Fighter of the Week Workshop #012 - Troika

[Trace Coburn]

  Now, if you want to fix the Troika's problems, you have a couple of options, and they're more or less straight-forward ones, depending on what you want to achieve.  Want better dogfighting heat-dissipation, but still want to keep the full-sized LRM mount so you can lay down even more of those nasty, nasty twenty-point Thunder minefields?  Drop the ERMLs to standard mediums - this gives an all-energy barrage much the same heat-curve as the PPC/LRM combo, which is pretty acceptable, and let's face it, at Medium range you're more likely to engage with the LRMs than the ERMLs anyway.  On the other hand, if you want to optimise for aerial combat and don't mind the smaller minefields, drop the LRM-20 to an LRM-15 with Artemis-IV and invest the two free tons in another pair of double heat-sinks; your long-range PPC/LRM combo is now a -3 on the heat-scale for the same air-to-air throw-weight, and firing all your beamers generates only a +2 deficit, which is far more forgiving.  ;D

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  As for fixing the CMT-4U?  That's simple; convert it into one of the above variants and put the RLs back where they belong - on throwaway ground-units used by third-string militia formations.  >:(

[DragonKhan55]

What about this?

Downgrade ERPPCs to PPCs

Delete a pair of DHS, downgrade ERMLs to MLs, and add another pair of MLs in nose.

Now you have explicit fire-patterns: LRMs at Long, LRMs and PPCs at Medium, and two PPCs and four MLs at short.

A full-energy centerline is only +2 on the blip, and turning fights means you'll be at a cool 22 heat generated by nose + engaged wing vs 30 capacity.

A more outrageous variant that I can think of would pull the LRM-20 completely for two MML-7 mounts, three tons of ammo, and another pair of DHS to let you introduce your enemy to 14 SRMs on the merge as well.