Goth - 60t, TRO: Golden Century
All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop” thread.“Go ahead. Call me ‘emo’ One. More. Time.”
First off, I think I’ll let Tony Stark say it for me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WW87SvdrkoY It’s been a long time between drinks, hasn’t it? Here’s hoping I remember the whole recipe — there’s little worse than a botched cocktail, am I right?
Anyone who’s read more than a handful of my previous columns knows that I’m a long-standing culture-vulture, the kind of joker who enjoys knowing the historical context of a design and witnessing the march of technology. For nigh-on thirty years IRL, the Clans’ Golden Century has been one period of technological evolution where we knew a lot of the start- and end-points, but few of the intervening steps, which left rivet-counters like me somewhat down in the dumps... but at last, the Fates (and the Catalyst creative staff) have seen fit to smile upon us by releasing an entire TRO dedicated to this transitional period in Clan technology.
Now, obviously, most of these early designs are going to be good, or even brilliant — they would’ve had to be, to be adopted in the first place — but that same march of technology would see them simply superceded by later developments. Putting on my Doyle hat for a moment:
why would a ‘brilliant’ Golden Century fighter give way to a modern one? Well, heat-management is the signature conceit of the BattleTech combat system, so obviously some of these earlier designs would use single heat sinks and be outmoded by ships with doubles. But why not simply build them with DHS to start with? Any number of reasons, actually. SHS are a completely mature technology by the late 2800s, while DHS in the Kerensky Cluster were transitioning from the older, bulkier SLDF models to the more compact Clan models, which would create a host of engineering challenges. There’s also the issue of manufacturing infrastructure: building new factories is
expensive as hell in terms of time, manpower, expertise and resources, whereas if you can simply yank a bird out of a Brian cache and take to it with a wrench straight away in a ‘workshop’ environment, your overheads are vastly lower... but that means working within constraints imposed by the
original design.
Which brings us to the
Goth, of which we got our first glimpse in
Turning Points: Tokasha, but only received full tech-specs for in the recent release of
TRO: Golden Century. Now, the design is very directly and explicitly based on the SLDF
Gotha, and from an aesthetic standpoint, I love this choice right off; its limited use of advanced SLDF tech aside, the
Gotha has always put me in mind of the ‘Thunder’ fighter from Glen Larson’s version of
Buck Rogers, a show which (like Larson’s previous work
Battlestar Galactica) finished what
Star Wars started in engraving a love of whooshing spaceships and
zap-zap-zap-kaBOOOOOM! dogfights on toddler-me’s brain even as I was learning to grasp the alphabet. :D However, as Cloud Cobra engineers soon found, it does come with certain limitations as a weapons platform: namely, the 180SFE (limiting the spaceframe’s thrust-curve to a mere 5/8) and the single heat-sinks mounted therein, limiting the type’s ability to cope with the colossal heat-burden of being loaded with Clan-grade energy weapons. However, their mandate was to Omni-fy the design’s
weapons systems, not completely overhaul the powerplant and cooling arrangements, and like all good engineers, they chose not to borrow trouble. (Remember the cardinal rule of sound engineering practice: ‘to get an improved end-product that works, start with a
base product that works and make
improvements; don’t take away what
already works’. In cruder terms, “If it’s
already working,
don’t ****** with it!” Engine and cooling improvements could wait until the
next iteration — see the eventual successor, the
Visigoth.) And besides, the majority of these spaceframes were originally de-mothballed
Gothas taken from Brian Caches for conversion; ‘objective creep’ like that would have blown their project timeframe to hell and gone just from the necessary design-work, let alone implementation and troubleshooting.
Now, CCC’s Techs did make
two relatively quick and minor changes to the base spaceframes as they were reactivating them, in that they removed and recycled the older, heavier SLDF-grade Ferro-Aluminium armour and replaced it with the newer Clan version of that same composite, winding up with the same degree of protection for only twelve tons. (Well, technically they had to shave off three points on the nose, but since that ‘only’ leaves the layout at 74/54/48... well, the loss is all but negligible in real terms.) In turn, that ‘freed’ ton was, sensibly, ploughed straight back into another single heat-sink to address the type’s dissipation woes, and fluff-wise I can well imagine this as a measure taken to improve the ship’s airborne trim, balancing SHS placements port-and-starboard to even out internal loads.
This leaves the
Goth with an impressive twenty-seven tons of pod-space, and if the use of SHS in the base spaceframe means your pods can only mount singles as well, a little judicious tweaking of the loadouts and teaching your pilots the value of proper fire-discipline can let them work around the worst of the limitations. (Also note that if you play with Quirks enabled at your tabletop, the
Goth has a Combat Computer, knocking another four points off its heat-scale. >:D It also gets Easy to Maintain (logical, given how it relies so much on Intro-level technology that is
almost idiot-proof), Atmospheric Flight Instability (which stands to reason given its profile is, erm, another example of BT’s cases of raw thrust triumphing over aerodynamics), and Obsolete for the period of 2980 to... 3164? ??? (The start date seems fine, since IIRC that’s when the
Visigoth was in the ascendant, but presumably the revival date is a typo and meant to read ‘3146’.)
Goth-prime explicitly takes its cues from the Royal version of the
Gotha, and I’d lay good money that these were the specs of any
Gothas that were in Clan service between the advent of Clantech and the start of the Cobras’ Omni-fication project. The nose houses a Large Pulse Laser and twin C/ERMLs for a solid triple-punch at Medium range. Each wing houses a Clantech LRM-15 with Artemis-IV and (hallelujah!) a full ton of ammunition per launcher, backed by an SPL for anti-personnel and/or point-defence duties. Tailgaters are going to have to deal with twin rear-mounted C/ERMLs — not a pleasant or easy thing to do. And four more heat sinks are podded in to at least
try to keep the temperature down.
Considering the Quirk that effectively bumps your dissipation capacity to 23, this is a
very solid combination, particularly since heat-wise, an ER Medium and an LRM-15 are interchangeable; you’re only going to build +1 heat per turn if you fire all of your forward beams. A Strafe or Strike against a ’Mech is going to strip off large chunks of its armour, which is when you drop thirty LRMs on him to probe the soft-spots and
really ruin his day.
Goth-Alpha seems to be an effort to duplicate the
Ironsides, another SLDF favourite. Twin nose-mounted C/LPLs mimic the old PPCs (but with better accuracy), and each wing holds an ERML and twin SRM-6s (all four launchers feeding off a single ton of ammunition), while six additional SHS do what they can to cover the heat-burden.
Here, you’re safe to make ‘slashing’ attacks with both pulse-cannons and the ‘engaged’ wing’s ERML, which is a solid way to make the recipients miserable in an awful hurry, but if you want to do crit-seeking against ground targets, missiles-only might be the way to go. Nonetheless, this is fighter that prefers to turn-and-burn in the Medium-to-Short-range brackets, and one presumes that when the Cloud Cobras teamed
Goths with
Hydaspes as they did while besieging Coyote holdings in 2948-49, this would have been the loadout of preference, covering the ‘weaknesses’ of the bigger ships’ hyper-focus on Extreme- and Long-range firepower.
Goth-Bravo is for the more-balls-than-brains brigade who are all-too-common amongst Clan pilots, especially in later years. An Active Probe cuts through enemy jamming, while each wing houses two laser cannons — an ER model for reach, and a pulser for precision or knife-fighting — while six more heat sinks are thrown into the mix as well.
Probably aimed at Dropper-chopping and chewing chunks off of hostile WarShips, this one builds heat slowly if you use it as an Extreme-range sniper, but once you close the cap and switch to using just the ‘engaged’ wing or the pulse-cannons, you can start flattening the curve again. I’d imagine this is the loadout that earned the
Goth an evil reputation for murdering ’Yote DropShips in the fighting around Homer and Brim.
Goth-Charlie... well, ever since we got our first peek at some of the kit used in the Golden Century, it’s been repeatedly pointed out that some of those weapons-platforms were just
too good for the Clans to have genuinely let them go extinct, and why bother making these toys and showing them to us if we can’t actually
use them in modern games? Well, the developers have heard those complaints — and likely had plans to address them even before they were voiced — because in the Dark Age era, the Wolf Empire has retooled the old
Gotha production lines on Stewart to build the
Goth for the new era of conflict. The Charlie loadout is clearly one such modern configuration, being that it’s built around twin RAC/5s (weapons from the FCCW period of BT history, long after the
Goth ‘died out’) and seven(!) tons of ammunition.
This loadout basically exists to gladden the hearts of anyone who loves the sound of
BBRRRRRRRRTTTTTT! in the morning. Any ’Mech caught by a Strike from one of these is going to hate life (and the opponent player) after a single pass, and so will almost any other fighter that lacks the kind of thick hide the
Goth boasts.
Goth-Delta is a blending of IS and Clan technology. The wing-mounted LRM-15s are back, this time with Artemis-
V guidance modules and three tons of ammo in total, while the C/ERPPC in the nose is now supported by a PPC Capacitor for additional punch every second turn. Five additional heat-sinks go towards the dissipation capacity, while two coolant pods (presumably something the Wolves looted from the gladiators of Solaris VII during their time there) allow for an ‘oh SHIT!’ moment or two. And the nicest part, for those want to save ammo? The PPC-Cap and one of the LRM launchers are completely interchangeable, heat-wise. >:D
All in all, I personally think the
Goth is a perfect first-generation OmniFighter. Not because it’s completely flawless — an XL engine for more speed and DHS for better cooling would have been needed to do that, but you need to walk before you can make a flying leap to something like the
Visigoth — but because it
is flawed, as all first-generation efforts inevitably are, and its imperfections are what make it perfect for the brief the writers were given.