Gallant

Description
First appearing as an ad-hoc and incomplete design during the last days of the Word of Blake's defense of Terra, the Gallant was a broken-terrain cavalry BattleMech utilizing Improved Jump Jets in common use among the Republic Armed Forces, Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces and Armed Forces of the Federated Suns.

One of the many haphazard prototype 'Mech designs the increasingly desperate Blakists threw into battle against Stone's Coalition, the Coalition's capture of the design specs and Skobel's partial production line at Moscow for the Gallant allowed them to refine and fully develop the design to help fill the desperate need for BattleMechs after the Jihad. After the formation of the Republic of the Sphere, the Gallants design specification were also exported to the Lyran Commonwealth and Federated Suns as a token of thanks for worlds that were given to help form the Republic.

Built using an XL Fusion Engine to devote weight to weapons rather than speed, for the Gallant's envisioned cavalry role it was equipped with five Waterly Heavy Lifter Improved Jump Jets to more easily handle mountainous and urban terrain. Mounting thirteen tons of standard Pribak 9000 plating and equipped with fourteen Double Heat Sinks, the Gallant boasted respectable field endurance.

Weapons and Equipment
Originally conceived with a different weapons array, the prototype Gallant's weapon package was reworked at the eleventh hour to enhance its effectiveness against combined-arms formations and was retained when it entered full production. Principally armed with two Tronel XIII Large Pulse Lasers mounted in place of its right arm actuator, the Gallant also carried a large Skobel Drotnik MRM-20 launcher in its left torso supported by an ammo efficient Hovertec Streak SRM-2 rack in its right, each launcher allotted a single ton of ammunition placed in their respective side torso location. A head mounted Zippo Flamer rounded out its weaponry.

Variants

 * Prototype : Prior to being reworked to combat Devlin Stone's forces, the Gallant was originally armed with a fairly standard array of energy and missile weapons.


 * GLT-8-0 : An experimental reworking of the Gallants original weapons array developed by Federated Suns, this variant featured a pair of Thunderbolt 10 Launchers in place of the Large Pulse Lasers. The 'Mech's secondary weapon systems were exchanged for four Medium X-Pulse Lasers. CASE was added to protect the ammunition for the Thunderbolt Launchers . BV (2.0) = 1,666


 * GLT-10-0 : This Dark Age variant of the Gallant developed in Introduction Year::3130 removes the standard weaponry and replaces it with a pair of Large Re-engineered Lasers in the right arm. These are supported by a single Artemis IV-enhanced MML-7. The Flamer remains in the head, but to gather information about the battlefield, this Gallant carries a Remote Sensor Dispenser on the rear of the right torso. It has eleven double heat sinks, but all other performance parameters match the original Gallant. BV (2.0) = 1,495