Hydaspes - 95t, TRO3067
'Hydaspes' - Clanspeak for "eat shit and die"?
Originally posted 2 Mar. 2005.
All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread.
"MY NAME IS OZYMANDIUS, KING OF KINGS. LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!"
However, unlike Shelley's poem, there is a great deal to see about the
Hydaspes... like the fact that it's a perfect example of a near-optimised canon design - and of why such near-optimal designs are so rare in canon. :-X Brought to us by the Cloud Cobras, the
Hydaspes' brick-in-the-teeth firepower and almost ridiculously tough spaceframe are elegant proof that however much outsiders may be mystified about their long-term Cause, they know how to lay first-class groundwork to get to their goal(s). :o
Let's say this up front: the
Hydaspes ain't no Ferrari, and it gets shitty mileage. Its ninety-five-ton bulk is driven by a 285XL engine, giving it a 5/8 thrust curve that can be outperformed by almost anything else in the sky, and its four-ton fuel fraction means that it has shorter legs than most other fighters. On the other hand, that lightweight powerplant means that one has an almost ridiculous amount of free internal mass to devote to other structural elements - such as twenty-two-point-five (yes,
22.5!) tons of ferro-aluminium armour, laid out 138/106/82. You need a Clan ERPPC or a Gauss rifle to threshold the nose, and C/ERLLs are effective only against the stern; you're not entirely invulnerable to enemy weaponry, but you're damned close to it. }:) The armament is similarly impressive: the nose houses a Clan ER Large Laser and twin C/MPLs; the wings duplicate this energy armament and throw in an Artemis'd LRM-15 with sixteen rounds per launcher for good measure; the stern is protected by twin Streak-6 racks sharing a ton of ammunition; and thirteen additional double-heat-sinks cover enough of your heat to make life very unfun on the other end. }:)
The fluff says that the Cobras deliberately designed the
Hydaspes for range-bracket engagements, and I don't doubt a bit of it. Pilots cannot alpha-strike their forward weapons without eating a +24 heat deficit, but with this sort of arsenal an alpha-strike would be like using a nuke to knock over an ant-hill anyway. :P At Extreme range, you can take hopeful shots with all three ERLLs, comfortably remaining at ten
under maximum safe heat capacity while knowing a lucky hit would start the process of attriting the enemy early; at Long, you add in both LRM racks, accumulating no heat while adding a great deal of throw-weight; at Medium range and closer, one trades out two of the ERLLs for all three pulse bays, still remaining heat-neutral (or dropping the third ERLL as well to cool off); if someone gets on your back, you with-hold one MPL bay and give him a faceful of SSRMs instead.
Going by the TRO fluff alone, Star Adder-piloted
Hydaspes have smoked at least four Blood Spirit DropShips and crippled the destroyer CBS
Blood Fury to the point where her captain scuttled her rather than see her taken. Admittedly,
Blood Fury was 'only' a
Lola-III, with minimal anti-fighter armament (the Blood Spirits being unable to foresee
Strategic Operations and the (re-)introduction of capital-laser AAA targeting), but the York campaign is a strong indicator of the
Hydapses' design role: it's a lumbering beast, too slow to be a dogfighter or a bomber - it can carry only ten tons of externals at 3/5 - and thus, while it can work well in internal-ordnance ground-attack and providing massive fire-support to other fighters, its design-role is to
slaughter enemy capital assets. And it's a monster at it, too: I count no fewer than
eight bays on an individual
Hydaspes that reach the breakpoint of Capital scale, so over a full ten-bird Star, we have....
- ERLL bays: three @ 10 Capital damage each
- MPL bays: three @ 14 Capital each
- LRM bays: two @ 12 Capital each
And if you're in the mood to leave a "PS: Screw you!" as you overshoot the target and disengage:
- SSRM bay: one @ 24 Capital
Overall, the
Hyadaspes makes a poor aerial-combat system but a hell of an attack bird. I highly recommend the deployment of a strong escort force to guard their flanks and backs (anything getting in front of them won't live long enough to realise what went wrong), and try not to go out of your way to attract attention on your way to and from the target - the other guy's already going to honour the threat you represent in full, so don't ask for more grief (unless you're playing distraction/misdirection games). For those of you who may have joined us late, I'll reiterate the key tactical concepts for any ASF, the
Hydaspes included: Point-mates
must stick together, Points
must watch each others' backs, you
must concentrate your firepower (CLG isn't only for 'Mechs), and as always, "Get in, hit hard, and get out while the getting's good!". A Point of
Hydaspes should be able to dispatch a single
victim enemy fighter in a single volley, so don't frell around with turning fights; if you're forced into an aerial battle, hang back on the edge of the furball and snipe at the highest-priority threats.
Defending against
Hydaspes is a pain in the ass... but it
is doable. Thankfully, they're rare in the Invading Clans, so they're mostly found in Clan-on-Clan action, and Clan technology allows certain counters.
Chaeroneas,
Avar-As,
Batu-As... these are the preferred 'low' element of the high-low mix; all of them mount an ERPPC and are highly agile, so they present an all-aspect threshold threat and can engage the
Hydaspes from behind at Long range, where its Streak racks cannot protect it. In the medium category,
Visigoth-As are about the only rational choice: they have three weapons capable of nose-TACing the
Hydaspes at Long range and sufficient agility to use the same tactics as the interceptors mentioned above; however, in a pinch
Turk Primes can serve in the same capacity.
One interesting countermeasure to the
Hydaspes available to some Clans is the
Xerxes, which I gave a mixed review to in my inaugural column. Admittedly,
Xerxes lack the armour to go toe-to-toe with
Hydaspes, but the
Xerxes has the mobility to out-turn the
Hydaspes, twin ERLLs in the nose, twice the fuel endurance, and
a BV barely half that of the Hydaspes, which sets up situations where
Hydaspes can be outnumbered two-to-one by
Xerxes (Or even more, if you buy your units by C-bills instead). Ideally, the
Xerxes formations would hang back until the
Hydaspes units had depleted their fuel and turned for home, then bounce them; at this point, depending on pilot temperament and concern for safety, they'd either hang back and snipe at the
Hydaspes all the way back to base with those threshold-seeking twin-ERLL bays, or accept the threat from the Streak racks and close to smash the bastards with those godawful UAC/20s. Any escorts should be left to the defenders' own interceptor/dogfighter Stars.
The sole canon variant of the
Hydaspes is a study in "Shiny Kit Syndrome": the
Hydaspes 2 mounts twin heavy medium lasers in the nose, with a heavy large laser and two ATM-9s in each wing, backed by a targeting computer, six tons of ATM ammo, and twenty-five DHS; oddly enough, this variant also has double the original's fuel capacity. ??? I despise any weapon with an inherent to-hit penalty, which meant that this loadout turned me right off at first, but in this case the TarComp which offsets that penalty is a mere two tons, so I can't really scream too loudly about 'wasted tonnage'. After proper reflection, in considering the armament, the expanded fuel fraction, and the heat profile - with the same +24 overheat on an alpha-strike, but an all-energy attack being a net '0' - I'm pretty sure that this one's intended for rather more extended sorties than its brother, using the ATMs only to soften up the target while closing (ER rounds for Extreme and Long range, standards at Medium) then transitioning to lasers-only when the knife-fight begins and sticking with Short-range attacks until the fight's over... and lemme tell ya, pal, heavy lasers may be bulky, inaccurate, temperamental, and as hot as hell, but when they connect they hit like the fist of an enraged god. I'd rather have the baseline model myself, but this one can get the job done too - individual force commanders should make the choice based on what sort of fight they anticipate. (But remember, the -2 model has no tail-guns, so watching each others' backs is imperative.)
[VARIANT PROPOSALS REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants, including my own, belong in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,1774.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcripts of previous runs of this thread 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. ;) Repost closing note, 16-02-2011: yet another article that doesn't seem to have gotten much attention on the second run. ::)
