The Farragut class Battleship, the big stick of the Terran Hegemony.Mass – 1,680,000 tonnes
Length – 1405 meters
Crew Compliment – 730
BackgroundIn the mid 2430’s the Terran Hegemony fleet was faced with the growing obsolescence of its front line battleship the
Monsoon class and the fact that the older
Dreadnought class was now obsolete. A replacement for both classes was needed to keep the Hegemony’s fleet ahead of the House Lords whose fleets were viewed as a threat to the Hegemony.
The new battleship design was to be able to replace both older classes in front line combat and carry the most advanced weapons available. The new design was commissioned by the then First Lord, Richard Cameron and initial design work started in 2430. Unfortunately, the First Lord did not live to see the ship he had a hand in designing leave the slips in 2448. What emerged was a monster and a ship that quickly redressed any thought of an imbalance between the fleet of the Hegemony and the House Lords.
The
Farragut class battleship, named after Admiral Isaac Farragut, not the ancient Terran Admiral David Farragut the new battleship was a mobile fortress massing a huge 1,680,000 tonnes making her the largest ship built in the Inner Sphere until the
McKenna class appeared two hundred and four years later.
The
Farragut was also over a kilometre long, 1,405 meters to be exact but despite her great mass and size the
Farragut was able to generate more thrust than the older ships she replaced and at full burn could generate 2.5g of thrust, making her capable of matching a pace set by the common
Riga class frigate and the planned
Avatar class cruiser.
The
Farragut also served to highlight the high technology of the Hegemony and she was designed from the onset to feature the brand new Heavy Naval Gauss Rifle, able to inflict tremendous damage out to extreme range whilst generating little heat. That each weapon alone weighed 7000 tonnes and fired a shot weighing 12 tonnes didn’t bother the
Farragut and she was fitted with eighteen of the new weapons with them covering all arcs. Backing these weapons up was a fearsome array of weapons that would enable the
Farragut to engage at all ranges. Fourteen NAC-40’s, fifteen Heavy Naval PPC’s and twenty two launch tubes for Killer Whale missiles gave the ship its main and most formidable punch whilst for point defence forty large lasers were spread around the hull to target fighters that managed to get close.
The
Farragut also boasted a thick hide with 1,603.5 tonnes of the new Ferro-Carbide armour shielding her from hostile fire and she boasted a massively reinforced hull structure that was matched by the
McKenna class and exceeded by the far larger
Leviathan class produced centuries later. An expansive 183,414.5 tonne cargo bay also allowed the
Farragut to supply other vessels and carry enough fuel and ammunition on-board for long deployments.
Finally coming to her aerospace compliment the
Farragut boasts a full wing of Fighters (36) as well as 10 small craft and shuttles. The only area the
Farragut falls short is that she is only capable of carrying a pair of dropships verses the
Monsoon’s six.
If there was one problem with these massive ships it was their construction costs and the expense of keeping them in service. It seems that the Heavy Naval Gauss rifles were possibly maintenance intensive (as with many new weapons) and this made the
Farragut seemingly be quite the hangar queen (although this is my own interpretation and not official). This meant that production of the
Farragut’s ceased in 2500 after a mere 52 years of production, a very short time by Hegemony standards.
Despite this they served in the Reunification War as fleet flagships and in line squadrons where their firepower would tip the balance in many battles and the ships proved capable of taking huge amounts of damage and still getting home.
After the Reunification War the Farragut’s remained in service for centuries, their only presumed rival the Marik
Atreus Class and the
Lyran’s Tharkad (although other ships of this size may exist we have yet to see any data about them). Still as time moved on and doctrines changed the
Farragut’s started to show their age, and their high maintenance requirements gradually saw the class start to be retired into first secondary fleets and finally mothballs. Even this didn’t save the class and it was ordered that the ships start being decommissioned and scrapped but it does seem that this may well have been for public consumption outside of the Hegemony.
It seems that instead of being scrapped some
Farragut’s were put into storage in mothballs whilst they were official scrapped. Indeed during the Amaris War the
Farragut class served alongside General Kerensky’s forces and survivors of the class accompanied him on Operation Exodus.
A single
Farragut would later show up in the hands of the Word of Blake, it’s not known where she was found but it can be assumed that the
Farragut the WoBS
Righteous Justice was either a mothballed ship discovered at the Ruins of Gabriel or a repaired hulk that had survived the Amaris Civil War. It’s not known if any of the class survived the Pentagon War or are still in some hidden naval cache awaiting the call to arms once more. Or, if the
Righteous Justice, who fell in battle over Terra was the last of her kind, finally making the class extinct.
DesignThe
Farragut is a monster, she’s really an early McKenna and yet she still has vulnerabilities and is an avatar of the Hegemony/SLDF’s warship design where each ship was supposed to be part of a greater and mutually supporting whole.
As is fitting her class the
Farragut packs a fearsome amount of firepower, but she was designed before bracket firing became a thing, and even afterwards where we can assume the classes computers were updated and upgraded to take the new firing protocols into effect she can only bracket fire to a rather modest degree with her largest group of weapons being turrets with three H-NPPC’s in them, everything else is either mounted in single mounts or in pairs.
This means a
Farragut like other ships of her time must get a bit closer to bring her firepower to accurately engage a target, but she’s got the hide to do so and more importantly the thrust. With a 3/5 thrust curve the
Farragut is capable of generating more thrust than many ships of her era and is as ‘fast’ as the later
Texas and
McKenna classes and the big cruisers of the time in the form of the
Avatar and
Luxor classes and is capable of keeping up with the
Black Lion’s and turning with them. This means the ship can handily roll and bring new faces to bare if one side takes damage.
The
Farragut is, like many battleships built for broadside fighting but don’t think you can engage her head on and escape her firepower, the guns are well spread out whilst her massed Killer Whale launchers also cover all angles.
For example, if a
Farragut can broadside you you’ll have this pointed at you.
6 x NAC-40’s in 6 x single mounts.
6 x Heavy Naval Gauss in 3 x dual mounts.
6 x Heavy Naval PPCs in 2 x triple mounts.
9 x Killer whale launchers in 3 x triple launchers.
15 x large lasers in 3 x quintuple turrets.
That’s a LOT of firepower and save the NAC’s (and of course the large lasers) it’s all darn long ranged whilst the NAC’s provide a ship killing punch at short to medium ranges.
Like other Hegemony/SLDF ships the
Farragut is vulnerable to fighters yet her missile batteries can engage them at long range and no fighter wants to be hit by a Killer Whale missile. The
Farragut’s complete lack of any form of Naval Laser means she can’t engage them with any other weapon other than her missiles whilst the large laser battery is in my eyes a final terminal defence.
Remember a
Farragut would not be on the front line, or if she was, there would be escorts sailing with her to add their guns to hers against an incoming threat. Any fighter strike would have to work its way past any escorting fighters and dropships, then run the gauntlet of missiles and naval lasers before getting in range to engage. It could be assumed that any strike that did manage to break through would be scattered, its fighters damaged and pilots rattled by the seemingly never ending stream of missiles and laser beams as big as their fighters firing at them. The large lasers could then hopefully pick off crippled fighters and further reduce the damage that a
Farragut might take.
Against small craft the
Farragut is also hard to damage and can even prove a challenge for capital grade weapons to threshold.
Fore armour – 200 (20 point threshold)
Fore-sides/Broadside armour – 250 (25 point threshold)
Aft-sides armour – 250 - (25 point threshold)
Rear armour – 143 – (15 point threshold)
And a meaty 95 structural integrity allows the
Farragut to take a pounding even with her armour gone, but hopefully a commander would roll away an exposed area to save that happening.
Whilst a
Farragut’s centrepiece allows her to reach out to extreme range the limited (or non-existent depending on the time period you’re playing her in) bracket firing she can do means that like most ships of the time she must close but her guns allow her to reach out and barrage a foe as she’s getting into range. A slap from a H-Naval Gauss is not something anyone wants .
A final layer of protection or a long range weapon is the
Farragut’s aerospace compliment. With 36 fighters carried the
Farragut carries more fighters than any other ship in service until the massive boondoggle that was the
Enterprise entered service or the later
McKenna’s who carried 50 fighters a piece. This gives you enough aerospace assets to form a decent screen whilst also giving you enough to throw into an attack if needs be. Two dropships are also carried but this is the only area where the older
Monsoon’s outclass the
Farragut, as each of the older ships could carry six dropships.
I would assume that the
Farragut’s dropships would be combat ones, not freighters. With a 183,414.5 tonne cargo bay the
Farragut has lots of internal stores and if needs be another friendly dropship could load up and carry cargo over whilst her two escorting dropships sit nearby.
With a beefy organic aerospace wing you can do a fair bit, but remember that fighters are also your best protection against hostile strikes, and even with her protection and guns a
Farrgut’s greatest threat does come from hostile aerospace assets and you’ve got 36 counters for that threat carried on-board.
Fighting oneThe high threshold thanks to the
Farragut’s thick hide makes fighters less likely to cripple and knock her out with lots of crits but instead they would have to chew away at her armour and this obviously takes time. The same goes for assault dropships, unless you’re in a Pocket Warship you’re not going to threshold the armour and need to burrow into it with repeated strikes, whilst enduring return fire from guns far bigger than yours.
As with all capital ships swarming one with fighters is the easy but boring route, but with so many missile launchers and the fact that a
Farragut is going to have her own escorts and fighter escort means that taking one down with this method may be exceptionally costly.
Facing one with a Capital ship is going to be a foreboding task. Whilst the Farragut lacks the armour of a
Texas she’s as well protected as a
McKenna (save on her stern) and packs a brutal if inaccurate at long range punch.
No matter how you engage a
Farragut you’re going to take casualties doing so, this means that basically even with Capital ships you’re going to have to engage her with two to one odds, more if you’re in small ships like destroyers who can be ripped of their armour with a few hits.
ContemporariesFor her time the
Farragut class has a fair few contemporary classes, the main rival is the
Atreus class, but these ships are smaller, more poorly armed and protected in every way. Yes they could hurt a
Farragut but in a one on one fight, the
Farragut has the advantages in firepower and protection. The Lyran’s
Tharkad class is another contemporary, exceptionally well-armed but still not enough to safely engage a
Farragut without support. The
Texas and
McKenna’s are the bane of a Farragut in a single ship on ship engagement. With their massed batteries built for bracketing fire they can engage at ranges where the
Farragut is far more dependent on luck than any accuracy and can start wearing her armour down. The
Texas is basically outgunned by a
Farragut but can engage the bigger ship at longer range and if she can control the range then the
Farragut won’t really stand a chance. This goes double for the fearsome
McKenna who’s massed Heavy N-PPC’s can flay almost any ship apart before they can seriously threaten her, and the
McKenna who replaced the
Farragut in service is by far the superior vessel in a pure gun battle.
Perhaps the only ship in the modern era that might be a challenge for a
Farragut would be a
Mjolnir class battlecruiser, the Lyran vessel is slightly faster than the big Hegemony warship and has considerably higher protection and a monstrous amount of structural integrity. Both ships are designed to get in close and hammer away and it then becomes a test of firepower vs protection. A close in slugging match between the two could be very bloody.
ThoughtsAs the flagship of a battlegroup a
Farragut is a formidable foe in any period, even against more modern 3067 type ships who like her have to get a bit close, which is what you DON’T want to when facing a Farragut. The
Farragut is a lovely ship, her solid and clean lines do kind of make her look like a beer can but there’s a simple brute look to her that makes her look very business-like in her profile.
A monster for her time and she’d do well even if she was ‘retired’ and ‘scrapped’ in later periods, I can see them being slowly pushed aside to either serve alongside the very limited number’s of
Texas class ships or secondary areas, but their maintenance costs (and I assume issues) could be the contributor to the classes retirement rather than doctrinal shifts. If they were main reason the SLDF would have probably just upgraded the
Avatar rather than replacing it as it fitted in beautifully with the SLDF’s bracket firing technology due to its massed Naval Laser batteries.
In the modern period the
Farragut would run rampant, House Warships are designed like her, they have to get in close and this would have a
Farragut commander going “Praise the First Lord and pass the ammunition!” before ripping anything that looked at her funny apart. Of course you’d never face a
Farragut alone, she’d be escorted by cruisers, destroyers and a picket of corvettes. Killing a
Farragut in a campaign or as part of a larger battle could well be a game changer for the sides involved. She’s a final boss and should be treated as such. (and probably has this music-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhWaufQD9Uo which fits really..you’ve broken through the screen, fighters are scattered, a cruiser burning off the port bow..and the
Farragut starts to slowly come about guns tracking, charging up to fire…)
Its just the small matter of carrying out the deed and you have to question yourself on what you’re willing to endure to take out the ship.
A
Farragut class Battleship in her prime whilst in commission with the Terran Hegemony.
A reactivated
Farragut class Battleship now many hundreds of years old with who knows how many miles on her engines leaving the Inner Sphere for presumably the last time, this unnamed vessel is taking part in Operation EXODUS and is proof that the class was far from decommissioned and scrapped. Here she is moving in formation with a
Sovietskii Soyuz class heavy cruiser.
As always comments and thoughts are most welcome.
