NL-42 Battle Taxi - 200t, TRO3057
Originally posted 2 Aug. 2006. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread. Once again, Wolf’s Dragoons give people reason to scream “Munch!†by having a near-lock on the Inner Sphere market for a certain piece of foundtech: in this case, the NL-42 shown in TRO3057/R is an ‘export’ model of the Dragoons’ own
Lupus-class assault craft.
Topping the SC tonnage range at 200 tons, the Battle Taxi is another case of truth-in-advertising: intended to carry armoured assault troops on boarding actions against enemy ’Ships in the heat of battle, the NL-42 is never going to stand in the line of battle, or even in support of it. Nonetheless, its ‘precious cargo’ can prove a devastating and decisive weapon.
The first step in actually proving that weapon decisive, however, is getting it aboard the enemy vessel in the first place. In this, the NL-42 is well-served: its 6/9 thrust capability gives it the speed to chase down the majority of DropShips and pretty much all of the known WarShips save the ‘rediscovered’
Mako PF - and five tons of fuel gives it enough endurance for a prolonged stern chase, or to avoid a picquet-line of Droppers or small-craft (or a fighter squadron!) to deliver its troops to the target. An SI of 9 and heavy layers of standard armour, laid out 248/90/120, mean that you have to devote serious firepower to destroying an NL-42 short of its target - it can even survive a (single) hit from a NAC/25! :o - and in the short-sprint situations battle-taxis would/should be used in during engagements between WarShips, such main batteries are usually going to have bigger concerns. (Exception: Star League-era BBs. A
Texas or
McKenna could simply disintegrate an NL-42 with their ‘secondary’ NAC/40s and probably not even notice doing so.)
The battle-taxi is pretty solidly armed by the standards of medium starfighters, in that it can give pause to most interceptors or tear a bite or two out of a medium. In each ‘wing’ - though the NL-42 is actually a spheroid design, ‘wing’ seems to be a convenience reference - you find an ERLL and twin medium pulsers... but unfortunately, the craft mounts only fourteen chillers. Chillers, not freezers: for a foundtech design using lots of energy weapons, it oddly does
not mount DHS, meaning that its effective hitting power is sharply hobbled. Probably not a big deal, on second thought: tactical doctrine would likely be for NL-42s to be escorted by fighters and/or assault DropShips to draw fire and fend off enemy fighters, with the ’Taxi firing only in strictest self-defence against stray enemy interceptors which got past the screen. As a fluff thing, I’d actually be surprised if the NL-42 doesn’t actually use its guns for SEAD, making called shots against point-defence mounts in the immediate area around its target breach-point.
Unfortunately, owing to the same translation/“grandfathering†issues which so irked me about the Mk.7 landing craft, the Battle-Taxi isn’t all it could be when it comes to its
raison d’être. >:( Its internal cubage is given over to Dropper-scale accommodations for an officer-pilot (10 tons), two crewmen (7 tons each), a gunner (7 tons), five tons of food/water (WTF?), a ton of general-use cargo space (presumably used by the assault troops for carrying additional ordnance and quick-fix gear to repressurise the breach-zone after they burn through the hull), and two ten-ton troop-bays, each holding a single Point/squad/Level-I of battle-armour. I’ll spare you a reprise of my earlier ranting and simply say that if you consider the NL-42’s typical mission-profile, a rather-more-reasonable two tons of crew-space per crewman and two tons of victuals would yield enough spare tonnage to pack
two more Points/squads of troops aboard the craft, along with improving its SI and armour: putting twice as many battle-suits aboard an enemy ’Ship at least triples your chances of successfully capturing the thing, and the added resilience to enemy fire gives you an even better chance of getting there to try it in the first place.
(There are, of course, counter-arguments about ‘eggs in one basket’ and using more NL-42s to carry those troops to ensure
some survive to reach their target(s), not to mention the ‘small’ issue of actually having that many ‘zooted’ Marines to deploy in the first place. Frankly, I’d expect to see NL-42s only on BCs and up, the ‘big boys’ with enough boat-bay space for such specialists - CAs and smaller, the ships with limited ’bay space and smaller Marine complements, would probably be making do with Mk.7s - and that being so, any ship with sufficient boat-bays to carry dedicated NL-42s also have sufficient space (in the cargo-bays, if nowhere else!) to set up good-sized Marine barracks and ‘morgues’.)
Shortcomings of the NL-42:
> Once again, grandfathered stats gave us grossly excessive crew-comforts and too little cubage for the intended cargo, in this case battle-armoured Marines.
> Improper use of IS2 tech: when you can’t fire one complete ‘wing’ of your ordnance because you’re deploying ER larges and MPLs but only SHS, somebody pinched a few pennies too many - and ‘pinched’ is probably the right word. >:( Similarly, considering that a Point/squad of BA and its troopers costs about as much as some standard-engine BattleMechs and that the NL-42 itself costs as much as an advanced-engine ’Mech or ASF, ferro-aluminium armour to keep the ’Taxi and its grunts intact until they get to the target isn’t
that much of an ask, surely? ::)
Total Warfare Update As with the Mk.7 and the
Lyonesse, rules-fixes in
Total Warfare and
Tech Manual let you rectify some of the issues with the NL-42’s quarters, but also impose limits that mean ‘no fourth BA squad for you!’ :( More immediately concerning,
Strategic Operations adds another element to the aerospace battlefield by allowing you to play with electronic warfare systems, both for protecting yourself and hurting the other guy.
Now, small craft EW systems don’t provide any protection against the capital ships that are the NL-42’s targets of preference, but being able to knock back hostile ASFs is always helpful, so this element does help shape your tactics. If EW’s in play at your table when you dispatch an NL-42 on a boarding action, it would probably pay to include an ECM-equipped fighter or two in the escort force, to provide ‘virtual’ armour against defending fighters in addition to your physical hull-plates. And for that matter, I’m not aware of any rules about whether or not a small-craft that’s latched onto an enemy ’Ship and engaged in a boarding action can still use its EW systems to knock back the ’Ship’s ECM, but if they
can... well, that suggests an
interesting additional utility for a suitably-modified NL-42, now doesn’t it? }:)
[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,6239.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcript of the previous run of this thread may contain numerous reader-proposals for variants. I’ll try to change it out for a ‘sanitised’ version of that thread when I can, but I can’t promise it’ll be soon - that’s a lot of ground to cover. ;)
