Part 839: Battlemechs are Awesome commercials sponsored by Defiance Industries - Longbow
It's time for the return of BattleMechs Boating and Bombarding!Featuring the LGB-7Q Longbow
A lone Commando dashes across a battlefield, lasers and autocannon shells zipping all around it as it makes a full sprint towards a waiting DropShip. "I got the recon data but they're right on my tail!" Its pilot shouts over the radio. Then suddenly, from high above it, a storm of missiles comes crashing down, completely gutting the little light mech.
"I'm not getting paid enough to die," said DropShip command, who promptly sent the Overlord DropShip blasting off skyward. Out of the smoke of the combined battle and DropShip launch, a Longbow appears, striding through the smoke to stand over the ruined Commando, its missile doors open and its fifty LRM tubes still hot from the payload it delivered unseen. The towering Assault, with no arms or hands to gesture with, made a few pelvic thrusting motions to taunt the fallen foe.
"That," DropShip Command added, "was NOT how that mission was supposed to go. One Longbow ruined our entire mission!"
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Have you ever driven an Archer and felt like those two LRM racks simply weren't enough? That's why we at StarCorps invented the Longbow. This 85-ton chassis is protected by 14.5 tons of StarCorps' own StarSlab Mk II armor, and moves at a very reasonable 54 km/h, because when you have the reach of a Longbow why would you ever need to hurry somewhere?
I'm not going to waste any more of your time talking about how the Longbow also features an industry-leading package of communications gear and targeting suite, including the O/P 3000 COMSET, the latest in a product series that you've grown to love in designs like the Warhammer, Stinger and Stuka. No, I know you're here to talk about the main draw of the Longbow, and that is the weapons suite. Each arm of a Longbow carries a Holly LRM-20 backed up by a Delta Dart 5-pack in the corresponding side torso. That's fifty long-range missiles you can throw in a single volley. Fifty! That's ten more than an Archer!
I know you're saying "wow, fifty LRMs at a time? I probably only get like two shots if I'm throwing out that many LRMs." Uh, no. You get twelve enormous salvos of missiles because we packed this thing with plenty of extra ammo. We know you're going to be doing a lot of shooting with a machine like this, so we made sure you could stay on the field. And if they do run out? You've got a pair of medium lasers in your centerline... or hey, just kick someone. Your kicks do more damage than a Gauss rifle, and everyone is terrified of those!
The next question you're probably asking is "are there any new variants of the Longbow you're prototyping?" And our answer is "probably; we're StarCorps. We run our company like we came from Shadowrun." Maybe we're building a new variant that will push the top speed to 64 km/h, or perhaps we're adding an XL engine to make room for a shitload of pulse lasers just in case people get up in your face. Who knows, maybe we've even got a version we're testing that fires laser-guided artillery missiles over the span of 10 km or more. You certainly don't know, because to do so you'd have to fight through the army of heavily-armed security that protect our top-secret research projects, and even if you somehow managed that, our Sphere-wide network of spies would probably intercept the data before it reached your superiors.
So there you have it. The Longbow. If you've ever said to yourself "I wish that we had more LRMs being shot at the enemy right now," then buy the Longbow. To know how many Longbows you need to buy, StarCorps recommends determining exactly how many LRMs you would ideally like being shot at your enemies, and dividing that number by 50.
The Longbow: better than the Archer because 50 is better than 40.