couldn't fit an HGR on the Urbie and still make it work.
The tech fired the Urbie and was knocked off it's feet and rolled downhill and in the process tore the HGR off of the mech.
By the time the Urbie was stopped by a building he said he needed a change of underwear and that he won the bet.
A few months after I showed the joke mech to a friend he added two lances to his unit.
To this day I still don't know why he added them.
If you find yourself in a fight with someone who willingly got in a locust, then you are going to die. It is simply not a machine you put yourself in if you don't already know you'll be fine.
It's like you're a Dark Souls boss and some dude with a loincloth walks in. You know you're done for.
I came here for the Holy wall of Flak and Battlestars now I'm here playing War Thunder on legs.
The Locust and the Urbanmech have a lot in common - they're dirt cheap and they're not great against other mechs, but they're mechs, and when you have mechs with small lasers and machine guns and the other guy has PBIs, you tend to win. It's what makes the Locust work as being believably fucking terrifying in Decision at Thunder Rift.
I have often been *that* locust pilot in MWO. Using my little locusts is always fun, even when brief.
Ah, I remember having done a only light mechs start on Battletech Advanced mod for Harebrained's BATTLETECH, and got a Locust 1E as one of my starters.
So, I slapped 4 medium lasers on it. And in one missions I managed to get an ECM unit and an XL Engine as salvage. Into the Locust it went.
Now, you see, in the vanilla game, light mechs were useless, because evasion was useless, due to any shot taken at a mech costing a mech a pip of it, and you always fought outnumbered.
In the mod, evasion is only lost via either taking stability damage, which means being hit in the first place, or being dumb enough to get melee'd. OR via sensor lock.
Thanks to the ECM, my locust could not be sensor locked. So I had this stupidly fast fucker that was never below 8 pips of evasion, and that had 4 medium lasers it could dump into the asscheeks of hostile mechs, then zoom away.
It was a fun mech, until it ate a lucky hit from a Hunchback's AC20.
The other reason light 'mechs were useless was you could only bring four 'mechs period. I'm a known light 'mech hater, but even I'd run a couple if I could just have a second lance- just a couple Fleas or something cheap to replace to spot for LRM boats with.
Light mechs are not useless in that game, evasion is pretty powerful, especially when combined with terrain. You don’t want to position yourself where all enemies can hit you.
However, the 4 mech limit definitely hurts their utility. Why bring a 20 ton mech when you can bring an 80 ton mech? Having a light mech among medium lances can be useful, but once you get to heavier lances… you kind of need to know what you are doing to make a light mech work, and making it work better than a heavier mech requires less common skill.
Though I think you could just run it around enemies and hit targets with 3 missile boats. Never stop running unless its behind terrain and then its locking targets through the pilot skill.
This lil thing has had my heart since I got into the fandom a few years back through MWO, fast as fuck, all the audacity and all the adrenaline >:3
One of these is basically responsible for knocking out an entire Smoke Jaguar defense array during Operation Bulldog
The Locust really needs a jump button. It's definitely on my wish list
I think TheB33f should be the exemplary locust pilot considering his demonstration of almost single-handedly assassinating the entire opposing team in his tactics video.
The Pulse laser Locust is a pretty decent battlemech.
3:51 This newfound knowledge, and "where the enemy is", both being "right on my ass, you better have that ambush up".
If I run fast enough- the bad thoughts can't catch me! Lol
My first introduction to the locust was in Crescent Hawks Revenge where they would routinely kick the legs out from under your mechs if you let them get anywhere near you.
I learned to have a lot of respect for those little buggers from that.
I haven't laughed this much watching a video in a long time. 30 years of playing BattleTech off and on was perfectly represented in this video. Your nerd humor is perfect. Thank You. I admit to having modded the Locust in many ways trying to make the little bugger work. I even fielded 15 of them once. 5 normal, 5 LRM versions, and 5 triple Medium Laser versions. Almost won that one. It started going wrong when the Atlas did a perfect Torso shot with the AC 20 to the lead of the full tilt screaming attack wave, when he needed a 12 to hit. Ah well. It was fun.
Back in the 80s or 90s, I forget what edition of Battletech, there is one version of the Locust that was extremely deadly. If you saw it, and correctly identified it for what it was, you better kill it. Right away. In fact, it's a priority.
I don't remember what this version was called, but it was armed with a targeting laser, used to paint a target for artillery or air strikes. You can have this thing hide in trees, or get to some high ground, and it could laze targets across the map. Once it painted a target, there would be like a few turns go by before all hell broke loose, and you might lose even an assault mech in one turn. When you combined artillery and aerotech to the game, it really changed the game up, substantially, to the point where, back then, we questioned the military viability of battle mechs at all, given their sheer cost, compared with tanks, infantry, and aircraft. When you've got Long Toms, aerospace fighters, and other artillery out there, that means that mechs are big, slow, expensive targets.
I'm sure, long ago, they had to have corrected this. After all, Battletech is supposed to be about the big robots fighting each other.
If only there was a variant with Jump Jets. We dug this hole, and we shall never put down the shovel!
The 6M is officially the one Battlemech sponsored by SnowFlame!
I understood that refrence
Won a game of MWO in a Locust one time. I managed to find the enemy assault lance and escort out away from the main forces and singlehandedly dogged them for five minutes straight trapping them in a ditch while the other six mechwarriors ran straight into a line of eleven battlemechs. Another time, i managed to slip behind enemy lines and started picking off their rear line one by one timing my large pulse so that it would hit them square in their rear CT the same time salvos from our LRM boats landed causing massive damage without revealing that i was ever actually there.
The locust, the best target for a rifleman in the absence of air targets to mop, otherwise known as that mech hard countered by jeeps with machine guns or any jeep with anything bolted to it. Like in some short story they took one down with harpoons
A locust with a flamer and machine guns is an absolute nightmare
I used to like using the locust in Revenge of the Crescent Hawks. I enjoyed the video, giant stompy death machines are always a good time.
I remember this little monster from MW4! Loaded it up with super short-range, high caliber burst autocannons, then sprint into hugging distance of other mechs and wreck them while they were trying to turn fast enough to score a hit. Good times. Good times.
That's my most distinct memory of MW4 too. I probably wasn't that effective with it, but it was a fun meme to run up to other mechs four times my size and try to shotgun them to death.
You left out my favorite version of the Locust, the 3 ML version of the base Locust.
You know what, that periphery variant with the rockets actually makes perfect sense in an irl warfare setting. The locust is fast, and vulnerable; it SHOULDN'T be in protracted combat ANYWAY. You don't want them in the fight long enough to need a backup weapon. What you want is for them to move up, unleash their entire payload into some poor lumbering bastard, then retreat with all speed back behind friendly lines to rearm with more inexpensive, dumb rockets that were very powerful to go out and deliver with precision in another strike.
It's the exact same concept as helicopter based CAS, you see it with Apache's, Alligators, etc. Fly in, fire the rockets or missiles, then return to base to rearm and refuel before the next sortie/ambush. It's perfect for hit and run warfare. Except a locust mech has the advantage of being able to take cover and be overlooked, crossed with the disadvantage of needing to run rather than fly straight back. Same principle though
Locust pilots everywhere, "Hit me if you can! I'M FAST AF BOIIIII!!!!!!"
i had a pair of 1vs in my old merc unit that had been refitted with 2 medium lasers in the R/L arms, a small laser in the CT and adds an additional half to n of armor - giving it max protection. Their main job was to punch through and track down things like LRM carriers (the chap i use to game against loved LRM carriers and the like in his support units, This was all 1st SW era. They used the full rotation of their arms to do run bys... hit them coming in and going out...
another good vid mate
Locust: "I'm fast and can sting you to oblivion with my medium laser. Nobody can outdo me!"
Savannah Master: *_Ahem._*
6M - *Revenge*
Honestly the Savannah master is suppose to be somewhat rare due to the engine type.
@@shade8816 Yep. The creator, S.L. Lewis, had been with a band of Star League facility hunters when they hit the jackpot and found a depot that had been hermetically sealed with the contents carefully packaged in storage lubricants so as to pass the test of time with little degradation. Among the equipment, they found a stockpile of 2,000 Omni 25 small fusion engines. Lewis opted for the engines as his share of the take and the rest, as they say, is history. A total of nearly two thousand Savannah Masters (and their variants) were produced, slowly, by Lewis's tiny company over the next decade. It remained rare for over a decade until the spread of the Star League memory core (suck it, ROM) allowed Edasich Motors to start producing a licensed reverse-engineered copy of the engine. Even then, Savannah Masters remained relatively rare as weapon technology was progressing to the point where it's primary defense (speed) was starting to wane.
@@Vulpine407 Aye. Alas, too many played the 'lawls horde' without figuring how they would have so many units. Logistics is really a nightmare at times isn't it?
I don't mind a good combined arms force, but I prefer ones that make sense. A Light lance here, a command lance there, some helis and infantry with transports...
One step at a time though right?
Great mech for the newbies to train in.
"Why do you need 310? What are you running from?"
The Atlas.
What's fun with the Locust and it's variants is that you can run well-rounded teams of just one chassis, and you could still justify it with their numbers.
oh thanks now i have the perfect mech for my d&d character
I can't be the only person who is disappointed that he didn't talk about the Battle of Thunder Rift?
"how long have you been here?"
"11 days."
"How long do Locusts live?"
"11 days!"
In Battletech the PC game, I have a fav configuration with 2 medium and small lazors all in its center torso. I named it the 'Biting Locust' and it began as a filler for my lances. But against my friends it became a absolute thorn in their sides. Ignore it, and its scouting and pinging the enemy, focus on it, and often the rest of my lance is positioned they can take advantage. Had nothing but armor on its side and arm sections allowing me to use them as armor plates effectively. Allowed one to eat a AC20 hit once (friend got lucky) and keep on truckin. Just with a third of its torso gone XD
Wish I had saved a screen shot of one getting the killing blow on a knocked down highlander. It walked up to the assault met, and stomped on it, funny thing is, the assault mech looked to have more metal in its crippled leg then the locust had entirely lol.
As a fav line of mine says in the Solaris arena in mech warriors 3. "Sometimes that annoying tap in the rear is the last thing you know."
Locus pilot: I am speed I will tickle the back of your knees. I shall flee before you can turn to see me.
Speed is Armor, Speed is Life -Captain Shack
I'm going to for sure use some Royal locusts against my friend the next time we play.
It's really more of cavalry mech rather than a proper scout. It does screening and raiding operations.
In the Battletech game by HBS there's a variant of the Locust that replaces the machine guns with 2x LRM5s. It doesn't do much damage but it's a long range harasser that can be hard to get rid of because of its speed and range.
It's a tabletop variant, too. It is also ludicrously thinly armoured, literally the least-armored Mech ever.
In MWO I stuffed a Snub-Nose PPC on my 1V.
Endo-Steel, Light Ferro, XL160 engine, reduced armor in the arms and head since there's nothing important in them, 6 double heat sinks and the snubby PPC in the center torso...
I call it Short PeePee.
Cuuuuuuursed
@@ornerylurker8296 cursed, but it slaps. Maxing out the cooldown and heat related skills on top of the -50% Energy Cooldown quirk cuts the SB PPC's cooldown from 4 to 1.52 seconds. Makes for an effective hit and run anklebiter that I am having a blast in.
@@TimeSweeperAdam Considering it's literally just a running shotgun on legs, "slap" seems to be a bit of an undersell.
@@ornerylurker8296 Snubby is just a normal PPC but a ton and slot less at the cost of range. But yea, how consistently I'm able to tear shit up at best and confuse and annoy other players at worst is phenomenal.
AZ1:20D0|2d|I@p@0|i^|i^|i^q@0|i^|i^|i^r00s00t@0u@0v50w404040
Here's my specific build, but it's not really all that unique or hard to make.
Note regarding the Locust's armor: 4 tons is pretty much the most armor a 20-ton battlemech can carry, so while not durable overall, for a mech of its weight class coupled with its speed, it's actually probably the most survivable battlemech of its kind. If you want something a bit more survivable you might want a Cicada, which is basically a bigger Locust (twice as big in fact), and has enough carrying capacity that if you're willing to put in a slightly smaller engine you can actually put some pretty respectable firepower onto it.. Unlike the Locust, there is a variant of the Cicada with a PPC, the CDA-3C, which was actually pretty successful.
Also, the variant of the Locust generally regarded as the best in Introtech is the LCT-1E. This one ditches the machine guns in favor of a second medium laser and two small lasers, and puts everything in the arms so that way you can alpha strike at stuff behind you while running away.
Overall, the Locust has the potential to become a really nasty knife fighter in the right hands.
I love playing a Locust in MWO. So satisfying!
its a good enough scout mech especially with its quirks letting you bring 2 for 1 oscout in both price and mechbays but using it for other stuff is a bad idea. still better than the wasp and stinger though
Now imagine when you do company size battles and your opponent brings 4 lances of locusts to the field
What, nothing on the 1E? It was my bread and butter in MWO X)
The base Locust-1V and 1-E are actually extremely solid and basically the yardstick for what makes a good scout in the Succession Wars era. Cheap, extremely fast, enough armor to take a large laser hit without internal damage anywhere but the back, and enough firepower to scare off other lights and in case of the -1V make obnoxious infantrymen regret their life choices. (Why is taking a Large Laser hit important? Because the Phoenix Hawk exists, and it's the apex predator that 3025 scouts have to worry about.)
And if you take design quirks into account, it has excellent quirks including the unique Compact Mech quirk that is stupendously powerful in terms of logistics.
Correct this is a “nah I’d win” mech cause yeah, I’d win
I got my son into Battletech tabletop. He HATES when I field a Locust. It is so annoying to him. He spends so much time trying to take it out I'm able to hit his 'mechs with my main force. Always liked them.
I actually don't mind this little monster. As an unapologetic tinkerer for the tabletop game, I actually pulled out the machine guns and some armor and increased the engine to a 180 fusion plant to increase its top speed to over 140 mph. I then and added either 2 more medium lasers or 4 small lasers to make it a more credible threat.
I have also embraced my insanity by creating a variant with the commonly available 200 fusion giving it a top speed of over 180kph. The machine guns and 1.5 tons of armor were sacrificed. Two small lasers were added. Note all these variants only use 3025 tech level equipment.
19:11 bold of u to assume I'm using this speed to run AWAY from the bad guys, and not turning myself into a mechwarrior-guided missile
310 KPH!?
WTF.
Might as well be a LAM
Another awesome video man thanks!
I know you did a reunification war episode about a year ago, but as a proud concordat citizen, I wanna see an episode of the Taurians alone!! But if you do or don't make a vid about the concordat, keep up the great work!!