| The theft of the Hunter design by Southern commandos and its duplication by Territorial Arms may have propelled Republican military hardware forward, but it had a negative effect on the freedom allowed to engineers and designers. Because of the success of the Jager, the South spent several decades in which they almost automatically created copies of Northern Gears and contributed relatively few new design concepts. When the Northco Armored Hunter was fielded in the Merchant War it was taken for granted that an Armored Jager would soon follow. Such a design did indeed rapidly materialize and matched its Nothern counterpart almost perfectly. Heavy alloy armor plates were attached to the chassis and armored variations of the standard autocannon and rocket pod were supplemented by a back-mounted mortar. Unfortunately, this almost unthinking duplication of Northern designs led to a reproduction of the base design's failings. The Armored Jager was just as slow and lumbering as the Armored Hunter and only achieved a limited distribution for the same reason. The Alpha refit program for the Jager family provided an opportunity to rethink the design. Territorial Arms engineers decided to honestly tackle the weight problems of the Armoroed, instituting changes at almost every level of the design. To provide extra power, the Gear's V-engine was updated to the newly-released Windhill WV-1000A; to lighten its load all armored weapons were bandoned and a standard PR-25 autocannon became the main weapon. The heavy alloy armor was replaced by armoplast ballistic plastic with only a few supplemental alloy armor plates, including a spiked forearm. This new model had a maneverability and walking speed comparable to the basic Jager Alpha.
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