Catapult

Why it earns its tonnage

The shape tells you what it's for. The missile racks sit up in the ears, the lasers tuck under the cockpit, and there are no arms at all. It's a missile platform on a pair of legs and a set of jump jets, and everything about it assumes someone else is holding the front line.

That's fine as long as it's true. Two LRM 15s from long range, a jump to the next bit of cover, repeat. Four medium lasers mean a light mech that runs in to finish it gets a nasty surprise. The problem is endurance. Eight reloads per launcher goes quickly, and once the missiles are gone you're a sixty-five ton machine with four mediums and not much armour.

Two bits of engineering history worth knowing if you ever get one in the bay. The original Anderson 21 jump jets had a habit of breaking down and venting exhaust into the mech, which cooked it from inside. There was a general recall in 2566 to fit Anderson 25s, and some Catapults never got the refit. And the ejection system fires sideways. Perfectly safe, apparently, but a genuine surprise the first time.

Turned down, then fought over

After the Hegemony let the contract lapse, the remaining Catapults stayed in service with specialist and second-line units, mountaineering regiments among them, and Hollis made just enough spare parts to keep a shrinking number of them walking.

When the Star League fell, a lot of the survivors went with Kerensky on the Exodus. The Capellan Confederation gathered up most of the ones left behind, and the Draconis Combine took a sizeable batch when it captured Dieron. Hollis's factory on Corey briefly started making new ones and spare parts again, and then it was destroyed at the start of the First Succession War.

That's when it got strange. With no factory anywhere, the Catapult became rare enough to be worth fighting over, and there were whole invasions launched simply to seize the remaining machines, the Federated Suns' campaigns against the Confederation above all.

It took until 3033 for things to turn round, when the Combine contracted Yori 'Mech Works to restart production of the K2 on Al Na'ir. The C3 artillery variant followed, and paired with Ravens for spotting it became one of the more feared combinations of its era, despite nearly five centuries separating the two designs. By the Clan Invasion the Confederation and the Combine held most of the Catapults in existence, and new variants kept coming for decades.

And one last thing: it's half the reason the Timber Wolf is called the Mad Cat. When an Inner Sphere targeting computer first met one, it couldn't decide between a Marauder and a Catapult.

How these are rated

Every verdict below is against other Catapults available in the same era. No variant fails the Trap test, which fits a chassis that split into genuinely different roles rather than piling up near-copies.

Only the Trap tier is calculated. It is worked out from the variant data rather than decided by me, which means it is falsifiable: to argue with it you only have to name something the cheaper machine gives up. The other three are my opinion and you should treat them that way. 0 of the 19 Catapult variants fail the Trap test. The full rating scale is here, including what it deliberately does not measure.

The variants worth arguing about

All 19 are in the table further down. These are the ones that change how the machine plays.

On the table

Piloting one. Stay back, stay in cover, and jump between firing positions rather than walking between them. Count your reloads from turn one, because eight per launcher runs out faster than you'd expect. Keep the lasers for anything that reaches you, and don't start a fight where they're your main weapon.

Fighting one. Close the distance. Inside its minimum range the LRMs are wasted, and it has no arms to fight with. Aim for the head if you get the chance, since the weak head armour quirk is working for you. And if it's the C1 or A1, you can simply outlast its ammunition.

What I see go wrong. Catapults getting put in the front rank because they're sixty-five tons and look sturdy. They aren't. It's a support mech with a heavy's weight, and it needs someone standing in front of it.

Against OpFor Command

If you run solo games with our AI opponent, the Catapult splits three ways: 10 Missile Boats, 5 Snipers and 4 Skirmishers.

• The C1 family are Missile Boats and will hang right back, which is what they should do.
• The K-series PPC variants play as Snipers and will trade shots at range.
• Butterbee, the K5, the H2 and the C6 are Skirmishers and will close in, which suits their short-range loadouts.

16 of the 19 variants carry jump jets, so expect an enemy Catapult to move between firing positions rather than stand still.

All 19 variants

Damage figures are the Alpha Strike short, medium and long values. BV is Battle Value 2.0.

Where and when you can field it

Availability for the CPLT-C1 by era, straight off the Master Unit List.

Related designs

Other machines that do the same job

Take it to the table

Common questions

Stats on this page are generated directly from our variant database, which is reconciled against the Master Unit List for Battle Value, introduction dates and per-era faction availability. Alpha Strike damage values are the standard card figures. If you spot something wrong, tell me and I will fix it.