![]() Many details of this BattleMech reveal its rushed production history. The right arm, however, has identical protection to the -1A1's limb, the technicians judging that the loss of a single medium laser would have minimal impact on the mech's combat effectiveness and refusing to add additional armor which would further increase the necessary time for gyro balance calibration. To compensate for reduced mobility, four Icarus 81 jump jet systems were mounted to allow jumps of up to 120 meters, and the armor was increased by almost 50%. Targeting for the gauss rifle, however, was not so easy, and the need to compensate, however slightly, for recoil and ballistic drop mean that a pilot needs live-target gunnery practice to compensate for the quirks of the Charger's limited targeting system. Although initial targeting computer faults reduced their effective range to the same as the small lasers mounted by the -1A1, those faults were quickly corrected by copying the targeting software from the Challenger variant. An additional 3 heat sinks compensates to some extent for the heat, allowing the -1KGR Charger to fire all its weapons and generate no surplus heat while standing. The remaining lasers were replaced with a quartet of Agra 1L medium lasers, multiplying its energy-weapons only firepower by nearly 33%, and its effective range by 300%. Although this rendered several of their front-line assault lances somewhat short of spare parts, the change freed up nearly 30 tons, which were used to replace one of its pitiful 5 small lasers with a single gauss rifle and two tons of ammunition, fed into the weapon via a helical magazine. To do so, Kuritan engineers removed the Charger engine and looted spares intended for use in repairing Thugs. Its 80 ton bulk made its chassis an excellent potential contender, capable of mounting one of the heavy weapons and a sufficient ammunition load. The Kuritan plethora of the unpopular "Charger" chassis meant that when the Kuritans sought a platform to mount gauss rifles on, they first turned their attention on machines that they could spare, such as the Charger.
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