Discussions about WarShips, their merits, their flaws, their design and their usage tends to focus on modern designs, but what about the earlier designs, when some technologies have yet to be developed? What about where it all started, with the TAS Dreadnought?
(Some might argue that the warship story starts with the TAS Charger, but as we lack even a hint of stats it's a moot point)
It may be surprising to some, but technically the Dreadnoughts weren't WarShips, but were instead Primitive JumpShips. In fact, per IntOps, every "WarShip" introduced prior to 2460 is actually a Primitive WarShip. In order of introduction date, that would be the following classes: Dreadnought, Dart, Black Lion I, Bonaventure, Vigilant, Cruiser, Lola I, Quixote, Essex I, Defender (FedSuns), Winchester (TauCon), League I (FWL), Monsoon, Aegis, Commonwealth I (LyrCom), Narukami I (DraCom), Du Shi Wang (CapCon), Tracker, Vincent, Riga I, Nightwing, and Farragut.
It's worth mentioning that the HAF Navy numbered over 300 warships, up to and including the Cruiser-class, three decades before anybody else built a warship. Given that we know the Defender is the first non-Terran true warship, it seems likely that the HAF only faced militarized Aquillas and their ilk during the Campaigns of Persuasion. With a navy in the hundreds. Including Dreadnoughts. And those Aquillas were probably armed with viciously sharp slices of mango. Yeah, the Hegemony were that kind of special.
Hegemony...
Hegemony...
Hegemony, **** yeah!
Coming again to save the ************* day, yeah!
Hegemony, **** yeah!
Freedom is the only way, yeah!
Colonies, your game is through,
'Cause now you have to answer to...
Hegemony, **** yeah!
So lick my **** and suck on my *****!
Hegemony, **** yeah!
What you gonna to do when we come for you now?
It's the dream that we all share,
It's the hope for tomorrow,
**** yeah!
(Official anthem of the HAF Navy during the Campaigns of Persuasion)
So what's the difference between a WarShip and a Primitive JumpShip? After 2300, the answer is not much really. Obviously there will be certain weapons and equipment that aren't yet available, such as KF-capable docking collars, but by 2300 most key components achieve their modern form in game terms, with the exception of armor. The lighter, and potentially longer ranged, compact KF core is the real game changer in technology terms for the Dreadnoughts, but otherwise it's only their size that sets them apart from whatever came before.
I'd like to point out here that the armor section for the Primitive JumpShip construction rules really got messed up. Not only did the primitive armor modifier get left out of the rules, although it appears in the example, but the rules and example mistakenly use the armor formula for modern JUmpShips and not modern WarShips as they should. As written, the erroneous formula presents the ludicrous situation of a Primitive JumpShip being able to have stronger protection than a modern WarShip of the same size and structural strength even when the latter uses Lamellor Ferro-Carbide. This should have been addressed a long time back, but the fix got lost among other updates and was only recently added to the IntOps errata thread. Of course, this being BattleTech there will no doubt be rules lawyers who will argue the point until official errata is published or perhaps even until a new printing of IntOps.
To give an example using a canon design, with all else remaining equal, the Dreadnought-class' armor values when first constructed would actually be two facings of 55 and four of 54, instead of the 85/85/85/80/80/80 shown in HTP:RW.
Having to use DropShuttles instead of DropShips had a big impact on warships when we look at them as a complete weapon system. Instead of allocating 2kt for two collars to gain up to 200kt of DropShip mass (yeah, I know, large DropShip quirk...), giving a 198kt net gain, DropShuttle bays require 11kt to carry 10kt of DropShuttle mass, for a net loss of 1000t. Even if you carried a 5kt DropShip instead of a 5kt DropShuttle, you're still coming out ahead in the mass comparison. Combat DropShuttles can still be useful to extend the defensive perimeter, add extra launch bay doors for ASFs and Small Craft, and provide extra capital ECM, but you're giving up so much more for that capability than you do for equivalent, or superior, DropShips.
So, from 2300 until 2460 (Terrans)/2470 (Terrans in bulk, plus everybody else), you have less armor protection for a given tonnage, and the burden of DropShuttles instead of DropShips, but nothing really differs when true WarShips start being built. It can be assumed that many earlier designs that were still in service were then upgraded, giving us the stats that we see in TRO3057R and later publications. The publication of IntOps means that we really need a major rewrite of many warship designs, but given the relatively poor sales performance of TRO3057R I'm not holding my breath. (Note: I have zero knowledge of any plans that may or may not exist for an update to TRO3057R, so don't take my wording as anything other than my pessimism)
I would argue that after the Primitive JumpShip/WarShip threshold, the biggest paradigm shift for naval combat was the introduction of AMS in 2617. Prior to that date, much less capable point defense was available to the point of making ships all but defenseless against massed nuclear missile attacks. Of course, due to the real world timing of the introduction of rules and designs, AMS is few and far between in canon designs, particularly in the heyday of WarShips during the Star League era. Jellico developed an after the event excuse that the SLDF relied on defense in depth to reduce or prevent nuclear attacks reaching their WarShips, but there is the problem that eventually a bad guy is going to get in shooting range and the SLDF currently lack a canon solution. Perhaps more importantly, what about prior to the Star League or those navies that lack the SLDF's vast resources?
In my opinion, the only limits preventing naval battles from looking like WOPR simulations as they should are game factors. A case of the tail wagging the dog.
Prior to AMS, scenarios that go nuclear tend to be rather short and often result in the destruction of both sides, which is rather unsatisfying. Game rules thus treat nuclear weapons as an optional add-on and this is reflected in canon designs, which typically have few capital missile launchers. Without nukes, scenarios become more drawn out, allow greater use of tactics and have a real chance of having a surviving victor. Real world sensibilities and the obvious and rational aversion to nuclear warfare perhaps also has a role to play here.
Within the game universe, it should be remembered that the Ares Convention didn't exist prior to 2412 and even after that nuclear attacks were still legal on military targets 75000km or more from an inhabited planetary surface. Even with the fear of a legal slap on the wrist or mutual destruction holding back the use of nuclear weapons, there'd always be somebody who'd chose to launch at the first opportunity, or as a last gasp to take an enemy with them, particularly given some of the mutual hatreds between some states in the BattleTech universe.
Conventional thinking is that a large WarShip will defeat an equal mass of smaller WarShips due to how maximum armor protection is calculated. Given that just one or two nuclear hits can be so devastating, in a naval environment that focuses on nuclear warfare there is the argument that multiple smaller ships increase the survivability of at least some of your force. All that would change when AMS is invented, and large WarShips focusing on direct-fire armamaments would become the dominant designs. It's somewhat amusing that in the development of real world blue water navy we went from gun-armed to missile-armed warships as technology advanced, but BattleTech space navies should be doing the opposite.
Without designs being limited by game factors and the real world history of the game's development, I'd suggest that prior to 2617 warships should look more like the Cruiser- or Quixote-classes, with armament focused on massed capital missile batteries, with the addition of swathes of point defense. Small Craft, DropShuttles and, later, DropShips, would be designed to provide even more point defense and fleets would be forced to fly in tight, mutually supporting formations. Some warship designs, perhaps corvettes, could even focus more on point defense than offensive capability, although that would perhaps be a questionable use of a KF core. ASFs, whether primitive or modern, would be more likely to carry Alamos into battle in naval engagements, and that's already hinted at with the fluff for the Alamo in IntOps that states that "...during the Age of War... the Type II and its modern equivalents often served as a weapon of choice in dealing with fleet assets...".
Even with a possible tendency towards smaller warships in this pre-AMS nuclear battlefield, larger warships would perhaps still have a place at the back of a fleet, carrying large numbers of DropShuttles, Small Craft, ASFs, and possibly possessing bigger missile magazines. The smaller warships on the leading edge of a formation would perhaps limit the number of shots per launcher because they probably won't get to empty their magazines anyway, so instead of spending tonnage on deeper magazines, they'd mount more launchers to allow for bigger salvos.
That's enough for a start.
TL;DR - Hegemony are nuts. Oops, math. Poor doggy. Macross spam time with Harrington in command.