Fan Service: It is about "servicing" the fan[4] - giving the fans "exactly what they want".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_service In the beginning there was science fiction and to travel the stars they needed space ships. Because bigger is better these soon became mile long ships, and because that just wasn’t phallic enough, they had to add massive weapons running the length of the ship.
About 80 years later along came BattleTech with its long, germanium cored JumpShips. These promptly became kilometre long WarShips but for twenty years the franchise ignored the temptation of the spinal mount. Until TacOps came out. Powerful but gimped in the extreme; even then, thanks to the general reduction of WarShips in the universe, use of this weapon was limited to a near mythical Word of Blake super ship. Teeth were gnashed until finally the 2765 Field Reports were released and we got the Soyal-class heavy cruiser. Appropriately the reaction of the fans was one of huge excitement then release.
In universe the Soyal had its genesis in the 2725 tenders for a replacement for the Star League’s Avatar-class. Delhi WarShips (builder of the Vincent-class) had got their hands on the designs for mass drivers and saw it as a chance to make the jump to the big league. Given the Medium Mass Driver finally mounted has the potential to kill a destroyer in a single shot it was a reasonable assumption. The problem was that no one had built a ship with a mass driver before and Delhi certainly couldn’t go asking the SLDF. Too many awkward questions about where the designs came from. So, they just went and designed the ship.
Central to the Soyal is the Medium Mass Driver laid along its germanium spine. It defines the ship. At 1.5 million tons it is twice the size of a normal heavy cruiser, but Delhi’s design team argued that that was the price to pay for revolutionising naval combat. Again it is hard to question their logic. 120 points of Structural Integrity show just how worried Delhi was that the mass driver would split the ship in two. At this point things were going reasonably well, but from there on in Delhi’s inexperience would show.
Possibly the best way to show the inadequacy of the Soyal in SLDF service is to compare it to the ship that eventually won the 2725 tender. The Luxor-class.
At 890,000 tons the Luxor is 60% of the mass of the Soyal with nothing like the structural integrity. In many ways the Soyal is a ship from 300 years before. The fuel supplies are extensive and the cargo bay is huge, akin to the cruisers of yore like the Black Lion I and Dart. Armour is adequate, but a little light by modern standards, and uses out-dated compounds. The Soyal is actually the tougher ship, but at 1.5 million tons it needs to be. The three docking collars are inferior to the Luxor’s four at a time when the SLDF was making full use of the flexibility of DropShips. The flight decks are remarkably similar, probably specified by the SLDF, though the Soyal carries 48 BattleMechs for some reason. That brings us onto the weapons.
In addition to the mass driver, the Soyal’s weapons are made up of naval gauss rifles and auto canon. While the bow and stern gauss rifles are paired in bays, the side NACs are in single mounts. Old Killer Whales and naval lasers make up the defensive armament. Everything aft of the fore arcs is clearly defensive given the Soyal’s obvious strength forward, and even the capital missiles can be directed to fire forward as needed.
In contrast the Luxor is designed to fight on the broadside. Twin NAC bays and Gauss Rifles dominate the side arcs. Clusters of Naval PPCs and Naval Lasers provide support. This doesn’t seem so bad till one does the maths. At best the Soyal can fire 244 points into its forward arc using way pointed missiles. The Luxor can fire 432 points into its broadside. Where the Soyal is restricted by the firing arcs and inaccuracy of the mass driver, the Luxor is able to use bracketing to send accurate fire out to 50 hexes. As noted in the Soyal’s fluff, Delhi was not aware of this technique and didn’t design their ship in such a way that the SLDF could perform it. Additionally fighting bow on exposes the Soyal to more damaging critical hits. While the Soyal’s command and targeting systems were exposed the broadside only exposed weapons and cargo.
In AA terms both ships are comparable. Neither is in the league of say, an Aegis, but where the Luxor loses in accuracy it makes up in throw weight while the Soyal’s White Sharks are merely solid, lacking the long range accuracy of Barracudas which might have tipped the balance.
For all of that the Soyal had the ability to defeat a Luxor in combat. A few lucky shots with the mass driver could end things very quickly. But the percentage play rests with the Luxor.
So, when the time came for the SLDF to choose between the conventional ship, from a traditional provider, built to match their doctrines of docking collars and bracketed fire, or the outrageously heavy, untested freak, they went with the ship that matched their needs.
That would have been the end of it had it not been for the Capellan Confederation. In 2725 the Confederation was shopping around for a modern capital ship. Long and physically imposing. A powerful weapon system. The Soyal ticked a lot of boxes for the Capellans. Like all of the Great Houses, the Capellans were not fully aware of the SLDF move towards defence in depth (ie DropShips) and would not get knowledge of bracketing techniques until the 3070s. Size alone was good enough reason for the SLDF to reject the Soyal, yet for the Capellans the battleship size was a positive for prestige reasons. Ultimately more legitimate suppliers like Mitchell Vehicles or Blue Nose Clipperships were not going to be selling large modern hulls to a Great House without all sorts of Hegemony interference, so buying from Delhi held all sorts of benefits.
It has to be said that in the years before the First Succession War the Soyal was a highly successful ship. Solid numbers were built and saw service with both the Capellans and Free Worlds League. Big, with plenty of room for showing off, they looked the part for showing the flag. They were so successful the SLDF was forced to look into mass drivers even though they had no real interest.
The Succession Wars were both better and worse than might be expected. While the SLDF had a stand-off doctrine the Houses preferred pre-Reunification War brawling. This suited the Soyal as the big cruiser could get its mass driver into accurate range as both forces charged each other. True capital ships that could survive a hit were rare amongst the Houses and single hits could end battles before they began. However, once in short range the Soyal’s weak weapon systems could be truly exposed. As long as the mass driver could be avoided, ships like the Davion II and Narukami could brutalise the heavy cruiser. Ultimately this wasn’t what killed the Soyal-class. The needs of the Capellan Confederation for more ships after the fall of the Star League meant more time spent on lighter craft rather than huge cruisers. Even if Delhi WarShips hadn’t lost the ability to build WarShips no more Soyals were likely to be built. In the end attrition saw the end of all WarShips in House hands.
So, how to use a Soyal? Try and get close so that it is easier to line up the mass driver and the +2 to-hit is less important. Keep firing that big gun and hope that it hits something.
Defeating a Soyal is as simple as avoiding the big gun. If a House, use evasion to close then hit the flanks. If you win initiative, get out of the mass driver’s firing arc. If the SLDF, get comfortable broadside on and shoot out the Soyal’s targeting and control systems from 40 hexes out as the big cruiser desperately tries to get a firing solution. Or of course, release 4 Titan-loads of nuclear armed aerospace fighters on it. The SLDF does not play nice.
