OMG, so many replies. :o
Do you have a design for Sybil figured out?
Or are you thinking about having a contest for her?
Honestly? Right now, I'm thinking of bone-stock 2372 stat block to keep everything simple and so I'm not tripping over my own feet a year or two from now trying to remember what I did. Only real changes would be the addition of the SDS control system, ARTS for all the fighter and small craft bays, and maybe a small/large naval comm-scanner. Beyond that, her factories and everything else are all just items in her cargo space.
I'd originally thought about throwing a small repair bay in part of her cargo hold, too, like I'd originally done, but now I'm wondering if an external jump-mobile space station she can throw on a collar might be a better choice: any of the existing repair yard space stations in TR3057 would be easily converted to being jump-capable from the looks of it.
Excellent to see this again :) Great writing right off the bat!
Also re the art and the designs my headcanon is that the old art here is the pre-2700's refit, and that's the Aegis class as built by the Hegemony. The Clan Refits visual changes never EVER happened. What we see them as in TRO 3057 or Delranes - https://drive.google.com/file/d/11ymD2ZX8m8D8-MhxG6_yCcC1DQcYtqiz/view?usp=sharing is how the SLDF made them look or what they looked like when completed. The Clan refits are mostly internal changes and upgrading the hull to take harjel. All but the Snow Raven's simply wouldn't waste resources on rebuilding WarShips so extensively that they are totally structurally different in many cases.
That's essentially how I see it: the only changes between the "2750" (actually 2582) and Clan Aegis is the addition of HarJel to the armor. Other than that, they're identical, so I figure the major changes happened then.
Good to revisit this story, glad to see you going ahead with it.
But I will continue in my headcanon to see the classic Aegis, not the stupid-looking, in-universe-impossible, 3057 version. Same with all other ships. 90% of the TRO3057 redraws only make sense if you have artificial gravity and structural integrity fields -- they'd look great in Star Trek, not so much in Battletech. (I will give props to the Black Lion, which at least looks like it might be a practical warship for a vertically-oriented deck layout.)
I'm certainly not going to object. The art for the 2750 Aegis just happens to be one of the ones I'm not a fan of, whereas the 3057 art is one that I particularly like.
As for being in-universe-impossible, I think the cutaway art in Strategic Operations gives a good indication of how the internals on a 3057 art Aegis would be laid out, and don't particularly require artificial gravity. In terms of structural integrity fields, various art in both books have that issue, to varying degrees, but mostly due to the exceedingly low density of Battletech WarShips.
Actually with all the turns that BT ships can make it is likely that BT ships don't have actual decks as we normally think about them. Think more of a series of multi-directional rooms, with deck numbers being just to indicate the location.
Somewhat this, at least in some sections of the ship. That cutaway in Strat Ops helps support that there's some element of truth to this, IMO.
Question.
Where is the info about the Manassas coming from?
Specifically that it was a Block-1 model, since that isn't what appears in Living Legends blue prints.
My copy of Living Legends is in storage somewhere, so I was going off of the
Sarna entry.
