What sort of things do you think should be available to Houses & mercs for such rapid deployments? What might be the most common/popular?
Been playing around with that one a bit again.
Modified TRO3026 engineering vehicle : replace "equipment" with three lift hoists. Thus can carry six 10-ton containers as external cargo, and the lift hoists are usable in construction.
For the question "why an engineering vehicle" :
"Engineers construct buildings" (TRO3026/3039). ;)
Each container is a 8' cube that can be disassembled into six wall pieces 8' x 8' in size. Each container weighs 1 ton assembled and contains 9 tons cargo; the walls provide CF5 protection if you set it down like that.
In the field these wall pieces are reassembled to form a nice little rectangular building - in my example below 4.9m high, 9.8m long and 7.3m wide, with a sliding door in the front. Eight container walls form each side wall, six the back wall, twelve are used for the roof and eight are installed in front including four for the sliding doors. For camouflage purposes the building is covered in camo nets.
This building per se only has CF5 as a light hangar as well, since you can't use the walls like that for attaching anything; you could use it to store 15 tons in pallets on the ground - such as pallets of 500 kg in rows along the sides. Using a technique similar to HESCO we reinforce the walls with Earth though, upgrading them into a CF18 medium hangar - now capable of housing the same 54 tons that we brought in nominally.
The earth filling used with that HESCO equivalent is pretty discrete. Note: In all CF applications above I'm using a house rule in which the weight required in base construction materials for a building, not including special equipment, conforms to ( CF * 2.1% * housed_load ) rounded up to the next half ton. That house rule works very nicely with both real-life examples (e.g. containers, houses, even bridges) and Battletech itself (Collapsible Command Shelter).
Equipment used:
- Container Sides : 6,000 kg
- HESCO system weight : 100 kg
- Crane equivalent for sliding door: 3,000 kg
- Cover Netting : 50 kg
- A-Frames and Reinforcers : 850 kg
- Earth filling : 14,500 kg
- Net Cargo : 50,000 kg
Below i've used
cargo movement rules under SO with multiple detail steps to install this building - it comes out at 8 hours, which while not conforming to CO presents a nice round figure (one maintenance cycle = one day work) for Battletech:
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Site Survey/Preparation : (Notional) -> 15 minutes (note: equivalent to a dug-out)
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Preparation : 16 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
Unloading Containers : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 75 minutes
Unpacking Cargo : Manual (0.8t/minute) -> 68 minutes (note: includes sorting equipment)
Disassembling Containers: Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 30 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Readying Equipment : 174 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
(Placing Parts) : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 2 minutes
A-Frame Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 5 minutes
A-Frame Erection : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 4 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Installing Frame : 12 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
(Placing Parts) : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 6 minutes
Roof Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 11 minutes
Roof Mounting : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 3 minutes
Wall Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 20 minutes
Wall Erection : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 5 minutes
Wall/Roof Connection : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 3 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Installing Roof/Sides: 49 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
(Placing Parts) : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 1 minutes
HESCO Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 1 minutes
Earth Filling : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 73 minutes
Earth Movement : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 19 minutes
Connection Exterior : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 19 minutes
Connection Interior : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 19 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Erecting HESCO Walls : 133 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
(Placing Parts) : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 5 minutes
Front Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 2 minutes
Door Pre-Installation : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 15 minutes
Door Assembly : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 2 minutes
Front Erection : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 1 minutes
Door Installation : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 1 minutes
Front/Roof Connection : Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 1 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Installing Front : 28 minutes]
--------------------------------------------------------------
Installing Cover Netting: Manual (0.2t/minute) -> 4 minutes
Placing Cargo Inside : Vehicle (0.8t/minute) -> 63 minutes
(Step Survey) : (Notional) -> 1 minutes [Finalizing : 68 minutes]
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Under CO rules the same building would take a week to build with a single squad of combat engineers and a vehicle - let's assume they would cast it in concrete instead then with more permanence in mind.
Now, what can we use that for - reasonably, if we include concerns beyond just tonnage:
- a light vehicle bay (equipment goes on the side walls, center we'd have a nice hangar space for a light vehicle) + spare parts/fuel
- six mechanized infantry bays (six vehicles should fit in those 70m² on the ground - and bay-grade housing for the 42 infantry should fit in a space above that) + supplies for 3 days
- ten steerage quarters (each a 10m² room plus some common areas...) + supplies for almost 3 months
- cargo storage (72 Euro pallets of 750 kg each on the ground, exactly halfway between the minimum and maximum load for each pallet...)
Replace supplies and such with a power generator of your choice if you want to, although that'd have to come completely separate.