Republic WarShips Battle of Terra

[mrbooth]

With ilclan coming out shortly do you think we will get a new republic warship design or the same old three time destroyed four times salvaged 300 year old Star League era WarShips? HoW says that they have around 15 WarShips and names a few but only one is said to be a Essex class.

Thought?

[Dragon Cat]

They had the 3? Surviving Nova Cat WarShips they all converted to Republic service at the end of the War I think one was an Aegis I can't remember the others

Sarna has answers

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Republic_Armed_Forces#Navy

[mrbooth]

Yes and in HoW there is mention of 8 WarShips at one jump point and almost a dozen at the one the Wolves arrived at.

[Empyrus]

Off-hand, Hour of the Wolf called some assault DropShips "WarShips".

[mrbooth]

Off-hand, Hour of the Wolf called some assault DropShips "WarShips".

That's what I am afraid of is bad writing which is a distinct possibility, I am hoping for something new Aero wise to play around with but doubting it.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

IIRC HotW said they had four true Warships: I’m not sure the class on the fourth. Also the Castrums might as well have been Warships at that point lol.

But to answer the OPs original question I don’t think so. I’d love new designs too but highly unlikely.

[Wrangler]

The two novels dealing with the Trial of Terra (maybe on purpose) was vague on what the Republic had to avoid issues.

What we know is there was Lola III, Essex, and the Aegis.  Additionally there appears to be a additional Essex. Maybe they salvaged one from SLDF wrecks in Sol. God knows there properly plenty of wrecks.  Warspite may have been the only new build, but i hope not.   The Dante Frigate, the Flatus was of course lost when the Fidelis crew self-destruct to prevent it's capture....which i hate that sort ending.

[Empyrus]

The Dante Frigate, the Flatus was of course lost when the Fidelis crew self-destruct to prevent it's capture....which i hate that sort ending.

Given the name, good riddance.

[Tyler Jorgensson]

Given the name, good riddance.

I mean… you’re not wrong

[captnchuck67]

Okay After digesting Hour of Wolf and I'll an. Is it just me or does the RoS navy seem a bit off? Should not there be more and heavier units? Plus,it is do or die why no captors or whatever those WoB missile barges where called,even if you put regular warheads in it will mess someone up.

Plus,the RoS commanders knew when the McKenna jumped in not only what it ment to the Planners but what might be on board. Even if it was only partially functional I would have blown it to dust

and if the plan was to let the wolves land then I would have left them totally alone and focused on the Falcon and made certain  that they lost a ton more than they did
Now with the Castrums.they had 53 year of building, at 1 a year thats 53. Say only 75% showed up to defend earth thats 39 of them.plus you cant tell me that in the time from when the RoS took over Terra till HoW they did not try and restore at least partially the SDS system.
I know the point of the story the wolves need to land and win but this is just all kinds of wrong.
If you have all these remnants of the WoS who refused to return and are now sitting out there holding out,Alric is going to have some issues.
I liked the ILClan book but what really disappointed me was the lack of detail. No ToE,No list of what units where there in what strengh. nothing. espcially the space battle.

[captnchuck67]

I was doing more research and in TRO 3150 it says that all Castrums where

Prior to the implementation of Fortress
Republic, Castrums of the Border Fleets were
discreetly recalled to Prefecture X, ostensibly
for maintenance. Had Clarion Call not worked
as well as it did, the Castrums would have been
the Republic’s last line of defense.

So how many where there?
This is why BT either needs to fully flesh out the strategic stuff and give us hard numbers and tell us how things went down like the Tukiyyad books and the 4ISW  and have the Authors at least try and keep it real or not even try. This stuff makes my head explode.

[Wrangler]

No new card numbers were ever given about the production of this dropship. For all we know they could have reduced production of the Castrums which were made in New Earth we last knew.

There was some of severe military cut backs in the Inner Sphere after the Jihad and some previous MWDA Novels mentioned other cut backs.

I would wonder if they were forgotten about like every thing space wise.

[Weirdo]

Plus,the RoS commanders knew when the McKenna jumped in not only what it ment to the Planners but what might be on board. Even if it was only partially functional I would have blown it to dust

Blown it up with what? McKennas are extremely hard to kill even if you have a battleship of your own, and the Republic had absolutely nothing even remotely approaching that category. By my memory, the largest vessel they had was an Aegis, and Aegii have exactly two options when in a fight involving a McKenna:

1: Contrive the plot so that the fight starts at Short Range.

2: Be unimportant compared to other units in your fleet.

The only reason any Republic units survived the battle at the jump point at all is because Pride and the other large Wolf WarShips were focused on their job of escorting the troop ships. A McKenna that is cut loose for the hunt is the guaranteed death of every Aegis in the system that doesn't jump away, plain and simple.

[Hellraiser]

Question, has anyone played out how well a Castrum would stand up to a real warship?

I ask because I recall a few years back someone running a simulation of a Fox full of Tiamats v/s an Agamemnon and it did NOT go well for the Fox IIRC.

Now a Castrum is quite a bit more than a Tiamat, but still just wondering how well they do against the Cruiser based forces the Clans have.

From other threads it does appear there may be a new 5th Warship Essex Class but everything else is unclarified & could be Pocket Warships or True Warships, unknown.

1 Castrum a year seems possible, Jumpships used to be slower in the old JS/DS sourcebook and the Castrum is pretty large but I'd say it would still be faster than 1/year but call it a base minimum of 53 seems like a good starting point.

[Hellraiser]

1: Contrive the plot so that the fight starts at Short Range.

2: Be unimportant compared to other units in your fleet.

HighSpeed Pass?   But yeah, I agree. 

[Weirdo]

Good point. Three options, none of which were possible in that particular battle.

[monbvol]

Question, has anyone played out how well a Castrum would stand up to a real warship?

I ask because I recall a few years back someone running a simulation of a Fox full of Tiamats v/s an Agamemnon and it did NOT go well for the Fox IIRC.

Now a Castrum is quite a bit more than a Tiamat, but still just wondering how well they do against the Cruiser based forces the Clans have.

From other threads it does appear there may be a new 5th Warship Essex Class but everything else is unclarified & could be Pocket Warships or True Warships, unknown.

1 Castrum a year seems possible, Jumpships used to be slower in the old JS/DS sourcebook and the Castrum is pretty large but I'd say it would still be faster than 1/year but call it a base minimum of 53 seems like a good starting point.

Without having actually played it out on table top there was a thread some time ago where a fair number of Warship designs were exposed as to being very vulnerable to Castrums, some were even Clan/Former SLDF designs.  It did also show after a certain point in a straight stand up trade blow for blow fight it would get ugly for Castrums with far more designs.  But handle them carefully and be good with predicting your bearings only launch/activation points and it could still prove quite dangerous due to the simple fact a lot of Warships simply don't have enough AMS mounted on them.  Heck a lot still don't have any at all.

[Wrangler]

Question, has anyone played out how well a Castrum would stand up to a real warship?

I ask because I recall a few years back someone running a simulation of a Fox full of Tiamats v/s an Agamemnon and it did NOT go well for the Fox IIRC.

Now a Castrum is quite a bit more than a Tiamat, but still just wondering how well they do against the Cruiser based forces the Clans have.

From other threads it does appear there may be a new 5th Warship Essex Class but everything else is unclarified & could be Pocket Warships or True Warships, unknown.

1 Castrum a year seems possible, Jumpships used to be slower in the old JS/DS sourcebook and the Castrum is pretty large but I'd say it would still be faster than 1/year but call it a base minimum of 53 seems like a good starting point.

Actually, I did a experiment battle that i posted on Crazy Hits some years ago. It took 4 of them to kill a Capellan Cruiser via MegaMek. (Not using fighters, just big ships) No escort for the Warship.



Don't let silly picture fool you, essentially summed up what happened.

[Hellraiser]

Wow, that is both hilarious and actually pretty impressive.

4 DS v/s 1 WS =  Remove 2 DS & the WS.

That's the kind of a trade I'd be willing to make all day.

[CVB]

Especially when comparing costs
FH:
25,684,322,000 CBills
2xCastrum
11,640,608,000 CBills

[Hellraiser]

I was more looking at the tonnage in raw materials.

Loose 900KT?  v/s 200KT

[Weirdo]

How's the BV compare?

[CVB]

MUL is silent on the FH, Sarna gives 83,137.
Both agree on 67,223 for the Castrum.
Considering a better than 3 to 1 rate, the result is to be expected...

[Wrangler]

It would have been cool if we had been able to game out the Naval Battle for Terra on MegaMek and let results come be canon. (I know ain't going happen, but trial for the Leviathen II was fun).  Castrums could have made a difference along with the Tiamats IIs, Dragus IIs, Interdictors, Achilles Dropships supporting by fighters and giving the Warships some cover from those kamikaze dropships.

[Jellico]

Warships is why Tiamats exist. It is not a job for a Castrum.
Queue naval frustration. There simply aren't that many Wolves and the tools were put in place to handle a Star of WarShips. The McKenna is irrelevant.  It is only slightly more threatening than on of the multiple cruisers the Falcons brought. Or the Wolves for that matter. There should have been enough DropShip squadrons to act as a hard counter for multiple WarShips.  The threat is obvious so where is the counter?
Yes, I am aware what WarShips do to DropShips. But the entire assault DropShip complement of the Republic is designed to take it. So yeah, I am deeply frustrated.

[Cannonshop]

Warships is why Tiamats exist. It is not a job for a Castrum.
Queue naval frustration. There simply aren't that many Wolves and the tools were put in place to handle a Star of WarShips. The McKenna is irrelevant.  It is only slightly more threatening than on of the multiple cruisers the Falcons brought. Or the Wolves for that matter. There should have been enough DropShip squadrons to act as a hard counter for multiple WarShips.  The threat is obvious so where is the counter?
Yes, I am aware what WarShips do to DropShips. But the entire assault DropShip complement of the Republic is designed to take it. So yeah, I am deeply frustrated.

thus, why they put too many details into the story.  The outcome was predetermined, by adding detail the writers just highlighted the idea that the ROTS navy is completely and totally incompetent.

A much BETTER approach, would've saved a lot of pages.  "The Republic Navy was Annihilated early on."  and never mentioned again-thus, shifting the discusstion from 'how incompetent, don't they know how to use that stuff?" to "gee, the Wolves must be really brilliant, I wonder how they did it?"

Sometimes, Less really is more.  For instance, when your writer can't grasp either the tabletop or the conceptual realities of space combat, or when they're told to 'dumb it down' or apply stupidity pills to make an outcome work.  The better option is just to baldly state the outcome with as minimal details as physically possible so as to avoid getting logical people going "WTF dude? really??"

The entire naval battle for Terra should've been, at most, four sentences of six words apiece or less.

Either that, or they should've formulated and treated the material with some respect, while bringing out a logical conclusion that didn't rely on hamhandedly making one side complete morons.

[monbvol]

Warships is why Tiamats exist. It is not a job for a Castrum.
Queue naval frustration. There simply aren't that many Wolves and the tools were put in place to handle a Star of WarShips. The McKenna is irrelevant.  It is only slightly more threatening than on of the multiple cruisers the Falcons brought. Or the Wolves for that matter. There should have been enough DropShip squadrons to act as a hard counter for multiple WarShips.  The threat is obvious so where is the counter?
Yes, I am aware what WarShips do to DropShips. But the entire assault DropShip complement of the Republic is designed to take it. So yeah, I am deeply frustrated.

I largely agree.  The Castrum is interesting and serves as an interesting case study/point of comparison for what it possible but it is not the best Warship killing PWS out there.

Doesn't mean it can't seriously threaten some even 1v1 but that doesn't make it the best.

[Wrangler]

I always thought that the Castrum was intended as the command ship of Dropship squadron.
It also served as limited fire support and carrier.  While Tiamat II, Dragus II, interdictor, Achilles were the attack dogs. The problem fore Republic Border Fleet was likely dedicated Jumpship assets.

For the Battle of Terra, I would eager not all of the fleet was in Sol system when the Wolves and Falcons jump the fence/wall get in fight.  Those Forts seemed to have been staple of the system's defense.

No one expected Wolves to use essential ram Dropships to remedy what needed to be removed.
It goes against conventional Clan warfare tactics. Boarding ships, so-call clippers ships aren't so far from Clans methods, given Lupus dropshuttle/small craft job is the same but not as fast or armored.

If RecGuides payoff, perhaps a full TRO could include the missing units. Given the stats exist, I'd image a reused M9 station will likely be used as basis for the Fort's stats. The Pile driver class is armor (lots of armor) and speed, the Clippers just infantry bays , maybe small craft bays and couple weapons and of course speed.

I just hope failed Warspite will be its own design be bigger than a Aegis.

[Stormlion1]

The Battle of Terra also ignored something else. Terra's SDS network. Unlike when the WoB invaded the incoming Wolves were expected and the SDS command centers would have been manned and ready. Lots of orbital and ground defences were just ignored during the Wolf Invasion in favor of jump point space station defences. Has the RoTS never heard of defence in depth?

[Wrangler]

I'm guessing the SDS was not operational.  Also, Stone knew he was doomed.  So he wanted make sure he engineered right Clan to take possession of Terra.  SDS would have been pretty nasty if had been operational.