Warships and Sub-Capital Weapons

[Daryk]

Can Naval Laser Bracket Fire in AAA mode?

[monbvol]

Oh, wow. How on earth did I not know that rule? I thought they got the same +5 vs small targets as capital guns, and Barracudas just had -2 to hit in addition to that for +3 net. Barracudas are pulse Thunderbolt-20s, with improved TAC rolls and capital range? Impressive.

Been that way since at least Battlespace.

AMS on a small craft only fires once a turn.
AMS on a large craft can fire multiple times a turn.

On a evasion related note don't forget that large craft can Evade too.
Outside 20 hexes the large craft should stay stable and the ASF should evade making it immune to everything bar Barracudas.
Under 20 hexes both should evade because a combination of evasion and ECM makes the large craft immune while it can now get viable to-hits on the ASF.
Under 14 hexes the large craft should evade and the ASF should stay stable so it can actually use its weapons.
It is worth pointing out that a ASF has to get to 14 hexes to be able to use an Alamo.
The above basically holds true with 4/5 crews. With better gunners YMMV.

I don't remember a provision of actual proper AMS being limited in that fashion on small craft.

Can Naval Laser Bracket Fire in AAA mode?

It is expressly prohibited.

[Daryk]

Rog, thanks... it's been a while since I looked at those rules...

[The_Caveman]

Sure the Barracuda gets the whole -2 to make it more accurate but the White Shark and Killer Whale still have use as AA thanks to them not taking the +5 against targets under 500 tons either.

So they kind of solve the problem.  Sort of.

Ultimately yes it would have been so much better to have put in a capital AMS.

Cudas are the fighter-killers. Sharks and Whales, IMO, are best suited to busting heavily armored small craft and micro-DropShips which have the armor to tank a 20-damage hit without thresholding. Kraken-T is the closest thing to a dedicated ship-killer since it can threshold small WarShips and assault DropShips.

I'm not quite sure where this leaves subcapital missiles. They don't offer enough of a weight savings to combat their short range relative to their full-size counterparts, and DropShips can carry both. Manta Rays seem like they'd be worthwhile as a last-ditch "kill it now" defense against space bombing and kamikaze attacks by fighters. But you need 14 grouped launchers to hit the magic 70 fire-factor cap, so for anti-ship work they remain inefficient.

Since the Piranha lost its to-hit bonus it no longer seems worth the trouble. Sure the missiles weigh a third what Barracudas do, but is your WarShip really going to last those 50 turns to use them up?

[Jellico]

I don't have my books handy so the specifics will be rubbery...

All capital and subcapital missiles get a crit chance every time that they hit something. From memory...

Barracuda 12
Killer Whale 10
White Shark 9
Kracken 8

So Barracudas are the AA option. -2 to-hit and by doing 20 damage it is an immediate crit chance (maybe just for squadrons. can't remember, but 20 will threshold most ASF armour) in addition to the natural 12 it gets.

With 40 damage Killer Whales are the damage option while the White Shark is the crit option.

Krackens are unwieldy and reward you for effort. I am not even sure that they can target ASF.

I forget the critical chances for sub capital missiles.

Piranhas are most useful because of their range. They don't get a natural crit chance but 30 damage means that they will threshold ASF at will.

Stingrays are middling. At least they reach beyond 14 hexes to provide a layer of defence outside nuke range. That is why they ended up on the Leviathan III. Also they can still use way points so the mounts int the broadsides can cover 360 degrees.

The final two missiles are sucker punches under 14 hexes. Brutally powerful but they allow your enemies into effective range. The Isegrim uses its acceleration to get in close and drop a massive amount of damage into a target at very low to-hits.

[Jellico]

Now I have my books.

Strat Ops. P97. AMS: 2nd Paragraph "Fighter AMS may only be used once per turn."

Total Warfare. P239 Capital Missile Critical Hit Table
Barracuda 11+
White Shark 9+
Killer Whale 10+
Kraken 8+


Tactial Operations. P344 SUBCAPITAL MISSILE CRITICAL TABLE
Piranha N/A
Stingray 12+
Swordfish 11+
Manta Ray 10+

Strat Opd P32. Fighter Squadron Critical Hits and Fatal Threshold Damage
"Standard critical hits against a fighter squadron may occur in
the following two ways:
• Any single attack that destroys 2 points of a fighter’s armor
(at least 15 points of standard-scale damage).
• A natural 12 result on the dice roll."

Total Warfare P238-239 Critical Hits
"To determine if a unit takes a critical hit, roll 2D6 whenever one
of the four conditions below is met."
"Damage Thresholds:"
"SI Damage"
"Lucky Hits: Any successful to-hit roll that is also a natural 12"
"Capital Missiles: Every hit with a capital missile or missile
bay that strikes armor may inflict a critical hit, even if the
attack did not damage SI or meet any other standard critical
hit requirement." "A player makes only one critical roll per missile bay."

I am putting all this critical hit stuff down because it is important. To kill a Stingray squadron you need to do 180 damage... 6 times. So 1080 points. Because the exact ASF you hit is random you aren't going to start getting kills and degrading fire power till you have done about 500 points of damage.
OTOH Crits are relatively easy to get. A pair of large lasers will do it. And they start degrading firepower immediately.
If you do big chunks of damage, you get into Fatal Threshold territory. A Stingray has a Fatal Threshold of 50 meaning that if you do 110 damage the Stingray will die 50% of the time. Capital Missiles are good at that. That is a 4 x Piranha bay that has a 50% chance of killing a fighter with 200 points of armour in a single turn at 40 hexes. Not bad hey.

[Daryk]

Wait a second... does that "Crit on a 12" bit apply to ground to air fire too?  How have I missed that all these years??

[Vition2]

Strat Ops. P97. AMS: 2nd Paragraph "Fighter AMS may only be used once per turn."

Thanks for the reference, I was missing this even though I re-read the section 3-4 times after you first said this.

It makes me wonder about making a 2-400-ton "dropship" built to provide AMS defense for aero squadrons.  Hopefully the cost ends up being somewhat prohibitive - and is there anything about dropships not being allowed to be carried as cargo? (dropships as cargo is an area I specifically tend to ignore, due to the potential for abuse, and not even wanting to go there... usually  :D)

[Daryk]

Dropships as cargo is a third rail even for TPTB.  I'll link the rules question where Xotl basically said "don't hold your breath" for an answer when I find it again.

[Daryk]

Well, that took rather less time than I thought it would!

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=63631.0

[The_Caveman]

Dropships as cargo is a third rail even for TPTB.  I'll link the rules question where Xotl basically said "don't hold your breath" for an answer when I find it again.

Do we really want a Potemkin being able to haul 130-odd Unions around? Nevermind a Leviathan...

[Vition2]

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=63631.0

Technically that's specific to repair bays, but I'd be willing to expand that to cargo bays in general.  The answer given implies that, according to a strict reading of the rules, it's allowable - but it really shouldn't be allowed.

Do we really want a Potemkin being able to haul 130-odd Unions around? Nevermind a Leviathan...

From a logical standpoint a big union - which itself carries 12-14 largish units inside - would be significantly more difficult to carry than something that is only about 1/3rd larger than the physical size of a small craft - which have specific launch and holding areas.

I can easily see the potential for abuse here, but there are some areas where it would make sense for it to be okay - or at least a thing that isn't a dropship but has the size and in-system military capabilities of one but is more difficult transport to different systems.

...And now it seems like I'm arguing that monitors should be okay, and I'm not really in that camp.

To the OP - sorry for taking your question so far off topic, but this seems to happen a lot on these forums.  :-[

[monbvol]

Thanks for the reference, I was missing this even though I re-read the section 3-4 times after you first said this.

It makes me wonder about making a 2-400-ton "dropship" built to provide AMS defense for aero squadrons.  Hopefully the cost ends up being somewhat prohibitive - and is there anything about dropships not being allowed to be carried as cargo? (dropships as cargo is an area I specifically tend to ignore, due to the potential for abuse, and not even wanting to go there... usually  :D)

I myself have read that section as being specific to the other Point Defense Weapons, not AMS proper.  But going back it does actually include AMS proper for Small Craft.

Which seems to give subcapital missiles something of an interesting role, use them first to saturate Point Defense then use the full Capital Missiles as finishers.

[Jellico]

Why go DropShip when you can go Small Craft. One day they will let me revisit TRO3057 and I will put AMS on a Star League NL42. That will fix the "no SL AMS" meme.


Saturating point defence with Sub Caps doesn't really gel. Piranhas have the damage of a White Shark making the quite efficient. The other missiles have a range envelop of an LRM or worse. Why use the 50 point weapon as a distraction when you can use a 5 point weapon.