Arondight Assault DropShip, TRO3085, JHS3076
Well, it looks like the Mariks have competition in the Arthurian references stakes. While the Eagles were named for knights of the Round Table, the Davions have firstly refitted a class of DropShips called Excaliburs, renamed an ex-FWLN Zechetinu II
Excalibur, and have now named a class of DropShips after Lancelot’s favoured blade. Given Battletech’s overuse of Canine themes and the ever increasing war between the Lyrans and RasDom over Germanic/Norse/Cold themes I suppose another rivalry won’t hurt.
The origins of the Arondight are pretty self explanatory. WarShips are expensive and naval yards are rare and vulnerable. DropShips are cheap and can be built without the extra infrastructure needed by a jump core. Indeed three yards have geared up to produce the design and will build a squadron each in less than a year. Yay for the Davies.
Early versions went to war over New Avalon in 3074 where they suffered some problems with their targeting systems. Just what they achieved I have no idea. My understanding of the end of the Word of Blake operation on New Avalon was that the Wobbies packed up and left one night when the Davions were not looking. The next morning Yvonne rocked up, claimed a victory and handed free WarShips to everyone. I could be wrong. The key point is whatever happened there was very little for the Arondights to do, even if they were effective at doing it.
So what did the Federated Suns get with their new ship? Well they got a fairly standard 12,000 ton hull with over 1,200 points of ferro aluminium armour with a 5/8 thrust rating. It sits somewhere between an Overlord A3 and an Excalibur PWS in terms of style.
Actually it reminds me a lot of the Excalibur. The Excalibur is extremely overloaded with all sorts of weapons and the Arondight isn’t far off from that itself. Basically it comes down to the capital missiles. Indulge me a bit here.
There are a lot of ways you can load up on capital missiles. Going to extremes usually helps. On one hand you have ships like the Nekohono’o, three Krakens, it earns its keep by using those missiles to punch though large craft armour. Then there are ships like the Mule PWS. Ranks of dual purpose missiles equally at home against large craft or as a very formidable anti Aerospace Fighter defence. Then you have the Federated Suns Navy. The Overlord has some excuse as a first generation ship, mixing AR10s and Krakens and getting minimal benefit from either. The Excalibur does a good impersonation of a Mule and fills the role of fire support well, except someone thought it would be fun to mount a pair of Krakens. An extra AR10 on each flank would have been more inline with the Excalibur’s combat role and low thrust rating. This brings us back to the Arondight.
The Arondight makes use of an impressive thirteen capital and sub capital missiles. The bulk of this is broadside mounted Piranha missiles. Nice, compact, highly effective AAA missiles able to take a bite out of a large craft. And then some bright spark backed them up with AR10s. Now, I like AR10s on a DropShip if you can afford the weight and have no other options. The existence of the Piranhas shows there are other options. That’s 2000 tons of missile launcher and ammunition sitting there in the AR10s that could be devoted to sub-capitals for better effect. To top it off, the Arondight mounts a dinky single Kraken in the bow. That’s going to inspire fear.
The rest of the load out is similar to the Excalibur. Gauss rifles, RACs and ER lasers. Medium range mostly, but that’s not a great loss with all those capital missiles. Smart use is made of the AMS to achieve the minimum damage needed to at a +1 to incoming capital missiles. A lonely Screen Launcher sits in the rear arc. The fluff says it’s to defend against missiles and cover friendlies, however fields of fire suggest this would be difficult.
The Arondight carries no aerospace fighters and I have to say that it doesn’t really need them. The missiles are worth a wing of ASF, and to carry that wing over 3000 tons would have to be found. The Arondight does carry 24 battle armoured marines and a pair of small craft. I would have said they were for picket work, but the fluff says they are there in case of hostile boarding attempts. I am curious as to what would be boarding a DropShip with the firepower of a wing of ASF, but the Federated Suns has never really had any faith in the fighting ability of its navy.
Now some of you would have noticed the problem with the Arondight. While highly effective against aerospace fighters, capital missiles suffer badly when facing batteries of AMS. According to TRO3085 this is exactly what happened at Hean in 3077. So the FSN went back to the drawing board. 11 Sub Capital Cannon later we have a new ship. A triple battery of heavy auto cannon in the bow and quad batteries of light auto cannon in the forequarters give the Arondight genuine bite. Where before the Arondight was nothing more than a target for craft like the Interdictor, now an Arondight can chop these heavily armoured DropShips down with ease. The price was the Krakens and the AR10s. The loss of the latter stings a bit, but it was worth it. The cannon still can hit ASF, if at +3 to-hit, and the Arondight’s flanks are still lined with Piranhas. This is a genuinely exciting improvement, and badly needed when facing the new generation of Pocket WarShips operating after the Jihad. There is also a halfway refit that gives up some cannon for a Kraken but they are rare and I don’t like acknowledging their existence.
So how would I use an Arondight? Sit back at long range, broadside on and fire missiles. Try and get some smaller craft slowing the hostiles down to keep them away from the Arondight. Possibly have an Excalibur sitting back further as command ship launching its longer ranged missiles. An Arondight can dance with ASF if it has to, but it lacks the ability to prevent ASF getting into its weak arcs and equally has trouble breaking free of a dog fight. I would advise keeping Arondights away from WarShips. They lack the armour to play that game for long and unlike the Excalibur, lack the reach to hide behind a battle line. Leave them back as point defence until the WarShips are fully committed, and then bring them up into range.
Arondights are easily defeated by rushing tactics. If you have a wing of ASF, evade them in to short range and force the DropShip into a turning fight. Pick your lines so the Arondight is restricted to single weapon arcs. Other DropShips will have a hard time of it. Assault ships like Achilles and Noruffs will just charge on in and unload full frontal salvos into single arcs. The Clan DropShips should also have a chance. The key is armour. If you can survive the missiles there is a good chance you have the gun power at short ranges. Unfortunately there aren’t too many ships that fall into that category. Arondights just make WarShips annoyed, even with their new auto cannon. Much like the other spheroid hulled PWS the Arondight is essentially a defensive unit. A bunch of them will kill a WarShip fairly cheaply, but writing letters for 69 people at a time is depressing.
So to summarise, the Arondight is probably the logical development of the spheroid hulled, missile armed, heavy assault DropShip. It’s basically an Excalibur when freed from having to worry about the antiquated power relays and engines. The Arondight benefits from the introduction of the Piranha missiles but they were not strictly needed to achieve the same effect. As a fighting ship it is probably best suited to AAA escort in a battle line, but is certainly competent as a centre piece and DropShip killer. I would argue that other factions deserve this ship more (specifically the Clans who don’t have access to sub-cap guns so will have to build a missile boat anyway) and there are question marks as to whether the FSN would have been better served by an Interdictor style brawler to draw fire from their existing support ships. So the Arondight is a logically inevitable ship that will do the job, but probably does not solve the FSN’s needs.
The SCC variant is a ship the FSN needs. This variant gives the FSN a brawler that the original Arondight wasn’t. Unfortunately it is not a great brawler, or rather, because it is a refit it lacks the focus needed for a brawler. A key example of this is its inability to bring all of its most powerful weapons on a single enemy at one time like the Conquistador Blockade Runner. Likewise it lacks armour compared to real brawlers like the Interdictor and Taihou. Despite this, it remains the most formidable DropShip in the FSN short of a Vengeance, and in most combat situations will be a dominant force.