Inspired by the McKenna/Luxor discussion in the McKenna's WSot? article, here's a Luxor with a McKenna-like armament. The Luxor doesn't have the payload tonnage for a straight copy of the McKenna's armament, despite being a much toothier design (the Luxor has a 6.3% cargo fraction, compared to the McKenna's 13.2% - the McKenna's cargo bay could actually hold both the Luxor's cargo and its entire armament, with room to spare) so some sacrifices had to be made, mostly by focusing on long-range capability instead of extreme-range capability. I wanted to keep the cargo fraction as unchanged as possible, so that restriction also guided my redesign.
Like the McKenna, the McLuxor has a trio of 60-point bays on its broadside and aft quarters, but by switching two-thirds of those bays to triple NAC20s, that provides a saving of nearly 9kt per bay. Dual NAC30s would have saved some more mass, but at the cost of an even greater loss in bracketing capability. I aimed for a balance between the mass and bracketing by opting for the NAC20s.
With the main batteries out of the way, that left the bow, stern and forward quarters, which the McKenna covers with an array of NAC40s, NL55s and AR10s. There wasn't enough tonnage to be able to exactly mimic the McKenna's setup, with the stern losing a couple of NAC bays. I did add an extra White Shark and Killer Whale to the AR10 magazines for the forward quarter launchers, so that they had 4 full salvos of both, instead of just 3.5 salvos, fixing a minor irritation about the McKenna.
I also looked at removing a NAC40 bay from the forward quarters to improve the DS and ASF capacity, increasing the number of collars to 6 and adding 42 ASFs to give a full regiment. The problem with this version is that it drives the cost up massively due to the price of collars, especially when they're combined with a LF battery. My first McLuxor costs about two-thirds of the price of a McKenna - about the same as the canon Luxor, for that matter - while the alternative McLuxor would cost about five-sixths of a McKenna. Not an issue for table-top play, but I like to think about in-universe issues too and with the price gap with the McKenna so reduced, you'd have to question even more as to why you'd bother with the smaller, less capable vessel. Another idea was using the mass saved from removing just a single aft NAC40 to make improvements to the rest of the armament instead of the extra DS/ASFs, but I decided to stop tinkering with the weaponry.
The last change I made was to the armor. The Luxor had made the false cost saving of using Improved Ferro-Aluminum. I say false because the cost of armor is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of a WarShip, but can make a big difference to its survivability, and thus the potential need to buy a replacement. This is of course an issue suffered by most canon WarShip designs, but that's enough said about that.
I left the crew, escape systems, etc untouched and I adjusted for the incorrect armor mass calculated by HMA plus the extra KF drive support costs added in StratOps. The final design actually has more cargo capacity than the Luxor, possessing 181t extra capacity (the alternative McLuxor would have 982t more cargo than the Luxor), which is a trivial difference for a 890kt WarShip.
Overall, for a ship that's about half the mass and two-third the C-Bill cost of the McKenna, the McLuxor comes out very well in comparison. Given the respective cargo fractions it's not surprising, and it would be extremely easy to also redesign the McKenna to roughly halve its cargo and add more weaponry and armor for a relatively small C-Bill cost increase (eg. for just a 1.7% C-Bill increase, you could have a McKenna with more than double the armor, 4 extra ASFs, 2 extra SCs, 10 extra AR10s with larger magazines per launcher, 4 extra NL55s and the 12 NAC40s swapped for 63 NAC20s while possessing a 6.3% cargo fraction like the Luxor).
AeroTech 2 Vessel Technical Readout
VALIDATED
Class/Model/Name: McLuxor
Tech: Inner Sphere / 2690
Vessel Type: WarShip
Rules: Level 2, Standard design
Rules Set: AeroTech2
Mass: 890,000 tons
K-F Drive System: (Unknown)
Length: 975 meters
Sail Diameter: 1,490 meters
Power Plant: Standard
Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Armor Type: Ferro-carbide
Armament:
12 NL55
10 NAC/40
6 AR10 Launcher
16 Heavy NPPC
24 NAC/20
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class/Model/Name: McLuxor
Mass: 890,000 tons
Equipment: Mass
Power Plant, Drive & Control: 160,200.00
Thrust: Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Kearny-Fuchida Hyperdrive: Compact (Integrity = 18) 402,725.00
Lithium Fusion Battery 8,900.00
Jump Sail: (Integrity = 5) 74.00
Structural Integrity: 80 71,200.00
Total Heat Sinks: 3,250 Double 2,639.00
Fuel & Fuel Pumps: 3,060.00
Bridge, Controls, Radar, Computer & Attitude Thrusters: 2,225.00
Fire Control Computers: .00
Armor Type: Ferro-carbide (1,182 total armor pts) 1,417.00
Capital Scale Armor Pts
Location: L / R
Fore: 177
Fore-Left/Right: 215/215
Aft-Left/Right: 215/215
Aft: 145
Cargo:
Bay 1: Fighters (12) with 6 doors 1,800.00
Small Craft (4) 800.00
Bay 2: Cargo (1) with 1 door 56,214.00
DropShip Capacity: 4 Docking Hardpoints 4,000.00
Grav Decks #1 - 2: (95-meter diameter) 100.00
Life Boats: 35 (7 tons each) 245.00
Escape Pods: 30 (7 tons each) 210.00
Crew and Passengers:
62 Officers (58 minimum) 620.00
210 Crew (161 minimum) 1,470.00
83 Gunners (68 minimum) 581.00
44 Bay Personnel .00
Weapons and Equipment Loc SRV MRV LRV ERV Heat Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 NL55 Nose 11 11 11 11 170 2,200.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Nose 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Nose 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
3 NL55 FL/R 17 17 17 17 510 6,600.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) FL/R 40 40 -- -- 270 9,102.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) FL/R 40 40 -- -- 270 9,102.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) FL/R 40 40 -- -- 270 9,102.00
2 AR10 (8 KW, 8 WS, 10 B) FL/R * * * * 80 3,040.00
4 Heavy NPPC L/RBS 60 60 60 60 1800 24,000.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) L/RBS 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) L/RBS 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
4 Heavy NPPC AL/R 60 60 60 60 1800 24,000.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) AL/R 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) AL/R 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
4 NL55 Aft 22 22 22 22 340 4,400.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Aft 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Aft 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
2 AR10 (6 KW, 6 WS, 10 B) Aft * * * * 40 1,340.00
1 Armor correction 1.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS: Heat: 7,530 890,000.00
Tons Left: .00
Calculated Factors:
Total Cost: 21,145,666,000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 221,711
Cost per BV: 95,374.91
Weapon Value: 103,297 (Ratio = .47)
Damage Factors: SRV = 9,574; MRV = 9,574; LRV = 7,544; ERV = 1,975
Maintenance: Maintenance Point Value (MPV) = 607,016
(80,144 Structure, 220,422 Life Support, 306,450 Weapons)
Support Points (SP) = 788,625 (130% of MPV)
BattleForce2: Not applicable
And for comparison, the alternative McLuxor:
AeroTech 2 Vessel Technical Readout
VALIDATED
Class/Model/Name: McLuxor II
Tech: Inner Sphere / 2690
Vessel Type: WarShip
Rules: Level 2, Standard design
Rules Set: AeroTech2
Mass: 890,000 tons
K-F Drive System: (Unknown)
Length: 975 meters
Sail Diameter: 1,490 meters
Power Plant: Standard
Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Armor Type: Ferro-carbide
Armament:
12 NL55
8 NAC/40
6 AR10 Launcher
16 Heavy NPPC
24 NAC/20
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class/Model/Name: McLuxor II
Mass: 890,000 tons
Equipment: Mass
Power Plant, Drive & Control: 160,200.00
Thrust: Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Kearny-Fuchida Hyperdrive: Compact (Integrity = 18) 402,725.00
Lithium Fusion Battery 8,900.00
Jump Sail: (Integrity = 5) 74.00
Structural Integrity: 80 71,200.00
Total Heat Sinks: 3,250 Double 2,639.00
Fuel & Fuel Pumps: 3,060.00
Bridge, Controls, Radar, Computer & Attitude Thrusters: 2,225.00
Fire Control Computers: .00
Armor Type: Ferro-carbide (1,182 total armor pts) 1,417.00
Capital Scale Armor Pts
Location: L / R
Fore: 177
Fore-Left/Right: 215/215
Aft-Left/Right: 215/215
Aft: 145
Cargo:
Bay 1: Fighters (54) with 6 doors 8,100.00
Small Craft (4) 800.00
Bay 2: Cargo (1) with 1 door 57,015.00
DropShip Capacity: 6 Docking Hardpoints 6,000.00
Grav Decks #1 - 2: (95-meter diameter) 100.00
Life Boats: 35 (7 tons each) 245.00
Escape Pods: 30 (7 tons each) 210.00
Crew and Passengers:
62 Officers (58 minimum) 620.00
210 Crew (161 minimum) 1,470.00
83 Gunners (66 minimum) 581.00
128 Bay Personnel .00
Weapons and Equipment Loc SRV MRV LRV ERV Heat Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 NL55 Nose 11 11 11 11 170 2,200.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Nose 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Nose 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
3 NL55 FL/R 17 17 17 17 510 6,600.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) FL/R 40 40 -- -- 270 9,102.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) FL/R 40 40 -- -- 270 9,102.00
2 AR10 (8 KW, 8 WS, 10 B) FL/R * * * * 80 3,040.00
4 Heavy NPPC L/RBS 60 60 60 60 1800 24,000.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) L/RBS 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) L/RBS 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
4 Heavy NPPC AL/R 60 60 60 60 1800 24,000.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) AL/R 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
3 NAC/20(135 rounds) AL/R 60 60 60 -- 360 15,108.00
4 NL55 Aft 22 22 22 22 340 4,400.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Aft 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
1 NAC/40(42 rounds) Aft 40 40 -- -- 135 4,551.00
2 AR10 (6 KW, 6 WS, 10 B) Aft * * * * 40 1,340.00
1 Armor correction 1.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS: Heat: 7,260 890,000.00
Tons Left: .00
Calculated Factors:
Total Cost: 25,864,394,000 C-Bills
Battle Value: 217,237
Cost per BV: 119,060.72
Weapon Value: 101,233 (Ratio = .47)
Damage Factors: SRV = 9,274; MRV = 9,274; LRV = 7,307; ERV = 2,049
Maintenance: Maintenance Point Value (MPV) = 605,954
(86,652 Structure, 224,622 Life Support, 294,680 Weapons)
Support Points (SP) = 788,625 (130% of MPV)
BattleForce2: Not applicable