Mule: DS&JS, TRO3057, TRO 3075, JHS 3070
Built since 2737 the Mule has been representative of midsized transport DropShips around the Inner Sphere. There is not much more to say really. Good at what it does, this will be the ship that makes up the bulk of your transport fleet.
Historically Mules were not built in that many places. Just Sarna (Tengo Aerospace), and Tharkad (TAG). From here it would go on to dominate the late Star League shipping lanes. JumpShips and DropShips and TRO3057 go into mind numbing detail about the ship’s internals. A 3000 ton cargo bay low, a combined 5000 tons up high. Four 200 ton cargo elevators. Decks of crew quarters and specialized sales and financials rooms. Fluff fluff fluff. They even have a hydroponics facility.
Anyway. From our point of view the guns are ignorable and armour non-existent. Fuel is adequate and thrust enough to safely get into orbit. A little disappointingly there are no shuttle facilities. A shuttle is always handy in space.
Despite all of that this is one of the most important DropShips you are going to have to deal with. The Mule is a classic 3rd Wave unit. Wave 1 secures aerospace control. Wave 2 brings in the transports expected to operate in a moderately hostile environment. Wave 3 is where the soft and squishy transports come in. These are typically heavy lift units. They will be bringing your tanks and quite often infantry. All those second and third line units needed to cheaply hold the ground taken by your ‘Mechs and BA. The Mule comes into its own here. It brings your ammo, your armour, your food, your water. If you don’t need immediate access it can very efficiently carry tanks, ‘Mechs and aerospace fighters. About the only thing it doesn’t carry are people, mainly because it lacks the oxygen facilities.
You take a world with a Union. You hold it with a Mule.
The Star League used the ubiquitous Mule for something odd. They turned it into a genuine heavy assault DropShip. Doubling the armour loading on six White Sharks and six Barracudas and the heat sinks to fire them and six aerospace fighters the result is remarkably solid. The question is why on earth would they do it? WarShips weren’t rare. Neither were conventional assault ships. The term Q-Ship is bandied around a lot, but role doesn’t work. Historic Q-Ships were bait to draw in attackers. Ignoring the difficulty in commerce raiding in Battletech, who would be attacking League shipping? Or more importantly escorted League shipping. Q-Ships didn’t work in reality and it is easy to imagine that they didn’t work here.
However in the Jihad Word of Blake approached the same concept from a different direction. Their modified Mules were not intended to act as bait to draw in attackers. Instead WoB’s Mules would be sheep in wolves clothing, infiltrating commercial lanes and striking unexpectedly. Word of Blake would produce two different models. The “Pocket WarShip” was basically the same as the Star League model, but utilising eight AR10s in place of the mixed capital missiles. The “Q-Ship” model was an emergency construction which didn’t receive the extra armour.
All three variants are very good at what they do. At short range they can release a fatal spray of nuclear weapons. They are quite happy sitting in uncontested orbit dropping the occasional missile on the inhabitants of the planet below. More interestingly they are remarkably good AA platforms. Placed alongside WarShips or behind more solid DropShips like Interdictors they can maintain a heavy, extended bombardment at ranges where interception is unlikely while the true fighting ships remain.
In the modern era the capital weapon armed Mules are made as needed. Mostly by the Capellans at Sarna. The Fed Suns built standard Mules at Galax (Federated-Boeing) until the facility was destroyed in the Jihad, and Kathil (Kathil Shipworks) since 3039. TAG continues construction at Tharkad, and interestingly the Rasalhague Dominion builds Mules for the civilian market at their Alshain yard.
So how does one use the Mule? In the case of the cargo vessel, keep it away from things with guns. That is as hard as it gets. Using the Pocket WarShips is not much different. Try to avoid exposing it to frontline combat. Orbitally bombarding the defenceless is always easy. As noted above. Fire support in conventional combat is very doable, just be ready to run when things get hairy.
