BattleTech Mech Overview: Helios

Hey there, MechWarriors, welcome! Today in Mech Overview we're taking a look at the St. Ives Compact's special boy, the Helios!

Colonial Marshals Helios. Credit: porble

Isn't that a gorgeous machine? It has its... quirks, however. 60 tons isn't quite as awkward a weight to work with as 40, but 60 tonners do have a hard time balancing the speed/guns/armor trifecta. Most mechs at that weight bracket tend to focus on mobility. The Helios, however, is not like other girls. Designed to be a cheap bodyguard unit for the St. Ives Compact's expensive-but-powerful assault mechs, it pretty much turns all of the speed/guns/armor sliders to gun. Let's, uh... let's see how that works out for it!

Liberty: God I love the Helios. It's one of my favorite big boy Marshal rides and does an astounding job as a mobile skirmisher that wants nothing more than to sling big shells at things wayyyyyyyyyyy over there before peppering anything that manages to get close with a bevy of secondaries!

Variants

These mechs have all been reviewed based on a standard F through S scale, which you can find described on our landing page here (along with all of our other ‘Mech reviews, the name of the box you can buy to get any of the mechs we have covered, and our general methodology).

HEL-3D

The original* Helios, the 3D very much sets the pattern for what's to come. We've got a standard 240-rated fusion engine and full set of jump jets to go 4/6/4, endo-steel, and just nine tons (144 points, or 71%) of armor (a half-ton less than the typical Lancelot!), laid out so that it's particularly thin on the legs (only 15 points of protection). For offense it carries two ERMLs in one arm, an SRM 6 in each side torso, and a gauss rifle in the other arm, with one ton of SRMs and two tons of gauss rounds on the same side as the Gauss (protected with CASE in case either the rifle or the missiles blow). With 10 double heat sinks, the three-dimensional Helios only goes up one heat on a running alpha strike.

This mech makes some sense in its intended role, able to chip in alongside a heavier/slower firebase with gauss potshots and then light up anything that gets close with a respectable amount of firepower, but it has nothing to mitigate the TMM of the fast backstabbers who are most likely to stage-dive your sniper mechs (and doesn't have the ammo tonnage to bring Infernos to deal with any battle armor they might drop, either). With the gauss it also projects enough threat at range to make itself a target, and quite simply it does not have enough armor or speed to protect itself from any focused hate. 1,618 BV doesn't make this expensive, but it's not quite disposable, either.

Lynn's Rating: C-. Anything with a gauss rifle can level the playing field against anything that isn't rocking specialty armor at any time, so I can't hate this, but the rest of this mech's weapons want to brawl, and it is not going to live long in that application.

* The fluff suggests that the Helios 3D was introduced as a running change / refit package for a predecessor which was the same in every way but with regular medium lasers rather than ERMLs, but we don't have a sheet for that variant. The regular MLs would only save 44 BV, wouldn't really improve its heat curve at all, and would reduce the effective range of its backup weapons, so they'd be a pure downgrade.

Liberty's Rating: C+. I've used this thing alot and I adore the damned thing. Having a good main gun and reasonable backups for when things get a bit close while costing a reasonable price makes for a good second-line popper! She just needs a hand from some friends to stay alive!

Like a Marshal 6FR.

HEL-4A

One of the first mechs in line for reassessment when MRMs get rebalanced, the Helios Foray keeps the standard engine and 4/6/4 profile but swaps out all the weapons. The gauss swaps out for an ER PPC (Spheroid flavor, so no longer a headcapper), the missiles get combined into a single MRM-20, the ERMLs get downgraded back to regular MLs and a third, head-mounted ML joins them. With the heat sinks kicked up to 15 you're looking at movement heat on an alpha strike (these don't provide as much crit-padding as you might expect, however; four of them are squeezed into the arms). Most importantly, the armor is actually respectable, a full two tons heavier and AC/20-proof across the legs and front-facing torsos. The 4A is also down to 1,519 BV.

Lynn's Rating: C (probably C+ with playtest MRMs). While the 4A can't take a mech off the board in a single hit anymore, and it's even more eager to get to a three-hex range where its weapons can pop off, it should at least be able to survive to reach that range. It's a decent pocket heavy.

Helios. Credit: Rockfish

HEL-6X

To say that the Helios 6X looks more like a typical 60-tonner would be a touch misleading, but we do have a larger Light Engine and are up to a 5/8/5 base movement profile. Unfortunately, this is a Word of Blake variant, so from that point the Helios Sechs gets kinda weird. The armor and ERMLs are the same as the 3D, but the gauss gets swapped for a Heavy PPC and the SRMs both become Medium VSPLs. These are all great guns, but they run hot, and we're still at the base 10 DHS, so of course the Wobbies shoved TSM in here again, alongside the obligatory C3i node. 60 tons can be a fun weight for a TSM mech (as seen with the TSM Ostsols), since it's the breakpoint where normal punches become headchoppers when the heat is on, but the 6X still doesn't have hands and still has most of its guns in the arms, so it's built to run and to kick, not to punch. The heat curve here is also kind of shit; the 6X can reach +9 heat easily enough, and VSPs go a long way towards mitigating the accuracy debuff of being at 9 heat, but as near as I can tell it can only maintain neutral heat if it stands still, walks, or jumps, it has no way to handle running heat without heating up or cooling down. At 1,761 BV with fiddly features, that thin armor, and highly limited ability to ignore the TSM and just play a normal shooting game (since you can pretty much only fire three guns at maximum if you don't want to spike to TSM heat), I am not impressed.

Lynn's Rating: D.

HEL-6RISC

The Republic turned captured 6Xes into this experimental testbed, which Liberty and Jack already covered as part of our review of XTRO: RISC!

Liberty: He's so so weird. I love him.

Helios. Credit: Jack Hunter

HEL-7L

The Capellans' latest tweak to the Helios (the CCAF and Capellan allies having largely inherited the chassis after the Confederation took St. Ives back), the 7L kind of makes me ask "Where did this weight savings go?" It's got an XL engine, Endo-Composite (heavier than the original Endo-Steel, to be fair), and Light Ferro-Fibrous, but it's even less maneuverable than the original at 4/6/0. The traditional gauss is maintained, with the ERMLs swapped for Light PPCs to reach to similar range brackets, both missile launchers are swapped for MML-5s (with two tons of ammunition total, so not as flexible as you might expect), and there's a Boosted C3S. Armor is thicker than the 3D/6X, but not as thick as the 4A, frustratingly at 19 armor on every limb and 5/7/5 across the back. CASE II (in the right torso with the MML ammo, not in the right arm with the gauss) means an MML or gauss explosion won't automatically kill the 7L's XL engine.

What we have here is a budget sniper (1,459 BV!) which can tape down the triggers and throw decent damage from the backfield while your brawling-minded assets advance (particularly if its accuracy is improved, and its MMLs can accurately spit SRMs at 9 hexes, in a C3 net), but gets very sad if targets get up in its face. I love SRMs, but two torso-mounted MML 5s with no Artemis aren't going to help much at close range with, say, a Cicada 4A saying hello. Still, there's a fully cohesive game plan here, which is a step forward for the Helios chassis!

Lynn's Rating: B-? At least a C+; I need to get this to table.

Liberty's Rating: C+. The loss of 'get this gauss rifle just about anywhere you want it' jump is a bit sad but it's used for some extra base of fire work that is quite fun! Of course as Lynn said a dedicated fast boy with a baseball bat is still a problem for it but when it boils down the price really makes it so I'm actually not that worried about it.

HEL-C

That's the -C for C3, not the C for Clan. This is the other fruit of St. Ives' collaboration with the Draconis Combine, alongside the 4A. It's just a 3D with one ERML dropped for a C3S, down to 1,533 BV in the process. The Helios doesn't have the speed to spot for C3, but having a headchopper in a network always gives the possibility of a spicy payoff, and the Helios's short-range weapons to come online quicker with a spotter's help, so you can alpha strike more easily. The 3D is just such a disappointing base chassis, though...

Lynn's Rating: C in a C3 network, D+ without C3.

Hastati Sentinels Helios. Credit: Jack Hunter

Final Thoughts

Well, the Helios is certainly one of the mechs of all time! It at least has the decency to be BV and C-bill cheap for its firepower, but it makes a lot of compromises to get there. In its defense, the design space around it is a bit constrained; a proper "cavalry heavy" variant would probably come out feeling like some flavor of Argus or Dragon. Still, the mini is sweet, and the 4A and 7L feel usable. Maybe the future will bring further development for the Helios; I'm shocked the Capellans haven't stuck Stealth Armor on one yet, and genuinely Stealth would be a decent boost to the 7L's gameplan.

Until next time, MechWarriors, remember, don't fly too close to the sun unless it's the 7L variant of the sun!

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Tags: Battletech | Mech Overview | heavy mech | helios