Tex Talks the OZ series (It's Not a Gundam)

==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==
When we talk about eras we usually mean things like the Age of War, The Star League, The Succession Wars, The Clan Invasion. But today we are talking about Battlemech Generations. You had the 1st Generation starting with the Mackie. You also had what we call the 'Introtech' generation of Battlemechs and then the Post-Helm era. For this class, we will be talking about the start of the Mobile Suit-era of Battlemechs. Today ... we are talking about the OZ-series.
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===The Road to Oz===
Our story starts with an end: The Last Days of the Marian Hegemony.
====The Ares====
One day our least-favorite Romans decided to raid planet Junker. They got their asses handed to them by the Exarch, Future First Lord of the Second Star League. We've talked about his mech: The Tieren that he used for most of the Junker-Marian War. Its impact on Battlemech development is well known but we need to look at his second mech: The Aries.
 
First seen leading the Junker Counterattack it was in many ways the first instance of a Viable LAM. Land-Air Mechs were machines that were Battlemechs that could transform into ASFs with very obvious technical and performance issues.
 
The OZ-07 AMS Aries skirted around that by not transforming at all. It is essentially a lightweight VTOL with limbs.
In the skies over a Pirate Base, The Exarch fought against a swarm of ASFs and conventional aircraft in what was known as 'The King's Dance'. Active Mass Balance Auto-Control (AMBAC), basically mech acrobatics that used weight and momentum to maneuver, was showcased.
 
SAFE agents embedded within the Hegemony got hold of the ROMs ... and as you know with SAFE the recordings got leaked. It went viral and this was before Arianrhod gave us interstellar internet. It was what got the attention of the Inner Sphere as they watched the Junker-coalition march to Alphard.
 
While the Exarch would go back to piloting the Tieren. One former Marian Slave would rise to prominence piloting the Aries: Mashymre Cello, The Rose Knight.
Part Mechwarrior, Part Aerojock. He was at home in the Aries, battling alongside The Exarch as his right-hand man with an aggressive, some say suicidally reckless fighting style. His legacy lives on in Battlemech Combat Schools which study his books on Mobile Suit tactics.
 
When Alphard finally fell and Marius O'Reilly died of SRMs, the Junkers were at a crossroads. They could just simply leave and return to their homes ... or make something better in their parts of the Periphery.
 
They and their allies got together hashing out deals over trade, mutual defense, travel, and basic shared laws. But behind THAT was it's driving force: The Junker Guild who would help promote reconstruction, economic growth, and technological advances. They would also form the military backbone, their forces would help local militias fight off pirates and the ambitions of the great houses. First with what we would call 'Classic Battlemechs', and then with the Aries ... and the rest of its family.
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===Meet the Family===
The Aries was not produced in a vacuum.
 
It and its siblings' 'Mackie' was the OZ-00MS Tallgeese.
====Tallgeese and Leo====
Its performance was so high as to be uncontrollable and dangerous even for Trueborn ASF Pilots who were explicitly genetically engineered with high reflexes and resistance to high G-forces. For that reason, it is not produced or employed en masse. It is liable to bring down a whole Regiment .... and turn your insides into a red pulp in the meantime. Even the Exarch shied away from this beast.
 
The Tallgeese was in a sense watered down when Exarch's backers produced it's descendant mechs. The OZ-06MS Leo is an Ultralight at 7 Tons empty. In comparison, the NAIS prototype scout the Mite weighed 10 tons. This is a result of Exarch's once again radically different technology base. What we would call an XXL Engine married to a combination of electric motors and hydraulics. No myomers, no neurohelmet, no mountings for heat sinks, weapons, or the feeders that supplied them.
Still, it was effective. They could produce a whole lot of these and while they didn't have hardpoints for modular equipment like Strike Packs or Omni-pods it was simple and rugged enough that they could be refit for a variety of roles. It is best to imagine the Leo as just a human being and its various add-ons as its tools. Air and space combat packs, drone systems, extra armor and shields, and weapon systems, even the ability to upgrade it BACK into a Tallgeese using the Leo IV Greif kit.
 
Its low price and versatility made it the main line 'Mech for the Junk Guild for some years.
 
It also helps that the same factory that can make Leos could also make its siblings.
 
The Aries needs no introduction. Eight tons empty, the VTOL mech provided the Leos and Tierens aircover when ASFs weren't available. It took the same parts from a Leo and the standard off-the-shelf parts used by commercial VTOL aircraft. Standard models function the same as any VTOL, the AMBAC version used by The Exarch and Cello has a higher speed and tighter turn radius. Bring a brown bag. Motion-sickness is not an if but when with the Elite model.
====Need for Speed: The Tragos====
If you had a Hovervehicle dealer then you had half a Tragos. The OZ-07 Tragos shares a similar design to Guntanks and the Loto-style of humanoid QuadVees, in this case collapsing its legs and using a fusion-powered heavy hover unit to move fast around the battlefield.
It is mainly a fire support unit, Where the ground was too unstable, where space was a commodity, or where Tierens were JUST too slow, you had the Tragos come in with the artillery.
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====Twin Titans of the Seas: Cancer & Pisces====
The OZ-08MMS Cancer and OZ-09MMS Pisces are specialized aquatic mechs designed in parallel.
 
Like a LAM, the Pisces could transform between its Mech and Submarine form, its speed in the water and its combination of torpedo, depth charge, and missile launchers have made it useful for naval landings and coastal raids. Some ... 'special' Pisces Mechwarrirors use reinforced synthetic diamond propellers just so they turn the thing into a murder blender in melee. More than one raiding Lance landing on a water world was ambushed by hidden Pisces and anyone smart should check to make sure to check the waters of any world with a Leo factory. As long as you had a shipwright and Leo you could make one.
Its twin the Cancer is solely aquatic. It is a crab-shaped submarine with arms and it EXCELs at its job. It is the ASF of the sea, used to keep Landlubbers like myself out of the water.
Paired together they made many Guild worlds with water difficult to take as their defense forces could strike from any body or waterways and slip back into the depths.
Cheap to produce and repair with a shared pool of parts between siblings and also commercial civilian machines, altogether the five of these Mechs would make up the core of the early Junker Guild fighting force and would find their way as a viable second-line fleet.
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====Taurus====
And now Class, we look at the good stuff, the OZ mechs for those with a properly equipped Mech factory can produce. Battlemechs that decided battles one way or the other.
For the best LAM pilots, we have the OZ-12MS Taurus a general high-performance humanoid mech whose transformation is stupidly simple, folding up into a rigid aerodynamic shape that can go to and from space on its own power. If you have questions about the name? Don't. It annoys the Taurians and an annoyed Taurian is a Taurian ready to press the Big Red Button.
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====The Extreme Twins: Vayeate and Mercurius====
The OZ-13MSX1 Vayeate and the OZ-13MSX2 Mercurius are twins that represent opposite extremes.
 
The offensive Vayeate is, like the Hunchback and Hollander, a gun with a mech attached to it. It is a Sub-Cap PPC on legs, doing so because it's got a whole modified PPC Capacitor and a dedicated Generator to carry a beam of glowing fuck you in a fight. That is its only weapon. Some would say it is vulnerable without it. But I've seen MechWarriors who noticed that it had a pair of hands and wasn't afraid to use it. If you see it looking at you? Duck.
The Defensive Mercurius carried a large ballistic shield and a handheld Snub-nosed PPC, altogether perfect for close-quarters combat like in urban warfare. But its most famed aspect is that it is the first instance of the Planet Defensor system, a wireless counterpart to the Detonation Grid of Steiner Stadium and the derived Electromagnetic Armor made by Davion. It used a series of drones to generate a powerful electromagnetic field that could hold its own against a direct Long Tom hit.
===Conclusion===
In this day and age, it is hard to believe that Battlemechs were less nimble and agile as we expect them to be. The Mobile Suit generation was heralded by the Tieren. But the Aries and the rest of the OZ-series became the face of a new breed of Battlemech and a sign that the Inner Sphere was FINALLY moving away from the death spiral since the Fall of the Star League. Whether what came after was good or bad? Well ... that is up for interpretation.
--Class dismissed--
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Next Class is OZ CopyCats, Tomorrow
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Tex Talks the OZ series (It's Not a Gundam)
The Oz
Tex Talks the OZ series (It's Not a Gundam)