Rifleman

Why it earns its tonnage

Everything about the 3N makes sense once you picture aircraft coming over. Long-range guns only, because fighters don't come close. Arms that swivel and even flip over backwards, so you can track something that's passed overhead. A targeting system good enough to hold a lock on a fast-moving target. And a heat budget built around firing in bursts with breaks in between.

The Garret electronics deserve a mention. The D2j targeting-tracking system held its reputation for centuries, and when the Free Worlds League rebuilt the Rifleman as the 5M in 3049 they left it alone. The T11-A comms array was just as good, although its wing-shaped housing tended to draw fire.

What it can't do is brawl. Seven and a half tons of armour, a particularly thin rear, no hands or lower arm actuators, and a torso that only twists forty degrees. Against a lighter mech its size carries it through. Against something its own weight, standing and trading, it loses, and the commander who put it there was told as much by the design.

One last engineering detail: both autocannons feed off a single twenty-round magazine. Enough for short, sharp bursts. Not enough for a long fight.

Six centuries in the wrong job

The early Riflemans were a struggle. The 1N overheated badly enough that Kallon went back to the drawing board, and the 2N fifty years later was better and still ran too hot. The 3N in 2770 swapped some of the heat-hungry energy weapons for autocannons, and that's the one that stuck.

Kallon still wasn't happy with it, and within a few years they'd built a replacement: the JagerMech, meant to fix the Rifleman's heat, armour and endurance. It never replaced it. The two ended up serving side by side for centuries, which tells you the Rifleman was doing something right.

When the Star League fell, Riflemans ended up in every Successor State army, with House Davion holding the most and using them hard against the Combine. That's where the front-line habit started, as losses forced them into roles they weren't built for. Hanse Davion himself designed two variants, the 4D and the 3C, trying to make it a better line mech.

By the FedCom Civil War it had a poor reputation, and then something odd happened. The 7th FedCom RCT blockaded Kallon's factory on Talon, cutting off JagerMech production, so Kallon pushed its experimental RFL-8D into full production as a stopgap. The 8D was good. Both sides of the civil war ended up fielding it, and the Rifleman's name recovered on the back of a blockade.

A bit of trivia to finish on: the Rifleman's look was borrowed from the Destroid Defender in the anime Macross, which makes it one of the original Unseen designs.

How these are rated

Every verdict below is against other Riflemans available in the same era. One variant fails the Trap test, a rushed ComStar build from Tukayyid.

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. 1 of the 23 Rifleman variants fail the Trap test. The full rating scale is here, including what it deliberately does not measure.

The variants worth arguing about

All 23 are in the table further down. These are the ones that change how the machine plays.

On the table

Piloting one. Fire in bursts. Pick a weapon group, fire, and let the heat settle before the next big turn. If there are aircraft or VTOLs in the scenario, you're the best thing on the table for them. If there aren't, stay at range and let heavier mechs take the hits, because you can't.

Fighting one. Close in and stay close. Past its long-range sweet spot a 3N has nothing but thin armour and a heat problem. Its rear is especially thin, but don't assume you're safe behind it, because those arms can flip over and fire backwards.

What I see go wrong. People fire everything every turn because it's all long range and everything's in reach. Two turns later they're at thirty heat, sluggish and missing, and the enemy walks straight up to them. The Rifleman rewards patience more than anything else here.

Against OpFor Command

If you run solo games with our AI opponent, the Rifleman is split: 11 Snipers, 7 Brawlers and 5 Skirmishers.

• The 3N and most long-range variants are Snipers and will hold their distance.
• The autocannon-heavy variants like the RFL-3C and RFL-5M are Brawlers and will push in.
• The fast, jump-capable late builds such as the RFL-8D and C 2 play as Skirmishers.

Give the engine an aircraft to shoot at and a sniper Rifleman does exactly what it was built for.

All 23 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 RFL-3N 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.