Author Topic: Omni Dropships  (Read 928 times)

Lagrange

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Omni Dropships
« on: 29 July 2024, 08:29:00 »
The rules change to allow cargo to be stored in the unused capacity of transport bays turbocharges the ability of dropships to function as a form of omni unit.   To get a sense of this, I tweaked the Nest carrier design to max out the number of Small Craft bays creating a base chassis of:
Code: [Select]
Nest Omni Carrier
Type: Military Spheriod
Mass: 5,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Introduced: 3025
Mass: 5,000
Battle Value: 2,310
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-D
Cost: 168,154,000 C-bills

Fuel: 230 tons (6,900)
Safe Thrust: 7
Maximum Thrust: 11
Heat Sinks: 124
Structural Integrity: 11

Armor
    Nose: 161
    Sides: 162/162
    Aft: 191

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Small Craft (4)         2 Doors   
    Bay 2:  Small Craft (4)         2 Doors   
    Bay 3:  Small Craft (3)         2 Doors   
    Bay 4:  Cargo (17.5 tons)       1 Door   

Ammunition:
    180 rounds of AC/2 ammunition (4 tons)

Escape Pods: 1
Life Boats: 0
Crew:  2 officers, 3 enlisted/non-rated, 3 gunners, 55 bay personnel

Notes: Mounts 39.5 tons of standard aerospace armor.

Weapons:                   Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat)             Heat  SRV     MRV     LRV     ERV   Class       
Nose (6 Heat)
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
Aft (19 Heat)
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
3 AC/2                  3    1(6)    1(6)    1(6)    0(0)  AC         
    AC/2 Ammo (180 shots)
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
2 Small Laser           2    1(6)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
1 Large Laser           8    1(8)    1(8)    0(0)    0(0)  Laser       

Configuration A: Blockade runner
2K tons of cargo + 2x 100 ton ASF

Scenario: Deliver significant cargo tonnage through a contested space to a defended LZ.  Good for situations where you want to reinforce the ground forces of a planet but do not have full control of space.

Configuration B: Pirate/L1 point assault
20x 100 ton ASF(half stored as cargo) + Volksbus with 210 techs.

Scenario: An enemy force jumps into an L1 point or pirate point near a colony. The Nest Omni loads a counterattacking hitting them hard before they manage to even get near the planet.

Configuration C: Deep Defense
2k tons of cargo +Quartercraft with techs +fleet of Interdictor (which use their own drives).

Scenario: A long duration patrol of a star system with the possibility of intercepting a significant opposing force.  The Nest provides a base for maintenance and supplies with a massively more effective sensor suite so it can direct the accompany swarm of Interdictors against targets.

Configuration D: Deep Raid
12x Phoenix-Hawk LAMs (as cargo in bays with ASF) + 6x 100 ton ASF + 200 tons Cargo + 2x Quartercraft for techs, pilots, and a few marines + 2x Cargo Smallcraft

Scenario: You want to perform a raid deep behind enemy lines to acquire prototypes of new equipment being developed.  Everyone has quarters and there are significant supplies.  The ASF establish local air superiority while the PHawks take out security forces and load up the cargo craft doing a smash & grab before a more organized planetary response can catch them.

There are doubtless many more configurations with the wide variation of scenarios making the design potentially amenable to campaign style play.

How good of an Omni is it?
Omni capability has overheads in terms of both cost and efficiency.  We can't really evaluate these overheads without considering specialized designs for each scenario which is quite a bit of work.  Nevertheless, a few things are clear:
  • The vast majority of the cost to satisfy a scenario is in the dropship because of its x28 cost multiplier.
  • Using a small craft for most uses instead of building directly into a dropship has a cost of about 1.26M (for small craft bay + life support instead of cargo) + 5M (baseline cost for a small craft) + 40 tons (for required small craft components). 
  • Using Small craft bays instead of ASF bays to store & launch ASF decreases the maximum number of ASF immediately launchable by 25% (200 tons vs 150 tons) but increases the maximum number of ASF carried by 50% through elimination of the 50 ton overhead of an ASF bay.  Furthermore, the prep time for such stored ASF, after the first is launched, can be as low as 2 minutes using a dedicated tech team + 2 extra teach teams.
  • Extra quarters via dedicated small craft are pricey.  If we installed 160 tons worth of steerage quarter in a dropship it would cost 0.9M, but using a small craft bay + small craft instead would require 20% more tons and a factor of 7 more cost. These overheads are large compared to a baseline of +25% cost for omni ground units, but not that bad in practice because you need to be installing quarters for about 200 people before it even reaches 25% of baseline system cost.
  • Transport bay life support (most famously infantry bays) favors small craft.  A small craft with 16 infantry bays costs about 1/3 of the same on a dropship.  Obviously, there's still a tonnage overhead, but the cost savings are quite substantial.
  • Omni capability isn't complete.  Ground unit support can only really be handled via small craft with ground unit bays implying a 100% tonnage overhead.  Or, you could have some support vehicles with a mobile field base (although that starts to feel a bit rube-goldberg).  There are a few cheap tricks here: LAMs and fixed wing support vehicles are launchable from smallcraft bays and potentially potent in non-canon ground combat.
  • There is a downside in that when extra capacity is being used as cargo, you can't perform maintenance on relevant units.  My expectation is that this is a mostly acceptable downside with tricks like: do maintenance before loading the ASF for a short duration mission, take advantage of battle losses to do maintenance, have 100 tons of unused cargo and shuffle it around to perform maintenance, cut thrust on the dropship and externalize some ASF during a maintenance period for the remainder, etc...   

DevianID

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #1 on: 29 July 2024, 22:59:51 »
So as I understand it, you are using a custom 200 ton small craft, and cramming the quarters in that, so while you are paying for all the small craft stuff, if the dropship doesnt need expanded crew services its not coming out of the dropships tonnage.  Versus taking 1 small craft bay, and putting 40 quarters into that, you instead have a small craft with 30 quarters, that only loads into the dropship when extra rooms are needed.

So you have a stack of 3 'shuttle bays' for 2200 tons/11 small craft, and a bare bones/spartan core ship.  Even on the 2k cargo version, you dont have the spare bay to actually house the ASF crew, or launch either fighter, with the single 200t remaining small craft bay.  I think your margins on cargo versus used bays are far too tight, you dont have a free open bay to transfer ASF packed up as cargo into to work on.

Also, is there a reason to move 7/11?  I understand the blockade running aspect, but its not an aerodyne that can vertically move though the atmosphere and make use of its speed, so its speed 'going down' to the planet is limited anyway.  4/6 is faster then average for spheroid cargo vessels, 5/8 is faster then leopard CV patrol craft.  7/11 isnt outrunning avengers or anything, nor aerospace fighters, so it feels too fast without a reason.

Hellraiser

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #2 on: 29 July 2024, 23:55:36 »
Also, is there a reason to move 7/11?  I understand the blockade running aspect, but its not an aerodyne that can vertically move though the atmosphere and make use of its speed, so its speed 'going down' to the planet is limited anyway.  4/6 is faster then average for spheroid cargo vessels, 5/8 is faster then leopard CV patrol craft.  7/11 isnt outrunning avengers or anything, nor aerospace fighters, so it feels too fast without a reason.
I could be mistaken but I believe he mentioned in another thread that the love of 7/11 was to outrun the typical "Medium/Heavy 6/9 Fighter", force SI damage on anything 7/11 - 11/17 speed, and, having the Armor & Long Range guns to handle something like a Trident chasing it.
It's built to game the rules & run away 99% of the time.
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3053: Star Colonel Rexor Kerensky: The Silver Wolves

"I don't shoot Urbanmechs, I walk up, stomp on their foot, wait for the head to pop open & drop in a hand grenade (or Elemental)" - Joel47
Against mechs, infantry have two options: Run screaming from Godzilla, or giggle under your breath as the arrogant fools blunder into your trap. - Weirdo

Lagrange

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #3 on: 30 July 2024, 06:13:25 »
I could be mistaken but I believe he mentioned in another thread that the love of 7/11 was to outrun the typical "Medium/Heavy 6/9 Fighter", force SI damage on anything 7/11 - 11/17 speed, and, having the Armor & Long Range guns to handle something like a Trident chasing it.
Right. 

So as I understand it, you are using a custom 200 ton small craft, and cramming the quarters in that, so while you are paying for all the small craft stuff, if the dropship doesnt need expanded crew services its not coming out of the dropships tonnage.  Versus taking 1 small craft bay, and putting 40 quarters into that, you instead have a small craft with 30 quarters, that only loads into the dropship when extra rooms are needed.
For example, yes.

Even on the 2k cargo version, you dont have the spare bay to actually house the ASF crew, or launch either fighter, with the single 200t remaining small craft bay. 
That's not quite right.

The capabilities of a bay with cargo are the standard ones, except you cannot do maintenance, customization, or dropping troops.  Dropping troops is irrelevant for small craft bays.  Customization is unimportant.  Maintenance could be important depending on scenario.  This is why there are _2_ ASF for the blockade runner.  If you really need to do maintenance mid flight, you can launch one ASF and do maintenance on the other.  Obviously, the main transit drive would need to be shut down, so this isn't great.  Also obviously, if you knew that you were on a mission requiring intermediate maintenance, (i.e. running a gauntlet), you would just carry somewhat less cargo so you could conduct maintenance under thrust.

Minor side note: for the blockade runner, you would probably use 2 separate bays with 100 tons of cargo and a 100 ton ASF ready to go so that both could launch on demand.

It's also important to notice that small craft bays come with minimal life support and bunks for 5.  This is true even when the small craft bay is carrying 200 tons of cargo. Thus, the blockade runner could carry 6 pilots and 42 tech/astechs to keep it's ASF running round the clock with 8 hour shifts, if desired.   That's far better than is typical on carriers.

I think your margins on cargo versus used bays are far too tight, you dont have a free open bay to transfer ASF packed up as cargo into to work on.
I was imagining the ASF get into about 1 fight during the blockade running.  If you are concerned about more than that, transporting 5% less cargo seems entirely reasonable.

Also, is there a reason to move 7/11? 
As Hellraiser says, 7/11 is good at breaking ASF.  The heavies can't catch up, the mediums take structural damage, leaving only the light ASF with negligible armor to be worried about.  "Brave Sir Robin" is absolutely a key strategy for survivability for a dropship vs. ASF.

More generally though, missions are about capabilities at a price.  So, instead of worrying about to much speed, it makes more sense to worry about to much price or not enough capacity.  The price is actually fairly low for a military transport.  For a Leopard CV price tag, we're getting a Union CV (or more) of transport and armor at Avenger speed.  And on the capacity side, it's obviously easy to increase capacity significantly by simply increasing tonnage. 

W.r.t. Aerodyne vs. Spheroid, yeah there's a tradeoff here.  Going with Aerodyne makes atmospheric operations work better but costs 25% more, a smallcraft bay, and greatly reduces landing options.  You could go either way---I decided to go this way here.

On the Omni direction, it may be worth listing things out a bit.  Smallcraft bays can handle:
  • Cargo.   Overhead is 6k/ton.
  • ASF.  25% fewer bays but carries 50% more ASF.
  • LAMs.  25% fewer bays but carries 50% more than battlemech bays at 4+ per bay.
  • Fixed Wing.  No overhead, and now you can pack many small ones.
  • Quarters. ~25% tonnage overhead and x6 cost overhead.
  • Infantry bays: ~25% tonnage overhead but 1/3 price.
  • Vehicle bays: ~25% tonnage overhead and x2 cost overhead.
  • Battlemech bay: ~25% tonnage overhead and x6 cost overhead.

For a dedicated ground-unit dropship the overhead looks unappealing but not completely crazy.  But from an ASF carrier viewpoint, the ability to expand missions to support small craft, fixed wing drones, LAMs, cargo, and troop transport missions while actually carrying more ASF seems pretty appealing.

Hellraiser

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #4 on: 30 July 2024, 13:55:09 »
As Hellraiser says, 7/11 is good at breaking ASF.  The heavies can't catch up, the mediums take structural damage, leaving only the light ASF with negligible armor to be worried about.
I'll admit, I don't play enough AT to know about the SI for Overthrust rule, but, after reading the other thread where you first mentioned it, I had to do a double/triple take.
And then I got really appreciative of my favorite Assault DS the Avenger.
It's totally gaming the rules, but, the ability to essentially outmaneuver anything less than 12/18 is very useful.
3041: General Lance Hawkins: The Equalizers
3053: Star Colonel Rexor Kerensky: The Silver Wolves

"I don't shoot Urbanmechs, I walk up, stomp on their foot, wait for the head to pop open & drop in a hand grenade (or Elemental)" - Joel47
Against mechs, infantry have two options: Run screaming from Godzilla, or giggle under your breath as the arrogant fools blunder into your trap. - Weirdo

Daryk

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #5 on: 30 July 2024, 16:42:56 »
I read the rule as only applying if you spend that much thrust in a single hex... you should be able to spread out your thrust expenditure, right?

Hellraiser

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #6 on: 30 July 2024, 19:36:10 »
I read the rule as only applying if you spend that much thrust in a single hex... you should be able to spread out your thrust expenditure, right?
That would make a lot more sense.
Thrust in a single hex implies lots of spin/turn/torque whatever you call it.   Frame Stress.
V/S a steady increase in forward momentum.
3041: General Lance Hawkins: The Equalizers
3053: Star Colonel Rexor Kerensky: The Silver Wolves

"I don't shoot Urbanmechs, I walk up, stomp on their foot, wait for the head to pop open & drop in a hand grenade (or Elemental)" - Joel47
Against mechs, infantry have two options: Run screaming from Godzilla, or giggle under your breath as the arrogant fools blunder into your trap. - Weirdo

Daryk

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #7 on: 30 July 2024, 19:39:14 »
Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks so! :)

Lagrange

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #8 on: 30 July 2024, 19:46:07 »
It's totally gaming the rules...
Not that it's at least balanced.  The net effect is making ASF just a little bit less dominant than they are by default.

I read the rule as only applying if you spend that much thrust in a single hex... you should be able to spread out your thrust expenditure, right?
TW page 76 says you can only change velocity at the beginning or the end of your movement, and if you change at the end of your movement, you can't change at the start of the next turn.  Given that, you are forced to expend all the thrust for changing velocity in the same hex to pursue an opponent that is fleeing.

Daryk

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #9 on: 30 July 2024, 20:01:19 »
I'll have to check TO:AR... that same paragraph also says:
Quote
For simplicity, spending thrust does not consume a unit’s fuel.

Lagrange

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #10 on: 30 July 2024, 20:42:52 »
I'll have to check TO:AR... that same paragraph also says:
Yeah. 

Tactical fuel use is at SO page 34 and advanced movement is at SO page 64.  Neither advanced rules change the situation: you need to spend all the thrust in one hex in a chase scenario.

Daryk

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #11 on: 31 July 2024, 03:25:10 »
In SO:AAR, it's pages 33 and 52 now, but you're right.  The only solution seems to be to have a pilot good enough to make the Control Roll to avoid damage.

Lagrange

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Re: Omni Dropships
« Reply #12 on: 31 July 2024, 05:33:10 »
In SO:AAR, it's pages 33 and 52 now, but you're right.  The only solution seems to be to have a pilot good enough to make the Control Roll to avoid damage.
That works and it's very relevant if you have individual characters. 

When designing I usually target "regular" pilot levels, although it's reasonable enough to have a "for elites only" design.