Bashkir - 20t, TRO3055
Originally posted 15 Mar. 2006. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread. Gosh: cardboard armour, blistering speed, modest (almost coy!) armament and a flying-wing/lifting-body spaceframe - I wonder what the
Bashkir could
possibly be
descended from? O:-)
The Clans seemingly asked for (and got) a high-thrust lightfighter for ‘stiff-arm’ tactics: making the intercept at maximum practical separation from ‘home plate’ and holding (or at least delaying) the enemy until heavier types could intervene and make a harder stop. At 13/20, the
Bashkir out-performs virtually every other spaceframe in the sky save the ‘dumping ground’
Vandal, making it well-suited to such planning... though its mere three tons of fuel mean that it has to spend a lot of its time coasting home. :D Three-point-five tons of ferro-aluminium armour (19/17/14) is pretty respectable on a fighter this size, meaning that even the ferocious Clan ERPPC cannot OSK a
Bashkir. Though far from impressive by the standards of larger craft, four-point-five tons of pod-space is pretty healthy for something so small, and offers some interesting options. The external load is quite light, a mere four tons at 12/18, but using all of that for drop-tanks brings the total fuel fraction up to a more reasonable five tons, and if you use all the external gas for getting
to the fight, you’ve got something approximating the best of both worlds. :-\
All of the foregoing is pretty good stuff... but the designers get a big ding for the one quirk in this spaceframe: I ask you, what !@#$%^& genius decided to install an
eleventh DHS on a fighter that can barely mount enough firepower to overload its base
ten? ??? That’s an entire ton wasted on a ship where every gram counts! [tickedoff]
Bashkir Prime comes at you like Catherine Tramell wielding an ice-pick: fast, unexpected, and viciously, lethally dangerous under the right (wrong) circumstances. Each wing mounts an ERML, the
Prime’s main firepower; closer-range hitting power comes from a nose-mounted ERSL superimposed on a Streak-2 rack. Not even a whiff of heat problems (fourteen built, twenty-two sinked), and that SSRM-2 will
never use a full ton of ammo, so combat endurance is limited only by armour and fuel. The fluff says that this one is meant for knife-range dogfighting like its IS analogue the
Sparrowhawk, and I can’t dispute that specialisation. The Streak-rack is a really, really poor choice, though - the mass:damage ratio on a Streak-2 makes it virtually pointless, especially on a dogfighter - and it needs ditching instanter (see the Workshop thread for a fix).
Candour compels me to point out, however, that a Star of
Primes makes an excellent anti-’Ship harrassing unit and crit-seeker, especially against light units; okay, the nose-guns won’t give you much, but a constant, unimpaired-by-heat barrage from two ERML bays of up-to-7 Capital apiece can have telling effects, if only because a
Bashkir unit can make several near-unstoppable high-velocity passes and make a clean getaway before heavier pursuers can get a clean shot at them.
Bashkir Alpha opts for a slightly more
focused arsenal: a nose-mounted MPL and an SRM-6, a classic dogfighter/light-attacker ‘punch holes/find crits’ teaming. Also distinctly heat-forgiving, the
Alpha doesn’t have quite the wide fields of fire as the
Prime, but its ammunition load is markedly more realistic (especially when the fuel fraction is considered) and it can deliver some pretty decent blows before bingo-time. The weapons loadout puts me in mind of some light ’Mechs, suggesting that
Alpha’s favoured for chasing down light ’Mechs and Elementals (especially in Bloodname contests?). Scout-hunting isn’t normally a job assigned to ASF units in the IS (for various reasons), but the Clans do things their own way... and in this case, I’m reluctant to say they’re wrong for doing so.
Bashkir Bravo is the long-range harrasser of the family: its only energy weapon is a token ‘getting home’ ERSL, while each wing holds an LRM-5 and a ton of ammunition. Not a lot of throw-weight, but it’s
just enough to present a TAC threat to many light ASFs and the
Bravo can sustain the treatment for a goodly while, making it a nice little toy for ‘death by crits’ fans. And as I noted in the
Donar column, if a Clanner is going to make deep strikes against ‘soft’ targets in rear-areas or lay Thunder minefields in the enemy’s lines of communication, there are worse ways to go about it than with a
Bashkir Bravo.
Bashkir Charlie is deservedly named as the primary ground-attack variant, and it might do good service as a sniping unit in aerial (or anti-’Ship) combat, too: the only weapons are nose-mounted ER lasers, a Large and a Small (to fill the endemic ‘nagging half-ton’). A spiritual cousin to the
Seydlitz,
Charlie can make your life miserable from all ranges. }:) It has pretty decent Strafing/Striking power, and a Star of them would make for good Extreme/Long-range fire-support in anti-’Ship work, ‘shooting in’ a unit of
Primes.
Bashkir Delta comes to us from TRO3055U, and incorporates one of the two pieces of Clan “shiny kitâ€, in this case Heavy Lasers - a large and a small, in pretty much a direct substitution from the Charlie loadout. I’m not a huge fan of heavy lasers, but this is one of the few platforms where their use makes real sense: mobile enough to get them into and out of action effectively, with (just) enough heat-capacity to actually use the heavy-lasers consistently (indeed, this is the one case where that eleventh freezer actually gets used!). While you ‘lose’ Extreme range capability, most will tell you that it’s no especial loss in the first place - and what
Bashkir Deltas can do to enemy units (especially in a Strafe or in Star-sized ’Ship-killer units) makes them worthwhile.
Tactics for
Bashkir units depend on the unit loadouts and on the tactical circumstances they find when they arrive in the battle-area. They can’t absorb great deals of punishment, so (as I’ve told you
so many times before) the idea is ‘get in - hit hard - get out!’ Hit heavier spaceframes from the flanks and rear for better TAC-chances, wolfpack indidivudals to finish them quickly, and never, ever lose track of your fuel state. Going Dutchman is no way for a spacer to die.
As with the
Swift, you can’t hope to out-turn
Bashkirs - you have to out-stay and out-punch them. Use concentrated fire to put them out of the game quickly, and preferably from as far out as possible. Those old favourites the
Visigoths would get the nod on that score:
’Goth Alphas have a long-range, high-throw-weight arsenal which is almost perfect for crushing pests like the
Bashkir in one or two salvoes. Similarly, a single volley from that ninety-five-ton gorilla the
Eisensturm can leave a
Basher much the worse for wear.
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,4830.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcript(s) of previous run(s) of this thread may 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. ;)
