one of the things I enjoy most about Battletech compared to a lot of other mecha properties is the sheer volume of Objectively Bad Idea mechs. 99% of the time with a mecha franchise even the grunt-tier stuff is, like, a Merchandise Idea you are Selling to a Potential Consumer who will think it is Extremely Cool. even the humble Zaku was meant to be something that is cool in a kind of man-in-the-trenches way, designed sensibly by sober engineers, and deployed with a sense of dignity and grim pathos.
but then Battletech is just like 'yeah, so, this mech actually probably shouldn't exist. it was produced as part of a defense spending glut during a major political decline basically as a pork barrel project. pilots hate it because it's got a faulty ejection system where the canopy doesn't always fully disengage, the torso twist uses substandard motors so it only gets 45 degrees to either side, and honestly it's underarmed for its class and what it does have is trying to do too many jobs at once. there's still like 14,000 of them in circulation though because nobody ever blew up their factories due to nobody really wanting them. anyway you can have one for 2.9 million space bucks. maybe it's cheaper to replace this than to replace pilots'
I love all this and also that what's usually the more effective mechs is the less glamorous ones like trebuchets and blackjacks or even kind of embarrassing designs like the urbanmech.
urbanmechs are great, they're the cheapest thing you can put an AC20 or Arrow IV on, they're low profile, most models have jumpjets, they have good armour, etc
however urbanmechs are terrible, they have good armour for a light mech, they're as slow as the clunkiest assault mech, they have no tech advantages whatsoever, and they look like that
