C-Bills, LF Batteries, Docking Collars, and Slipways - Musings (TLDR)

[Minemech]

We'd have to figure out how much of the Dropship multiplier is for the KF linkage, and how much is for the multi-atmosphere capability.  That could explain the Behemoth, which is currently a 100kton Dropship with a 2/3 acceleration, but unable to land due to its low thrust.  It is a 'monitor', but one dedicated to cargo and the designers dropped atmospheric capability to make it cheaper.

At that point, a monitor would be a Dropship that cannot land on a planet. 


To me there are three 'classes' of monitor:
1) Jump-capable: essentially a Dropship that can never land.  Advantage: uses Warship engine percentages per thrust point, can be carried on a Docking Collar, no atmospheric capability multiplier.  Disadvantage: limited to Dropship tonnages, uses KF cost multiplier
2) non-Jump-capable, but small: no KF attachment capability, but you can shove it in a much larger ship's cargo bay.  Due to the Monitor being a single hull, the minimum size ship that can carry it is 10* the monitor's mass.  Advantage: no atmospheric or KF capability cost multiplier.  Disadvantage: limited to 250 kton mass, need large Warships to carry it
3) non-Jump-capable, and large: would need a custom style ship to transport it FTL (think like the Citadel station from Mass Effect, but with a KF core and carries cargo in the hollow front).  Advantage: can be much larger, no KF or atmospheric capability.  Disadvantage: once built, it stays; needs a special (non-canon) ship design to move after being built

I have forgotten, can a Warship with a Reinforced Repair Bay perform a KF jump with a vessel in the Bay?  (Assume all other conditions for jumping are met)

A canon example of a ship that approaches my understanding of the Monitor would be the Mako, with its strong broadsides. While it may not contain the biggest of guns, the paired NAC 25s can perform a strong punch for a ship of its mass. They are also practical given the ship's need for some range. Unfortunately, a number of long range guns were reasonably common in that era. It also has a good movement curve, with descent armor for its era. It needed cargo, and was lacked collars. It was designed as a parasite escort. It is not the ship I would have designed, but it is a canon resemblance of a Monitor.

[Minemech]

The argument on cost is some what academic in battletech. If there's one thing the stories have shown time and again is that the houses will build whatever they can and
As far as the Fox class goes she makes way more since if you look at her as if she is a votec project for a bunch of college students instead of a line ship. Her entire construction was both and industrial training course and a way to front the setup cost for building bigger better warships.

Real navies with all that implies I think scare the designers. They put a lot of effort into unit histories and such and imagine the nerd rage if say a battalion or regiment if your favorite house troops or Mercs got vaped before they even made planet fall. Such a thing is a real possibility all the time if full fleets started trucking around the verse.  Of course we have the mith and legends if a real fleet in the SLDF but even then it doesn't really meet general expectations.

There is nothing inherently wrong with mass manufacturing of the Fox as a Transport class Warship. It needed to be grafted into a larger navy. I wonder if the Federated Suns/Commonwealth overestimated the effectiveness of the Overlord A-3.

[Starfox1701]

I'm pretty sure that or something like it was the plan had the civil war and then the jihad not gotten in the way. I think it is also possible that since it was the plan to have the spheriods unit against the clans from the get go that all of the new ships where intended by the designers to function as a single immigrated fleet even if each nation had no such intent.

[idea weenie]

On the notion of a collarless fleet I don't think its practical outside of a narrow set of specific circumstances. The loss of any combat dropers is denying yourself to great a force multiplayer. On collar cost I'm confused. Standard cores can jump 3 times there own mass and compact cores 6 times there own mass. For a 2.5 million ton warship that works out to the core being able to move somewhere in the neighborhood of 6.5 million tons. Even with max collars and taking all Behemoths you can't push the mass over 4 million tons. In fact no ship maxed on collars will ever get close to exceeding its core's mass jump limit so why do the collars effect the cost of the core? Therescno reason For that and that needs to change pure and simple. If you want to limit the number of collars your players use pick a higher mass ratio like 1 per 100 k instead of 1 per 50k. Don't add some unexplainable cost spike that 90% of players won't bother calculating anyway. I mean most of us will figure the BV but you got to be pretty deep in the weeds in a campaign or writing a source book to actually need the Cbill cost of a custom ship.

??? I thought you could mount one collar per 50ktons of mounting ship.  So the 2.5MTon ship could mount up to 50 collars.  If each mounts a Behemoth that is 100ktons per Dropship, or a total of 5 mTon of carried Droppers, for a combined mass of 7.5MTon, divided by the 1,131,250 ton KF Core mass, is ~6.63

Cost complexity is explained by the need to deform the KF field across each Docking Collar.  More Collars mean more little bubbles that can be created in the KF field, meaning the core is harder to make.

I'm pretty sure that or something like it was the plan had the civil war and then the jihad not gotten in the way. I think it is also possible that since it was the plan to have the spheriods unit against the clans from the get go that all of the new ships where intended by the designers to function as a single immigrated fleet even if each nation had no such intent.

Now this is a very nice idea.  You have the Lyran Mjolnir, the Fedsun Fox, the FWL Thera, and I forget what the Capellan and Draconis ships were.

[Starfox1701]

A Behemoth takes up 2 collars unless they changed that back recently.

[Maingunnery]

A Behemoth takes up 2 collars unless they changed that back recently.

That is merely optional, it is a representation of how its size might block other DropShips from connecting to adjacent collars.

[Starfox1701]

Reference please

[Frabby]

Reference please

Well for starters, there is nothing in the game rules at this time except for a Quirk, which is by definition optional.

When the Behemoth was introduced to the BattleTech universe in 1988 with DropShips and JumpShips, the construction/space travel rules at the time postulated that a DropShip required two docking hardpoints for every 60,000 tons (or fraction thereof) of mass to dock with a JumpShip. There was no explanation given, and the only statted vessel of over 60,000 tons was the Behemoth.
The rule has since been dropped and doesn't exist anymore, and Quirk rules didn't exist back then.

The "Large DropShip" Quirk post-dates the introduction of the Behemoth DropShip by some twenty years. The Behemoth is explicitly listed as the poster child example for this Quirk though so the impression given is that the Large DropShip Quirk was actually tailored for and by the Behemoth.

The only explanation ever given is the wording in DropShips and JumpShips: "The hull is so enormous that it takes up the space for two vessels when docked with a JumpShip."
To wit, that means they still require only one collar for jumping, and can still be carried on a Scout class JumpShip with its single collar. Conversely, it wasn't ever said anywhere that they required two collars for jumping. Personally as a GM, I probably would still allow very small DropShip (such as a Fury, Buccaneer or Leopard) to dock next to a Behemoth.

[skiltao]

"Space" in that sentence could just as easily mean "collar space for jumping."

Also, to the best of my memory, that single sentence is the only thing DS&JS says about mass limits per collar. We can infer there's a limit somewhere in between the Mammoth and Behemoth, but that's all - there's no explicit rule there, and no particular tonnage is specified.

Where are you getting that 60 kiloton rule from?

[Frabby]

I'd have to look it up, but I'm fairly sure this was in one of the earliest aerospace construction rulesets - either AeroTech or perhaps BattleSpace. Let me get back to you on this.

Edit: Found it. BattleSpace rulebook, p. 49:

A DropShip docking with a JumpShip requires one docking hardpoint for every 60,000 tons of mass. Any DropShip docked with a JumpShip that has a working K-F boom may be transported through hyperspace.

The wording is still (or again) unclear - the first sentence could be construed to say you positively need to dock to two hardpoints, the second sentence seems to say one hardpoint will suffice. But that doesn't matter. Like I said above, this has positively been abandoned as a rule under AeroTech 2 and Campaign Operations rules. But it used to be in effect for a time, during one particular iteration of the aerospace rules.

[skiltao]

I read the first sentence as saying the DropShip isn't "docked" until it fills enough hardpoints, but yeah, you're right - this is all optional in the current edition of the rules.

Thanks for the pageref. The rule sounded like something BattleSpace would do, but I only checked its construction rules and individual ship entries, not the docking rules.  xp

[Starfox1701]

So basically the Behemoth is supposed to take up 2 slots but we can fudge it and double up the load.

[Frabby]

So basically the Behemoth is supposed to take up 2 slots but we can fudge it and double up the load.

I'd rather say under game rules it only requires one hardpoint by default, but unclear wording in its fluff and an expressly optional quirk mean that your GM can rule instead that an exception applies, namely that it either requires two hardpoints, or requires one and blocks another due to its sheer size. There is no definite rule by which the Behemoth always requires more than one hardpoint.

And just for the sake of clarity and completeness, technically the introduction of the Behemoth even predates the 60,000 ton rule from BattleSpace (but it had that piece of fluff in place from the beginning).

(Though the Behemoth, Castrum and - apocryphally - the Argo all have the Large DropShip quirk; I'm not aware of any other DropShip over 60,000 tons or associated with this quirk.)

[idea weenie]

I've figured it was along the lines of the effort needed to warp a KF bubble around a Behemoth meant that it only took up the space of 1 Docking Collar, but the drive couldn't put out enough energy for a second Dropship on the second collar (using a Merchant Jumpship or larger as an example).

Further development of Behemoths might have solved that problem, so it only takes 1 'unit' of KF strength to bubble a modernized Behemoth.

I guess in the meantime you might say that if you attach a Behemoth to one Docking Collar, and there are at least 2 collars on the Jumpship/Warship, then another collar can have a vessel of no more than 20,000 tons attached to it.  I'm not bothering with the specific location of the two Dropships, as I am assuming the Jumpship/Warship Captain would take care of that before jumping (with lots of discussions with the KF chief engineer to make sure the bubble could form correctly).

So a Scout Jumpship can carry a behemoth no problem.  A Merchant Jumpship can only carry a Behemoth if the second Dropship is less tan 20 ktons of mass.

[Korzon77]

Honestly, I thought that flaw would be better applied to Jumpships--IE, "Cramped collars: Due to the spacing of the collars, dropships massing over X take up 2 collars rather than one."

[Starfox1701]

Its odd because you look at somthi g like a monolith or a clan Aegiss and there's no way a Behemoth would take up 2 callors, but on something like a Tharkad yea I can see it.

 It's one of the flaws of ship construction rules. Nothing in the rules actually cover things from a stand point of the will be a visual feature as well as a physical one.