Class - Leviathan III Class Battleship
Length - 1623 Meters
Displacement - 2,400,000 tonnes
Crew compliment - 1215
When people saw this in the back of XTRO Republic III I think the reactions were a mixture of excited squee’s, rapid underwear changes and exclamations of concern and ‘how!?’ I’ll say it here and now that the Leviathan III is in my opinion both Deus Ex-Machina (quite literally) and is in essence broken. There’s NOTHING that you can put in the ring against the Leviathan III save the Leviathan II that would last long in a fight. The Leviathan III can make anything it looks at suffer a critical existence failure very quickly indeed. But lore wise, it’s an interesting beast and that’s what I’m going to be looking at.
Background.With their love of all things big and impressive it was only really natural that Clan Ghost Bear would build and design the biggest Warship in known space yet even the resource rich Bear’s had issues with the design, a case of their eyes being too big for their bellies, and they had to turn to their long term allies Clan Snow Raven to give the project the shove it needed.
It seems that the Leviathans were to lead the charge into the Inner Sphere in Operation REVIVAL when the Raven’s didn’t get a place in the line-up for REVIVAL but the Bear’s did the Raven’s support for the construction of the two Leviathan class hulls waned and when it was obvious there was no Warship threat from the Houses, construction was halted completely and the two hulls were left to hang in space gathering dust.
It took the intervention of Khan Bjorn Jorgensson to get the project restarted but even then it was at low priority. This changed after the Battle of Tukayyid where the Bear’s decided to relocate their population, every last member of the Clan into their Invasion Corridor. Now the Leviathans picked up pace, and whilst they were superficially complete and to an observer bristled with guns, they lacked most of their heavy weapon mounts and thick armour, instead they were completed as massive armed transports, Carracks on steroids. With their staggeringly huge cargo space 322,930 tonnes was used to carry factories, parts and people from the Homeworld’s to their new home in the Inner Sphere.
Eventually, the
Leviathan and
Great Bear would be joined by a third of the class the CGB
Rasalhague and these would be either rebuilt or completed as the class that is now called the Leviathan II. Instead of armed transports they were fully armed and operational battleships and the massive ships served Clan Ghost Bear well in the wars that followed, but even their massive size and firepower was simply not enough and both the
Leviathan and
Great Bear were lost in combat, one to massed warships, the other to a nuclear attack.
The Bears, now Ghost Bear Dominion’s naval strength was further reduced by fighting with the Draconis Combine as well as Clan Nova Cat’s so called Trial of Retribution that reduced the Bear’s warship strength to just the Rasalhague the Nightlord class Battleship
Ursa Major as well and the Carrack class transports the
Yiggdrasil and
Den Mother. With the death of seemingly 90% of the Warships in the Inner Sphere, with the House Lords fleets all but annihilated as well as that of Comstar the Bear’s position may not have seemed so serious and the Dominion turned their attention to producing a large number of Aesir/Vanir class Assault Dropships to go with the Dominions large dropship fleet whilst their capital ships were reserved for vital missions.
Still losses were incurred, the
Ursa Major died in battle taking almost all of the remaining DCMS Warships with her and earned a warriors death, whilst the
Rasalhague saw extensive action against Clan Nova Cat including their near annihilation before the Republic of the Sphere forced a peace between the warring parties.
With the biggest battleship in known space supported by a large dropship fleet the Dominion seemed content but other plans were afoot. With their industrial base working as individual parts of a far greater machine resources were being stockpiled, crews trained and bred, equipment prepared.
Deep within Dominion space and behind tight security the Rasalhague Dominion was building something, something huge. In the orbital yards of Alshain, a Leviathan was taking shape.
DesignAt 2.4 million tonnes the Leviathan III is simply the largest ship in space, over 1600 meters in length (1623 meters to be precise) there’s nothing that even comes close even the huge and now near (or possibly totally seeing as we have no idea what’s going on in the Homeworlds) extinct McKenna Class falls short, being lighter and over 200 meters shorter. Whilst the gargantuan Newgrange class yardship is longer at 2680 meters the ship is 400,000 tones lighter.
The Dominion learned the lessons of the Jihad and Ghost Bear/Draconis Combine wars. Whilst big battleships are expensive, inefficient and vulnerable to small craft, nothing else suffices for when orbital and indeed system supremacy must be gained. With this in mind Scientist General Gwendolyn worked to retain the Leviathan II’s firepower whilst increasing its anti-fighter and anti-missile defences whilst also making the ship as survivable as possible.
Layered with a massive 5,373 tonnes of Lamellar Ferro-Carbide armour, the strongest material known to the Clans the Leviathan III has protection that is unheard of, whilst her huge hull is heavily reinforced and braced making her as structurally sound as possible.
Despite the massive size and weight the ships engines can produce an impressive 2.5g of thrust at full throttle, and a more sustained 1.5g at standard thrust which makes her as fast as many smaller vessels and is of the same thrust level as the older McKenna.
The Leviathan III like the II is designed from the keel up to engage and destroy targets at extreme range and takes a page from the book of the old Texas class battleships to do this. Aboard the Texas the ships main armament was clusters of 12 NL-45’s. The Leviathan III takes this not one step further but several laps round the track further. A massive 108 NL-55’s grouped together into 12 gun batteries cover every angle except on the stern.
Able to take full advantage of bracket firing and the laser’s extreme range these weapons when massed together can rip apart any warship in space and even the largest pocket warship can’t take more than a hit or two from the massed guns. In many ways this is similar to the McKenna classes weapons layout, and whereas the McKenna relied in smaller groupings of hard hitting Heavy Naval PPC’s the Leviathan clearly works to abuse the bracket firing technology advantages to its limit.
It does not stop there. The ‘supporting’ naval weapons include 16 Heavy Naval PPC’s grouped together in quad mounts covering the bow, stern, and front left and right arcs, 12 AR-10 Missile launchers with generous ammo bins are spread across every arc, 15 NAC-20’s in triple turrets, and finally 6 Heavy Naval Gauss rifles in paired turrets on the broadside and bow.
In theory this is slightly more throw weight than a McKenna in a broadside on broadside battle before factoring in any missiles or bracketing.
McKenna – 497 Capital Damage
Leviathan III – 504 Capital Damage
But it is at shorter ranges where the Leviathan III also spares little expense. Unlike the SLDF era ships that they used before the Leviathan series always had a large array of anti-fighter and dropship weaponry to ward off hostile small craft assaults, this is refined in the Leviathan III. She’s literally dripping with ER and Pulse Lasers, LRM’s and ATM’s, Gauss rifles and PPCs (which have been fitted with Clan PPC Capacitors!) whilst a phalanx of AMS and LAMS keep hostile missiles honest and can disrupt, damage and thin out all but the biggest strikes. Whilst small fighters that go near her could be blotted out of existance with barely a 'how do you do'. The Leviathan III also features a few sub-capital weapons in the form of the Clan’s Stingray missiles. Six of which are mounted in paired triple launch tubes on each broadside to deliver a brutal anti-dropship/assault dropship/Pocket Warship punch if the massed lasers have failed to destroy the target.
Hostile Aerospace fighters would be facing a veritable wall of flak and missiles that would be engaging them well on their way in and as the range drops the firepower only gets more intense as ATM’s start firing HE rounds and the Stingray’s come into effect whilst the AR-10’s are spitting Barracuda’s at any threat. The result would be hell for all but the most intense of strikes and even heavily armoured fighters won’t last long under the barrage.
Doctrinally the Leviathan III differs from the II. Whereas the II featured a massive 300 aerospace fighters carried on board the III carries ‘only’ 60. But where as the Leviathan II featured 8 dropships the III carries a staggering 20 and can bring its own escort force along with it. With the Aesir and Vanir being exceptionally common and built in large numbers its most likely that these large dropships would form the main bulwark of dropship assets and the Aesir class ships would be able to lend their 30 on-board Aerospace fighters to the fight.
The Leviathan III also features 10 small craft and an on-board compliment of 225 Elementals for shipboard security or boarding actions although I do not know what suits they would be but i'd assume Gnome/Golems as mobility isn't a factor but firepower is.
Unlike most Clan ships IE Star League ones the Leviathan III has a rather modest storage of ‘only’ 51,459 tonnes but she also has a nice deep 15,000 tonne fuel tank, which is enough for nearly 949 days of thrusting around. She’d run out of consumables but at least she’s got a decent fuel tank on her unlike her Star League era cousins who had dinky fuel tanks.
ThoughtsThe Leviathan III is quite simply a monster, with the only ship that can challenge her technically a sister ship (The
Rasalhague) there’s nothing out there that even comes close to being a threat unless Clan Jade Falcon threw EVERYTHING at them and was willing to sacrifice most of its fleet to bring the Leviathan III down.
With a huge tonnage of armour, its to be expected that the Leviathan III has thick armour but this is all kinds of silly. She has four times the protection of a McKenna. Yep, that’s 1000 points of armour on every single part of the hull. That means you need to do 100 points of capital damage to threshold the armour and there is NOTHING that can do that, not even a Castrum at full roar, or the massed naval PPC’s of a McKenna can threshold the armour to get a crit and you have to hope that missiles can do it. But with 20 AMS covering each angle of approach (split between normal and laser) good luck with that too! Oh and its structural integrity…150 points strong. The only way you might be able to do it on a high speed approach and have big NAC or Gauss rifles in the bow of your ship and hope for a hit. Otherwise you’re having to burrow through that massive amount of armour plate.
The wall of anti-fighter/dropship defences would probably be akin to flying into something like this -
https://youtu.be/czAwsE7yLBc?t=202With multiple bays of anti-fighter weapons with them overlapping their firing arcs can be truly intimidating, and even if a Dropship does not get blasted out of existence at long range they can’t take repeated strikes from dozens of LRM-20’s, ATM-12s ER Large lasers, large pulse lasers, gauss rifles and PPCs. And then if they get past that, its ER Medium and medium pulse laser boogaloo.
Sure fighters COULD take one out if you massed them into a HUGE strike and threw them all at one facing, but that’s probably the only way, and this of course ignores the Leviathan’s aerospace assets and of course that armada of dropships.
Let’s talk about those for a moment shall we? The Aesir/Vanir is a nasty combination, 30 ASF’s or a LOT of sub-capital missiles. You can read about them -
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,37176.0.htmlThese ships work best in groups, with the Vanir able to cover each other’s weaker arcs by simply being covered by another of its kind. Assuming that a Leviathan III came along with 15 dropships (3 stars) and used a 2 Aesir 3 Vanir mix whilst the remaining 5 are cargo dropships, that is still 180 fighters and 9 heavy escorts that would add another layer of anti-aircraft defences to ward off any strike whilst the Leviathan does the job of un-existing anything that looks mean.
Realistically the Leviathan III and its air group can’t be used outside anything of all but the largest scenario and even if you went without fighters and dropships it can still rip apart anything in space. Possibly the only weak point is the stern, here the firepower is the lightest with ‘only’ four Heavy Naval PPC’s and whatever guns are in the aft left or right arc you’re approaching from.
This ship though is not one to conquer worlds. Sure if you loaded her up with 20 Overlord C’s you could bring 900 Mech’s to the party but that’s really not what the Leviathan III is for. She’s built to ensure orbital dominance, to head in system with her escorting flotilla of assault dropships and smash anything that comes up to challenge her. The Dominion is not too shy about the pleasantries of warfare as they were in the past (see Second Combine/Dominion War with the unofficial Trial of Annihilation waged against Clan Nova Cat) so its not too unfeasible to see her guns turned groundward if needs be. Once orbital security is assured then the jumpships with the invasion forces can arrive and take over a world. The Leviathan III crushes the orbital defences and ensures aerospace superiority whilst covering the landing forces.
The Leviathan III is the settings
Yamato, a warship built to beat anything that anyone might possibly built, its an
Eclipse Class Super Star Destroyer or an EVE Titan type ship.
I’ve heard other folks refer to the Bear’s as the Camping faction. One that sits behind its defences and seems relatively harmless whilst building up and up. This is very true, for many years the Bears were a largely ignored Clan, but their massive industrial support has helped them start building this thing, and apparently the Republic is having kittens about it, as the Ravens are also apparently working on something as well. What this says for Warships in the setting is still unknown.
The Leviathan III might be used as a plot point, a few nuclear flashes and evidence pointing at the DCMS could result in the Dominion crossing the border and take pressure off the beleaguered Davion’s. Or we could be looking at the ICS
Kerensky for all we know.
Using OneReally you would not, at least outside of special battles and campaigns, these things are broken. Its really that simple. But let’s say you did put down a Leviathan III and your opponent didn’t immediately throw a chair at you, this thing is a broadside fighter. Even without dropships and fighters you want to just turn broadside on and start hammering away. This then puts your opponent in a horrid bind. Do they sit at extreme range with next to nothing capable of replying save missiles which are going to be swatted down by the massed AMS. Or, do you try to get into the range of your guns and then suddenly face a rapidly escalating wall of firepower being thrown your way?
Then its just a case of vomiting out enough firepower to make a hostile ship simply ‘go away’. And it can do that with a worrying amount of ease, whilst being able to take near everything in the setting and laughing it off.
Facing oneA Leviathan III is the House Atradies box thingy…and we know what’s in the box.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/13/ae/68/13ae6819443c6cc6afbf6f5a78bfdc05.jpgBasically these are nightmares to face. There’s no way of putting it any way. A Leviathan III can thin out inbound fighter strikes with its bonkers flak array and lasers. These can also rip assault dropships apart in quick order. Its guns and missiles can rip capital ships apart and with its huge armour, you have to hammer away in the valiant hope of getting a breach or making the Leviathan back off.
What you need is numbers, lore wise the Falcons could do it if they were willing to sacrifice damn near every ship they had, seeing as a Leviathan III can 'remove' an Aegis in a turn of fire if she's not at extreme range. The Ravens could do it as well, again if they were willing to sacrifice nearly every major unit in their fleet. Fighters, cruisers, battleships, you’re going to need them all and you’re going to either need to split its fire by attacking from multiple vectors or forcing the brute to eliminate a target at a time before moving on, whilst other ships attack without too much counter battery fire.
And this is before you factor in any dropships or ASF assets with the Leviathan III. Realistically you’d not have the Leviathan III alone without any ASF assets or dropships and with 60 on-board fighters and whatever comes with her massed Aesir/Vanir or any other dropships on her 20 collars (expect Nagasawa’s too).
This means that even if you bring along a huge swarm of Castrum’s even they will have issues to paraphrase a certain Mon Cal “Our ships can’t repel firepower of that magnitude!” Doubly so as even the Castum’s Improved Heavy Gauss then come within range of the Leviathan’s massed anti-fighter/dropship weapons, and whilst the Casty does have Sub-capital weaponry, the I-HG’s give it a lot of extra firepower.
Realistically the only way to fight this monster is with a pair or trio of McKenna’s, a pair might struggle as it’s a case of them burying through the Leviathan’s armour before their weaker hides are torn asunder, but three should in theory do it easily. In theory a McKenna if she can hold the range open can fight better at extreme range but it’s also incredibly difficult to hold that range open and fire broadsides which the McKenna would have to do to get the most out of her massed N-PPC’s. The Leviathan III's decent thrust rating means she's not as sluggish as the Aegis but has enough thrust to turn and roll as needed, sure she's no speedboat but she does not need to be. With her being able to turn enough with most destroyers and cruisers means that even trying to get into a decent firing position (astern, try getting astern if you can) can be a pain
Can you use fighters? Yes, but you’d have to sling ALL your fighters at it. Not all of them on a planet, but probably in an entire sector/district/region. Doubly so if she’s got fighters and dropships herself. Slinging nukes is always an option, but thanks to massed AMS and her absurdly tough hide its going to take more than one. That’s why I think these things are simply Deus Ex Machina. I’m sure that if the Leviathan III does not die in the shipyards due to R̶e̶p̶u̶b̶l̶i̶c̶
TOTALLY SOMEONE ELSE’S interference then she then becomes a massive plot device. This ship, in the current setting can literally decide the fate of a campaign, or even an empire...or a Republic. But we'll have to see what the future holds.
If this ship has a theme song its this as background music;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frqYK1EZ3O0And this when she jumps in;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sASfLQm9iCcAnd yes it would be transmitted across the entire system.
The Leviathan and her collection of Tubes. Perhaps its where the Chatterweb comes from...
As always, comments, criticism and thoughts are most welcome.