CMT-3T Troika - 65t, TRO3067
Originally posted 02 Feb. 2005. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread. Perhaps the signature unit of the Capellan-Taurian-Canopian "Trinity Alliance" - certainly the only other 'NATO standard' unit the Alliance has produced, the ABS-3L
Anubis, was nothing to write home about - the CMT-3T offers sex-appeal (look at the artwork - tell me that thing doesn't shout "Who wants some?" and I'll tell you to get your eyes checked! ;D), good firepower and endurance, and a tough, reasonably mobile spaceframe. About its only gross flaw is a heat-curve that's a lot more finicky than it really should be.
Admittedly, at 6/9 the
Troika isn't quite as mobile as some of its contemporaries in the medium class (namely the LX-2
Lancer and the ON-1
Oni) and light fighters can still fly rings around it; however, the
Troika's fuel-fraction is six tons, which gives it a better combat radius than many other designs - including both the
Oni and the base-model
Lancer - so their better manoeuvrability actually becomes a double-edged sword. On the other hand, the
Troika carries a very, very worthwhile armour-fraction - some 12.5 tons of ferro-aluminium, just under the magic 20%-by-mass threshold - and its 74/52/46 layout makes it near-immune to medium lasers, so most interceptors are going to find doing serious harm to a CMT-3T rather heavy going. And the arsenal? [cue Brock Lesnar entrance theme]
Well - here comes the pain! A Tomodzuru LRM-20 in the nose with three(!!! :o) tons of ammo, meaning that you can actually afford to take a couple of marginable shots on the off-chance of a hit... or carry a ton of Thunder munitions along with your self-defence load, and thus do all sorts of nasty things to enemy GroPos' mobility. }:) Each wing supports an ERPPC and an ERML... which is the
Troika's key problem, since it has only seventeen freezers. At range, your PPCs and missiles generate a +2 overheat - not especially egregious, if you stick to a 3-3-2 firing pattern to cool off. Unfortunately, up close, where your missiles are range-inhibited (fluff-wise) and all your energy weapons are supposed to come into play, firing all the PPCs and lasers results in a +6 deficit, which is completely unacceptable in a knife-fight; you end up having to leave at least one of your beamers inactive to avoid gross overheats and the concomitant control problems, which is Not Good Enough. On the other hand, strikes or strafing runs from a
Troika will clear a GroPo's sinuses for him but good, and a thirteen-ton bombload arriving at 3/5 won't do much for his outlook either; nor can WarShips afford not to honour the threat presented by a
Troika squadron's massed batteries (one Capital bay of 7 points, two of 6 and two of 3? Erm,
eek!? :D).
By preference, stock
Troikas should stick to fire-support or attack duties, hanging back to tear chunks off the other guy from medium or long range; while they have the resilience and weaponry to deal with any short-term air-to-air threat, they should not be allowed into sustained turning engagements lest they broil their own pilots, and thus a squadron or two of interceptors or dogfighters should remain with support range at all times. (If such support cannot intervene for a couple of turns, though... well, say your mantras now, kiddies: Formation Discipline. Wing-Pairs. Mutual Support. :P) Do
not stick around if enemy
Daggers or
Lancers appear in your area of the furball - they can hand you your lunch but quick, so if they show up, either avoid them completely or blow straight through them, one-pass-haul-ass.
Defeating CMT-3Ts is not an easy ask; you need the firepower to breach their armour, yet enough mobility to employ it effectively (and semi-optionally, the toughness to survive the experience ;D). On the Davion front, DARO-1
Dagger Primes would be my weapon of choice for dogfighting with
Troikas; Leaguers should prefer the LX-2
Lancer; either has the mobility to get inside a
Troika and the guns to threshold it once it gets there. Alternatively, a high-low mix of heavies and interceptors might do the trick; use the heavies' long-range weapons to soften them up (using anything >= LRM-15s or LPLs, please) and the lights to get inside them and try and exploit the resultant weaknesses. Those taking this latter approach should note that the
Troika has no tail-guns at all and relies on Mutual Support
TM to deal with back-biters, so isolating singletons for concentrated punishment is recommended.
Considering its origins, it's probably inevitable that the only canon variant of the
Troika, the CMT-4U, is a Periphery Bumpkin version loaded down with rocket launchers - five RL/20s in the nose and two RL/15s in each wing, replacing the LRM-20 and its ammunition bay, though adding a pair of freezers for better heat efficiency. Quite aside from the insult to the Periphery States' collective intelligence implicit in the sudden near-mandatory use of RLs on their front-line war machine, the Taurians probably think they got screwed with this one, and it's hard to blame them; while you can sustain a decent rate-of-fire and rate-of-damage when using the RLs one at a time, an all-energy dogfight is now a far more practicable proposition, and an all-RL alpha-strike could send even the largest opponent (or WarShip) home with a limp, the loss of the LRM launcher's reach, flexibility and combat-endurance makes it a poorer cousin of the -3T. Better than nothing, but less than the best; the Taurians ought to lodge a complaint... for all the good it's likely to do them. :-\
[VARIANT PROPOSALS REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants, including my own, belong in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread: http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=1481.0 . Be advised: the attached .txt transcripts of previous runs of this thread contain numerous reader-proposals for variants. I'll try to change those out for 'sanitised' versions of those threads when I can, but I can't promise it'll be soon - that's a lot of ground to cover. ;) Funny thing, though - I don't have a copy of the second run saved to my HDD. I'm pretty damn sure I re-ran it, and I would have saved it if the readers had added anything substantive at all to that re-post, but with the old version of the archive gone, there's no way to check and be sure. :-\
