Author Topic: Subcompact Warships: A Thought Exercise  (Read 737 times)

deathzealotzero

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Subcompact Warships: A Thought Exercise
« on: 28 November 2024, 06:27:31 »
So! Ever since I started creating TROs and such for Battletech Warships, mainly trying to convert Gundam ships into Battletech Warships using MegaMek Labs, I have been fascinated with the idea of the Subcompact Warship. An option that can be chosen in MML via the Vessel Type Dropdown Menu. However, this Vessel Type appears to have its own rules built into the MML Software. Mainly the K-F Drive is fifty percent of the ship's mass instead of the forty-five percent or so for a regular old Warship with its own Compact Core. Another rule is that Subcompact Warships have to be under 25,000 Tons which is a bit annoying in my mind, as I normally try to convert the much smaller Gundam Ships into such a vessel which means it can be quite annoying to try it that way. Though due to this the Subcompact Warships designs will not have any sort of Dropship Collar Hardpoint only allowing such ships to carry small craft and no Dropships at all. Still, I have decided to see about developing my own handful of Subcompact Warships mainly for regular old Battletech with no Gundam component.

(Grumble. One of these days I am going to do a Gundam Ship-to-Subcompact Warship Design mainly by hand so I can go above 25k tons and shrink the K-F Drive by a bit further allowing a better conversion. Grumble.)

Phantom Surveillance Ship (Royal Variant)

So okay, my first overall design I want to present to you all is a sort of replacement for what I would consider the progenitor for the entire concept of Subcompact Warship the Bug Eye Surveillance Ship. The Phantom Surveillance Ship which instead of being visually based on the likes of the Buccaneer Cargo Dropship like the Bug Eye is instead visually based on that of the Mule Class Dropship which does mean it sports a heavier mass of 11,200 Tons under twice the mass of the Bug Eye sports. This does allow a bit more mass to play with mainly giving it a somewhat decent weapon array of four Star League Era ER PPCs, four Large Lasers, and a pinpoint weapon array of nine Small Pulse Lasers spread across the ship's hull. I know it doesn't sport missile or autocannon weapons, or even Capital Scale Weapons, but figured a primary energy armament would be the best mass-wise for the ship. It also sports all First Class Cabins for its entire crew and a very small gravity deck of 20-meter diameter allowing them to be somewhat comfortable during the course of their mission. More so than the vastly tinier Bug Eye. Also since this is supposed to be some sort of spy ship I have added an infantry bay, of sorts, which I would have it carrying a team of fifteen special operations troops that can be landed on a planet, station, or deep space outpost via the ship's sole Small Craft, often a special stealth rated craft. Other equipment includes much of the same observation and surveillance equipment of the Bug Eye along with the addition of a Mobile Hyperpulse Generator and a large Naval Comm Scanner. To better get them and up out of a system faster during their mission, the Phantom comes equipped with a lithium-fusion battery system. It also sports a small light vehicle bay which would be used to carry a pair of zero-gee work pods, of a sort - I swear it is the Gundam fan in me -, which combined with regular zero-gee suited engineers could allow the crew to add various additions, like extra hull plates allowing a slight change to the ship's hull, fake weapon arrays, or even different paint schemes, to the ship's hull to make them look like a specific ship or even another sphereiod dropship design before the course of a mission. A typical Phantom would have somewhere around fifty tons of its cargo space set aside for these extra bits though some ships of the class would go below or above that threshold depending on its captain. Still, the Phantom Class is a very expensive craft to build, more so than the old Bug Eye, mainly to many of the more advanced equipment it sports, which does see only a handful of these ships constructed over the years of the Star League. Where they would often be used by the Star League Intelligence Command and a couple used by the "Blackhearts" during their operations in the Taurian Concordat. Though later on the Star League would try to introduce a cheaper variant of the Phantom which dropped much of the more advanced and expensive pieces of equipment like the Mobile HPG, LF Battery, and replaced the ER PPCs with regular PPCs. However, not many of these downgraded craft would be built before the Star League fell in the aftermath of the Amaris Civil War.

Code: [Select]
Phantom Surveillance Ship (Royal)
Mass: 11,200 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 2760
Mass: 11,200
Battle Value: 2,248
Tech Rating/Availability: E/F-X-F-F
Cost: 8,294,977,672 C-bills

Fuel: 259 tons (2,590)
Safe Thrust: 4
Maximum Thrust: 6
Sail Integrity: N/A
KF Drive Integrity: 3
Heat Sinks: 118 (236)
Structural Integrity: 40

Armor
    Nose: 6
    Fore Sides: 6/6
    Aft Sides: 5/5
    Aft: 4

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Small Craft (1)         1 Door   
    Bay 2:  Infantry (Foot) (5)     0 Doors   
    Bay 3:  Cargo (250.0 tons)      2 Doors   
    Bay 4:  Light Vehicle (2)       1 Door   

Ammunition:
None

Dropship Capacity: 0
Grav Decks: 1 (20 m)
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 0
Crew:  16 officers, 74 enlisted/non-rated, 18 gunners, 30 bay personnel, 6 passengers

Notes: Equipped with
    lithium-fusion battery system
    1 Long Range Optical Telescope
    1 Mobile Hyperpulse Generators (Mobile HPG)
    1 Satellite Imager [Infrared Imager]
    1 MASH Equipment (4 theaters)
    1 Naval Comm-Scanner Suite (Small)
    1 Satellite Imager [High-Resolution (Hi-Res) Imager]
    1 Satellite Imager [Look-Down Radar]
8 tons of improved ferro-aluminum armor.

Weapons:                 Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat)           Heat  SRV     MRV     LRV      ERV    Class       
Nose (30 Heat)
2 ER PPC             30   2(20)   2(20)   2(20)     0(0)   PPC         
RBS/LBS (22 Heat)
2 Large Laser        16   2(16)   2(16)    0(0)     0(0)   Laser       
3 Small Pulse Laser   6    1(9)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Point Defense
Aft (36 Heat)
3 Small Pulse Laser   6    1(9)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Point Defense
2 ER PPC             30   2(20)   2(20)   2(20)     0(0)   PPC         


And that is for this Subcompact Warship design! Hope you all liked it! Had some fun developing it. I have ideas for a couple of further ships of this type which I will post later, including the mentioned standard non-Royal if you will version of the Phantom. OH! And Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

EDIT: And yes I do know. That it would need some way of saying the reason why they can't land on a planet just like the Bug Eye does.

Daryk

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Re: Subcompact Warships: A Thought Exercise
« Reply #1 on: 28 November 2024, 07:38:34 »
No hyperspectral imager?


Daryk

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Re: Subcompact Warships: A Thought Exercise
« Reply #3 on: 29 November 2024, 07:43:30 »
Rog... I could have sworn they were always available.  C'est la vie!

deathzealotzero

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Re: Subcompact Warships: A Thought Exercise
« Reply #4 on: 11 December 2024, 14:54:17 »
So, one of the major ideas that I had for Subcompact Warships would be a dedicated escort craft for larger warships of the Star League Defense Force Navy. Basically, a vastly enlarged version of the fanon Goalkeeper Defense Craft of the Delranes Fighting Ships TRO Fanon Book just geared for more direct anti-fighter combat instead of a dedicated point defense craft. Mainly, as SLDF Warships were notorious for their little armament geared to defend themselves against attacking high-speed aerospace fighters. Hence, smaller Subcompact Warships equipped with a plethora of smaller dropship-scale weapons would be the best bet to defend the larger, more expensive regular Warships.

Drake Class Close In Escort Ship   

Over the course of the Star League and its mammoth-sized Star League Defense Force, it became apparent that the large Warships that dominated its Navy did not sport enough lighter-weight weapons to be used against attacking high-speed Aerospace Fighters or Assault Dropships mainly through the use of nuclear weapons. As any other weapon system carried by Aerospace Fighters or Assault Dropships typically didn't do anything against the heavy armor of such Warships. While many of these warships would sport their own fighter capacity and the ability to carry their own assault dropships to defend themselves from attacking smaller craft some limited combat against pirates and more large-scale military exercises would show a slight weakness in this strategy. Hence, the Star League Defense Force would look into the development of a dedicated close-escort craft to defend their expensive warships from such craft heavily damaging or outright destroying such vessels. At first, this would be the rollout of the dedicated Goalkeeper Defense Craft but this was more for use against nuclear attacks instead of defending against a dedicated fighter attack which would see a limited production of the Drake Close In Escort Ship, a new Subcompact Warship which sported a 12,000 Ton Sphereiod-looking hull design that sported a massive amount of lower-scaled weapons allowing it to fight against enemy aerospace fighters and assault dropships attacking a much larger Warship.

The overall armament of such a ship design would be centered on several ER Large Lasers, Gauss Rifles, and PPCs each while further supported by a dozen or so Medium Pulse Lasers, eight LRM 20 Launchers, and a Point Defense Array of somewhere around two dozen or so Small Pulse Lasers. These weapons were spread across the sphereiod-looking hull of the design with most of the heavier weapons being clustered along the sides of the ship, the so-called Broadsides and the nose of the ship to better counter attacking enemy craft. Some of the heavy Gauss Rifles are clustered alongside some lighter weapons around the ship's aft to better give the arc of the ship a bit more teeth when enemy fighters attack from its tail. The Gauss Rifles are supplied with sixty tons of ammo while the LRM Launcher is supplied with a hundred fifty tons of ammo. It is further defended by somewhere around a hundred twenty tons of Ferro Carbide Armor spread across the hull of the ship about evenly.

Still, only a handful of these ships would be produced by the Star League mainly as their smaller Compact Cores would be far more expensive to build and maintain. Not to mention, the rollout of far cheaper combat Small Craft, like the Goalkeeper Class, and more heavily armed Assault Dropships like the Titan Class would be a far superior and cheaper means of protecting larger warships. Not to mention new smaller escort-type warships like Corvettes being built to counter attacks on larger warships by aerospace fighters and assault Dropships. Even then the handful of these ships commissioned by the Star League would be quite successful in its main mission of being a dedicated escort ship to larger warships throughout the final decades of the Star League. The handful of the built ships of the class would all out destroyed during the final years of the Star League during the course of the Amaris Civil War. Later on, the overall hull design of the Drake would be used by the new Federated Commonwealth to design their own Fox Class Corvette Warship a few centuries later.

Code: [Select]
Drake Close In Escort
Mass: 12,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 2740
Mass: 12,000
Battle Value: 8,262
Tech Rating/Availability: E/E-X-E-F
Cost: 6,210,622,312 C-bills

Fuel: 339 tons (3,390)
Safe Thrust: 4
Maximum Thrust: 6
Sail Integrity: N/A
KF Drive Integrity: 3
Heat Sinks: 125 (250)
Structural Integrity: 30

Armor
    Nose: 30
    Fore Sides: 25/25
    Aft Sides: 25/25
    Aft: 20

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Small Craft (1)         1 Door   
    Bay 2:  Cargo (450.0 tons)      1 Door   

Ammunition:
    720 rounds of Gauss Rifle [IS] ammunition (62 tons),
    900 rounds of LRM 20 ammunition (3 tons)

Dropship Capacity: 0
Grav Decks: 1 (30 m)
Escape Pods: 12
Life Boats: 15
Crew:  12 officers, 44 enlisted/non-rated, 25 gunners, 5 bay personnel, 12 passengers

Notes: Equipped with
    1 Satellite Imager [Infrared Imager]
    1 Field Kitchen
    1 Satellite Imager [High-Resolution (Hi-Res) Imager]
    1 Satellite Imager [Look-Down Radar]
    1 MASH Equipment (1 theater)
150 tons of ferro-carbide armor.*

Weapons:                               Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat)                         Heat  SRV     MRV     LRV      ERV    Class       
Nose (58 Heat)
2 Gauss Rifle                       2   3(30)   3(30)   3(30)     0(0)   AC         
    Gauss Rifle Ammo [IS] (120 shots)
3 Medium Pulse Laser               12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Pulse Laser
2 PPC                              20   2(20)   2(20)    0(0)     0(0)   PPC         
6 Small Pulse Laser                12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Point Defense
2 LRM 20                           12   2(24)   2(24)   2(24)     0(0)   LRM         
    LRM 20 Ammo (300 shots)
RBS/LBS (112 Heat)
4 ER Large Laser                   48   3(32)   3(32)   3(32)     0(0)   Laser       
2 Gauss Rifle                       2   3(30)   3(30)   3(30)     0(0)   AC         
    Gauss Rifle Ammo [IS] (240 shots)
3 Medium Pulse Laser               12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Pulse Laser
2 PPC                              20   2(20)   2(20)    0(0)     0(0)   PPC         
6 Small Pulse Laser                12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Point Defense
3 LRM 20                           18   4(36)   4(36)   4(36)     0(0)   LRM         
    LRM 20 Ammo (300 shots)
Aft (46 Heat)
2 Gauss Rifle                       2   3(30)   3(30)   3(30)     0(0)   AC         
    Gauss Rifle Ammo [IS] (120 shots)
3 Medium Pulse Laser               12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Pulse Laser
2 PPC                              20   2(20)   2(20)    0(0)     0(0)   PPC         
6 Small Pulse Laser                12   2(18)    0(0)    0(0)     0(0)   Point Defense


*: Normally, the rules of the Subcompact Warships don't have it sporting all that much ability to have any armor. If you want to give the ship more armor you have to add more Structural Integrity but you have to get pretty high to give the design any sort of respectful amount of armor, further cutting into your needed tonnage. Hence, I just added some decent SI and then added enough cargo for a decent amount of armor. Shrug.