Combat Results
The Great Rasalhague Ambush
The last major naval offensive of the Rasalhague rebellion took place in 2362. The Rasalhague commanders once again assembled a strike force in secret, this time on their old capital of Rasalhague. In addition to a large number of old fighters(suspected to be misappropriated surplus from the Terran fighter fleet update program), the Rasalhague leaders managed to convince or coerce large numbers of civilians to use private aircraft as decoys. The Rasalhague plan relied on staying within the atmosphere, to keep the Draconis fleet too far away to usefully support their landing DropShips, and attempted to once again kill large numbers of DropShips full of landing troops and supplies. Unfortunately for the Rasalhague forces, the commander was somewhat desperate for operating bases for this impromptu air force, and had some of his units take off from a base in an adjacent province. This base was in a different time zone, and the commander was too headstrong to listen to the objections of his subordinates. As such, the first 13 fighters took off an hour before any of the other forces. While they realized their error before launching their attack run, the anomalous movement tipped off the Draconis fleet.
While the Draconis forces did not realize the size of the arrayed Rasalhague forces, they had learned from their mistake in 2355, and remained on alert until the real attack took place. Once the true attack took off, the commander of the Draconis fleet took the Atago and the Luthien as close to the atmosphere as was safe, and launched a barrage of naval laser fire against the Rasalahaguers in support of his DropShips, as well as launching a over a hundred of his own fighters to support his landing units. A gigantic missile barrage of almost four hundred Barracudas was launched against the DropShips. The Draconis fighters and the point defences of the DropShips managed to shoot down over half the attack, and the poor storage conditions of the Rasalhague missiles meant that a third of the rest malfunctioned. However, the remaining 117 missiles did tremendous damage to the DropShips, destroying over a dozen outright and crippling five more.
Once the fighters had fired their missiles, they were once again nimble enough for serious combat, and the resulting combat rapidly devolved into was a wild furball. Over a hundred light civilian craft were slaughtered while totally unable to defend themselves, but even with this diversion of fire, the experience and training of the Draconis pilots began to tell. Despite being outnumbered two to one, they almost managed to hold their own even without their supporting fire, and with the power of the WarShips added in, they eventually forced the Rasalhaguers to flee. While the original Rasalhague plan had called for the fighters to re-arm and attack other units, their inability to defeat the Draconis fleet outright meant that they were unable to break contact, and most of the Rasalhague units were followed back to their bases. The resulting orbital bombardments killed over ten thousand civilians, as well as an unlucky squad of Draconis military police who had been attempting to investigate potential rebel activity, but they broke the back of the resistance fleet. Only three pilots took to the air for a second strike. Seeing the forces arrayed against them, and realizing that the Draconis fleet was offering them no quarter after their attack on defenceless ground troops that the Draconis fleet had been protecting, they flew their craft into the planetary militia headquarters as a final protest against the hated invaders.
Losses:
Draconis Combine = 14x DropShip, 31x fighter.
Rasalhague Consortium = 200x fighter.
The Peacekeeping War
The peacekeeping mission to various major Capellan worlds encountered very stiff resistance from the Capellan ground forces, who seemed surprisingly averse to peace. Fully two-thirds of the Federated Suns fleet was moved in to assist with the operation, rendering substantial amounts of direct orbital assistance to the planet of Highspire before the Capellans could mobilize their fleet. Duke Francis Liao was eager to prove that his newly-allied realm was no paper tiger, and dedicated the entire Capellan fleet to operations against the Federated Suns. Two Quinru Zhe raiders were dispatched to wreck FedSuns infrastructure and trade, while the remaining fleet of four Quzhujian destroyers with one Qinru Zhe as escort were used as a compact fighting force to beat the "invaders" back.
The main clash between these two powerful fleets took place over the world of Tikonov. An escaping JumpShip brought word that the AFFS was burning towards the planet, and the Capellans jumped to a pirate point to intercept. However, disaster struck for the Capellans when the navigator aboard one of their Quzhujians mis-calculated the jump, and the resulting error stranded the ship deep in the outer system, too far away to take part in the battle. The Federated Suns admiral, eager not to replicate the mistakes of the late Admiral Arthur, had many of his fighters and small craft on scout duty, and caught wind of the Capellan fleet far outside weapons range, giving his forces a chance to prepare.
Knowing that his fighters were likely to be outnumbered, and suspecting that the Capellans would use their fighters to engage in a massive anti-shipping strike, he loaded his fighters for anti-fighter operations and set them lying in wait well ahead of his ships to intercept the Capellan attackers. The tactic was a stunning success - despite being outnumbered three to one, the Capellan fighters were badly weighed down by their heavy Killer Whales and White Sharks, and were unable to maneuver when the Barracudas rained down upon them. Some pilots fired their missiles from well beyond effective range, and a few even attempted to use the anti-shipping missiles against the FedSuns fighters(with little success), but many tried to press home the original attack, and died before they could. The FedSuns fighter pilots bled for their success, but the numerical advantage of the Capellan forces was whittled down substantially, and the remaining forces were not sufficient for the next strike to pose a serious threat to naval vessels without the fleet supporting them. Eighty missiles were still launched within combat range, but with only a quarter of the planned barrage being fired, the defences of the AFFS fleet were sufficient to stop them without excessive damage - the FSS Galahad suffered moderate engine damage, but the armor of the ships remained intact, if pockmarked.
Both sides paused to collect their battered fighter wings and to assess their damage. The Capellan commander knew his fleet to be outnumbered, especially with the loss of one of his destroyers, and prepared to fall back and lick his wounds, but when the AFFS fleet slowed down to keep pace with the damaged Galahad, he saw his chance to perhaps salvage the battle. Knowing that his ships all had longer ranges than his opponents, and believing that he may now be able to hold the range open(or at least to break contact with part of the enemy fleet if he needed to), he chanced a continuation of the fight. The Capellan plan was simple, as these things go - hold the fighters close to the fleet, prevent enemy fighters from attacking them while they were vulnerable, and try to replicate the success of the Qinru Zhe a decade prior with the addition of a major missile strike.
Seeing that he held the advantage of numbers and that the teeth had been pulled from the Capellan fighter wings, the Davion re-armed his fighters for an attack on the enemy fleet and closed the range slowly. Unsurprisingly, the Capellans tried to hold the battle at extreme range and whittle him down with their lasers, but unlike the last time these fleets met, the laser fire was barely more effective than his own shots, despite the superior range of their guns. Both sides attempted missile attacks, but neither side wanted to waste their limited ammunition on such distant shots. After the pattern had been established - barrage and feint, launch and fall back, but never actually press home an attack - the Davions made their move. Letting the wounded Galahad fall behind somewhat, the fleet leapt towards its opponents at full emergency power. The Capellans fell back, of course, but in so doing they left left their poorly-armed aft sections pointed at the enemy, and the enemy took advantage. Finally throwing the long-hoarded fighter missiles into the fight, a wave of heavy missiles swept towards the rearmost Quzhujian, CCS Elias Liao, and its aft section was badly battered. Losing half its acceleration almost instantly, the Capellans were left with a cruel dilemma of abandoning a quarter of their fleet or turning back to defend it. Historians will long debate the choice he faced, but when he faced it he turned his fleet around with no hesitation.
Heavy ship-killers flew from destroyers and fighters alike, as barrages larger than the original fighter strike flew out as fast as tubes could be loaded. Fighters unloaded their missiles, like the Davions had a minute before, and then launched themselves into the melee. In the three great destroyers, a dozen and a half of the largest guns ever used in human warfare fired their first shots in anger. However, attempting to defend their lamed ally had deprived them of their great advantage of range, and the sheer mountains of amour on the Albion and Galahad designs began to tell. They too had autocannons, but when those hammer blows began to land their guns kept firing while the Capellans were cut down. When the fleets had closed ranges so tightly that even point defence guns were strafing enemy fleet units, the mighty Galahad-class FSS Percival fired full broadsides into enemy units and tore half a dozen gaping holes into the Qinru Zhe in a particularly successful broadside.
For as long as Capellan missile supplies held out, their fleet scored important successes. Capellan fighter strikes endured horrible losses to cripple the Galahad's point-defence systems with their cannons as the fleet pounded the Albion-class FSS Rostock into scrap, and then a fresh wave of armor-piercing White Sharks savaged the now-defenceless Percival while the fighters turned on the Rostock to finish the job. However, despite the staggering damage being dished out, the AFFS ships were too tough to destroy quickly, and speed was of the essence. The Qinru Zhe had been crippled and was completely unable to fight, and the enemy was focusing its fire on the Elias Liao, which was buckling under the pressure.
Almost simultaneously, the Elias Liao's forward autocannon magazine exploded and the Albion's primary fusion reactor lost magnetic containment. Both ships were destroyed instantly, and the only survivor from either ship's complement was a rookie fighter pilot from the Elias Liao. The twin explosions blinded most sensors in the fleet, but the remnants of the Qinru Zhe's sensor system noticed something. Galahad was returning. Lamed by an engine hit, but still as well-armed as the day she was launched, the Galahad showed up on Capellan scanners as the dust cleared, and finally the Capellans took to their heels. The Qinru Zhe was unable to leave, and its crew abandoned and scuttled their ship to deny the Davions their prize, but the two remaining Quzhujians scooped up the remaining fighters and headed away from the planet, leaving the defenseless citizens of Tikonov in the hands of the invading peacekeepers.
Losses:
Capellan Confederation = 1x Quzhujian, 1x Qinru Zhe, 117x fighter
Federated Suns = 1x Albion, 44x fighter. Significant damage to 1x Galahad - $2B repair cost
Guerre de Course
While the Capellans reserved one of their Qinru Zhe raiders as a "battlecruiser" for their main fleet, the other two were detailed to fulfill the design's original role of commerce raiding against the Federated Suns. The CCS Mu was tasked with raids in the area of Muskegon, and the CCS Fangzhou was sent towards Carmacks further south. Both were given orders to preserve their commands if at all possible, and to focus on hitting the softest targets they could find - the goal was to cause pain in New Avalon, but the primary fleet combat was to take place elsewhere, and the realm was still too imperiled with too small a fleet to allow excessive chances to be taken.
The Fangzhou's raids were generally successful, if undramatic. Due to the deployment of the main Federated Suns fleet to the warzone around Tikonov, they encountered shockingly little resistance. Instead of remaining at the jump point to snap up JumpShips, the Fangzhou's captain headed in-system to destroy as much civil infrastructure as possible. A raid in-system in Carmacks destroyed three civilian space stations around the planet after giving the crews time to evacuate, though the captain elected not to bombard the planet itself for fear of causing excessive civilian casualties. An asteroid-mining operation in Ogilvie was destroyed, and an attack on Sekulmun could find no targets worthy of firing on. The most dramatic moment came when jumping into the old pirate haven of Kluane - the ship landed within sensor range of a JumpShip that was waiting with sails furled, apparently waiting for a laggard DropShip. The JumpShip jumped away almost immediately, long before the Fangzhou could get into combat range, but the ship began burning back towards the planet looking for the DropShip as a prize. The same engine trouble that led to the ship being late in the first place meant it couldn't avoid the Fangzhou, and it was boarded, the crew imprisoned for the duration of the trip back to the planet, and the ship destroyed. By this point, low on fuel from the long burns and the need to recharge the jump drive by running the reactor at maximum capacity, the ship returned home with just over a billion in damage inflicted to the civilian economy of the Federated Suns.
The Mu's raiding mission was shorter and much sharper. Within minutes of leaving Capellan space and arriving at the Amiga system, the Mu found a JumpShip charging its drive, and after a shot across its bows the boarding party put aboard managed to take the ship with no resistance, capturing it as a prize for the Commonwealth and sending it back independantly. The second jump, into Muskegon, was far more dramatic. It rapidly became obvious why Capellan intelligence had reported unusual movements among system-defence fighters(and why the Fangzhou had found none of them) when the Mu found a newly-built station at the nadir jump point, and fighters began to scramble out of the station in huge numbers. The Davions had been ready - news had reached them of the raiders, and the commander was holding most of his forces ready with anti-shipping missiles loaded for quick launch. Within less than ten minutes, over a hundred fighters formed up and were streaking towards the Mu. The Mu's captain had seen this strike forming on his sensors, but was unable to get close enough to interfere, so he instead switched his lasers to anti-air targeting mode and readied his dual-purpose light autocannons to shoot down the inevitable hurricane of fire.
The Davion fighter pilots were among the best that the AFFS had to offer - two of the squadrons had come from the first class at the newly-founded Albion Naval Academy's Fighter College, and while they found themselves in a difficult fight, they threw themselves into it with enthusiasm and skill. Facing no fighters on the opposing side, they could fly complex patterns to confuse the Mu's fire control computers, and flew them with skill and precision. Launching their missiles in a single coordinated wave, they then burst forward to attack the ship while its point-defence was occupied, and tried to destroy as many of the point-defence cannons as they could, in hopes of being able to pick the ship apart at leisure. The Mu's defences were overwhelmed by the wave of missiles, and dozens of heavy armor-piercing missiles landed and did terrible damage, leaving the ship adrift. Many of the autocannon mounts on the Mu were destroyed by the fighters, and the fighters celebrated their seeming crippling of the enemy ship. However, they hadn't won yet - while the Mu was drifting and lacked many of its light weapons, the fighter's cannons were not heavy enough to destroy the capital weapon mounts, and the Mu's lasers cut down fighter after fighter mercilessly. The fighters were planning to fall back and re-arm with missiles, but as it happened they had crippled the Mu's engines in the middle of a turn, and its momentum was taking it directly towards their home station. The fighters broke off, their magazines empty, but before the station could re-arm them for another strike, the Mu's capital guns came within range. The cannons spoke, and the station was defenceless against them. Most of the fighters launched with empty magazines, simply to avoid the destruction of their base, and the remainder surrendered to ensure that they would not be left adrift in short-legged defensive fighters.
It took the Mu over a week to fix their engines well enough to ensure that they could at least maneuver somewhat, and the ship staggered back home for repairs instead of continuing its voyage. But the damage had been done.
Gains and Losses:
Capellan Confederation = Moderate damage to 1x Qinru Zhe - $500m repair cost. Gained 1x JumpShip
Federated Suns = 1x Federation, 108x Fighter, $1.9B civilian damage not relevant to naval budget
Andurian and Irian
In 2367, the Free Worlds League saw an opportunity in the Capellan region. The newly formed "Confederation" had done poorly defending against the Federated Suns, and the League believed that several border worlds were ripe for the taking.
The order of battle available to Admiral Thomas Masters was a powerful one. Seven Heracles-class battlecruisers supported by two Phalanx corvettes was known to be far superior to anything that the Confederation had left after their disaster in Tikonov - intel estimated that they had not more than three of their heavy cruisers, probably two raiders, and that the balance of their fleet was converted merchants and cruise ships. The primary problem Masters faced was speed. His ships could not force an engagement directly, since his corvettes could not stand against the enemy fleet and his battlecruisers could not catch them. If he used single ships as detachments, he risked defeat in detail, and the Capellans had a known policy of trading coverage of their border for the ability to mass the largest possible fleet at the key point.
The League had three key points that must be defended in this war - their invasion force, their JumpShip flotilla supporting the invasion force, and the natural choice for a Capellan counterattack, the shipyards of Irian. Masters had enough force to support two with a good chance of victory at each against the entire Capellan fleet. So he did what any good commander would do in this situation - he buffed. With the JumpShips he left one Phalanx and three DropShips that had been modified to have the outward appearance of Heracles-class ships, complete with jump sails that had been liberated from an extremely irate merchant flotilla. With the invading force, three Heracles and his second Phalanx. And in Irian, the Heracles that had recently been laid down was shoved into the small yard to continue work on core systems, one Heracles was given the appearance of being incomplete in the primary yard itself, and three more Heracles were arrayed around the planet in such a way that an attacker would never see more than one of them from any jump point.
As predicted, the Capellans chose to abandon their forces under the gun in the Andurien region. The ground troops were reinforced when war seemed imminent, but no further reinforcements would come. The fleet concentrated for an attack, and given the overwhelming firepower they could see alongside the invasion fleet, the order came down to avoid a direct confrontation and raid the Mariks to death instead. Instead of a light raid like they had against the Federated Suns, the plan was a true deep strike operation against Irian, for only a truly important target like Irian could put enough pressure on the Mariks to come to a peace treaty.
In the end, it was a lowly sensor lieutenant on the Fangzhou that saved the Capellan fleet. On a quiet night shift as the fleet burned towards the planet, her scanners caught a whiff of communication between the base and another unit. After hours of analysis of the signal, she managed to put together a theory of what the Mariks had done based on occasional snippets of communication and the shocking similarity to an exercise that had been run in her training courses. The theory went up the ladder, and while the fleet admiral wasn't convinced, he agreed to keep a watch out for potential hidden units. As a result, the fleet laid in a contingency plan - instead of a traditional engagement where they would stop and pulverize the enemy shipyard, they chose a passing engagement that would give them enough speed to break through any opposition that did try to form up, while strafing the yard as they passed. At full emergency power, they would need only 20 minutes of warning to build up enough speed that the Mariks could never catch them. They got 23 minutes.
The Marik battlecruisers came out from behind the shadow of the planet, and the Capellans reacted almost instantly. Turning their ships around, the fleet began a burn at three gravities past the planet, and readied their guns. Instead of a slugfest, it would be a single quick burst of firepower from both sides. The battlecruisers gave chase, even after realizing that they would never be able to keep up, in hopes of being able to capture any crippled ships. Any fighters that could keep up with the crushing acceleration of the fleet units were launched to thicken up the fleet's firepower, and the two sides raced towards their meeting point. Six hundred missiles were fired in an instant between the two fleets, and almost four dozen gigantic cannons traded shells. A few more were fired from the opposite broadside as the Capellan fleet sailed through at a relative speed of over thirty kilometres a second, and lasers spiked the battered hulls of the battlecruisers as well. The Marik fleet's gunnery proved to be far less skilled than the battle-hardened Liaos, but the sheer weight of metal that they brought to bear was still enough to ensure that every single ship in the Capellan fleet suffered at least one armour breach. The Fangzhou, whose sharp eyes had saved the fleet, was aflame, and detonated less than two minutes later, taking 80% of her crew to eternity with her. But the Mariks had suffered too - the Heracles had gaping wounds and had lost most of her broadside armaments, and her sister ship Bellerophon's engines were shattered ruins. Three of the fleet's DropShips had been totally destroyed, and one unlucky fighter had been caught "like a bug on a windshield" by the doomed Fangzhou.
While the Capellan fleet struggled to control their damage, the shipyards that had been their original target were coming up rapidly. Each ship turned its least-damaged side towards the yards and fired what it could at them - the damage was far less significant than it could have been, but it was still massive. The germanium purification plant was shattered by missiles, the autocannon construction tooling was destroyed by the same model of autocannon that it had been producing, and the support infrastructure for the main yard would take months to repair. But the yard survived, and the ships under construction did as well.
The rest of the invasion went virtually unopposed in space, though the ground troops on both sides fought a bitter war on several planets. But with no navy to cover their forces, the Capellans lost world after world. When the peace treaty was signed, the Marik eagle was raised over seven worlds, and the Capellans swore to reclaim the important world of Andurien at the first opportunity.
Losses:
Capellan Confederation = 1x Qinru Zhe. Significant damage to fleet totalling $3B.
Free Worlds League = 3x DropShip, 1x fighter. Moderate damage to fleet totalling $2B, moderate damage to shipyard totalling $3B.
Research
Research:
DC: $3,792m
FS: $1,209m
CC: $353m
TH: $7,727m
UHC: $205m
TC: $186m
RWR: $310m
TOTAL = $13,782m
The winner is the Capellan Confederation, gaining vehicular drop chutes. Not related to naval construction, but you'll get a nice surprise round on any ground combats you happen to fight in the next round. And, given how many fights you seem to be getting into, that seems rather inevitable.
Budgets
I promised you guys economic growth, so growth you shall have. I did a bit of math on this - in order for the combined income of the great houses to match the TH by 2780, they need to grow about 1% per turn faster than the Hegemony does. If they grow at 2%, they'll be substantially stronger as a combined force, even if they're all individually weaker. For the RWR to catch up to a typical great house(which is perhaps a bit ambitious, but it was in that ballpark by the time of the Amaris coup), it'd need to grow about 4% faster than they do, or 5-6% per turn faster than the Terran Hegemony. Obviously, these growth rates will be jerked around by combat results as well - the Age of War will do bad things to long-run growth, while the relative peace Star League will do good things(though these trends may be masked by short-term budget prioritization - after all, in wartime the navy gets a bigger percentage of the pot than they do in peacetime, even if that pot is smaller).
Some of this will come from colonization and natural population growth(since the Battletech universe seems not to have ever stopped growing its population, unlike the real world's projections), some from background economy-boosting technologies, and some from economic development projects like recharge stations. I don't want to go into too much detail, because I know you'll all game the hell out of any rule set I explain to you, but suffice it to say that I am paying attention to that stuff.
CC: $82B, due to significant territorial losses. Note that there was also $2.869B unspent on the first turn when the CC was still NPC. Round that up to +$3B of surplus, because I forgot to draw it to your attention sooner.
DC: $110B, due to economic development and conquest.
FS: $105B due to minor conquest and economic growth.
FWL: $108B, due to conquest.
LC: $85B, due to economic development.
MH: $12B, due to conquest and loot.
TH: $760B, due to population and technological growth.
UHC: $21B, due to economic development.
RWR: $23B, due to colonial expansion and aggressive economic development.
TC: $12B, due to emergency wartime spending after discovery.