Tex Talks Battle Tech Episode XD: The Diamondback Tank, the Alacorn that you can't outrun.
Alright class, today's topic is something rather simple: The Terrans' solution to their own bullshit. Because when you live in a world with Crucio siege tanks and Thor superheavy mechs, you need something to deal with them if they show up where you really don't want them. That something is the Diamondback, the Terran's answer to the Alacorn.
Chapter 0: The Star League and its Royal Divisions
"By Order of the First Lord, it is decreed that the Battlemech known as the General Motors Marauder (MAD) is hereby restricted to the sole ownership and operation of the Star League Defense Force - Royal Divisions. This restriction hereby applies to ALL individuals, organizations, and armed forces. Any and all Marauders found outside the possession of the SLDF-Royal Divisions are to be seized immediately and their owners, operators, and any accomplices to be captured and interrogated. By Order of the First Lord."
-SLDF Directive #RC-1124-12 released to all SLDF Garrisons upon acceptance of the Marauder into Service.
To preface this lecture, I want to remind people that the Star League, from its onset, had a policy of reserving its most advanced and powerful technology exclusively for the Royal Divisions of the SLDF, and nobody else. These men and women of these Royal Divisions were made up exclusively of units drawn from the Terran Hegemony, with not a single trooper, technician, pilot, or mechwarrior born and raised outside of the Hegemony for at least two Generations.
Under most circumstances, this isn't something that the Great Houses would have agreed to, seeing as it meant the SLDF having more power than their own Forces. But much like the SLDF itself, it was a move that was only accepted by a combination of Hegemony Diplomacy, and the promise that once the Star League released any reserved technologies, all of the other Great Houses would receive them simultaneously. Much like the Star League itself, it was accepted as it was power not in the hands of their enemy.
The technologies, such as Double Heat Sinks, Extended Range Lasers and Particle Projector Cannons, and Ferro-Fibrous armor were significant upgrades over their base counterparts, allowing the Royal Divisions to outgun virtually any opponent they faced. This exclusivity was not restricted to just weapons systems and other technologies, with mechs such as the venerable Marauder and the mythical Atlas-II being restricted as well. It was only in the Fall of the Star League, that many of these technologies and mechs would find their way into the hands of the Great Houses.
The Star League wasn't just happy with enhancing existing systems though, or purchasing exclusivity for their Royal Divisions. They wanted the best of the best, and pushed the envelope and the Hegemony industry to develop new technologies. Enter, the Gauss Rifle.
Chapter 1: The Universal Appeal of Big Guns and the Star League
"Stop putting holes in my mech, you floating fucks!"
-Intercepted transmission from Atlas pilot during the battle of *REDACTED*
The Gauss Rifle is arguably the pinnacle of Inner Sphere weapons technology, or at the very least ballistic weaponry. LosTech for many years, the simple effectiveness of the weapon has kept it relevant for centuries since its introduction in 2590. It is, after all, hard to improve on hitting your enemy with a chunk of metal that is moving very, very, very fast.
The concept behind the Gauss rifle is very old, dating back to pre-space flight Terra; it being the simple concept of using electromagnetism to accelerate a projectile. The concept was toyed with for centuries since the original proof-of-concept prototype in the twentieth century, but it was not until the Star League that they started seeing the terrestrial battlefield.
Now I can hear a few of you wondering just what was it that made a Gauss rifle so special that the SLDF restricted it to the Royal Divisions? You mean aside the fact it hits almost as far as an Extended Range Particle Projection Cannon, and with enough force to one-shot a light mech? Well yes, there is something that made the Gauss rifle so special that even at the height of the Star League, it was guarded carefully.
All Inner Sphere Gauss Rifles are something known as a coil gun; using a series of magnetic coils wrapped around a barrel to accelerate a big chunk of metal down said barrel at very high speeds. Just how big? The Hegemony standardized the caliber for all Gauss rifles back when it was still around, and they decided a watermelon-shaped 30cm Ferro-nickel was the best choice. And if you didn't have any ammo? Well if you weren't concerned about damaging it, you could even muzzle-load the thing with anything roughly the right size and sufficiently ferrous.
Unlike most weapons, the Gauss Rifle is capable of actually penetrating modern armor, whether it be Standard or Ferro-Fibrous, instead of merely ablating it away. A feat that was unheard of up to that point, and was exclusive to the Gauss rifle. Tactically speaking, it meant a mech equipped with a gauss rifle could potentially one-shot any mech at range, without requiring a headshot. There was no guarantee for penetrating the armor, but the mere possibility meant that whenever someone was staring down the barrel of one of these cannons, they had good reason to start reconsidering their recent decisions.
But Tex, this thing sounds absolutely fantastic and better than any autocannon. Why wasn't it everywhere? Well, sit down and I'll explain. The Gauss rifle, for all its power, is complex, expensive, and the capacitors in it are prone to blowing up in spectacular fashion if it takes a hit. A single Gauss rifle costs about as much as any Class-20 autocannon and weighs even more, and considering it was consigned to the annals of history in the Succession Wars, that should tell you just how complicated it is. It should come as no surprise then that the Terrans with their advanced technology and occasional outright space magic would have their own version. Their technology went in a somewhat different direction than ours, however.
Going back in time again, at the same time the concept of the coil gun was developed, there was a counterpart concept, the rail gun. On average, rail guns are simpler and cheaper than coil guns to manufacture, requiring just two magnetic rails and capacitors, but are less powerful for the same energy expended and have their own maintenance issues. For a coil gun, the biggest maintenance issues are in the capacitors and control systems, requiring the occasional spare parts and replacement. While certainly expensive, it wasn't too demanding for the Star League or the Terran Hegemony. In contrast, while a railgun was simpler to manufacture, there was the issue of barrel life. Unlike a coil gun, where the barrels and magnetic accelerator are separate parts, in a railgun, the two are one and the same. And unlike with regular autocannons or even coil-guns, a rail-gun quickly grinds down the rails with every projectile. After enough shots, the weapon becomes about as accurate as a smoothbore muzzle-loader.
From all records found, the Hegemony tried its best to resolve the issue with a variety of options to avoid having to replace the rails after every live-fire exercise. Sabots, coatings, nothing seemed to work. In the long run, rail guns would have cost the Hegemony more to use than coil guns. Even the Star League didn't have enough money to replace thousands of barrels on a daily basis. At least, that was the case for Inner Sphere rail guns. Terran rail guns, however, are a bit different. To solve the issues of the rail gun, the Inner Sphere's Terran Hegemony built a better gun. The Terrans of the Koprulu Sector, well, they decided to build a better bullet instead.
The Terrans' rail gun takes advantage of Terran plasma technology to wrap the projectile in a plasma sheath. This reduces friction to solve those pesky maintenance issues like 'grinding away the entire barrel', extending the life of the rails massively, and gives the bullet some extra kick, kind of like a PPC shot. The energized plasma results in an electrical discharge upon impact, electrocuting the mech or combat vehicle in question. The end result is a weapon with firepower comparable to the Gauss Rifle at a fraction of the weight and cost, though it does lose a bit of range in the bargain. It's also less energy efficient, but when you've got cold fusion so common it powers your beer coolers I guess that's not much of an issue. And yes, it is capable of punching clean through Standard Armor like its Inner Sphere cousin.
Brief tangent; this isn't to say the Terrans don't have coil guns of their own. Their standard issue rifle, the C-14 is a hybrid using both chemical-propellant and a coil-gun, and allegedly their big bad battlecruisers? They use gauss rifles as their point-defenses, but those two will be the subject of a future lecture.
Back to the Terran railgun, this thing has earned its reputation across the Inner Sphere, the Periphery, and even among the Clans. Everyone has learned to recognize and respect it, and with good reason. For the Diamondback tank, the main platform the Terrans mount this thing on, it carries two of these weapons in a turret, letting it fire in any direction. At two thirds of the firepower of the Alacorn, but in a package half the size, and with a lot more speed, the Diamondback is the standard light tank of the Terrans. You may not like it, but you cannot deny it: The Terrans have style.
Chapter 2: Oh Shit, They're Everywhere
"Goddammit, fall back, fall back, where- *crack* *sksh*"
"They got Johnny! Shit shit shit!"
"Where is it, it was here just a second a- *crack* AHHHH!"
"Hold still you fracking bastard!"
-Partial BattleROM recovered from a destroyed Hunchback HBK-4P
So what makes a Diamondback a Diamondback? And how does it compare to the Alacorn? Well let's first cover the Alacorn, more specifically the Mark VI. The Alacorn started service with the Terran Hegemony, later being incorporated into the Star League, starting with the Mark I in 2561. In 2587, the New Earth Trading Company unveiled the Alacorn Mark VI, one of the first combat vehicles armed with the new Gauss Rifles. Packing three Norse-Storm M-7D gauss rifles, powered by a Pitban 245 XL engine, and protected by thirteen tons of armor, the Alacorn was one of the most feared tanks throughout the entire Sphere. When it was in service, the Alacorn could reasonably challenge virtually any battlemech in existence and have a solid chance of winning. How does this compare to the Diamondback?
Well what truly makes the Diamondback the menace that is is not the firepower of the twin Eviscerator railguns in the turret that it carries around, though that certainly doesn't hurt. It's the tank underneath that turret that is the real problem. Weighing in at a mere forty tons, the Diamondback is a true hovertank, using Terran gravity technology to float. That means that unlike traditional hovercraft that use fans and skirts and air cushions to float, the Diamondback can operate in any environment it wants with no loss in speed. And speed is what this machine lives for, with a top speed of 120 kph, faster than even most light mechs. Additionally, gravitational and gyroscopic stabilization lets it fire while moving at those speeds with no loss in accuracy. The Diamondback can quite literally run rings around most opponents, all while plugging them with a constant barrage of rail gun fire.
A well commanded Diamondback unit will perform hit-and-fade attacks against an enemy, zipping in to dish out damage before pulling away again to escape retribution. This tactic, combined with the Diamondback's speed, quiet running, and low profile, has turned many lances of mechwarriors into paranoid wrecks, constantly looking for the next Diamondback ambush.
Now, you may be thinking to yourself that this is just a light vehicle with a big gun, whose only defense is speed. But you've forgotten that Terrans are bullshit, and they build things to take a hit. A Diamondback's entire hull is built from a single piece of molded military-grade neosteel, which lets it shrug off far more damage than most forty ton vehicles while still shooting back. The single body construction means it has very few weak points to target, owing to the lack of welds or rivets. The end result? You can't outrun it, you can't outgun it, and without some fairly serious firepower of your own, you can't kill it either.
Chapter 3: What Psychopath Designed These?
"I don't know where it came from, I don't know where it went, I just hope that it never comes back."
-Statement taken from a Marauder pilot after an encounter with a Diamondback
The origins of the Diamondback are somewhat... murky. What is known is that they were originally designed by the Terran Confederacy during the Great War. Whether they were intended to fight the Protoss, the Zerg, or other Terrans isn't clear. What is clear is that they were effective enough against all three that the Dominion saw fit to keep them around long enough for the Raiders to get their hands on them. Which they then promptly used to blow up and rob some trains, if the story is to be believed. I guess Terrans aren't entirely above collecting salvage after all.
After seeing just how powerful it was by having their asses handed to them by the Raiders, Dominion would continue to use the Diamondback throughout the Second Great War, its rail guns putting in solid work against any armored opponent that couldn't get out of the way fast enough. Which, considering the Diamondback's speed, is most of them. At least as far as the Raider's records go before they accidentally ended up in our neck of the woods.
The Raiders, meanwhile, did what the Raiders have always done, taking the best from their enemies and combining them to make them better. In this case, they decided that plain old neosteel just wasn't good enough, and augmented it with something called Regenerative Bio-Steel. Most of the Raiders' units are made with this stuff, actually, but it's the Diamondback that benefits the most from it. As the name implies, Regenerative Bio-Steel is self-repairing armor. On lighter units, there usually isn't enough armor for it to make much difference. On heavier units, they tend to get stuck in, so it only has a chance to do its work after the fight is over. But Diamondbacks are armored enough and fast enough for it to matter. They can take a solid hit, disengage, let their armor regenerate, and then come zooming back in for round two.
The Terrans being magic space wizards, it doesn't end there. Like everything else, from their infantry to their warships, they all have a nice shiny layer of Vanadium plating. I'll go into more detail in a future lecture, but for now I'll just leave you with this: it's the kevlar of metals, diffusing impacts like kevlar does with regular bullets.
And the Terrans wonder why so many mech pilots view the Diamondback as something out of a horror movie.
Chapter 4: Fighting Back
"I really don't see what the mech jockeys' problem is. I love those floaty little tanks!"
-Statement taken from a Yellow Jacket pilot, shortly before he was found beaten half to death in an alley
Now, the question you must be asking yourself, is there anything that can stop the Diamondback? The answer is yes. But the answer is also "not a mech". Diamondbacks are specifically designed to destroy heavily armed and heavily armored platforms, such as mechs. Trying to fight them with mechs is exactly what they want, and in war giving your enemy what they want is never a good idea. To defeat the Diamondback, you must force it to fight something it isn't meant to handle.
If you are defending a fixed position, infantry armed with anti-tank weaponry is the most cost-effective solution to the Diamondback. The Diamondback's lack of a secondary armament means that it will be stuck attempting to kill individual soldiers with twin-linked rail guns. The Terrans are not unaware of this weakness however, and some new, experimental versions of the Diamondback now mount a small laser or a pair of C-14s in the turret to handle infantry, though at the cost of some armor. If your infantry are not up to the task, you can stiffen their resistance with field guns such as AC/10s and 20s. Artillery is typically not very effective against the Diamondback as its high speed makes it well suited for making slashing attacks against your artillery batteries and then escaping before you can strike back. Whatever your weaponry of choice, you should target the anti-gravity pylons on the sides of the Diamondback first to immobilize it so you can bring heavier firepower to bear.
Alternatively, one might opt to try unconventional tactics. One of the more common ideas is using fougasse mines. Effectively a giant buried IED wired up to a detonator, detonating it just as a Diamondback passes over it. If you're lucky, the tank briefly joins the Terran air forces. If you're unlucky, well, you just plastered that nice shiny diamondback in a whole lot of soot and dirt, and Terrans aren't known for taking cosmetic damage to their vehicles lightly.
When on offense, or in an open field battle, your weapon of choice against the Diamondback should be your air force. VTOLs and ASFs are well equipped to take on the Diamondback. The Diamondback in turn will struggle against airborne targets as its turret cannot elevate more than fifteen degrees. However, be warned that Diamondbacks frequently travel with Goliaths which can rapidly dismantle any aircraft foolish enough to come into their range. Unlike many groups I could mention, the Terrans actually understand what "combined arms" means.
If you have to fight the Diamondback using a mech, there are steps you can take to minimize just how badly you are about to get beaten. The first step is to limit the Diamondback's ability to use its speed and mobility. This means engaging in a city, or other tightly confined terrain such as a narrow canyon. Mechs with jumpjets can fire on the Diamondbacks from the tops of buildings, or use the Diamondback's own hit-and-fade tactics against it. The best mechs for this job are light mechs armed with large guns, such as the Panther or the humble Urbanmech. This will help against the Diamondback, but remember, you are still fighting against a tank with better tech than you that was specifically designed to kill your entire family of war machine. No one said this was going to be easy.
Chapter 5: Imma Get Me Some of That
"I want one, I want one, I want one, no, I want two."
-Hanse Davion after seeing the Diamondback in action
Needless to say, the Inner Sphere has attempted to replicate the Diamondback numerous times, with... limited... results. Without the Terrans' gravity technology, all efforts at creating a Diamondback equivalent have met with difficulty. Tracked vehicles simply cannot match the Diamondback's speed. Wheeled vehicles are thwarted by terrain that the Diamondback glides over with ease. Conventional hovercraft are too fragile and lack the stability to fire such heavy weapons while moving at top speed. The goal of creating a true Diamondback clone remains elusive.
The design process has yielded results for other vehicles however. Attempts to copy the Eviscerator railguns paved the way for the development of Inner Sphere copies, and rediscovering the secrets of SLDF Gauss rifles. Though these knock-offs weren't as effective as the Eviscerator, having less accuracy, reduced firepower, and considerably greater size compared to the original, they were weapons that were understood to the First Principles. Thus, these knock-offs, and facilities to manufacture them, could be built from the ground up; an absolute boon even during the recovery of LosTech in the Renaissance. By the time of the clan invasion, rail guns could be found among elite Great House units and in the hands of elite mercenaries, and serving as a nasty surprise during the Clan Invasion. Attempts to copy the plasma sheath found similar success, allowing for Inner Sphere rails to survive for at least a few battles before replacement.
As far as my research allows, it seems that the Clans have not made any effort at producing their own railguns, or at least none have been seen in the Inner Sphere thus far.
Closing Thoughts
More than any other element of the Terran arsenal, the Diamondback introduced something new to the Inner Sphere: A weapon and vehicle that not only potentially threatened the battlemech single-handedly, but seemed to have been designed from the ground-up as the ultimate battlefield predator, and the battlemech it's prey. The Diamondback was a veritable gauntlet thrown at the face of the very concept of battlemech supremacy, and it is a challenge that the battlemech has yet to be able to answer. The Diamondback's existence, among many other things unveiled and unleashed by the Terrans, forced the rediscovery of effective combined arms tactics across the Inner Sphere, started crash programs to develop counters and new technologies in response, and forced re-evaluations of existing and old technologies. It was either that, or getting your very expensive battlemechs gunned down by magnetically launched slugs.
And maybe that is to be expected. If there is one thing that the Terrans brought with them from the Koprulu Sector, it is knowledge. Deliberate or not, the Terrans are the greatest teachers the Inner Sphere has ever seen. It's just that some lessons, like the Diamondback, are more pointed than others.
Class dismissed.