Courtesy of Eldoniousrex
“Is that the new Nissan 650 ZX-3?” Liu Yizhen asked.
“Sure is!” Chad Drixler replied. As expected of employees at Skobel MechWorks, both had a penchant for over-engineered products. The Nissan 650 ZX-3, with its sleek lines and convertible hardtop, was the epitome of a modern sports car. It stood in stark contrast to the more utilitarian vehicles that dotted Skobel’s parking lot.
“Nice! I’ve been looking at it, but you know… kids.” She shrugged. Skobel offered generous parental leave, but as most parents know, the cost of child-rearing meant that certain sacrifices had to be made. Liu’s minivan was typical of the plight of parents.
Chad, as an eligible bachelor, had no such financial constraints. She envied his freedom as they both made their way to the guarded secret entrance nestled into the northern foothills of Skobel’s massive facilities, itself already surrounded by industrial buildings that mammoth the surrounding urban area.
Hiding in plain sight was often the best strategy for secretive government projects.
Once past security, Chad and Liu headed inside, then entered the elevator and punched in a combination of unmarked buttons that took them several hundred meters underground. Then, a retinal and biometrics scan, before finally passing another set of armed guards who checked their credentials. Finally, they entered a cavernous underground hangar that held Project Orca.
Easily the largest BattleMech ever made, the Orca towered over everything but the roof of the massive chasm several stories above them. It often made Liu feel like she was entering the bygone tomb of some long-forgotten god.
“What’s on the schedule today?” Chad asked as they got in a nearby cart. Getting around in the Project Orca hangar could take a while on foot, and most opted to use electric carts to get from A to B.
“Today is the big day!” Liu replied cheerfully. “Our test pilot is going to take the Orca’s first steps.”
Chad grunted, far less enthused than Liu. “Who’d they get to be the pilot?”
“Some former Steiner MechWarrior, used to pilot an Atlas in a scout lance back in the day. It’s the heaviest ’Mech they could find anyone with experience.”
“Which is still only half the size of the Orca,” Chad murmured. “Do you think the neuro-feedback conditioning will be enough?”
Liu nodded as Chad pulled up near the Orca’s gantry. “We’ve triple-checked the gyro calibrations, and our Hauptmann seemed alright with the feedback in simulators. I know it’s a big step, but we gotta start somewhere.”
Chad sighed, pulling the cart’s parking brake lever after it came to a full stop. “You’re right. When’s the test supposed to start?”
“You know they don’t tell the engineers—” Liu began, but was interrupted as a klaxon sounded and the gantry began to pull away from the Orca. That meant the pilot was inside and had begun startup procedures of the massive 400 XL fusion engine at the core of the enormous machine.
“Oh crap!” Chad shouted. “Get back in the cart!”
The two dove back to their seats, and Chad began to reverse away from the Orca, which was slowly coming to life. They watched as the massive chassis straightened, the downward-pointed arms reached a ready level, and then the huge, lumbering machine took its first step forward. It cracked the ferrocrete, sending up bus-sized slabs of earth around the titanic ’Mech’s toes.
“She did it!” Liu cheered, pumping her fist. Then, her smile faded as it became clear the test pilot was already overbalanced, the incalculable momentum of the Orca carrying it beyond its scheduled single footfall. It stumbled forward like a toddler taking its first steps, the other foot barely catching up to prevent the whole thing from tumbling to the ground.
“Shit shit shit…” Chad cursed like a mantra as he mashed the foot pedal, sending the cart backward at its maximum velocity. In front of them, the Orca continued its stumbling gait, arms gesticulating wildly. One barrel caught on the roof, gouging out a line of ferrocrete and sending boulders crashing around the rapidly reversing cart.
Suddenly, both Liu and Chad’s heads whipped forward as the cart began ascending the massive ramp leading to the surface. The Orca somehow followed despite the steep incline, frantically shuffling its feet as the pilot tried to remain upright. Chad swerved back and forth as the Orca‘s manic ascent continued to throw rocks and debris around them.
Finally, the Steiner pilot’s skill ran out. One gigantic toe clipped the ramp, and the Orca fell forward with a titanic crash just as Liu and Chad emerged outside. The Orca’s tumble, however, sent one of its arms upward, spiking through the tunnel structure and sending a chunk of ferrocrete skyward. The chunk followed a ballistic arc that eventually terminated on the roof of Chad’s new Nissan.
“My car!” Chad shouted in dismay while Liu patted him somberly on the shoulder.
Near the entrance to Skobel MechWorks, a delivery driver spotted the tail end of the catastrophe in open-mouthed astonishment. A moment later, security services drove up in an unmarked van, placed a bag over his head, yanked him inside, and then drove away. He wouldn’t be seen again for five full years.
Narration courtesy of BungleTech
The Orca is but one step of an infamous lineage that can trace itself all the way back to the Matar, better known as “Amaris’ Folly.” The first superheavy BattleMech would later be used as the basis for the Word of Blake‘s Omega superheavy ’Mech, and following Operation SCOUR and rebuilding Skobel MechWorks, the Republic of the Sphere would use the Omega as its starting point for the Orca.
To put it bluntly, the Orca was a barely mobile disaster. While the Word’s research into superheavy-compatible myomers and actuators was of great assistance to RAF engineers (as were several unfinished Omega hulls not destroyed during Terra‘s liberation), the Orca was constructed without planning or foresight. The idea, according to R&R technical advisor David McCulloch, was to “learn by doing,” an iterative process that resulted in frequent and catastrophic failure.
The first lesson came in an attempt to use standard composites to construct the Orca‘s chassis. It quickly became clear that lightweight endo steel was the only material capable of keeping the Orca‘s mass from ballooning completely out of control. Even after returning the orbital endo steel foundry to operation, the Orca still managed to weigh in at an astounding 200 tons.
That exceptional mass led to cascading problems that RAF engineers were never able to solve. The largest issue was simply pilot overload; the Orca‘s immense momentum required the pilot’s full attention at all times, leaving little brainpower to spare for combat. Weight tolerances for numerous components were also a constant issue, with techs continually swapping worn or burnt-out myomer bundles—often after a single test run.
Despite its size and frequent, earth-shattering failures at Skobel, the RAF managed to keep Project Orca mostly under wraps thanks to an ingenious disinformation campaign. Local industries knew some sort of combat machine was being built, but nobody knew what it was. Subsystems were sourced using completely fabricated names such as “GabrielTalker X Communications” and “ManSlaughterer X-Pulse Lasers,” while RAF agents planted rumors of a prototype ’Mech transported all the way from the Clan Homeworlds for study. Public acknowledgment of the Orca didn’t occur until 3103, and even then, most dismissed it as an April Fool’s Joke.
The Orca wasn’t fully revealed until 3135 thanks to documents recovered from a Republic installation on Sheratan. In truth, the Orca took its first steps back in 3091. It was easily the largest BattleMech ever built, requiring a 400 XL engine just to move at a stately 32 kph. The Orca‘s armament consisted of twin ER PPCs, a Gauss rifle, a single LRM-20 launcher, one extended range large laser, an SRM-6 launcher, and a small X-pulse laser for anti-infantry defense. The Orca also had a Sniper cannon mounted in the right arm, allowing it to operate as a sort of mobile artillery battery. However, this diverse array of weapons only further overwhelmed a pilot already struggling to maintain their footing.
Although several prototypes were built, none received operational approval, and all were soon mothballed in classified locations. This did not end the RAF’s fascination with superheavy ’Mech designs, however, with lessons learned from the Orca leading to both the Poseidon and Ares several decades later. Unlike Project Orca, the “Rhodes Project” followed a stricter development process that resulted in fully functional combat machines.
The future of superheavy ’Mechs appears uncertain. A number of former RAF superheavies now serve in the Star League Regular Army, but Clan Wolf appears to have little interest in producing these expensive weapons of war. Part of that appears to be the Clan’s emphasis on individual glory, something that’s difficult to achieve when the Ares and Poseidon both solved the Orca‘s pilot overload issue with a team of three.
Should the Clan adopt a more cooperative approach, or if it decides to continue the advancement of superheavy technology, we may yet see the Orca return from whatever grave it’s buried in.
And as always, MechWarriors: Stay Syrupy.
It’s ironic that it mounts artillery, because things this slow on a 31st or 32nd century battlefield are nothing but long Tom target practice.
3/5 is absurdly slow and what I would regard as minimum battlemech movement.
Real-life combined arms conflicts would include aerospace fighters strafing the crap out of this thing, dive bombing etc. And realistically, LRM carriers hiding behind hills as fast scouts such as LAMs / VTOLs buzz around like insects to paint the target.
In Robotech for example, the MAC 2 destroids were featured only to be shown torn to shreds by swarms of zentraedi battlepods. The wrong mecha for that conflict.
Like the 1000-ton Ratte “Landkreuzer” supertank that didn’t get past some rough sketches and specifications, just one of a long line of superweapons Germany was looking toward to turn their reversing WWII fortunes around. Assuming it was actually ever built, it would probably work exactly one time and win one battle for you, and then once the Allies became aware of it, it would be pounded apart by airstrikes and long-range artillery, because despite being powered by multiple marine diesel engines (two different versions of the power plant were proposed, either 2 or 8 marine diesel engines depending on the engine used) it moved at a sedate jogging pace.
Ooh, 1 Orca vs. the Ravannion Stinger Horde! Would it do better than an Atlas?
True, but the same could be said about Long Tom Artillery units getting hit by mechs and Aerospace fighters being downed by anti-air turrets.
This isn’t a lone mech that would ever be by itself, so long as the commander of the unit was smarter than your typical Steiner General. This would be the kind of unit that would drop artillery shells, and then reposition faster than most (which isn’t saying much) other artillery movers of similar weapon load. More importantly, this thing could defend itself if hostile forces get close, something most other Artillery can’t do. But it should never be alone. Partisan tanks, Battle Armor, potentially VTOLS/older hovers, and mid ranged units would all be assigned to guard the thing while it consistently adds its own fire power to any fight.
Just like the MAC 2, its suppose to fight from a distance and be protected. you don’t usually want your artillery and support units on the front lines.
Now, whether the resource cost is worth it, along with maintenance, is another story entirely.
“True, but the same could be said about Long Tom Artillery units getting hit by mechs and Aerospace fighters being downed by anti-air turrets.”
>>> How many Sniper Tanks could be built with the crazy resources sent to build one Orca? Warfare is mathematical calculations like this – and when you spend more on something slower than everything else, then it’s more vulnerable to things like aerospace fighters and artillery. THe enemy does not have to spend as many resources to remove your side’s artillery ability. If you had more than one Sniper Tank then you can lose some and still shoot back. The Orca is a white whale and it’s not worth defending – but because of its gigantic cost it would have to be.
The Orca COULD have it’s uses: it could easily sit back in the rear and just lob long-range artillery and such at distant targets, and still have enough mobility to get around when required to, ideal for “shoot-n-scoot” tactics, and defending vital assets by standing there and giving as good as it gets from other opponents, like the Annihilator does! It DOES look formidable in appearance, but the thing barely MOVES! And in practical terms, just how BIG does a Mech need to be, even a superheavy one? Most of them have to have three legs just to STAND! Martians from “The War of the Worlds” and The Masters from the BBC series “The Tripods” notwithstanding, just HOW do you control a tripod Mech?
The Problem with the Orca is cost. For the price of one Orca, you could probably field a battery of 30+ Sniper Artillery vehicles.
It features 44 tons of non-artillery weaponry, pluse ammo, and 9 DHS, which an Annihilator can match, at a fraction of the cost of an Orca.
So even if you could get the bugs out of the system, why would you want to field such a white elephant? I think for the price of one Orca, which MegaMekLab places at the price, without ammo, of 97.6 Million C-Bills, you could buy 2 Direwolf A and a company of 12 sniper Artillery vehicles with a bit of money left over. Both the Artillery and the Direwolfs could outmaneuver the Orca without trying.
Awhile back, I played a game in TT with a person in my gaming group who fielded an Ares in his lance. Even using the rules for oversized units, which effectively gave it a base TMM of -1 it was basically still the biggest threat on the table. I did go on to win the match, but I had still lost over half my force in the process.
If I learned anything, from that game, it’s that a superheavy mech is a very effective Distraction Carnifex: It didn’t really score any kills by itself, but it did force me to focus on taking it down, so the rest of his lance was able to get a few free rounds where they weren’t being shot at. We pretty much agreed that If not for a lucky thru armor crit on the Ares that wrecked it’s Fire Control, I probably would have lost, as it was literally the last mech to go down, and the only reason I could focus on the rest of the lance was due to the fact that it really couldn’t hit anything at range after that crit.
I could only imagine what kind of nightmare an Orca would be to face if movement wasn’t it’s own greatest enemy.
>I could only imagine what kind of nightmare an Orca would be to face if movement wasn’t it’s own greatest >enemy.
Have you ever tried fighting using a full-sized artillery cannon as your main gun? Those things are meant to fire from 3+ mapsheets away. If you’re in onboard range, you risk hitting your own side’s units nearly as often as the OpFor’s once the battle spreads out. (Trust me, I’ve had this experience.) The Orca isn’t just it’s own worst enemy if it moves at all, it can quickly become its own side’s worst enemy too! And if you try to use it as an artillery piece, its very low speed makes it highly vulnerable to counter-battery fire.
At least it has a decent selection of guns to shoot back with at any opponent that gets into onboard range.
Hmm…an April Fools’ joke that ended up getting canonized. I think there are still more viable Bad ‘Mechs left to profile…
At least it makes some sense as a boondoggle, showing the limits of the bipedal ‘Mech platform and the reason why they needed to develop tripod ‘Mechs.
And visually, the canon version looks more like something the SharkFoxes would come up with, rather than the Wolverines. Kind of a big, bulked-out Huntsman with that dorsal fin.
As I noted previously, it’s really too slow to be an effective artillery piece if the other side has arty also. In this respect, the Orca is like a drastically oversized Helepolis, albeit one much better able to defend itself against enemies that close to onboard range.
Many years ago now, I did the “Mech of the Week writeup for the Helepolis on the official board, and my advice for the Orca would be the same: replace that Sniper cannon with an Improved Heavy Gauss Rifle.
Although, if you’re playing with the Orca’s piloting Quirks in effect, that might not work out so well–unless you consider the Orca massive enough to ignore the iHGR’s recoil.
Does anybody here have the full stats for the Matar? I can’t find it in my version of MegaMek.
Well, I already got it going in MegaMek. I couldn’t find a file for the Matar, so I went with the next most obvious opponent: the Omega.
To make things a bit more fun, I tried to simulate the Orca’s wonky piloting by starting it off with a gyro hit. Because of the range of its Sniper cannon, I expanded the map to a 2 x 2 (32 x 34 hexes), set up as:
Rolling Hills 1 Rolling Hills 2
Rolling Hills 4 Rolling Hills 3
However, it seems I have to tweak the settings a bit more, as the Orca didn’t even try to fire the Sniper once.
For the first test match, which lasted 9 turns (they didn’t even start firing until turn 4), the Omega won, but only because the Orca fell and crushed its own head. One nice thing about the Orca is it can actually survive taking a Gauss slug to the head (a 20-point hit would’ve done it in though), but that left it extremely vulnerable to any further damage there, which is what happened. Even without using its Sniper, the Orca managed to get one ammo explosion (LB-X ammo) and blow one of the Omega’s Gausses–CASE II is awesome. The Orca is just as vulnerable to TACs as any other ‘Mech though, and took an engine hit on a TAC from an LB-X cluster attack.
Once I figure out how to get the Orca firing its Sniper, this should be a lot of fun.
Anyone else notice the nod to Tex’s Steiner Scout Squad in the into story?
Well, at least Orca with its 200 tons of weight have one crucial advantage – it’s IMMUNE to all EMP weapons and effects.
I did like the story of one engineer’s plight about being a working parent, the other losing his car to the Orca, but most disturbingly, the deliver driver who saw TOO much and got yanked away for FIVE years! There are a lot of things to the story that are very familiar to the modern-day; Skobel MechWorks version of Area 51, for instance: YOU see something there you’re not supposed to see, and you just disappear!
Hi Sean, I think there’s a typo: Sniper Canon –> Sniper Cannon
Fixed!
The weapons manufacturers of the Inner Sphere, no matter what era, take their security very VERY seriously!!!
Just need to say that the artwork here is referencing one of the all time great bad movies. Seeing Richard Harris attacking a superheavy mech is something I didn’t know I needed.
*Sigh of relief*
Somebody finally gets the reference.
I had no idea, but after seeing these comments I had to look it up. This makes the artwork here even better. :-D That’s great, if anyone is interested you can see it in the wiki here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_(1977_film)
Where’s Bo Derek? She was in this bomb too!
You guys mentioned the MAC II from Robotech; true, the design isn’t very fast and mobile, but it more than makes up for it in size and firepower! I would hate being on the business end of one of these thing’s salvos!
The website solaris7.com made up a whole bunch of Assault Mechs based on this; one of the names for one of the designs, was, aptly, GAUSSZILLA!!! The MAC II would DEFINITELY qualify as a superheavy Mech, even though it has just two legs instead of three!
Interestingly the MAC II is the only RDF destroid that did not end up as a battlemech. The Spartan became the Longbow, the Excalibur became the iconic Warhammer, the Zentraedi officer pod became the Marauder, the Raider X became the Rifleman, the Gladiator became the Archer (close combat specialist became LRM boat!?), and legend has it that the Zentraedi Battlepods became the Ostroc / Ostsol (though I don’t really see it). And of course the 4 or 5 Veritechs.
Maybe someone could work in the REF mecha, or the Southern Cross? Where’s the LAM VTOL (Ajax) or the tank to mech transformer (tank)?
The Southern Cross non-transformable mecha ASC Battloids with partial wings would look good in FWL purple…
Interesting , the Destroids must have had different names in different parts of the world . I know them as Spartan / Archer , Tomahawk / Warhammer , Defender / Rifleman , and Phalanx / Longbow . Also , I know the MAC II as the Monster . . .
The difference is though that robotech mecha are a lot lighter. Most of the destroids are in the 20-40 ton range, except the monster which is around 100 tons. The are also of course much more agile.
And I have now read that ironically , in Macross , the Spartan / Archer was a close combat specialist , which is why it has proper arms and hands , but in BattleTech , it’s a long range missile boat . . .
True, the MAC II/Monster’s image wasn’t directly borrowed like the others were, but the Stone Rhino/Behemoth is widely considered the closest Battletech homage (at least visually) to that Macross/Robotech Destroid. Once they started giving the TRO:3055 Clan ‘Mechs chassis names, they even designated the Stone Rhino’s chassis as “Star League Monster”. And the redesigned image is closer to the MAC II than the original TRO:3055 illustration. Also, the influence is obvious in the Matar (though that’s a retcon) and the Omega, the latter of which is probably the closest thing in BT to what the MAC II is supposed to be.
The Ost twins were modeled on, but definitely not direct copies of, the Zentraedi battlepods, and the resemblance was deemed close enough that they were made Unseen. The near-apocryphal Ostroc Mk II, however, was indeed a somewhat modified battlepod.
>>Where’s the LAM VTOL (Ajax) or the tank to mech transformer (tank)?
Don’t know about the LAM VTOL, but QuadVees are the closest BT equivalent to the latter…
One Southern Cross VF I would like to see adapted is the VF-8 Logan! It’s tiny, but it can go where other VFs/LAMs can’t, and it’s agile to boot! I even like the color, go figure!
The Logan featured two strong energy weapons, a gun cluster in the nose 1D6x10 and the standard battloid 1D4x10 pistol according to sembieda. Let’s call those a medium x-pulse laser and a light PPC respectively. Guardian and battloid are the same for this guy, though the cockpit looks vulnerable. 40 tons, 5/8/5, partial wing, 8 tons armor LAM.
So I’ve been tooling around with the Orca in MegaMek, and yeah, it kind of sucks.
1) I assume you all know the saying about how hard you fall the bigger you are. This thing takes 20 points of damage whenever it falls, for whatever reason. Once that starts happening, all that armour doesn’t last as long as you’d think. You need to keep this in mind if you want to implement the Orca’s piloting difficulties.
2) The Orca is just as vulnerable to headshots and TACs as any other ‘Mech. I feel like the head armour and structure didn’t scale with the rest of the chassis, because it’s still surprisingly easy to decapitate. It’s also surprisingly vulnerable to cluster shot.
3) The Orca just seems undergunned somehow compared to the Omega. It consistently loses to the Omega in head-to-head fights. It seems to me that the Omega has a more focused firing profile (first punch the holes, then use the sandpaper), whereas the Orca is just a grab bag of big guns with more variable ranges, but less overall crit-seeking ability.
4) The OC-1X is also undercut by the fact that its weapons are all IS tech. The Omega’s weapons may also be IS tech and weight-inefficient, but at least they do as much damage as their Clan counterparts and work the same way. The Orca’s IS ER PPCs have range, but lack the oomph you would expect on the biggest ‘Mech ever built. Its LRMs are plagued by min range. And I should have paid more attention to the artillery gun–it is in fact a Sniper *cannon*, not a Sniper *piece* (as found on the Helepolis), so my initial idea of replacing it with an iHGR wouldn’t work without sacrificing something else.
On another note, I still haven’t figured out how to overcome the bot’s aversion to firing the the Sniper cannon; I asked on the official forum and will hopefully get an answer soon. In the meantime I’ve taken to controlling the Orca myself(!), and also came up with a variant where I replaced the Sniper and its ammo with an IS LB-20X and 4 tons of ammo (2 slug, 2 cluster). The bot will fire all the guns here, but it hasn’t done any better than the canon version.
Craig: nice conversion to Battletech stats for the VF-8 Logan, but it only has TWO modes, fighter and guardian, but no battloid! The guardian mode of the Logan is ALSO the battloid mode of the Logan! Go figure, but it would still be fun to play it! I know there are Robotech miniatures out there as well as Gundam miniatures: has anybody seen Logan miniatures, fighter and guardian, anywhere?
Maybe the Orca doesn’t fire it’s Sniper cannon because a weapon of THAT size would have one h*ll of a recoil kick to it! Every seen artillery fire? And look at Battleship guns from World Wars 1 & 2! Look at the recoil on those weapons and they’re (usually) stationary but on a HUGE, (barely) mobile (stable?) three-legged superheavy Mech like the Orca, the kick would the make the Orca fall down, go BOOM!
I would love to see the mecha in Genesis Climber Mospeada/Robotech New Generation get into Battletech in one form or another: the Alpha Fighter did get into Battletech as the Hornet mech/LAM; no relation to the OTHER Hornet mech of the same name! I want to create for Battletech, ideal for the ilClan timeline, using the rules of both Battletech and Aerotech, get this, AEROSPACE BATTLEMECHS! Operating in space and atmosphere as well as ground: LAMs were the first to do this, but I think it could be done better, because Battletech, like a fine wine, has improved with age!
LAMs are considered dezgra. So no LAMsin the Ilclan era.