Banshee (BattleTech)
This page is for a Mech from BattleTech. If you are looking for the page about the Eldar melee unit, please see Howling Banshees.
The Banshee is a Assault 'Mech from BattleTech known for doing one thing, and one thing only; sucking. This thing may be one of the worst mechs ever created in it's weight class, and maybe even in the fiction of BattleTech in general. If given the choice between piloting this thing or getting into Battle Armor against an Assault Mech, most pilots will take the Battle Armor, or even just a fucking rifle and a ladder and see if they get lucky, rather than get inside this 95-ton hunk of shit.
Seriously, it's that bad.
History
This misbegotten Mech was initially developed by Defiant Industries and put into service in 2445 by the Terran Hegemony, as a contemporary to the Mackie and the Emperor with almost twice their top-speeds as a standard, but eventually gained a reputation as infinitely less useful than either of those designs, but ended up seeing a full-production run since the Hegemony really wasn't in a position to argue, and only stopped a decade later after nobody would touch the damn things. As a result, they've mostly been passing between owners at a furious pace, with the lion's share of the original production run ending up in Lyran Commonwealth territory. It took centuries for a decent version of the Banshee to hit the battlefield, in which it's reputation actually allowed the improved version to sneak in and cause serious damage because everyone was focused on the "real" threats on the battlefield.
What makes it so bad?
Simply put, in trying to speed up the typically ponderous Assault class, the poindexters from Defiant Industries who put this thing together forgot to scale up the weapons to compensate.
See, the Banshee's fusion engine is massive; bigger than anything else it's manufacturer makes, and takes up a lot of it's overall mass. As a result, while it's well armored and pretty damn fast for something that big, it's main armaments are pitiful; a Magna Hellstar PPC and an Autocannon/5, both built into it's lower torso, with some Small Lasers added in essentially as flavor. While on the surface that seems pretty okay, they all shoot from roughly the same distance and it's not like the guns themselves are defective, but the big problem is impact per C-Bill. Those two main guns would be okay on something like a Medium 'Mech or a Heavy Mech whose principal strength was skirmishing or shooting up other mechs of their size, and definitely not a 95-ton Assault mech whose typical job is to carry the biggest, most dangerous armaments possible and blanket the battlefield in all-out one-machine warfare.
For perspective, this would be like if an M1 Abrams had only a couple of light machine guns, or a Baneblade had a variant that had regular bolters or even Stubguns as it's sole form of weaponry. It's still dangerous, sure, and the weight savings almost certainly make them faster, but they're not gonna do nearly the same kind of damage they could've if they had weapons built for their size, and that ultimately would make them a massive a waste of money. Pack all that onto a big distracting robot, and you have the Banshee.
It is admittedly pretty good in close-quarters combat due to it's pretty impressive top speed and the sheer size of it making it capable of pulling an Atlas and just fucking punching it's way to a kill, the reality is that this thing is often getting reliably outgunned by Mechs almost half it's size and cost. And as if to make goddamn sure you knew just how fucking bad this thing is, it's main guns are terribly inaccurate in Melee range; the one place it's base configuration is good at.
In a grand example of just how badly this thing sucks, the Banshee in it's original state has survived up to the 31st century by sheer force of reputation; absolutely goddamn nobody wants to get stuck in this thing, to the point that anyone who has one only ever uses it to bully minor Periphery powers or as a training Mech for an actually good Assault Mechs like the Atlas or the BattleMaster somewhere down the line. It took almost 600 years of human history for a variant of the Banshee to be considered even accidentally viable for basic combat maneuvers, and a couple hundred more for it to be considered a useful one outside of that.
The many, many, many attempts to fix the Banshee
Because these things appeared effectively dead on arrival, anyone who has one has put an embarrassing amount of C-Bills into trying to fix it's crippling flaws while keeping it's single positive of being fast, with deeply varying degrees of success. It should be noted however that it's original variant, The BNC-3E, remains the most populous due to it's sheer ineptitude and because nobody save the absolutely desperate would be caught piloting this shitheap. They can't even melt them down fast enough to make the new ones, because that would mean having to admit you had them in the first place.
- BNC-1E - The prototype introduced in 2445, which ironically that had the opposite problem as the BNC-3E; it was exceptionally well-armored and had decent weaponry with a pair of medium lasers to help keep the PPC and the Autocannon's damage consistent, but poor top speed. The Terran Hegemony sought to fix the top speed problem, at the cost of turning the 'Mech into a headache for anybody who had one for the next 800 years. In the bitterest of ironies, given how the Assault-class would turn out throughout the years, if it'd stayed like this it might've actually gotten a better rep.
- BNC-3M - The Free Worlds League's first attempt at fixing it. It rips out the Autocannon and replaces it with a second PPC, as well as two Medium Lasers. While it does fix the problem of damage, it also failed to equip the heatsinks necessary to make it worth it, and as a result the thing may as well be a massive pizza oven with a gun attached.
- BNC-3MC - The Magistracy of Canopus's attempt at fixing it. They simply ripped the Autocannon/5 out and replaced it with an Autocannon/10, and pulled five of the heatsinks out to add extra ammo, while keeping everything else the same. Meaning that it has better range, but heats up quicker if it uses it's PPC too frequently. Hey, you do what you can in the Periphery.
- BNC-3Mr - A Jihad-Era refit that upgrades and reinforces the heatsinks and puts in ER PPCs and ER Medium Lasers in favor of the small lasers, doubling it's range, but also means it's still heating up pretty harshly and arguably robs it of it's ability to brawl efficiently.
- BNC-3Q - The other attempt the Free Worlds League tried, commissioned by House Marik itself due to a lack of PPC technology available to them. It pulls pretty much every weapon of note off of it in order to replace it with an enormous Autocannon/20. While it solves the firepower problem, it also makes it extremely short-range, and anything that can pop it before it gets into Autocannon range probably will.
- BNC-3S - Defiant Industries, fed up with it's creation sucking so hard, finally decided to scale back it's engine to turn it into a normal Assault Mech and wouldn't you know it, it suddenly freed up all this space for weapons to exist! This variant mounts two PPCs, an Imperator-B Autocannon/10, four Medium Lasers, a Short-Missile launcher system, and two Small Lasers just because they had room to put them there. While unquestionably better equipped for combat, especially at range, it's much slower, and heats up like crazy, even with it's new heatsinks. Still, this is the first model in what was almost half a millenia that you'd actually consider using on a battlefield if you wanted to survive.
- BNC-5S - At long last, a hard upgrade, thanks to re-discovered LosTech from the Star League. It once again rips out the giant engine for an Extra-Light Fusion engine and double Heatsinks, being faster than the 3S model and generally quicker than most Assault-Mechs. It mounts a Gauss Rifle and a pair of ER PPCs as it's main guns, and has four medium lasers, an SRM-6, and two small lasers.
- BNC-6S - The first variant that actually takes real advantage of it's ability to be a brawler, using an Endo-Steel Chassis, the Autocannon equivalent of a shotgun, and a Heavy Gauss Rifle.
- BNC-7S - The 5S's bigger, angrier brother, and arguably the best Non-Jihad version of the Banshee there could've been. It mounts an ER-PPC and a Gauss Rifle, Four Medium Lasers, and an SRM-6.
- BNC-8S - The Word of Blake's attempt during the Jihad, which given it was based on the 5S series meant it already had a better starting place than the 5S did. Built with a stronger frame, internals, and a fucking battleaxe to make sure it's place as a brawler was truly cemented. In doing so, they put the old engine back in, replaced the PPC, used an XL Gyro to save weight, moved the Autocannon to the other arm, and then crammed as many lasers and a Snub-PPC as they could onto it. It's real ace in the hole however, was it's Guardian-ECM system, allowing it to screw up long-range targeting and get up close as fast as possible.
- BNC-9S - The Banshees final form, built by Defiant Industries after the Word of Blake took over their home manufacturing stations and decided that they could do an upgrade on this thing too. While the Blakists opted for it's brawling potential, Defiant decided to try and actually make good on it's promises of a fast Assault Mech that could hit hard from close and long range. It accomplished this by using a Light fusion engine that could reliably target the earliest models' speed, and stuffed it to the gills with weapons: a Heavy PPC, a Light PPC, A Gauss Rifle, Three ER Medium Lasers, one regular medium laser, and a Missile system just in case whatever it was firing at managed to survive the opening salvo. All wrapped up with a targeting computer that made sure that it's energy-based weaponry melted it's target into slag.