Blue Water Troop Transport: Boarding Craft Support Boat

[Wolf72]

Code: [Select]

Boarding Craft Support Boat

Mass:                        9 tons
Movement Type:               Naval
Power Plant:                 Battery
Range:                       500 km
Cruising Speed:              43.2 kph
Maximum Speed:               64.8 kph
Armor:                       BAR 6
Armament:             2 Machine Guns

Introduction Year:           2300
Tech Rating/Availability:    D/C-D-D-C
Cost:                        35,316 C-bills


Type: Boarding Craft
Chassis Type: Naval (Medium)
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)

Mass:                                              9 tons
Battle Value:   30
Alpha Strike PV: 2

Equipment                                         Mass (tons)
Chassis/Controls                                    1.5
Engine/Trans.                                       2.0
    Cruise MP:4
Flank MP:6
Heat Sinks                    0                     0.0
Fuel                                                0.5
Turret                                              0.5
Armor Factor (BAR 6)          7                     0.5

                          Internal   Armor   
                          Structure  Value   
     Front                   1         2     
     R/L Side               1/1       1/1   
     Rear                    1         1     
     Turret                  1         2     


Weapons
and Ammo                      Location    Tonnage   
2 Machine Gun                  Turret         1.0     
Half Machine Gun Ammo (100)     Body          0.5     

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Cargo (1.0 tons)        1 Door    1.0
    Bay 2:  Inf. Comp. (10 foot)    1 Door    1.0

Notes:
Advanced Fire Control                         0.5

Here is my open water troop transport boat.  While not an omni-support veh, one could drop the weapons, fire control, and cargo then get +3 tons (4 if you include the transport already allocated) to change this into a better personnel carrier.  2.5 tons will get you a standard foot platoon.

Note: something funky going with MML and exporting to notepad ... missing the actual troop tonnage, range, and some other odd formatting stuff.

[edit: aaaaah, so the AFC is already included in chassis/controls.  sigh, support veh export in MML needs some tweaking or I need to do some tweaking]

[Vehrec]

A 9 ton boat with 10 guys does NOT strike me as a very great way to get to the fight.  Seasickness and generally a wet experience as waves break over the boat are expected.  Especially not for blue-water work, where that 500 km of range will be used up faster than you think.

[Wolf72]

I hope anyone assigned to naval operations doesn't get sea sick!

I've always thought of this as some sort of 'simple' boarding operation, ala Coast Guard (note the single quotes for 'simple')

I would assume that no one ever plans on sending this thing out to it's max range, only deploying it to scout, board, ferry.  Then recharge once back aboard its mother ship (with lift hoists)

Any support vehicle should not be used for heavy combat.  If you're thinking of going into a hot zone, you probably want something with a bit more tonnage ... 15+ or so.  Against a real combat unit, this boat is going to have use weapons like "Please?" and "Thank you!"

[maxcarrion]

This has a pretty good "Customs Cutter" feel.  A squad of guys to carry out inspections/anti-piracy and a couple of machine guns in case the locals get rowdy. Not for use against military targets but for when a handful of guys with autorifles are taking control of a container ship or when suspected smugglers need an inspection and might get rough.  Personally I'd want it to be faster but this is a very cheap design so probably for certain backwaters that have to make do.  An upgrade on a RIB or Scarab equivalent but still little more than a river patrol boat.

[Wolf72]

Faster you say? ... could drop the MG to 1, there's a half-ton.  I wish we could 'officially' go sillier with support vehicles and allocate ammo per shot.  Then use the fractional accounting at the end to see what is left over and convert that to some additional personal cargo capacity.

let me check MML and see what happens (while also trying to maintain range).  Drop a MG, increase speed to 5/8 (range drops to 400 km), drop .5 ton cargo, increase range to 800 km.  Changing to Tech E increases range to 500 km (at .5 ton) or 1,000 km (at 1.0 ton).

I've done the paper math on really big ships before using fractional accounting, at the end I came up with just under a full ton left over -- I think that'd be a cool feature for MML for SV and CV, I mean I might only be adding a few hand-held spotlights, but I could!

[Wolf72]

Other options: drop the cargo space and make it a hydrofoil, speed increases to 5/8 (BV 35, cost 37.7 k)

A combat vehicle option (intro date of 2470) using hydrofoil goes 7/11 (using a 10 fuel cell engine) or 9/14 for no increase in weight! ... range is technically 666km (using the CV fuel formula, Fuel Cell vehs get 666km, ICE gets 1,000km).  Also crew is less! Technically  1 (or 2 if you fluff it that way) versus 6 for a support vehicle (5 crew base, 1 gunner).  BV increases to 83 (85 at 8/12, 89 at 9/14) and cost increases to 75.8 k (78.2 k, 82.9 k respectively) ... oh and AlphaStrike PV gets up to 8!

fyi In my AU my designs (90% or so) stick with 10 or 40 rated engines for fluff/availability reasons