Early this morning I had a strange and mostly incoherent dream about a visit to a game store or some other place that sold BattleTech miniatures. One mini hanging on the display rack drew my attention because I had never seen one like it before, because I don't think it exists in the real world. So here's what I know about this new mech design, the Jester:
You can tell at first glance that the Jester was done by the people who designed the Awesome. The resemblance is as similar as the Phoenix Hawk to the Wasp. One of the key differences between the Jester and Awesome is the fact tha the Jester is only a light mech. The basic outline of the Awesome is preserved, but it is a much skinnier mech, almost with a "scarecrow" effect like the Vulcan.
The shoulder-mounted armor plates reach up significantly higher on the Jester, such that these plates could possibly protect the head from shots from either side of the mech (at least if those shots originated from an angle of about 90 degrees to the centerline of the mech). The head, while blocky like the Awesome, does not have the same "face" effect because the entire front of the head is a square slab of canopy material, as if the face was covered by a square black veil.
Both arms end in armanent, much like the right PPC-arm of the Awesome. These weapons, which are mounted just below the elbow, appear to be lasers of the same type as used on the Locust, but I couldn't tell if they were supposed to be small or medium lasers. The right torso has a weapon system that looks much like an Awesome's torso-mounted PPC, but the weapon in question is either a large laser or medium laser. It's definitely one size bigger than the arm-mounted lasers, which look puny in comparison. There's no left torso-mounted weapon. Below the right torso laser and above the hip actuators are a pair of rotary machineguns, much like on a Chameleon or Merlin. These could be either two center torso mounts, or one each in the right torso and left torso.
I got the overall impression in the dream that the Jester was an early light recon design, but not as small as 20 tons. Also, its not as fast as later light recon mechs, like maybe it is a 5/8/? mech. I couldn't tell if it had jump jets or not.
Posted by jrients
at 8:15 AM CDT