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[David Bradley]

With the preview of Ilya Muromets, it seemed like a good time for us to create this Hero Mechs thread.

So, the first question most of you seem to have is, “Who is Grigori Kovalenko and why haven’t I heard of his Mech, Ilya Muromets?” The reason is that both of them are brand new creations. While the BattleTech universe and canon are vast, there actually aren’t a lot of legendary MechWarriors whose Mechs are fully statted out. And many of those Hero Mechs that do have record sheets aren’t significantly different from one of the standard variants. Therefore, going forward, Hero Mechs will be drawn from both the canon as well as our original creations. There’s even the possibility of taking a canon character, whose Mech does not have an official record sheet, and creating a loadout of our own.

As for where the name Ilya Muromets came from, it is named after the knight from medieval Slavic myths and folk tales. As with everything else in the world, you can find more information on your friendly neighbourhood Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia...i/Ilya_Muromets

The second question most of you seem to have is, “Wait, can I fit three Gauss rifles in this thing?” The short answer is, “Yes.” The longer answer is, Yes, you can do that, but you’re going to be making a lot of sacrifices.” In order to meet the tonnage requirements for three Gauss rifles, you’re going to have to severely downgrade your engine and armour. And that new engine will probably be an XL, leaving you more vulnerable. You’ll also likely want a few tons of ammo, which means a few more tons used up. Oh, there’s one other thing, it was discovered that the Gauss rifles’ internal explosions weren’t working as intended. This will be fixed in game with the same patch that makes Ilya Muromets available. When a Gauss rifle is disabled, there will be a very high chance that it will explode for 20 points of damage within the Mech.

This amounts to a Mech that may have some powerful weapons, but it will also have a number of vulnerabilities.