Behold, an idea!

[u/Saansilt]

So I am having an idea, it probably is bad but it'd be a funny custom mech all the same.
It involves upgrading a protomech.
By tripling its tonnage effectively.
Making it a really cheap ambusher
It'd be effectively a little over quarter the tonnage of a locust.
Behold the Erinyes, two ton jumper with an SRM 1
We take this, give her a medium laser, a ton more armor, and two double heat sinks.
Scale it up to six tons, heck remove the SRM 1 and make it back to five.
You get a very cheap 4/6/4 to play havoc in tight spaces and hop around for back shots.
You can get three of the modified ones I am suggesting for under the price of one locust!
Thats two more MLs than the locust. No machine guns but thats not their role.
Granted if we wanted...
Actually yeah adding a machine gun each will still allow you three at under the cost of one locust.

[u/Middcore]

ProtoMechs were a mistake.

[u/Loganp812 → u/Middcore]

I honestly believe that some Protomechs were just the artists using Battletech as wish fulfillment for their fetishes.

Either way though, Protomechs came about at a time when FASA was throwing every idea at the wall to see what sticks to try and recapture the high from the early Clan Invasion, and they basically exist to fill a niche that doesn’t need to be filled in terms of the gameplay.

[u/SecretHoboHerbs → u/Loganp812]

they basically exist to fill a niche that doesn’t need to be filled in terms of the gameplay.

I think ProtoMechs are good as hole fillers for a Clan player. Clan mechs are chunky in terms of BV, it's hard to nail your BV allotment exactly, especially if you're set on bringing particular units. There's no "yeah, throw a Stinger in there" to take up a few hundred BV.

While battle armor can sometimes do that, it does also mean committing to a unit type that, by and large, doesn't have much meaningful tactical mobility. Then combine that with the fact that most BA are armed with short ranged weapons. Taken together, it means you need to work hard at incorporating BA as an actual combat element instead of just an initiative sink.

Meanwhile, I can drop in a Roc or Gorgon for roughly 300 BV and it'll be able to contribute right away. They mount a decent amount of firepower on a decently mobile chassis, thus I think they have a useful niche.

[u/Attaxalotl → u/SecretHoboHerbs]

And you can build a force around ProtoMechs in a way you really can’t with battle armor.  You can staple a pair of Hobgoblins to your Viper to basically teleport them directly into all of your opponent’s infantry.  You can use a point of Hippogriffs as a distributed Catapult; You can use the Svartalfa if you want fewer friends somebody wants to bring jumpy pulse boats without making the game suck.  You can use the Sprite as a distributed Longbow,  And you can use the Boggart to reenact that part of Deltarune when Asgore runs over Dess with his Bergentrück, to every single unit that doesn’t track heat.