WarShip Write-Up: The McKenna Battleship

[mbear]

Yeah, aside from the missile tubes and their ammo, just about everything would have to be hand-made, or yoinked from the Ravens. And I could think of free things that would piss them off faster than raiding the stocks they need to maintain their own fleet.

Danny Autocarract? Or did you really think of no-cost options of pissing off the Ravens?

[Weirdo]

Auto, indeed. Though I do like pissing off Ravens, it lets me tweak one of the members of my local group. :)

[gyedid]

I have never beaten a Mckenna except for one time. And I used a Dreadnought to do it in a pick up game. And I still don't know how I did it. I have used massed Foxes, three Avalons, two Texas's and not once have I beaten a Mckenna decisively.

You didn't try a Leviathan II/III  ;D

cheers,

Gabe

[gyedid]

I wonder what the Ghost Bears did with the Blakes Sword? Probably the only Clan that might have been able to salvage the ship or strip it and rebuild a new ship using the parts.

If the origins of the Blake's Sword are what they were reputed to be, the only thing the Bears would've done with her is scuttle her and vaporize the fragments with their Lev II.

cheers,

Gabe

[Phobos]

Do any still even exist in 3145?

McKenna's Pride(Clan Grand Council), Sovereign Right(Clan Star Adder), and Lei Kung(Escorpion Imperio).

Allegedly...  :P

[Jellico]

I don't see the LF battery being tested on heavy cruisers - and the 10 Monsoons that were retrofitted, don't forget them - before finally being fielded on the McKenna once the concept was proven. I instead see it as purely economics and political demands.

Not every decision is made due to doctrinal or technological reasons.

I don't disagree. "Tested" is perhaps too strong a word. Cruisers certainly would have made sense as the first place to use LF batteries. The batteries certainly seemed to give heavy cruisers a new lease of life, if only for 100 years.
Service would have shown cruisers would have been insufficient on their own, and the finance guys would have seen firepower per LF battery as a similar bottleneck to collars per jump core. Given the expense it only makes sence to pack as much combat capability into a single LF battery as possible.

They also wanted for things that a McKenna would've been overkill for.  IIRC, the Luxors' first assignments tended to be guarding convoys going to and from the Periphery.  Not something you waste a McKenna on, but OTOH more than what a ship of the Luxor's capabilities should be assigned to.  But remember, this is the same organization whose idea of crowd control was the Magi.

cheers,

Gabe

Mainly because that was the main job for the fleet at the time (2765).

An SLDF escorting formation would have been made up of several parts. Sov Soys and the DDs would have been the close escort, protecting single convoys.
The LF ships would have been distant escorts, responsible for shepherding several convoys. These guys are being called in if the close escort can't handle it. Arguably a perfect role for a battleship.

Remember in 2765 the Periphery had effectively no WarShips. Yeah the RWA is running Hegemony assets, but they are also being taken to pieces by the fleet. The rest of the Periphery is running an asymetric war. ASF, nukes, crazy janes, merchant raiders. The stop and search stuff a Sov Soy and its DropShips are made for. The distant escort is only jumping in if Tirpitz comes out to play, at which point the gloves not only come off but knuckledusters are applied. 

[BrokenMnemonic]

TRO3057 has 30 going to the Houses and 70 to the Hegemony. The 106 number come from Battlespace.

TR2750 mentions 106 being mothballed, and then "one-third" going to the House navies and 70 to the new Star League Navy, so I think Battlespace was referencing TR2750.

[Stormlion1]

You didn't try a Leviathan II/III  ;D

cheers,

Gabe

That's a game breaker right there I think. Might need three or four McKenna's to fight a Lev.

[marauder648]

In a pure gun battle as long as the McKenna stays at long range she outguns a Levi III, At extreme range the Lev can accurately bracket with her 4 x 12 NL-55 batteries, but her heavy naval Gauss rifles are paired so you can't bracket so accurately with them.  If the range remains extreme its basically 8 x 24 point shots vs 4 x 28 point shots.

But that's if you somehow manage to stick at extreme range and want to spend all day burrowing through 1000 points of armour.

 As soon as the range drops slightly from extreme range then the Leviathan's guns come into play (lots of NAC-20's etc) and you also come under fire from its anti-fighter weaponry which is often clustered together in such numbers that it hurts.  Just on her broadside alone at long range she can lob out 46 points of damage with her 'anti-fighter' guns and this goes up as you get closer :s  Then the Stingray missiles come out to play along with harder hitting ATM ammo :s  And then there's the ER Mediums, the Medium pulse lasers...yeah, letting a Leviathan III get close = bad idea.

Also the McKenna's AR-10's are basically useless as you've got 20 AMS pointing at you if you're trading broadsides and there's nothing getting through that short of massed saturation from multiple ships.  And the McKenna conversly lacks any form of AMS herself.

In a straight up gun duel a Leviathan III would kill a McKenna, but would take a battering doing so.

[Jellico]

Um. Conventional weaponry uses different range bands to capital weaponry. Extreme conventional is approximately equal to Medium Capital.

As you note a Leviathan and a McKenna have approximately the same broadside but a quarter of the armour. 2 McKennas have twice the firepower and half the armour which is pretty close to an equal battle. 2 McKennas would probably lose through crits. 3 would curb stomp the Leviathan. 

[marauder648]

I'd still say thats encouragement to 'keep away' if only through sheer firepower and as a deterrent against trying to bring your own short ranged weapons to bare, and they are common on IS warships and on assault droppers and quite a few PWS.

[Weirdo]

Convincing a McKenna.commander to keep the fight at long range when you don't have any conventional guns is about as hard as four week yogurt. Warm yogurt.

[Jellico]

I'd still say thats encouragement to 'keep away' if only through sheer firepower and as a deterrent against trying to bring your own short ranged weapons to bare, and they are common on IS warships and on assault droppers and quite a few PWS.

Um, yeah, maybe. Conventional weapons are more effecient, but we are talking hundreds of weapons to be noticable on a 500 point ship. The Leviathans are probably the only ship that can even try to play that game. Nothing else comes close. Basing your tactics around a weapon system that is a fraction of your firepower is foolish. The only time you  want to get close is with something like a Narukami or Kirishima where you are trying to attempt a turning game, which means 5 or 6 hexes range to be able to get around your opponent.

DropShips have to play that game because they virtually can't mount anything else. Even something like a Taihou gets a firepower boost from its MRMs. 

[Weirdo]

Mmmm...WarShips that can dogfight... {>{>

[UnLimiTeD]

In which book can I look up actual rangebrackets today?
I got a plethora of PDFs here, some I probably never read after buying, and I'm not quite sure where to start. Because the listed ranges (without brackets) seem pretty similar to conventional weapons at times.
I feel that is a knowledge-hole I have to fill.

[Weirdo]

Total War. Either look in the aero combat section, or do a word search for 'capital', that should bring you to it fairly quickly.

[UnLimiTeD]

Ah, thanks, i had expected that to be covered in more advanced rules' books.
Though that still means that the large ACs and some subcapitals have pitiful range. Oh well.

[Adgar76]

Excellent article!
For those who are interested, I took a shot at converting the McKenna to AS:

Unit	Type	Size	Mv
McKenna (Clan)	WS	4	3
	Armor	Threshold	Structure
	443	148	95
Capital	S	M	L	E
Nose	365	365	45	45
L/R Side	360	360	360	360
Aft	182	182	22	22
Capital Missile	S	M	L	E
Nose	12	12	12	12
L/R Side	0	0	0	0
Aft	6	6	6	6
Specials:
AT50,CAP,CK273,DT6,LF,ST16

The damage is still impressive.
How impressive? It's enough to OSK an Aegis, and 2-shot a Nightlord, Thera or Texas..  :o
None of the ships I mentioned comes even close to this level of damage in the side arcs. The closest competitor is the Thera with 188 at L range, and only 72 at E. To have a chance, they would have to close to M range, where all have damage values of 200+. Problem is, they would still need 3 good hits to kill the McKenna. It's not going to be pretty!

[mbear]

Excellent article!
For those who are interested, I took a shot at converting the McKenna to AS:
The damage is still impressive.
How impressive? It's enough to OSK an Aegis, and 2-shot a Nightlord, Thera or Texas..  :o
None of the ships I mentioned comes even close to this level of damage in the side arcs. The closest competitor is the Thera with 188 at L range, and only 72 at E. To have a chance, they would have to close to M range, where all have damage values of 200+. Problem is, they would still need 3 good hits to kill the McKenna. It's not going to be pretty!

Isn't a Thera directly engaging a McKenna like putting a Nimitz class aircraft carrier (without planes) up against an Iowa class battleship? Sure you can do it, but why would you destroy a strategic asset that way?

[marauder648]

Isn't a Thera directly engaging a McKenna like putting a Nimitz class aircraft carrier (without planes) up against an Iowa class battleship? Sure you can do it, but why would you destroy a strategic asset that way?

Pretty much yeah. The Thera has some fairly impressive firepower but its mainly to ward off destroyers or cruisers.  The Thera should not be walking up to Mr McKenna's table, slapping his beer out of his hand and going "U WANT SOME M8!!!!" and expect to walk away the victor.

[Weirdo]

Sometimes you don't have a choice. The McKenna's coming at you, and you must choose between the Thera...and that thing the Thera is protecting.

Plenty of plot has to happen to set up that fight, but if it can happen before, it can happen again.

[marauder648]

Indeed. Just don't push your luck and call a Thera the Glorious to tempt fate in a Campaign...

[Adgar76]

Well, when I made the comparison I did not mean to suggest that a Thera *should* engage a McKenna directly. I compared the two ships because while mainly a carrier, the Thera still has very good firepower and protection, so I felt that it could be a useful yardstick in measuring the McKenna's strength in ship to ship combat.
The only conclusion that I wanted to draw is that in AS, just like under standard rules, only a Leviathan II/III is more powerful.

[Kit deSummersville]

Do we have any canonical listings of engagements that McKennas lost outside of the CSJ Obsidian?

[Weirdo]

Do we have any canonical listings of engagements that McKennas lost outside of the CSJ Obsidian?

WoBS Blake's Sword.
CSR James McKenna.
SLS Zughoffer Weir. (Only technically. [rockon])
Various SLDF vessels lost vs Amaris, such as Enterprise.

[Colt Ward]

Yeah, to cut down on warships and start removing a smaller faction the Werewolf got ran over by a Levi 2.

[Weirdo]

Forgot about that one, but Werewolf actually died facing Blakists, it was the WiE Black Lion that regretted playing speedbump.

[Sjhernan3060]

Allegedly...  :P

With this ship being as good as it is did any new ones get built after KLONDIKE?

[marauder648]

Short answer - No.

Long answer - No, they lacked the infrastructure or capacity to build them and there also wasn't the need for such hugely expensive (in resource terms) ships in a society that valued the actions of the single warrior above absolutely everything.  Whilst later you could probably have the Clans produce a McKenna, they didn't because WarShips were very very far down the totem pole for most Clans, little above tanks and vehicles for some.

[gyedid]

Short answer - No.

Long answer - No, they lacked the infrastructure or capacity to build them and there also wasn't the need for such hugely expensive (in resource terms) ships in a society that valued the actions of the single warrior above absolutely everything.  Whilst later you could probably have the Clans produce a McKenna, they didn't because WarShips were very very far down the totem pole for most Clans, little above tanks and vehicles for some.

And yet, when the Clans did start to build new Warships, they went "MOAR BIG!!!"

cheers,

Gabe