CSR-V** Corsair - 50t, TRO3025
Originally posted 13 Mar. 2005. All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread. The mainstay and jewel of the Federated Suns' medium fighter force, the
Corsair is a fearsome dogfighter in the Succession Wars era; though a little overshadowed by newer models once foundtech came into vogue, it still remains a cheap yet highly capable platform, very worthwhile for commanders on a budget. It's fluffed as having been designed to supplement the Star League's aerospace arm after the fall of Stefan Amaris; given that the time-span in question is barely five years from Liberation to Exodus, they must have worked fast to get it into production. :D Most of Wangker Aerospace's CSR-V12 production lines, however, were to be found in Davion space (or space quickly annexed by the FedSuns at the outset of the First Succession War), making it one of their preferred rides.
Running off a GM 200SFE with the
de rigeur five-ton fuel-fraction, the CSR-V12 puts out a very decent 6/9 thrust profile, meaning it can turn-and-burn with most other dogfighters of the day and make life miserable for most heavier birds. The armour is almost ridiculously thick by the standards of the day:
thirteen-point-five tons of standard plating (that's 27% by mass! :o) give the spaceframe a 73/50/43 profile which renders it immune to medium laser threshold-TACs from all angles. The onboard armament is nothing to sneer at, either; the nose houses twin Exostar large lasers, with mediums in each wing, small laser pairs in the nose and tail, and sixteen SHS to keep the twin 80mm main guns running all day. The
Corsair is a lean, mean machine that goes very far out of its way to make other guys miserable. About the only problem is that you can't use the main guns and the secondaries at once without overheating - you're confined to either the LLs
or the MLs and SLs - so heat discipline is crucial.
Corsairs are almost archetypical medium-weight fighters, and they should be used as such. They have the armour to shrug off most medium-weight guns, so an aggressive player can use them as the first wave of an attack on an enemy formation, throwing them headlong at enemy interceptors with a
Sparrowhawk unit close behind; their LLs should cripple or kill a number of light birds in one or two exchanges, making it that much easier for the SPRs to finish off cripples (and if the enemy turns to engage the
Corsairs when they blow through, the
Sparrowhawks will be on their backs instantly). Defensively, they're a second-layer workhorse, engaging the enemy's interceptors/dogfighters short of their targets, or alternatively hunting the enemy's own heavy fighters once the
Sparrowhawks punch a hole for them. A commander who's willing to risk taking them out of the air-combat role for a while will also find them useful in the attack or mud-moving roles; a squadron of twin LL mounts makes for a 10-point Capital bay to smack DropShips, while ten tons of bombs slows the
Corsair to only 4/6, making it a good balance between speed and bomb-capacity, and its twin-LL/twin-ML strafing capability yields as much punch as an alpha-strike from an
Ostsol. (Seeing all this, I have to think that demand for
Corsairs must far outstrip production rates. ::) ) Remember the mantras - formation discipline, teamwork, concentration of fire - and you should do fine.
Unfortunately, the competition in the 3025 era is pretty stiff. Kurita fields the
Shilone (a 6/9, well-armoured alpha-baby with an LRM-20 and an LL), the
Slayer (a 6/9, heavily-armoured alpha-baby with an AC/10 and five MLs forward and twice the
Corsair's fuel-endurance) and the
Samurai (a 7/11, moderately-armoured dogfighting alpha-baby with a
nasty array of medium and small lasers); the Cappies can throw in the TR-13
Transgressor (a 6/9, heavily-armoured dogfighting
beast bristling with large and medium lasers and enough HS to run them) and the TR-10
Transit (a 6/9 attack bird, moderately armoured, but which would you rather face - quad MLs, or an AC/20? :o). This means that whenever
Corsair pilots launch, they know that they're in for a long, hard, miserable, shit-ass [DELETED] day at the office. :(
Kurita players have a number of options. They can engage
Corsairs with their
Shilones; their LRM racks give them an advantage in both range and throw-weight, and they can engage with all their weapons without fear of heat buildup. They can send in their
Slayers - they have far more armour than the CSRs, their AC/10 is an all-aspect threshold threat, and again they have no heat worries. They can tap the
Samurai for dogfighting duty - they can out-turn
Corsairs, and the five MLs they can put into a CSR's rear-arc far out-reach and out-punch the
Corsair's twin SLs aft, still without heat problems. Or, in a special hell reserved for Davion players who find themselves "paying off karma at a
vastly accelerated rate", the Snakes can use cooperative tactics between the above models -
Shilones for fire-support and
Samurai or
Slayers for the dogfight. [shudder] This combination has a good end and a bad end, and in play, it'll be really easy to tell which is which. :D
Capellan gamers, on the other hand, have only the one specialist dogfighter, the
Transgressor, but it's a real problem for the
Corsair boys: it can match their turning performance, it can run all three of its large lasers without fear of heat buildup, and it has enough armour to blunt the worst of their firepower. With a squadron of
Thunderbirds to provide LRM fire-support and 'shoot them in', a
Transgressor squadron can easily wreak havoc on the smaller
Corsairs. By comparison, the
Transits should steer clear and stick to their assigned attack missions... but that doesn't mean that a dose from the lasers (or the 20-gun) won't give a
Corsair a heck of a jolt if they take a snapshot on their way past. :D
The first 3025 variant on the
Corsair theme is the CSR-V12M, which gives away one of the large lasers and both stern SLs for three more heat-sinks, 20% more fuel, and two more tons of armour, raising its protection to 73/56/63. The armour and added fuel-endurance are welcome; the added heat-sinks are wasted tonnage, since even an alpha-strike with the (reduced) armament generates only sixteen heat anyway. >:( However, this model will improve a squadron's overall heat-efficiency, and tossing one or two into a unit will seriously futz with the other guy's force-appreciation.
The CSR-V20, the second 3025 reprise on the
Corsair theme, is rather less radical than the -V12M, simply trading the secondary lasers for a nose-mounted SRM-6 and a single ton of ammo. Probably intended as a wicked crit-seeker under AT1, the SRM rack loses some of its efficacy in that role under AT2, but it's still a worthwhile 'finishing weapon', with as much throw-weight as a single LL for much less heat (meaning that at close range, it can also be used as a 'cooling off' weapon). Slightly more of a niche weapon, but still useful.
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,2050.0.html3049 AND BEYOND:CSR-V14 Corsair - TRO3057/RS:AT2Warning: the above is a direct link to the .pdf file here at classicbattletech.com. Sadly, the only foundtech
Corsair variant we have is the CSR-14 from RS:AT2 (though it actually missed the printing and had to be erratta'd in! :(), and it's a fairly straight pull-out/plug-in remodelling, much like the TR-13A: the single heat sinks are replaced with freezers, and the LLs are upgraded to ER models. The good news is that this variant still remains fairly cheap, has far greater heat-efficiency (it can now alpha-strike at will), and its primary weapons now reach into the Long range bracket. The bad news is that it is no faster nor tougher than the 3025 variants, which means that it has merely retained parity with most of the foundtech designs across the border(s) rather than improving itself. That being so, the tactical advice (both for and against) is pretty much the same, with the added complication of birds like the
Troika and
Defiance in the picture. However, the support of a squadron of
Dagger Prime OmniFighters would do much to complicate the enemy's life (and would finally offer a counter to those @#$%^&* SL-25s >:().
[VARIANT PROPOSAL(S) REDACTED] All proposed fan-variants - including my own - belong in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,2050.0.html 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. ;)
