The periphery states never really had much of a chance of standing up to the full might of the newly formed Star League when the Pollux Proclamation was issued. Even the vaunted Taurian Navy would be badly outmatched, with even victory leaving them with losses they could not replace against an enemy with a tremendous lead in WarShips and support vessels. For the Magistracy, the Outworlds, and the Rim Worlds, the balance of power was skewed to the point where even the thought of a standup naval engagement was insanity. Every periphery state hoped to boost the odds through the use of privateers and disguised merchant cruisers to raid supply lines and ambush isolated forces of Star League ships, and one of the best weapons they had for these operations was probably the humble capital missile. These weapons were cheap, easy to make, small enough to be used by dropships or jumpships alike, and, when equipped with even low yield nuclear warheads, a potential existential threat (though use of nuclear warheads by privateers was all but unheard of, as even the periphery states were unwilling to casually hand out weapons of mass destruction to civilian auxiliaries). Most important of all, they could be launched well beyond the range of typical capital weapon systems (often times relying on targeting data provided by spotters closer in) or deployed as clouds of sleeper munitions well in advance of the enemy's arrival. This allowed the auxiliaries to engage even capital ships without risking their own often fragile converted merchant vessels to enemy fire.
Though in practical use these auxilliaries had little affect on the course of the war, several notable successes against convoys and even some of the League's most powerful capital assets led to development of counters to the naval missile threat. However, all of these proved to be of relatively limited utility, able to engage and repel only a handful of naval missiles at a time due to the limitations of targeting and threat identification technology at the time. A wing of fighters on dedicated point defense or an escort retrofitted with small lasers and machine guns might be able to fend off attacks from a single converted merchantman, but massed missile attacks like those seen during the Hyades campaign could quickly overwhelm these defenses, leading to heavy losses that the SLDF was simply forced to ride out.
It wasn't until 2613, over a decade after the Reunification War had ended, that the League managed to develop a solution to the problem, leveraging improvements in computing technology to develop an advanced autonomous targeting and tracking computer mated to a highly accurate autofiring gun, the first example of the now familiar anti-missile system. Though better known for their use in ground combat, this system was originally developed purely for ship defense, and by 2614 was already being mated to a small craft hull, creating the Ancile Point Defense Craft.
The Ancile is fairly basic for its type, designed specifically to encourage proliferation by being easy to build and small enough to be transported even in a fighter bay, allowing even the smallest of the League's warships the ability to carry at least a few as needed. The Ancile has no offensive weaponry, only moderate armor protection, and just enough maneuverability to keep up with the warships and transports it would be shielding. The rest is allocated entirely to the point defense arrays, which are more modest than designers originally hoped for, but still allowed as few as two Anciles to provide effective protection against dozens of naval missiles by overlapping their fields of fire and re-positioning themselves as their point defense bays exhausted their ammo supplies. These craft proved so successful in this role, in fact, that the idea of mounting dedicated point defense systems on larger ships was seen as basically unnecessary, and likewise may have led to the death of the "missile ship" as a concept among Star League Era navies.
The Terran Hegemony widely exported the Ancile, as well as licensing production of the design (though not the anti-missile system, which had to be imported from Hegemony manufacturers). By taking away each house's nuclear silver bullet, this action may have helped smooth over some of the rough spots in inter-house relations, with none of the states willing to risk their modest fleets in direct naval confrontations during the Star League's golden age. This didn't last, however, and once the Star League fell and the Succession Wars began, the Ancile was on the front line (though rarely noticed in popular press). Unfortunately, combat losses, and the declining technology and lack of materials to make more soon stripped the fleets of the Inner Sphere of their shields, accelerating the already rapid collapse of the Inner Sphere's fleets. By the twenty ninth century, the Ancile was extinct, along with most of the spacecraft it once protected.
Though the Inner Sphere had begun to rebuild its fleets during the 3050s, there was little to no interest in reviving the Ancile concept until the mid 3070s, with the Word of Blake demonstrating just how effective nuclear missiles could be against unprotected craft. The Ancile re-entered limited production each of the great houses (and the Free Worlds League's successor states) by 3076, though production largely stopped once the Jihad had formally ended. The clans, despite fielding fleets of primarily Star League era WarShips with little to no integral point defense, have largely turned their noses up at reviving the Ancile. As a purely defensive vessel with no way to win glory through combat, but at the same time expected to follow combat ships into harm's way, the Clans simply aren't sure what to do with it.
Ancile class Point Defense Craft
Type: Military Spheriod
Mass: 100 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Introduced: 2750
Mass: 100
Battle Value: 1,340
Tech Rating/Availability: E/E-F(F*)-D-D
Cost: 9,014,508 C-bills
Fuel: 9 tons (720)
Safe Thrust: 3
Maximum Thrust: 5
Heat Sinks: 20
Structural Integrity: 6
Armor
Nose: 70
Sides: 70/70
Aft: 70
Cargo
None
Ammunition:
180 rounds of Anti-Missile System [IS] ammunition (15 tons)
Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 0
Crew: 2 enlisted/non-rated
Notes: Mounts 16 tons of standard aerospace armor.
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV
5 Anti-Missile Systems Fwd R 2.5 1 3 0 0 0
5 Anti-Missile Systems Fwd L 2.5 1 3 0 0 0
5 Anti-Missile Systems Aft 2.5 1 3 0 0 0
