CHP-W* Chippewa - 90t, TRO3025
Originally posted 13 Jul. 2005. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread. The Lyran Commonwealth’s signature heavy attack spaceframe in the Succession Wars era, the
Chippewa packs in a great deal of firepower, but it’s also ungainly, inadequately cooled, and the primary production model has armour that I could read a newspaper through. :( In all honesty, I can see exactly why the development of the
Eisensturm was such a priority when foundtech came along, as the
Chippewa is rather less than awe-inspiring. In fact, I’m sure that I’ve publically called it a ‘deathtrap’, and I’m not about to take that back just yet. ::)
Let’s deal with a few fluff things before we get to the meat of the meal, shall we? First off: what’s with the name? The Lyran Commonwealth is a cultural blend of Scots/Irish, German, and Italian, so why the heck would they name a heavy fighter after a tribe of North American Indians? ??? Secondly, the
Chippewa is described as being easy to maintain, forgiving of handling in atmosphere, and (owing to a folding-wing design) well-suited to carrier operations. All very well and good; in RP terms, this one sounds like a winner from a merc’s point of view (if you gloss over the inadequacies). Thirdly, there’s a pure-fluff matter of ‘special insulation’ on the large-laser mounts which offers the equivalent of two integral heat-sinks per LL; if Bowie Industries ever rediscover the secret of producing this material (which was lost in the Succession Wars and is now absent from most
Chippewas), they need to re-issue it to all currently-serving CHP-W5s or -W10s
RIGHT THE HELL NOW, because that insulation is about the only thing that lets this ship use all of its primary energy weapons! >:( (If you combine a half-ton-per-LL special item from
Tactical Operations with a 1-point-per-LL Quirk from
Strategic Operations, you can actually match the efficiency of the fluffed insulation, but I'm not sure how many game-tables will consider combining the two kosher. :-\) Fourthly: I wonder if the
Chippewa is a design-descendant of the TFN-3
Typhoon found in ’26R (and now ’75)? Certainly the weapons-layouts suggest a kinship....
The CHP-W5 puts on a 5/8 turn of speed with the nominal five tons of fuel, so it’s not going to set any records for speed or agility; then again, if you can show me any IS1 spaceframe heavier than eighty tons which
can turn and burn any better, I’ll show you a bird whose engine is too heavy to allow a useful amount of armour or warload. :D Not that the
Chippewa’s armour is much better than that anyway: 7.5 tons of standard plate laid out 43/24/29 is positively
dreadful, even by IS1 standards - it’s even out-armoured by its compatriot the LCF-R15
Lucifer, which is twenty-five tons lighter! >:( - and ML thresholding across the wings and aft is a very real threat. The warload is a mixed bag, really: the nose mounts twin medium lasers, twin LRM-15s with a total of four tons of ammo, and an SRM-6 with fifteen salvos; each wing mounts twin large lasers; a pair of small lasers are mounted aft, ostensibly to discourage tailing attacks; the whole lot is supported by twenty-five heat sinks.
Frankly, I think that the
Chippewa is overgunned and undercooled. Part of that is a fluff issue, relating back to the ‘proprietary insulation’ mentioned above, but the fact remains that the spaceframe cannot fire all four large lasers at once without eating a very nasty +7 overheat, and as with the
Bravo-configuration
Visigoth, I don’t have much time for a ship that can’t actually
use all of its primary guns. >:( Moreover, alpha-strikes are a hideous +27 (not counting the tail-guns), which is barely three points short of a mandatory shutdown and will blow the thing to pieces anyway when the ammo cooks off. Not ‘if’;
when. Moreover, I think I’ve made my views on SLs pretty clear since I started this column, so you’ll be unsurprised to hear me say that the type’s anti-backstab defences are pretty bloody sad. :(
That said, if you’re willing to pay exquisite care to your heat-scale and which weapons are appropriate to the situation, the CHP-W5 can put a goodly amount of fire onto a target. The twin ExoStar LRM-15s reach out to Long range for a good whack and no real heat problems; at Medium range, adding in one pair of the McCorkell Larges almost doubles your throw-weight for a mere +1 overheat (which is something to be conscious of, but sustaining it for four turns or less is no sweat (heh ;D)); and at Short range, you can keep those two LLs going and leave off the LRM-15s in exchange for the nose-mounted Martell mediums and the SRM-6 (generating that same +1 per turn) or just the MLs (to cool off by -3 per turn). Strafes or Strikes are also Bad Juju
TM for the guy(s) on the receiving end; overheat or not, the idea of all that firepower landing on your ’Mech/vehicle at once is a certified brick-passer. :o DropShips need to respect that throw-weight, too; a squadron of
Chippewas (literally) has Capital bays left, right and centre: 11 Capital for the LRMs, 10 Capital for each LL bay, 6 Capital for the MLs and 5 Capital for the SRMs. :o
CHP-W5
Chippewas cannot afford to get into air-to-air fights - full stop. No caveats about peace through superior firepower; no encouraging of fire-support tactics. The
Lucifer has enough of an excuse for armour that it can
almost get away with such antics; the
Chippewa can only be used for attack duties, because it’s meat on a plate for enemy dogfighters or interceptors.
Remember your mantras, especially about keeping escorts close at hand to fend off enemy aircraft and ‘get in, hit hard, get out!’ tactics.
Want to bust up
Chippewas? Pour in the interceptors and dogfighters, my friend. Drac players have all those lovely, lovely options open to them, but my personal preference would be a mix of SL-17
Shilones backing up either S-3
Sai and/or SL-21
Sholagars - the -17s ‘shoot in’ the -3s/-25s, then pile into the dogfight themselves. Tail attacks are the preference, of course, and while you need to remember that the
Chippewa does have tail-guns, twin SLs aren’t
that big of a counterpunch, so don’t be afraid to go in hard.
Free Worlders, on the other hand, should make liberal use of that perennial favourite the F-90
Stingray, which is one of the finer dogfighters of the IS1 era IMO. F-10
Cheetahs have no business trifling with that sort of throw-weight, but if a squadron or two can make a couple of pirahna-style high-speed slashing attacks from the CHP-W5’s flanks or stern, they can do a real number on it in short order.
Clanners? One word:
Visigoth. }:)
Two canon variants of the
Chippewa exist. The first one is the CHP-W10, a Davion IS1 variant of the -W5 which I would
infinitely prefer to be flying if I were given the choice in-universe. Not an overly involved modification, the -W10 drops a large laser from each wing and ploughs all the freed weight into armour, resulting in a profile of 86/58/78. This model now has more than twice the survivability of the more populous -W5 and far fewer heat issues - an alpha-strike is now a ‘mere’ +13 overheat, which is not overly great, but it’s far better than it was. You can actually strafe with
all of your remaining energy-weapons without overheating now, and to my mind, that’s better than having ten tons of energy weaponry sitting in your wings doing SFA. ::) If you have the choice,
THIS is the
Chippewa you want on your side - one might even go so far as to say it’s an attack platform almost on a par with the vaunted STU-K5
Stuka. ;D }:)
Coming to us in the back of AT2, the CHP-W7
Chippewa is a beneficiary (victim?) of ‘Shiny Kit Syndrome’ and IS2 foundtech. Mounting an XL engine, the -W7 converts its heat-sinks to double-capacity models, its armour to ferro-aluminium (now having a 43/29/33 profile), replaces the large and small lasers with pulse-models, and halves the LRM magazines. You’ve lost no real range, you can actually fire both laser-bays at once without cooking yourself, and you can use bracket engagements for your weaponry: LRMs plus all four LPLs at Medium range, and LPLs plus MLs plus SRMs at Short (trading the SRMs for the SPLs if you’re being tailed). I’m not convinced that losing the long-range ammunition endurance is a good thing, and the LPLs encourage pilots to get into close fights, which is a
GREAT way to get smoked (especially against the Clans! :o), but this one is a far, far more fearsome attack platform, especially for strafing and anti-shipping duties, so I can’t in good conscience suggest that it be discarded out of hand. I’d rather have an
Eisensturm, of course - who wouldn’t? ::) Use the CHP-W7 in a second-line role, keeping it for attack duties while the
Eisensturms hog all the glory in the aerial fight; that said, a cooperative strike package of CHP-W7s and EST-R3s/EST-Os would do a
lot to occupy an opponent’s mind. }:)
And with all that covered, we come to our DIY segment. ;D
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding “FotW Workshop†thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,2813.0.html Be advised: the attached .txt transcripts of previous runs of this thread contain numerous reader-proposals for variants. I’ll try to change those out for ‘sanitised’ versions of those threads when I can, but I can’t promise it’ll be soon - that’s a lot of ground to cover. ;)
