Thunderbolt II TDR-60A

Mass: 60 tons
Chassis Configuration: Biped
Power Plant: TriStar StarHeart 200 240 Fusion
Cruising Speed: 43.2 kph
Maximum Speed: 64.8 kph
Armor: StarGuard Heavy
Armament:
     1 PPC
     1 LRM 15
     3 Medium Laser
Manufacturer: TriStar Interstellar
     Primary Factory: Memphis
Communication System:
Targeting & Tracking System:
Introduction Year: 3025
Tech Rating/Availability: Inner Sphere
Cost: 4.97 million C-bills

Overview
The Thunderbolt II is the 'Mech that explains Memphis Motive Works better than any company history: a Thunderbolt deliberately built five tons light, not to make it better, but to make it match. The mandate comes from the Common Heart program — the 3010s Rearmament Edition of Melissa Starr's founding doctrine — whose central order was ruthless in its simplicity: every new 'Mech would take the StarHeart 240 or would not be built. The classic 65-ton Thunderbolt's 260-rated engine didn't qualify, and MMW's engineers, ordered to square the circle, went digging in the Star League archives and found the arithmetic already done — a 2610 pattern, shaved to sixty tons by some forgotten Hegemony logistics initiative so that a 240 would carry it at full stride. The pragmatists of the 3010s recognized the pragmatists of the 2610s across five centuries, revived the pattern to prove the concept, and then built their own definitive model on its bones. With a corporate self-confidence nobody at the company has ever seen reason to walk back, MMW designated its new machine the TDR-60A and filed the Star League's five-hundred-year-old original as the B.

Capabilities
The A-model is the Thunderbolt II proper and by far the more numerous: MMW's from-the-ground-up 3025 production design, wrapping the classic Thud's beloved general-purpose character — a Hellstar for reach, a Holly LRM-15 rack for the approach, a trio of B3Ms for the close work — in StarGuard Heavy plate on the mandated frame. It gives up the old 65-tonner's kitchen-sink excess and keeps its soul: tough, forgiving, competent at every range, and utterly indifferent to glamour. Fifteen heat sinks keep the mixed battery honest, two tons of missile reloads keep the quartermasters involved, and the whole package costs less than the machine it replaces while sharing an engine with everything beside it in the hangar. It is the March's default answer to the question "send a 'Mech" — and the reason the question rarely needs a second sentence.

Deployment
The Common Thud — crews apply the name to both models, with the affection it implies — is the medium backbone of the March: A-models fill the Guards' medium companies, all three capital-world militias, the Dominion rotation, and the training establishments, while B-models concentrate where jump jets and empty ammo bins earn their keep, the 7th Sherwood Rangers foremost. Doctrine pairs it naturally with its stablemates — a "240 lance" of Mongooses scouting for Thunderbolts ahead of Battleaxes is the March's default combined weight.

History
The TDR-60B entered March production first, in the early rearmament years, as the mandate's proof piece — and promptly taught the program its most useful early lesson, which is that a five-hundred-year-old pattern revived unchanged will be adored by exactly the specialists it suits and politely declined by everyone else. The 3025 A-model was the answer: the Thunderbolt the line companies had actually asked for, on the engine the program had already decided they were getting. It has been the March's default medium ever since — never anyone's favorite 'Mech, an enormous number of people's second favorite, which the type's partisans note is a form of winning. Common Heart's vindication is the fleet itself; the document's authors are owed an apology from every design bureau that laughed, and being Memphians, have doubtless already framed one. The type's institutions are its monuments. Spreadsheet, the oldest B-pattern hull in Guards service, walks every 1st Memphis Founding Day parade as the regiment's working color guard machine, named in tribute to the mandate that revived it. Leftenant Dao Marchetti of the 7th Sherwood has spent eleven years offering the Jabberwocky School's standing challenge — find her B-model under the canopy before it finds you — without a claimant. And the 33rd Broken Wheel's fire lance includes an A-model called Second Sentence, for the regimental joke that when Tripet asks the March for help, the reply is a Thunderbolt II and no second sentence.

Type: Thunderbolt II
Technology Base: Inner Sphere
Tonnage: 60

TDR-60A - 4.97 million C-bills - 15 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Thunderbolt II TDR-60A .mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
PPC	Right Arm	3	7
LRM 15	Left Torso	3	7
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Ammo LRM-15 x2	LT	2	2

TDR-60A1 - 5.26 million C-bills - 13 Double Heat Sinks - ↓ Thunderbolt II TDR-60A1.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
ER PPC	Right Arm	3	7
LRM 15	Left Torso	3	7
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Small Laser	Center Torso	1	0.5
Ammo LRM-15 x2	LT	2	2
Artemis IV	LT	1	1
CASE	LT	1	0.5

TDR-60A2 - 5.66 million C-bills - 13 Double Heat Sinks - ↓ Thunderbolt II TDR-60A2.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
LRM 15	Left Torso	3	7
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
ER PPC	Right Arm	3	7
Ammo LRM-15 x2	LT	2	2
Artemis IV	LT	1	1

TDR-60B - 5.08 million C-bills - 18 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Thunderbolt II TDR-60B.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
PPC	Left Arm	3	7
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Left Torso	1	1

TDR-60C - 5.18 million C-bills - 12 Single Heat Sinks - ↓ Thunderbolt II TDR-60C.mtf

Weapons and Ammo	Location	Critical	Tonnage
LRM 15	Left Arm	3	7
LRM 15	Left Torso	3	7
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Medium Laser	Right Torso	1	1
Ammo LRM-15 x4	LT	4	4