Sai - 40t, Objective Raids/AeroTech 2
Originally posted 4 May 2005. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread. The Dracs did it again.
I'm not kidding. When the gorram
Clans adapt and adopt your design (and no fewer than
six Clans, according to the FM:U RAT's), y'all gotta
know you did
something right! :o Appearing to be a quasi-replacement for the legally-challenged SL-25
Samurai, the
Sai is not in the same league as the
Sholagar as an interceptor, nor the SL-17
Shilone as a fire-support platform, nor is it quite as good a dogfighter as the
Samurai... yet it can perform those roles very well and adds its own specialities as a fast bomber/attack bird.
I didn't have access to the actual fluff on this bird when I first wrote this column
(if there is any; if someone with Objective Raids could let us know and/or post it on this thread, it would be appreciated) (though TRO3039 fixed that - see the next post), but HM:A and some deductive reasoning tells me a fair bit - and perhaps reflects the different mindsets of different nations. The Federated Commonwealth recovered Star League technology via the Helm Memory Core and/or the NAIS, and when they wanted to try their hand at an 'advanced' aerospace fighter, they took a methodical approach and tried to replicate the old HMR-HD
Hammerhead, using it as a stepping stone to more advanced aircraft. The Combine, on the other hand, got Star League goodies directly from ComStar (thanks to a Precentor who
seriously boned the beagle; whether this was a genuine blunder or "accidentally-on-purpose" may never be known), but it seems that
Gunji no Kanrei Theodore Kurita had imparted his spirit of calculated daring to his people (or was quietly desperate to find ways to fend off the new superpower on his doorstep(s)), because rather than build an old fighter and take things step-by-step, they started with a clean sheet of paper and created an entirely new design as a testbed, taking a rather more high-risk/high-return mentality which seems to have paid off quite handsomely. There used to be a
Sholagar factory on Schuyler, but at some time during the 3040s, as the Dracs gained enough understanding of what they'd received to start building it, that factory was closed to SL-21 construction and retooled to produce the new starfighter design; named the
Sai, this new 'experimental' fighter was a formidable complement to the already star-studded DCMS fighter corps... until Clan Smoke Jaguar invaded the planet in June of '50 and annexed the plant for themselves, at least. :D
In any case, the original S-4
Sai was an interesting start for a foundtech programme, a revolutionary new craft rather than an incremental development of an older type. Forty tons of starfighter driven by a Shinobi 240XLFE loaded with twelve DHS and five tons of fuel, the
Sai turns out an 8/12 thrust curve and offered a level of internal weapons volume that was unprecedented in the Successor States (the THAF
somehow having managed to conceal its deployment of XL engines on ASFs ::) ). Using all three of the 'new' construction technologies (and thus taking an exponentially higher engineering risk), the
Sai gave seven tons of its all-up mass to ferro-aluminium armour, laid out 35/32/26; unfortunately, this is vulnerable to ML thresholding across all aspects, but some things can't be helped. :-\ The arsenal was also foundtech: a nose-mounted ER PPC, offering Long-range capability and a solid ten-point whack to anything getting in front of it, and SRM-6s in each wing with Artemis-IV guidance-modules and a ton of ammo per launcher for close-range "Who's your Daddy?" }:)
This spaceframe offers so many options, it's downright criminal. As a dogfighter, the S-4
Sai can out-turn even the
Samurai, and its ERPPC and missiles can inflict much pain either far away or in close; note well, it can and will maintain its rate of fire, since the Combine's mania for heat-efficient starfighter designs shines through again here: the S-4
Sai can dissipate 24 heat but generates only 23 on an alpha strike! :o It can hang back behind other fighters and provide them with fire-support from its ER PPC for pretty much as long as its fuel lasts, either alone or in company with
Shilones to compound the other guy's misery. It can carry eight tons of external payload at 6/9, making it a fearsome fast, light bomber (or an ideal long-range complement/escort to
Slayers, if fully loaded with external fuel). It can act like a flying
Panther in the strafe/strike mission, punching holes with the PPC and crit-seeking with all those lovely, lovely SRMs. A squadron of S-4
Sais in the anti-shipping role is nothing to sneer at, either: a PPC bay of 6 Capital from Long range and two SRM bays of 5 Capital each at Short range will (or at least should) get the attention of most 'Ship captains in a
hurry.
The one caveat to this is, however, the unfortunately thin armour that is a consequence of being so small a spaceframe. A single medium laser will threshold any aspect of the S-4
Sai, so the best plan would be to avoid engaging enemy interceptors, instead picking on bigger, slower birds that can't resist too effectively - ideally, from behind at Medium or Long range, where their tail-guns can't exact revenge.
Essentially, in the offensive playbook the S-4
Sai may well be the ultimate utility player, useful for any assignment it may be needed in. I'd use them three ways:
- in partnership with
Sholagars and
Samurais, providing fire-support to the SL-21s as they lunge ahead to engage the enemy first, then 'shooting in' the specialist-dogfighter
Samurai, then finally mixing it up themselves
- alternately, they'd partner
Shilones and/or
Slayers (I won't call it "escorting" them, since neither type really needs it), with much the same intent.
- they'd be the heavy punch in a light fighter wing; two squads of
Sholagars would keep enemy fighters busy while the
Sais went after heavier metal, like the enemy's transports or WarShips.
As long as the player remembered his
mantras and steered clear of enemy interceptors like
Sparrowhawks and
Seydlitz, he should do just fine for himself. ;D
You can take S-4
Sais out of the picture in two main ways: crushing firepower, or better turning performance. FedSuns
Sparrowhawks which get inside an S-4 will have it for lunch, since it lacks tail-guns and cannot turn hard enough to dislodge the nimbler Feddie, and a couple of solid hits from a
Stuka's LRMs and large laser bays will likely send an S-4 on an abrupt detour to Queer Street. ::) (I'd also be interested to see the results of a duel between a DARO-1
Dagger Prime and an S-4
Sai, pitting as it does agility, light armour and a Long-range weapon against a devastating RAC/5 and almost ridiculously thick armour. My money's on the
Sai if the pilot keeps his head about him and holds the range open, but if the
Dagger got a clean shot at Medium range, it'd be all over bar the whimpering.... ;D) Lyran SYD-Z4
Seydlitz combine both of these approaches to perfection, so I don't hesitate to recommend them for the job, though F-92
Stingrays can crit the hell out of S-4s at Long range and would make very, very good fire-support platforms for such
Seydlitz units, as they can at least try to evade counter-attack; forget the
Lucifers - unless you really hate their pilots. ::)
There were two variations on the S-4
Sai before the release of TRO3039, and the tale of their existence is quite bemusing. The S-4C comes from the original plant on Schuyler; despite the spaceframe's being considered decidedly inferior by Clan standards ('\/\/3 4R3 t3h l33t! \/\/3 pwn J00 4|_|_! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!'), the Smoke Jaguar who annexed the Wakazashi plant apparently took great glee in deploying S-4s against the Combine in a classic "FYVM!" - and in upgrading the production facilities to manufacture the S-4C to further that same act of spite. Carrying only six tons of Clan FA armour (profiled as 35/27/26) to make extra weapons volume available, the S-4C mounts fourteen(!) DHS, a Clan ERPPC in the nose, and twin(!) Streak-4 launchers in each wing, with a two-ton magazine in the fuselage. While even more fragile than its forebear, the S-4C remains an alpha-baby with staggering hitting power and eye-opening versatility, as long as you don't go out of your way to expose it to enemy fire. (Not that the Jags ever concerned themselves with pilot survival, but still.... >:() Being that the S-4C appears in the FM:U second-line random tables of no fewer than six Clans - Diamond Shark, Fire Mandrill(!?), Ghost Bear, Nova Cat, Wolf, and Wolf-in-Exile - one has to believe that the S-4C has made one hell of an impression on Kerensky's Children, imitation being the sincerest form of flattery and all that. (I
think I follow the line of proliferation, though: the Cats got them from the Jags during Operation BIRD DOG, and possibly bought/scrounged a few from the DCMS afterwards; the Bears got them from the Cats in the Trial of Retribution; the Wolves got them from raiding the Jags and/or the Bears; the Sharks simply bought the damned things from whoever was running the plant that week; and presumably they then sold them to the Wolves-in-Exile and the Mandrills. That's about the only way I can imagine they got to a Home Crusader Clan, 'cause nothing else is tracking. ::)) The S-4C is much the same as the IS S-4, and should be used much the same way.
However, during Operation BIRD DOG in 3059, SLDF forces led by Victor Steiner-Davion retook Schuyler, depriving the Smoke Jags of their only(?) source of S-4Cs and putting a Clan-grade starfighter factory in the hands of the Combine, who probably couldn't believe their luck. :o Unfortunately, it
was too good to be true, because despite the military benefits of continuing S-4C production, the economics of building ClanTech with an Inner Sphere technology support-base seem to have forced them to downgrade the Wakazashi plant to resume production of the less-advanced S-4... and the S-7 series which followed it. (Interestingly enough, the fluff text on both the ON-1
Oni and the MIK-O
Tatsu implies that the S-7
Sai is a testbed OmniFighter, complete with teething troubles! :o) The S-7
Sai (or should that be the S-7
Sai Prime? ???) mounts twin ERMLs in the nose and MRM10s in each wing, with two tons of ammo in the fuselage, giving it fearsome Medium-to-Short-range throw-weight, and it carries 20% more fuel than the base model, improving its operational range quite a bit. It even mounts twelve DHS, making for an alpha-strike at
-6 heat! However, the S-7 lacks the range-advantage of its forebear(s), making it more of an attack specialist.
[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,2163.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcripts of previous runs of this thread 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. ;)