Tex Talks the OZ series: Copy Cats

==Description==
Set in the It's not a Gundam, this is a holovid (Television) seminar-class program, which is profiling in a humorist manner, the characters and machines the OZ-series of Mobile Suits. This show is a satire of the real life youtube channel, Tex and Black Pants Legion as honoring them.
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==Introduction==
If you are here then you've already either been in my OZ-series class or are part of an OZ-club. If you are the latter PLEASE do not pick fights with the Hunchbackers. The Sheriff is already busy trying to keep the Guntankers and LAM-jocks from murdering each other. Piss off the Van Zant Patrol and your on your on. Anyways.... Let's begin. Today we will be speaking about OZ Mechs, specifically their variants.
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===The Copy Cats===
Now while the greater Lyran population was trying to prove they had a larger piece of overcompensation than whoever made the Tieren, Katrina and Nondi Steiner noticed that the Ares was not a one-off LAM and that it was part of a greater line of Mechs.The OZ series much like much of the early Junker tech Steiner acquired was bought second-hand. Many worlds choosing Lyran Kroner instead of technology. While in hindsight a poor decision, slowing reconstruction and development efforts across the board, this was in a time and mindset of Lostech and scavengers. Technology. ANY technology. Was a double-edged sword. It tended to paint a target on your back for pirates, local lords, and well ... anyone who won't take no for an answer.Imitation led to adaptation. While the Davion half had the NAIS madly cackling in the middle of thunderstorms the Lyran Military-Industrial Complex saw a market in affordable Battlemechs. Relatively speaking.
 
Quikscell had a reputation for being cheap, poor quality, and skimping out on parts, manuals, or making sure that their paper thin armor wasn't ACTUALLY made of paper. Why am I talking about a Company that has branches across the Inner Sphere and beyond? Well that's because the Lyran Branch was the first one to make knockoff Leos even shoddier than the base model. Corners weren't cut. They were CHOPPED off. Their flagship combat vehicle: The Scorpion Light Tank is considered the premier budget tank. The Quikscell Leo was created to be price competitive for little good and A LOT of bad. Every branch of Quikscell followed after and every two-bit moron with spare change could try their hand at being a MechWarrior for a whole five seconds before the Fusion Engine goes off.
 
Ugh... Moving on...
 
Defiance Industries at least had better quality control. While not costing an arm and a leg every Leo, Aries, and Tragos they made still costed just below a light due to the extra armor and redundancies to keep them in the fight longer. They all comfortable weighed in as Medium-class mechs; a reminder that the originals were Ultralights. Not the most popular Lyran variants out there. That's because while they were busy trying to make Superheavies they never tried to seriously market their Mobile Suits.
 
No that honor would go to Coventry Metal Works. Trying to sell Light Mechs to Lyrans is an easy way to get high blood pressure. Fortunately they managed to make it work. Commandos have remained their bread-n-butter past, present, and future. To keep with the times they have done something that had increasingly become common: Substituting Lostech with OZ parts.
Mechs like the Spider, tanks like the Schrek and Alacorn, and so and so forth were increasingly rare due to the fact that the factories that made them and the factories that also made said parts got nuked or worse in the first two Succession Wars. Jury-rigging wasn't an act of desperation it was par the course for any competent Mechtech. The sheer amount of used second-hand OZ parts and duplicates meant that OZ parts became a de facto maintenance standard. Coventry was the first to make it 'official' marketing cheap 'Lo-Grade' OZ-derived parts and 'Hi-Grade' better quality parts for all their Mechs with the COM-Leo variant Commando becoming known for it's reduced logistical foot print and ease of maintenance.
====The Mariks Touch====
Across the border the Free Worlds League was undergoing a change, courtesy of Janos Marik. The Old Eagle had built his powerbase irrespective of Parliament. Rather than wrestle with the bureaucracy and political infighting much of his work was done in-house so to speak.
 
Fate would have it that his adopted daughter and the Exarch hit it off. There whole lovestory is the fodder of plenty of romance Holovids but I'll stick to the effects of the two lovebirds: mainly the fact that the Junker-Atreus alliance was joined at the hip. Possibly in the Canopus sense. And no, there was no love triangle with Natasha Kerensky, or threesome, in this class we deal with objective fact and not pop culture ramblings.
 
But I digress... the Mariks made their own OZ machines. With their relationship with the Junkers and the skills of both Secelia Dote-Marik and Thomas Marik the Burion Design House was formerly incorporated. While known for their Demi-series they also produced the highest quality OZ-mechs outside of the NAIS and Junkers for both the military and civilian market. While there are many companies who produce OZ tech, especially in the league, Burion has maintained their preeminence to the chagrin of their rivals in and outside the Free Worlds.
 
As time wore on it became obvious that the Free Worlds League was breaking away from the Kapetyn Accords and also the rat race for First Lord. But while one nation left it, another joined.
====The Numbers Game====
Taurians don't like Davion. And Thomas Calderon was a god damn walking stereotype at times and got worked up over whatever Hanse was doing or not doing at any given point. The Capellans roped them into an an alliance, surrounding the Davion half of the Federated Commonwealth on three sides.
 
Vandenburg Mechanized Industries being the face of Taurian military hardware was quick to capitalize on OZ versatility, simplifying the chassis to allow any of their OZ-VMI Mechs to be quickly refitted between a Leo, Aries, or Tragos in the field without a dedicated mech bay. Later chassis versions would extend that interchangeability to the Pisces and even the Mercurius and Vayeate. The only Mechs it couldn't be converted into were the Cancer and Taurus due to the incompatible body shape for the chassis and the Tall geese due to the high stress on the frame, so much so that the prototype tore itself apart.
 
VMI models like so many other variants quickly found their place on dozens of worlds to augment both the industry and the defenses of each planet. Just like the Mackie there was a scramble for Oz Mechs. And just like WarShips if you had more than your neighbor then you were the stronger one.
 
Whole Regiments could be raised overnight at a tenth the cost on all sides.
 
Ceres Metals may not have been Quikscell but Mad Max was short on Mechs and Mobile Suits made do. They produced en mass and while not Quikscell cheap they were budget fighting machines to fill in gaps in the Capellan defenses.
 
Hanse Davion meanwhile assembled multiple Regimental Combat Teams made out of OZ Mechs and Junkertech to defend the FedSun borders. And he would need it. FedSuns manufacturers like Achernar Battlemechs and General Motors produced designs similar in form and function similar to what VMI and Coventry did at the AFFS' request. Corean Enterprises led the charge with the VLK-MS Valkyrie variant, the Davion's answer to the COM-Leo; NAIS turned the flagship Light of the AFFS into a Mobile Suits using the hover and flight systems of the Tragos and Aries to a speed freak. Even as the demands of the Fourth Succession War made the AFFS and prioritize GM production the VLK-MS would fight on every Frontline. They would meet their match battling against Jenner and Panthers also upgraded to Mobile Suit grade.
 
Oh right. I forgot about the snakes.
====Banzai Charge 2: Electric Boogaloo====
The Jenner MS and Panther MS need no introduction. Luthien Armor Works and Alshain Enterprises both upgraded their titular designs to make them even faster, more agile, and capable of getting into melee. In fact it was the Exarch's display in the Marian War that made them go whole hog on melee combat. Including Chargers. ESPECIALLY Chargers. Physical Swords and when they had the tech: Mech Vibro-swords and Beam Sabers all because they chased after glory.
 
As for 'pure' OZ Mechs? Well let me put it this way: You have a society so hopped up on fighting and dying gloriously and where a MechWarrior was held in an even higher prestige than the rest of the Sphere combined. Then you hand out Mechs like candy. What you got was hordes of screaming nutjobs falling over each other trying to claw at your face. Every world had a factory with plenty of aspiring Samurai now given the chance to show how even more fanatical they are. Tai-i Mercer Ravannion who died two years before the Junker-Marian war championed wave tactics using Light Mechs. It didn't work. As it turns out Battlemechs were hard to come by back then. Now they weren't. While Mobile Dolls were the face of OZ-lance hordes the DMCS Banzai Charges had the 'benefit' of thinking, breathing men in the seats. Even bloodthirsty the Combine could conduct small-unit tactics unlike the puppet swarm intelligence that the Niops designed.
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===Conclusion===
The OZ-series I think is an expert example of the effects of proliferation. Guns, tanks, nukes, Mechs. Everyone tries to get their own shiny new weapons and everyone tries to make it different just to give it an edge over the competition.
 
As you may have noticed I haven't covered any civilian models. It is not just because it is out of scope for a course on the study of war.
 
There are Heavylift and Search-and-Rescue Aries, General-purpose Industrialmech Leos, Tragos All-terrain cargo haulers that could do last-mile work and load/unload their own crates. Even the Mercurius and Vayeate would find use, the former responsible for holding back floods and fires and the latter used in precision PPC mining.
 
Military innovation goes hand in hand with Civilian innovation. For good and bad both are linked. Ask anyone in IT how computers or the Internet came to be.
 
Paraphrasing Nina Keith, MechWarrior of The Gundam: I believe that it can do more good than bad.
 
And I hope that stays the case.
--Class dismissed--
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Tex Talks the OZ series Copy Cats (It's Not a Gundam)
The Oz Copy Cats
Tex Talks the OZ seriesCopy Cats (It's Not a Gundam)