BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Player Boards => Fan Articles => Topic started by: Terrace on 16 June 2018, 18:52:54
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Recently I posted a topic (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=61671.0) discussing the building of OmniFighters with Reflective Armor. At the time, I was unaware of any such designs, until I stumbled upon the Simurgh (http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Simurgh) while doing research for the topic. I had either forgotten about it, or never knew it involved that combo (the second is more likely).
So, the question I would like to pose to those who've used it: How would you rate it, both as a spaceframe in general and with the canon configurations?
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I'd take it against Clantech fighters 1 on 1 and expect to have some success.
That's a very good standard for IS tech.
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It seems to like ballistic weapons...
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Tough, with a strong forward punch and competitive mobility.
I think it's notable for mounting not a single energy weapon in any of it's configurations (that I could find). Against modern ASF that need not be a bad thing.
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. . . do we have a Omni or even regular fighter with Reactive Armor or Ballistic Reinforced Armor armed with all energy weapons for a great paper/scissors/rock fight?
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Not that I know of.
And what about Anti-Pen?^^
I think Reinforced + BSPFD would be a neat combo, though.
A bit more weight-intensive than Reflective + AMS, but it should definitely exist.
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The configs are rather interesting. The B can punch holes in anything it comes across, the A can pour out up to 22 five pointers per round (Woe to anything with less than 41 armor...) and the prime can do a nice touch of both. The Republic did manage to salvage some interesting toys from the toasterworshippers.
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. . . do we have a Omni or even regular fighter with Reactive Armor or Ballistic Reinforced Armor armed with all energy weapons for a great paper/scissors/rock fight?
Since it's an Omni itself, the obvious answer would be to create an energy-heavy configuration when presented with such an opponent, right?
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Sure . . . except it launches with how its configured- usually not knowing the opposition, though Reflec is being viewed as a ideal ASF armor b/c of the bonuses from the various flavors of PL. Thus the ballistic armed configs are usually a good idea . . . since very few fighters (not one named yet) has either of the ballistic off-setting armors.
I mean if as part of a campaign you have intel that the defenders of Planet Doo-dad has the latest in ASF- squadrons of Sales-Inducing-Name fighters which are armored in BRA to protect them . . . sure pack your energy Omnipods (unless you are playing in a venue that is canon-only . . . ).
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The main reason for Reflec to be that good isn't even just that it's good - it's that it has no disadvantages (barring not taking HFA) in space.
There's a startlingly low risk of physical attacks and no area of effect weapons to speak of. I take that back. Apparently Artillery Cannons still count as AE, even with no area.
Then the thresholding rules are just gravy on an already appealing choice with how they stop clan/heavy PPCs and by extension most other energy weapons from penetrating by putting just 4.5 tons on one facing;
While HFA might give better average protection against an unknown force with presumed mixed armament, being able to ward off crits from 1/3 - 1/2 of the enemies weapons is exclusive to the heaviest of birds.
The Simurgh isn't quite heavy enough for that.
As I've been looking over it, it also features very good cooling (courtesy of no energy weapons), and mounts all of it's weapons in the nose. The more I look, the better it turns out to be.
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The main reason for Reflec to be that good isn't even just that it's good - it's that it has no disadvantages (barring not taking HFA) in space.
Well there is the potential wrinkle about how CAP/SCAP PPCs and Lasers are not only NOT energy weapons, they're AoE weapons..
Not sure whether they count as AoE in space though. If they do, that's a hell of a problem.
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Well there is the potential wrinkle about how CAP/SCAP PPCs and Lasers are not only NOT energy weapons, they're AoE weapons..
Not sure whether they count as AoE in space though. If they do, that's a hell of a problem.
If your gunners can nail speeding ASFs with Naval-scale Lasers and PPCs, there's probably not a single ASF in the void that can take that damage without complaint. The NL35, the smallest Capital-grade energy weapon, is gonna hit for 17 damage, assuming the Reflective Armor works on it. It will threshold any fighter it hits, regardless of the facing. Even a dinky little Light Sub-Capital Laser is gonna hit as hard as a Medium Laser does against standard armor.
The point is, it does not matter if Reflective Armor provides any benefits, because the sheer amount of damage-per-shot is gonna crit that poor unlucky ASF through the armor, even at 50% strength. An ASFs best defense against Capital-scale weaponry is and has always been not getting hit in the first place.
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I wonder if Anti-Pen armour could help there, but it's probable no one really knows the answer to that one.
Well, that's rather hypothetical.
Special armours are mostly about surviving and preventing crits from lighter units, or the smaller calibers employed by dropships for fighter defense. I think Baracudas and SCLs are the only larger weapons I'd worry about when constructing a fighter.
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Light fighters can't mount decent calibre ballistics. Missiles are restricted to 5 point clusters.
Thus energy weapons are the only way that they can get decent firepower.
By extension given standard armours a medium or heavy fighter can carry more firepower using energy weapons than missiles or ballistics.
That is the advantage of reflective armour over the other exotics.
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Light fighters can't mount decent calibre ballistics. Missiles are restricted to 5 point clusters.
Not trying to content the point, because it still stands no matter what, but ... thunderbolts? Or are they split for ASFs?
As for a wider discussion:
There might not be much of a meta with how many space games I've seen (exactly 0), but I wonder if there will eventually be an equilibrium?
Reflec armour is still on the rise, and powerful, but that in turn makes Re-Lasers and subpar non-energy weapons valuable.
And Plasma, somewhat ironically, the extra heat isn't particularly devastating if you're not using your heatsinks anyways.
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Thunderbolt 10s are 7 tons with 5 heat. They are borderline practical for smaller craft.
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Thunderbolt 10s are 7 tons with 5 heat. They are borderline practical for smaller craft.
Can you mount Thunderbolts or Rocket Launchers as external ordnance? I'd think some clever tech could set up a One Shot missile pod and wire it to the hardpoint. If you can, a Seydlitz or Sparrowhawk with multiple rocket pods could be a beast. (I'm specifically ignoring the Arrow and AAMs from TacOps. I want to know about TechManual level missile weapons.)
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Can you mount Thunderbolts or Rocket Launchers as external ordnance? I'd think some clever tech could set up a One Shot missile pod and wire it to the hardpoint. If you can, a Seydlitz or Sparrowhawk with multiple rocket pods could be a beast. (I'm specifically ignoring the Arrow and AAMs from TacOps. I want to know about TechManual level missile weapons.)
Rocket pods do exist but dont think you can do T-Bolts
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Yes, RL10 pods can be carried externally like bombs . . . I prefer the old way to calculate bomb carry however, which is that it affects your speed- part of the reason IIRC that the Jump Bomber was so fast with no integral loads. You want to see devastation? Take some larger conventional fighters, load them with RL pods and have a go at a armored column.
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I just noticed that the Simurgh also has the best dmg/ton heavy weapons available on the non-gauss configs. Couldn't find anything IS above 2, excluding the obvious offenders like medium lasers. And with the Gauss, it has the best dmg/hit available. It's actually really optimized the more I look at it.
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Better than Xerxes?
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For a while I really wondered what the hell is supposedly so optimized about a Xerxes, but than it dawned on me that you might mean dmg / hit.
And yes, a 22 is hard to beat.
Though UACs are great in that they offer both great dmg / ton and decently sized hits.
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After this thread inspired me to dive into the dropship rules (The fighter is, after all, fluffed as a strike bird), I wondered:
How effective is it's weapon load, actually, against larger craft?
Is there still a point in a single large hit against, say, a warship? Or Dropship?
It is, without a doubt, devastating against opposing fighters, but I'm not so sure anymore about the thresholding of a squadron.
Oh, and regarding armour:
If a reflec bird is hit with, say, a Long Tom, will that be 8x 5 dmg, or will the clusters be doubled to 4x 10 dmg?
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Oh, and regarding armour:
If a reflec bird is hit with, say, a Long Tom, will that be 8x 5 dmg, or will the clusters be doubled to 4x 10 dmg?
If your fighters are in a position to be hit by enemy artillery, you messed up badly.
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After this thread inspired me to dive into the dropship rules (The fighter is, after all, fluffed as a strike bird), I wondered:
How effective is it's weapon load, actually, against larger craft?
Is there still a point in a single large hit against, say, a warship? Or Dropship?
There's two main reasons to use big guns vs big ships, as opposed to big numbers of small guns.
The first is thresholding. Even squadrons will only generate crits based on the damage of a single gun, so bigger single-hit guns will threshold bigger ships. This only really helps against relatively lightly armored DropShips though, and don't even bother trying to threshold WarShips except for the absolute thinnest-skinned.
The other reason to use big guns is damage concentration. Especially when dealing with WarShips, it takes a LOT of hits to chew through a decent skin of armor paint. The hit chart doesn't help, spreading your hits across multiple armor facings. You hit a cruiser with five medium lasers, you're lucky if three of them hit the same location. On the other hand, a Heavy Gauss Rifle is putting all 25 in one spot, and between you and your buddies, you're that much closer to getting at the actual SI.
(Interesting note: These reasons are why anti-shipping strikes are one of the few situations where you might want a standard Heavy Gauss instead of the Improved.)
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The other reason to use big guns is damage concentration. Especially when dealing with WarShips, it takes a LOT of hits to chew through a decent skin of armor paint. The hit chart doesn't help, spreading your hits across multiple armor facings. You hit a cruiser with five medium lasers, you're lucky if three of them hit the same location. On the other hand, a Heavy Gauss Rifle is putting all 25 in one spot, and between you and your buddies, you're that much closer to getting at the actual SI.
You wouldn't really get significant concentration of damage. The biggest weapon an ASF can mount is going to do 2 capital damage. If you're not thresholding it will take at least ten hits on the same location to get to SI. Concentrated damage is a thing where you can break through the armor in one or two or maybe three hits. It's less of a thing when it's taking you ten or more.
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Ten hits is better than having to score fifty. And if you're doing 2 Capital when another fighter would only do 1, then by definition you're cutting the time needed to grind through that armor in half. It's not about quick solutions, it's about every little bit counting.
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If your fighters are in a position to be hit by enemy artillery, you messed up badly.
Most artillery has a Flak option.
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Or you're fighting a Transit.
So, basically, if a Squadron of 6 Simurgh Bs attacks a warship (unlikely, but just hypothetically), they deal 26 capital damage in 'small' clusters?
Well, then again, the iHGR will threshold some dropships, as well as every single fighter and small craft out there.
The Simurgh makes for a scary attack platform, and potentially heavy dogfighter, but one wonders what it's meant to attack if it's weapons aren't actually heavy enough for the bigger targets.
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So, basically, if a Squadron of 6 Simurgh Bs attacks a warship (unlikely, but just hypothetically), they deal 26 capital damage in 'small' clusters?
Larger clusters than others, but yeah. Don't forget that after all the standard-scale damage room a given source has been allocated to a capital-scale target, all the damage that hit a given location is treated as a single chunk of damage. You're still not critting anything due to other rules, this just means that once you hit SI, you're not rolling ALL the crits.Well, then again, the iHGR will threshold some dropships, as well as every single fighter and small craft out there.
The Simurgh makes for a scary attack platform, and potentially heavy dogfighter, but one wonders what it's meant to attack if it's weapons aren't actually heavy enough for the bigger targets.
The point is that no ASF ever has weapons that will reliably crit a WarShip. By dealing its damage in those slightly larger clusters, the Simurgh B is going to chew through the shell that little bit faster, so is more suited to the task than other fighters that deal smaller clusters.
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Oh, and regarding armour:
If a reflec bird is hit with, say, a Long Tom, will that be 8x 5 dmg, or will the clusters be doubled to 4x 10 dmg?
4x10. With odd points of extra damage not transferring between locations.
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Oh, and regarding armour:
If a reflec bird is hit with, say, a Long Tom, will that be 8x 5 dmg, or will the clusters be doubled to 4x 10 dmg?
I assume you mean a reflec bird that's on the ground, e.g. taking off or landing at a field. Doesn't artillery mounted on ASF lose the AoE effect?
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If this thread (https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,30107.0.html) is still valid, then they are possibly just as painful in the air.
And painful they would be, 4x10 would potentially crit out a fighter.
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. . . which would make Reactive Armor the armor of choice for CAS and planetary bombers?
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Ten hits is better than having to score fifty. And if you're doing 2 Capital when another fighter would only do 1, then by definition you're cutting the time needed to grind through that armor in half. It's not about quick solutions, it's about every little bit counting.
Another comparable weight and tech fighter would not be doing only 1 capital, though. Against warships, why does it matter if you're using the Simurgh's 47 tons of podspace for 2 iHGRs totalling 4 capital damage or 5 ERLLs totalling 4 capital damage?
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5 scattered hits . . . need for 30 DHS so . . . 20t for DHS (maybe less b/c engine size), 25t for weapons . . .
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Because those two iHGRs are going to concentrate their damage on two armor facings max, and stand a real chance of putting all that hurt into one spot, bringing you that much closer to punching through. While doing the same with the five ERLLs is possible, it's also possible you'll see their damage spread out across three or four armor facings, depending on the hit chart your angle of attack forces you to use. Concentration is key if you don't want that WarShip to simply outlast you or want to keep the number of chances it gets to actually hit you with a NAC to a minimum.
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. . . which would make Reactive Armor the armor of choice for CAS and planetary bombers?
Artillery is still big, hot and heavy.
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Sure, but Reactive Armor will decrease its damage and thus likely threshold ability . . . same for any ACs pressed into duty.
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Well, at that point, you run into regular flak.
I think for a planetary bomber, HFA is a pretty solid choice. It might even cover the crash. xp
To get back to anti-shipping duty, so the Simurgh B Squadron will deal 2x 13 Capital, with 2 Capital for the purpose of thresholding.
Then the Prime would deal once 6-15 and 2x ... how do Cluster weapons even work.
Anyways, assuming a limited amount of attacks, wouldn't it also make sense to have a single strong hit, followed by a multitude of smaller ones to increase the chance of stacking up damage on the same facing the big hit landed on?
Though I suppose that is getting off topic - the Simurgh even offers those options.
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Sure, but Reactive Armor will decrease its damage and thus likely threshold ability . . . same for any ACs pressed into duty.
Until you get the one roll that causes the reactive armor to ignite and destroy itself, at which point you'll go down in BT history as you've invented the self-thresholding fighter. Congratulations! ;)
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I for one welcome our new 1 in 1296 (Or less if its a mech) chance of fireworks overlords.
Wait... Even less for mechs again. have to roll for possible criticals.
Higher for fighters if you can get threshold hits in, But again, have to roll for possible criticals first.
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Just get HFA. It's probably easier to source, and the 24% extra protection also works against thresholds. Including against Flak AC ammo and pulse lasers, which are probably Anti-Air weapons.
And ADAs, which apparently aren't even AE?
I think we can just agree that we wouldn't use a Simurgh for the task. For all it's fluff of anti-ship operations, I think it mostly makes a superb heavy dogfighter.
Question is if that still applies in atmosphere.