SW-606 Swift - 25t, TRO2750
Originally posted 1 Mar. 2006. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread. The overall design philosophy for the SW-606 seems to have been (as Capt. Malcolm Reynolds might say): “Faster. Faster!
Faster would be better!†::) Whoever cooked the thing up certainly seems to have thought of little other than getting to the enemy quickly... though how much good the
Swift was expected to do once it
got to the engagement is something of a mystery. :D The type’s B-TT7i computerised voice-warning system keeps the pilot fully apprised of all developments and potentially dangerous situations... though its constant nagging, like that of many twentieth-century fighter-jets, saw the system dubbed “Bitching Betty†by most pilots and often saw her turned off completely.
Credit where credit is due, though: the
Swift is, without exception, the fastest fighter any IS power has ever built and put into the black. 13/20 is a thrust profile that allows an interception separation-from-bullseye which is pretty hard to argue with. (What
is a little debatable is how much a pilot’s going to be worth as a combat asset after sustaining a 6.5
g or 10
g acceleration for minutes on end; I certainly can’t say I like to imagine the long-term health impacts of that sort of sustained stress. :o) Three tons of internal fuel isn’t especially heartening; however, a max load of five drop-tanks gets you two and half tons more fuel and only costs you half a
g of sustained thrust, so the idea would be to use the drop-tanks to get you
to the fight and rely on your internal tanks (and some coasting) to get you home again. The armour is decent enough - two tons of ferro-aluminium, 10/10/6 - though at this size and speed, you are
definitely looking to dance between the bullets rather than shrug them off.
The thing is, in their mania to save weight for the engine, the SLDF designers cut right into weapons volume: they trimmed off the fat, sliced off all the meat, and went to work with a bone saw. When a
Swift gets to the fight first, it’s ready to hit an opponent with nose-mounted lasers... two of them. A single medium, and a single small.
Oh, God. Oh God. Keep this vicious beast away from me. @p?
Another explicitly designed aircraft, the
Swift is meant for super-long-range interceptions, making high-speed ‘slashing’ attacks through enemy formations to harry and nip at given targets, then
maybe stern-convert on any lame ducks and give them another dose. In accordance with
basic tactical common-sense, I’d imagine that wing-pairs or even whole squadrons will concentrate their fire on a given target, to maximise the chance of actually inflicting meaningful harm. Don’t bother sending SW-606 squads on anti-’Shipping or attack missions unless you’re devoid of any alternative; a single 3-Capital laser bay is little more than a nuisance to anything other than a civilian JumpShip, so unless you’re playing misdirection games or looking for cheap harrassers, it’s as near to pointless as any fighter-squadron gets.
Want to stop
Swifts? They’re too fast for anything other than the lightest of Clan starfighters to have a hope of beating them at their own game... so don’t bother. They only have Short-ranged weapons, so use anything and everything more potent at your disposal and batter them all the way in; almost
any hit will cause a TAC-check, and a single PPC strike will vape every last shred of armour over even the best-protected section of a
Swift. A horde of
Swifts attacking even a relatively ‘light’ medium fighter such as the
Corsair is in much the same predicament as a mob of ruffians armed with knives charging an alerted SWAT-trooper equipped with body-armour and a SPAS-12 shotgun: they might get to him, and they might even hurt him, but they’re going to leave a lot of their own bodies in their wake and it’d take a special favour from God Himself for them to stand any real chance of killing him.
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,4585.0.html Now, don’t be coy here, folks. If anyone (even my new friends from Candlekeep.com) has an opinion, they’re more than welcome to let it out to breathe. ;D
Be advised: the attached .txt transcript(s) of previous run(s) of this thread may contain numerous reader-proposals for variants. I’ll try to change those out for ‘sanitised’ versions of those threads when I can, but I can’t promise it’ll be soon - that’s a lot of ground to cover. ;)