Lancer LNC-60A

Mass: 60 tons
Chassis Configuration: Biped
Power Plant: TriStar 300 XL
Cruising Speed: 54 kph
Maximum Speed: 86.4 kph
Jump Jets: 5 (150m)
Armor: StarGuard Standard
Armament:
     2 ER PPC
     3 Medium Laser
Manufacturer: TriStar Interstellar
     Primary Factory: Memphis
Communication System:
Targeting & Tracking System:
Introduction Year: 3055
Tech Rating/Availability: Inner Sphere
Cost: 12.16 million C-bills

Overview
The Lancer is the machine that proves Memphis Motive Works grew up. For two centuries the MMW catalog was a museum of other people's ideas made March-practical: the Mongoose inherited from a dead manufacturer, the Thunderbolt II revived from a Star League archive, the Battleaxe II built on a borrowed Victor frame and cheerfully admitted to be an Awesome with a Memphis accent. Every one excellent; not one new. Laid down clean in 3055 as the recovered technologies matured and the Clan threat sharpened the question, the Lancer is the first design in the company's history that owes nothing to any machine before it -- no revived pattern, no orphaned classic, no rival's shape reworked, not even a marketing nod to a heritage hull. It is the March's coming-of-age in metal.

Capabilities
The mission was the Marauder's shadow. The MAD-10T gave the March a 300-XL command 'Mech fast enough to run with Clan heavies; what it lacked was a screen to keep pace. The Lancer is that screen: on the StarHeart 300 XL it makes better than 85 kph and jumps 150 meters, matching the Marauder stride for stride and outrunning most of what the Clans field above medium weight. Its argument is a pair of Improved Magna ER PPCs -- a twin-bolt volley that holds a heavy at arm's length -- backed by three B3M lasers for anything that closes anyway, and cooled by a lavish seventeen double heat sinks that let it throw both PPCs turn after turn. It does not brawl and does not need to: it finds the enemy heavy, makes it cautious, and keeps it that way until the Marauder arrives to end the conversation.

Deployment
Lancers screen the March's 300-XL assault lances -- the '300 lance' to the Mongoose-and-Thunderbolt '240 lance' -- pairing with Marauders in the Memphis Battalion and the Clan-facing 21st Morven Grenadiers and 33rd Broken Wheel Cavalry, where speed and reach matter more than staying power. As the advanced tier's designated cavalry, it is the machine the 33rd requests by name for the Dominion reaction role.

History
The Lancer is a clean sheet, and MMW is quietly, enormously proud of it -- which makes the one thing everybody notices all the more delicate. It is a fast, jump-capable, twin-PPC sixty-tonner, and there is exactly one famous 'Mech that silhouette calls to mind: the Psychedelic Smoo Baby, the outrageously-painted, heavily-modified Warhammer a young mercenary named Tennessee Starr campaigned through the Solaris VII games before he came home and raised the Guards. MMW maintains, with a steadiness that has survived every trade-show heckler since 3055, that the resemblance is entirely coincidental. Everyone at the company knows better, everyone will tell you the coincidence is real, and both are true in the way only a TriStar tradition can be. Asked to choose between sweetest accident in the catalog and most sentimental in-joke, the company declines, which is itself the answer. The lead designer's only recorded comment, to a reporter who pushed the point at the unveiling: 'The Warhammer is a very good design. So is this. Draw your own conclusions. We've drawn ours.'

Type: Lancer
Technology Base: Inner Sphere
Tonnage: 60

LNC-60A - 12.16 million C-bills - 17 Double Heat Sinks - ↓ Lancer LNC-60A.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
ER PPC	Right Arm	3	7
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1
ER PPC	Left Arm	3	7