Author Topic: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.  (Read 15370 times)

marauder648

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Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.



Class – Tharkad Class Battlecruiser
Displacement – 900,000 tonnes
Length – 975 meters
Crew compliment – 474

Background

The Lyran Commonwealth had a proud history of being a naval power and at the pinnacle of its might for many long years sat the Tharkad class battlecruiser.  Designed in 2685 the Tharkad was built with an eye towards defeating the newest ships being laid down by the Terran Hegemony and in service with the SLDF, the Avatar class cruiser as well as the older but still common Aegis class cruiser. 

The ship also comprehensively outgunned other ships in House service like the Liao Du Shi Wang and outclassed the ancient Fed-Suns Defender Class and we can assume it was larger than any known DCA warship, mainly because we’re still waiting for them to produce a battleship or cruiser class vessel.

The introduction of the class when the LCS Tharkad left the graving docks in 2690 and entered service also caused a bit of an arms race with the Hegemony who countered the new Lyran vessel with the Black Lion II which entered service in 2691.  Whilst it may seem silly that it caused an arms race with a faction that could produce 2 McKenna class Battleships a year whilst also churning out cruisers by the bushel, it’s my opinion that the Hegemony kind of reacted like the Royal Navy did in the late 1800/early 1900’s. 

Way back then, the British heard about a Russian ‘super ship’ that was faster than any battleship and could run down anything afloat.  Hearing this report the Royal Navy built a counter in the form of an entire class of six ships to counter the Russian three.  The British ships were superior in every respect and it once again cemented any perceived threat to the Royal Navy’s hegemony at sea.  This is how the SLDF seems to have reacted.  Did they NEED the Black Lion II?  Probably not, but they had a perceived need that they did, so they went and built it.

The Lyrans produced a total of twenty eight of the big battlecruisers, often paring them with the Commonwealth class Light Cruiser, the Block II of that class entering service in 2765 gave sterling service as an escort alongside the bigger Tharkad class ships.  The two classes perform well together, the Tharkad provides the big guns and the heavy fighter and dropship support whilst the Commonwealth are good escorts and can swat destroyers and dropships letting the Tharkad pound other ships flat.

The Tharkad was built from the keel up to engage and crush hostile capital ships and was well equipped for this role.  Her four massive engines could propel the ship up to a maximum of 2.5g of thrust making it as ‘fast’ as the cruisers of the time and faster than more than a few destroyer and frigate classes which it could no doubt run down and annihilate, especially the old Hegemony cast offs that the bulk of the House Lords fleets consisted of.  At 900,000 tonnes the Tharkad was a big warship and was built round a solidly built hull that was layered with 983.5 tonnes of Ferro-carbide armour to give protection greater than the Avatar, Aegis and later Sovietsky Soyuz class ships, indeed the Tharkad’s armour was more in line with the Aetrius and Monsoon class battleship for its scale.


The Lyran’s also didn’t hold back on arming the centrepiece of their fleets with the biggest weapons they could and the Tharkad features a diverse array of weapons.  A quartet of heavy naval gauss rifles are probably the showpiece which is apt considering the Lyran’s love of big bore weaponry.  Backing up these are an array of NAC-35, 30, and 20 as well as clusters of Naval Lasers in the 45 to 55cm range. Medium and heavy naval PPCs and a meaty six rack of Killer Whale missiles in the bow that round out the Tharkad class’s anti-shipping weapons.

Unlike many (nearly all) SLDF and Hegemony ships the Tharkad was also armed with smaller scale weapons to engage hostile small craft and dropships.  This battery consists of clusters of medium and large lasers as well as big groupings of LRM 20 and 10 launchers that can launch veritable clouds of missiles at incoming fighter strikes.

Finally the Tharkad also had an impressive air compliment, with 36 aerospace fighters carried on board as well as a massive 6 dropships (something that wasn’t seen beat until you get into McKenna territory) a lone Tharkad is quite capable of defending itself with its organic air wing.  This large organic air wing could have been inspired by the Commonwealth Block I Light Cruisers, when they entered service they too carried 6 dropships and had room for 22 small craft, this may have factored into the design of the Tharkad class nearly three centuries later.

By Hegemony/SLDF standards the near 54,000 tonne cargo bay was somewhat limited and this perhaps reflects a different doctrinal approach.  SLDF/Hegemony ships were built to patrol huge tracts of space whilst I can imagine the Tharkad’s, much like the far later Mjolnir class ships being sent out to do a job and then coming home, not shilly shallying around with patrols.  But 100 days worth of fuel at constant thrust is actually greater than many SLDF ships, but her smaller cargo bays and the need to keep her air group and dropships fueled cuts into this.

Despite the class’s toughness, weapons fit and defences the class fell victim to the blazing heat of war in the First and Second Succession Wars.  This saw the death of the Lyran naval industry, the Commonwealth class and all but one of the Tharkad’s, the LCS Invincible.

The LCS Invincible

Some names resound through history, Victory, Constitution, Enterprise, Yamato, Bismarck and the Invincible proudly joined that pantheon of famous Warships.  Crippled in battle over the world of Moore the Invincible was found to be simply uneconomical to repair, especially with the damage done to the Lyran naval yards.  She was instead turned into an orbital museum, the last example of what had once been the mighty Lyran fleet.

But during the Seventh and Eight Battle of Hesperus the Lyrans were close to losing the strategically vital world and its utterly priceless Mech Factories to the invading forces of the Draconis Combine.  Their capture could well mean the death of the Lyran Commonwealth to the Kurita onslaught.  The Triad, the leaders of the time had one ex-aerospace and naval officer amongst their number.  Henry DeCalidore proposed that in addition to the counter-attacking and relief forces that the LCS Invincible be reactivated and sent along with the relief force.  The ship had still not been fully repaired, there simply wasn’t the yard space or equipment to do so, and the Invincible herself was over 200 years old and age had not been kind to the old ship, only made worse by the lack of repair facilities and any chance to overhaul her.

Pulling together the last remnants of the Lyran Navy who had served aboard major capital ships, men and women who had retired from service with the death of the fleet this scratch crew of 200 reactivated the Invincible and the old ship joined the counter attacking forces despite her engines threatening to give out and concerns about her hull taking the strain of the jump as well as weapons fire. 

The ship didn’t rip itself apart and appeared at the zenith jump point and opened fire, smashing the last DCMS Warships including the ancient DCS Yedo a Baron Class destroyer.  With the blockade broken the Invincible headed in system and in conjunction with the last reserves on Hesperus as well as those that arrived after the Invincible and supported by the guns of the battlecruiser the Kurita forces were driven off world and into retreat.  This epic battle actually became source material for four movies as well as two live plays and the ballad Invincible Dream.

Unfortunately the battered old warship vanished on her way back to Tharkad, suffering a misjump, a tragic end that also cemented her name in the history of the Lyran state and people’s minds.

Yet the end was not what it was expected to be.  Somehow the Word of Blake found the Invincible and recovered, repaired and reactivated her seemingly with the intent of presenting the ship along with the Word’s military strength when the Third Transfer of Power occurred.  But with the collapse of the Second Star League the Word saw the prophesised Transfer slip from their hands and instead of appearing as friend the Word flew into a rage and attacked.  The Invincible herself arrived at Tharkad, painted in the glistening white of the Word and no one knew where she had been or how the Word had found her.  But either through misheard orders or a fit of rage the Invincible’scommander had the ship fire on the Lyran capital because of the collapse of the Second Star League.  The shot went wide and instead of being a warning, it hit an old fusion reactor which detonated in a massive blast that lead many to believe that The Word of Blake had just nuked the capital city.

The orbital battle that followed was vicious and whilst the Invincible did engage more ground and orbital targets she was swarmed by furious Lyran aerospace fighters and withdrew to be repaired whilst the Word launched its ground assault.

When Stone’s Coalition came to free Tharkad from the Word the Invincible was engaged by the larger, more modern successor to the old Battlecruiser the LAS Yggdrasil a huge Mjolnir class battlecruiser.  In the orbital battle the Invincible remained in the fight but was captured in a furious boarding action and taken into the Coalition fleet.  The quickly repaired Invincible became the flagship of Devlin Stone and it was from her bridge that he gave the go order to begin the assault on the Terran System.  The battlecruiser and the rest of the Coalition fleet took a fearsome pounding in the battle for the cradle of humanity and after the war the Invincible returned home to Tharkad.

But the return trip was a disaster, the final jump badly damaged the old ships jump core and suddenly the Invincible was stranded in a system that lacked the facilities to repair and service her.  Moored in orbit over the Capital the Invincible remained in commission but due to her age, the damage she’d taken and the lack of any docking facilities in the Tharkad system to repair her she deteriorated and was suitable for little more than being a training ship for other Lyran warships and their dropship fleet.  Such was her poor state of repair that Devlin Stone himself remarked that the Invincible should be converted back into a museum instead of trying to refit the pride of the Lyran fleet.  It should be noted that the Word also gave the Invincible a Lithium-Fusion battery which in essence made her a sub class.

Design

The Tharkad is a meaty effort and is a capable Warship that’s a threat to anything in her time period or the modern period.

As fast as the then new Avatar Class cruiser she outguns the Hegemony ship in a stand up broadside fight and even outguns the old Monsoon class battleship;

Tharkad Class  - 408 damage
Avatar Class – 339 Damage
Monsoon Class – 357 Damage
But the competitor to the Tharkad in the form of the Black Lion II packs a heavier punch in the broadside;

Black Lion II – 456 damage

But this is through the simple dint of being a AC heavy design and Naval AC’s are fearsomely hard hitting weapons, yet the Black Lion is also far more vulnerable to fighter attacks despite having naval missiles spread everywhere but on her bow and stern arcs, carries 2 less dropships and 18 less fighters.

Armour wise the two are closely comparable.

Tharkad             Black Lion II
Fore – 145         Fore - 151
Fore Sides – 140 Fore Sides - 168
Aft Sides – 140   Aft Sides - 168
Aft  - 131           Aft - 151
Structural integrity – 80      Structural integrity – 75

In a gun fight in theory the Black Lion is superior thanks to the simple fact she has bracket firing whilst this was not given to the House Lords ships, yet the Tharkad classes guns are not just close in beatsticks like the NAC dominated Black Lion.

Weapons – 4 Heavy Naval gauss rifles (2 x double mounts),  11 x NL-55’s (1 x triple mount, 2 x quad), 4 x NAC-25 (2 x dual turrets), 15 x Medium NPPC’s (5 x triple turrets), 8 x Heavy NPPCs, 2 x triple turrets, 1 x dual turret, 4 x NAC-30 2 x dual turrets, 4 x NAC-35’s 2 x dual turrets, 6 x NAC-20 3 x dual turrets, 6 x Killer Whale launch tubes.

17 x Large lasers, 34 Medium lasers, 18 LRM-20, 18 LRM-10

The Tharkad has a diverse weapons fit and it can engage at long range but the lack of bracket firing means that you’re rather more reliant on luck than real accuracy at long range but she packs a significant wallop at all ranges and the big six pack of Killer Whales provides a dangerous crit seeking ability in a closing engagement and if you’re using the rules then you can fire them off boresight for even more firepower.  But like most ships designed before the rules for bracket firing were a thing, the Tharkad is very much a close and hose type ship who fights well at short to medium ranges and she's basically a brawler.

The six dropships and nice big 36 strong fighter also give the class a formidable ability to engage and defeat hostile strikes from other warships.  Until you get to the Texas and Farragut classes you’re not going to get bigger organic fighter compliments whilst you need an Avatar or Monsoon to equal the 6 dropship parasites.  With its heavy firepower, solid protection, good thrust rating, awesome organic aerospace support and point defences the Tharkad can gun down pretty much any cruiser it comes across until the Luxor hits the scene in the dying days of the Star League. 

Against something like the hard hitting Cameron the Tharkad can set the pace of the attack and the angle thanks to her higher thrust rating allowing her to out manoeuvre the lumbering and smaller ship.  Even against a modern ship like a Nightlord the Tharkad stands a good chance due to its meaty firepower vs the Clan ships very eclectic mix of weapons that at least to my mind, make little sense. 

Obviously the later Mjolnir class considerably outclasses the Tharkad class, they are much larger and have miles more armour and structural integrity with a terrifying (if ammo limited) punch at shorter ranges and their weapons mix is rather similar.  I’d like to think that there’s some of the genetics of the Tharkad in the Mjolnir class.

The anti-fighter weaponry also for the time stands out, because the SLDF rarely bothered with anti-fighter weapons on-board its ships.  The LRM clusters can do a number on fighters with 84 damage or 8 capital damage, this isn't something most fighters want to get hit with and even a modern flying brick like the Eisensturm does not want to get tickled by that barrage.  The laser clusters are more a weapon of last resort, whilst the large lasers can plink its only really noticable at short ranges where they can slap you with anywhere from 54 to 72 damage (depending on what turrets are engaging you).  Again this hurts, and can make quite a few fighters regret their decisions but its at the shortest of ranges. 

The Tharkad also lacks any form of AMS and relies purely on her armour to absorb missile hits rather than being able to deflect or destroy them.

Fighting a Tharkad can be a nasty experience, their mix of weapons gives the class a rather meaty punch, especially if she can get her front/aft arcs to bare with her broadside.  She's a thuggish brawler and can rip chunks out of any ships hide, but she has her flaws.  Many SLDF warships were also NAC heavy gunboats and getting into the Tharkad's range for her guns also means getting in range of theirs and that can be bad.  Her limited bracket firing abilities also mean that other ships can outrange the Tharkad and engage her more accurately at longer ranges although this works better with some ships rather than others. The champions being the Texas, McKenna, Potemkin and Leviathan classes, whilst smaller ships like the Avatar can plink away before closing the range and the Luxor is a good solid all rounder. 

A Tharkad will probably try to close with you and if you can engage her as she's doing this, do so, but its going to come down to a NAC fight at the end of the day unless you happen to be one of the four champions mentioned above.  And if a Tharkad is facing one of those unsupported I wonder for the Captain's sanity.  The Tharkad's a great cruiser killer, it can rip destroyers apart and pound frigates into rubble, but do NOT throw her at a Battleship without friends.  You want to do this.



That's the DCS Yado being destroyed by the Invincible'sguns.  You don't want that happening to your prized battlecruiser so don't fight above your weight.

I hope folks enjoy this write up and I'm always welcoming of any comments.
« Last Edit: 06 March 2016, 20:59:48 by marauder648 »
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VhenRa

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #1 on: 06 March 2016, 05:59:48 »
Lyran Commonwealth.


That is all I can really add.

marauder648

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #2 on: 06 March 2016, 07:19:20 »
Lyran Commonwealth.


That is all I can really add.

Oops! Fixed now :)
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VhenRa

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #3 on: 06 March 2016, 12:46:20 »
Oops! Fixed now :)

Missed one.  Their capture could well mean the death of the Lyran Alliance to the Kurita onslaught.

mikecj

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #4 on: 06 March 2016, 13:52:17 »
Great write-up, thanks
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Colt Ward

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #5 on: 06 March 2016, 18:31:15 »
Eh . . . she really should have been repaired somewhat by the time the Dark Ages rolled around.  It would also have been interesting if the Wolves or Falcons at least put marines aboard when they invaded the planet.
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #6 on: 06 March 2016, 19:05:27 »
Great Article, Marauder648

She was pretty nasty customer, I'm glad Herb and the rest of the CGL staff gave her stats and a role to play in the Jihad. 

I was wondering, how well she played with her OTHER ship she was servings along with her. The Mako-Class Corvette, which Lyrans were building along side the reborn Commonwealth-Class Light Cruisers.

Their all pretty fast ships, with squadron of them coming in, they would get stomped badly by the Tharkads.

I was wondering why or should we ask how come the Invisible wasn't mentioned in the invasion of Tharkad?  Hopefully she survived the multi-Clan invasion.
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #7 on: 06 March 2016, 19:31:25 »
Presumably the Invincible was in too bad of shape to see use during the Wolf and Falcon invasion of Tharkad.

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #8 on: 06 March 2016, 22:06:54 »
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #9 on: 06 March 2016, 22:24:11 »
I thought the survivors from a dropship that got ripped by the Wolves joined with a bunch of old war vets to get her moving.  They had to pull the huge NAC shells from the museum- even hand carrying one from a disabled turret to a working one to get the final shot at the alien Falcons.
Colt Ward
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #10 on: 07 March 2016, 02:14:42 »
I was wondering why or should we ask how come the Invisible wasn't mentioned in the invasion of Tharkad?  Hopefully she survived the multi-Clan invasion.
No one could see her.


A Tharkad has better AA than a Black Lion II largely because of the fore capital missiles. The Black Lion is actually superior from the rear and those conventional weapons mostly irrelevant.

Speaking of those missiles they are most likely intended to deploy nukes.

Personally I diagree with the arms race explanation for the SLDF battle cruisers and point to the decommissioning of the Monsoons as their origins.

sadlerbw

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #11 on: 07 March 2016, 16:59:50 »
I thought the survivors from a dropship that got ripped by the Wolves joined with a bunch of old war vets to get her moving.  They had to pull the huge NAC shells from the museum- even hand carrying one from a disabled turret to a working one to get the final shot at the alien Falcons.

Yeah, and then at the last minute, the orbit of the ship aligned perfectly with the system's primary and the veterans blew out the polarized shield on the Wolf flagship with a David light-gauss rifle, blinding Alaric temporarily. Only, one of the veterans spent his career in Logistics, so he had never actually shot one of those before. And then, one of the elementals issued a batchal to a Lyran grunt with no legs...and lost.

Then again, if we are going to parody Taylor Kitch bombs, I prefer John Carpenter! The crazy turbo-dog thing was awesome!
« Last Edit: 07 March 2016, 17:01:21 by sadlerbw »

Colt Ward

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #12 on: 07 March 2016, 17:02:52 »
Lol, Battleship and the BSG mini-series are the only two movie/tv plots I know of where a museum ship goes back into the fight.  Which is always a fun yard . . . and something I have imagined the two times I stepped on the deck of a ship or boarded a plane.
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #13 on: 08 March 2016, 00:47:16 »
Was the Tharkad actually the largest class of Warship built by the Lyrans up until the 1st SW?  It strikes me as a case of trying to do too much with too little--they wanted a Hegemony-style battleship but for some reason couldn't/wouldn't build one, so they tried to squeeze some battleship capability into a battlecruiser-grade hull (particularly the 6 Dropships and integral fighter complement).  I do find it a bit hard to believe that building over a million tons was beyond the Lyrans' capabilities, especially when the example of the Soyal shows that non-Hegemony shipbuilders were capable of building ships to that scale (though in that particular case there was a very good reason why).

I think the ship the Lyrans had in mind to counter wasn't anything built by the Hegemony/SLDF, but the FWL's Atreus class.  Though called a battleship, the Atreus would be a battlecruiser by SLDF standards.

cheers,

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #14 on: 08 March 2016, 14:43:55 »
In real life history, a lot of dreadnought battleships were artificially kept smaller than you might want to fit in existing dry docks etc and it might be that without a massive investment and rebuilding the Lyrans could not make or maintain ships larger than X?
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #15 on: 08 March 2016, 15:22:36 »
Eh . . . she really should have been repaired somewhat by the time the Dark Ages rolled around.

Then she'd probably have been lost for good when Tharkad was attacked.  :'(
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #16 on: 08 March 2016, 15:26:11 »
True, but when the survival of the realm is on the line you throw everything in the fight- there is no tomorrow without victory.

She should honestly be set up like we are told Ancestral Home was- KF unfunctional but the rest of the ship able to protect the capital.  Bluntly in space you do not need a drydock . . . it just makes it easier, faster and cheaper to repair something than having a few habs and cargo containers floating around.
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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #17 on: 08 March 2016, 18:17:36 »
Was the Tharkad actually the largest class of Warship built by the Lyrans up until the 1st SW?  It strikes me as a case of trying to do too much with too little--they wanted a Hegemony-style battleship but for some reason couldn't/wouldn't build one, so they tried to squeeze some battleship capability into a battlecruiser-grade hull (particularly the 6 Dropships and integral fighter complement).  I do find it a bit hard to believe that building over a million tons was beyond the Lyrans' capabilities, especially when the example of the Soyal shows that non-Hegemony shipbuilders were capable of building ships to that scale (though in that particular case there was a very good reason why).

I think the ship the Lyrans had in mind to counter wasn't anything built by the Hegemony/SLDF, but the FWL's Atreus class.  Though called a battleship, the Atreus would be a battlecruiser by SLDF standards.

cheers,

Gabe

Problem is were kinda hedged in with new designs.  If were stupidly lucky maybe a one-off prototype WarShip was made for entirely new class.  Field Manual 2765 series highlighted all remaining (Inner Sphere) first WarShips.  The writers made sure it was clear that there was limited shipyard production since everyone was living off used-warships from the Star League/Terran Hegemony.   I would loved to seen a Lyran Battleship, fighter carrier or even a Destroyer.

If anyone needed bigger ships in their fleet which was biggest disappointment to me was the Kuritas,  couple battleships would have been nice. Even a few.  Least it would have given the Tharkads something worthwhile to fight.
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gyedid

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #18 on: 08 March 2016, 22:21:43 »
Problem is were kinda hedged in with new designs.  If were stupidly lucky maybe a one-off prototype WarShip was made for entirely new class.  Field Manual 2765 series highlighted all remaining (Inner Sphere) first WarShips.  The writers made sure it was clear that there was limited shipyard production since everyone was living off used-warships from the Star League/Terran Hegemony.   I would loved to seen a Lyran Battleship, fighter carrier or even a Destroyer.

If anyone needed bigger ships in their fleet which was biggest disappointment to me was the Kuritas,  couple battleships would have been nice. Even a few.  Least it would have given the Tharkads something worthwhile to fight.

Well we can always hope that the upcoming Historical:  1st SW  gives us a few new goodies in that department--even if they only last a few years and their shipyards are destroyed early on...Herb has now given numbers on each House's fleet strength on the eve of the 1st War, and it seems that most Houses managed to triple the size of their navies between 2765 and 2787.  Those Tharkads would've formed about 10% of the Lyrans' pre-war naval strength.

As to what the Tharkads would've been fighting in the 1st SW, until we have more info on the other states' navies, they would be facing a mostly destroyer navy on the Combine front, but the Narukami can punch well above its weight, and the Cruiser is a missile cruiser (read:  nukes galore), so it's easy to see where their ships went there.  On the FWL front, they would've been facing well-rounded armadas centred by Atreuses (Atreii?), Leagues, and perhaps a few Soyals in the mix--some of those Tharkads could conceivably have fallen to mass driver attacks.  They're battlecruisers and still too much in the "glass hammer" paradigm IMO.

cheers,

Gabe
So, now I'm imagining people boxing up Overlords for loading as cargo.  "Nope, totally not a DropShip.  Everyone knows you can't fit a DropShip in a WarShip!  It's...a ten thousand ton box of marshmallows!  Yeah.  For the Heavy Guards big annual smores party."
--Arkansas Warrior, on the possibility of carrying Dropships as cargo in Warship cargo bays.

TERRAN SUPREMACY DEFENSE FORCE.  For when you want to send the SLDF, but couldn't afford the whole kit and kaboodle.

Wrangler

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #19 on: 08 March 2016, 23:20:05 »
Well we can always hope that the upcoming Historical:  1st SW  gives us a few new goodies in that department--even if they only last a few years and their shipyards are destroyed early on...Herb has now given numbers on each House's fleet strength on the eve of the 1st War, and it seems that most Houses managed to triple the size of their navies between 2765 and 2787.  Those Tharkads would've formed about 10% of the Lyrans' pre-war naval strength.
Gabe
I hope your right, but i get impression from what I've read/posted else where that current designs continued to be built verses new designs to cut down on loose ends.   Essex Is re-enter production again.  While I believe from what been said in the FR:2765 that Soyals for the League were like 1 or 2 ships verses halve dozen that Caps got.
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glitterboy2098

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #20 on: 08 March 2016, 23:45:26 »
True, but when the survival of the realm is on the line you throw everything in the fight- there is no tomorrow without victory.

She should honestly be set up like we are told Ancestral Home was- KF unfunctional but the rest of the ship able to protect the capital.  Bluntly in space you do not need a drydock . . . it just makes it easier, faster and cheaper to repair something than having a few habs and cargo containers floating around.

it was probably too expensive. remember that when the Jihad ended, the Lyran state had a lot of rebuilding to do. fixing up an old warship was probably a low priority. then the blackout happened. with the Lyran government funnelling a lot of funds into Comstar to try and keep it afloat, and facing down two clan conflicts, i doubt they would have moved up the priority of repairing the ship.

Colt Ward

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #21 on: 08 March 2016, 23:57:04 »
Low Priority . . . it was over sixty years.  They obviously had some form of naval equipment production because the 'equally' stranded Yggdrasil was mobile and shooting.  Not suggesting a Hero crash program, but replacing weapons, repairing armor, attitude thrusters . . . all little things that could (and should) have been restored, especially in the draw down era.
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gyedid

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #22 on: 09 March 2016, 03:34:48 »

As to what the Tharkads would've been fighting in the 1st SW, until we have more info on the other states' navies, they would be facing a mostly destroyer navy on the Combine front, but the Narukami can punch well above its weight, and the Cruiser is a missile cruiser (read:  nukes galore), so it's easy to see where their ships went there.

And I forgot about the Samarkands.  Victory through fighter spam.

cheers,

Gabe
So, now I'm imagining people boxing up Overlords for loading as cargo.  "Nope, totally not a DropShip.  Everyone knows you can't fit a DropShip in a WarShip!  It's...a ten thousand ton box of marshmallows!  Yeah.  For the Heavy Guards big annual smores party."
--Arkansas Warrior, on the possibility of carrying Dropships as cargo in Warship cargo bays.

TERRAN SUPREMACY DEFENSE FORCE.  For when you want to send the SLDF, but couldn't afford the whole kit and kaboodle.

Liam's Ghost

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #23 on: 09 March 2016, 03:59:27 »
Personally I diagree with the arms race explanation for the SLDF battle cruisers and point to the decommissioning of the Monsoons as their origins.

The two explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The Monsoon was replaced because it had increasing trouble competing with the new warships of the great houses, and its replacement (the Texas) apparently took a year and a half to build each ship. Battlecruisers filling the gap makes sense.

Though the official explanation (dating back to TRO 2750) was that the new battlecruisers were supposed to be command ships in the frontiers, notably of convoys heading into the periphery, and they specifically wanted something that handled better than a battleship "so it could keep up with the fast cargo dropships being built at that time".
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gyedid

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #24 on: 10 March 2016, 01:21:10 »
The two explanations are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The Monsoon was replaced because it had increasing trouble competing with the new warships of the great houses, and its replacement (the Texas) apparently took a year and a half to build each ship. Battlecruisers filling the gap makes sense.


Point taken, but the thing is that at that time, we know of only one House--Marik--that has a similarly-sized ship that can really compete with the Monsoon, the Atreus.  The Capellans' Du Shi Wang doesn't even come close, and Davion's Defender, despite its still-impressive thrust rating, is already obsolete.  We have no information that Steiner and Kurita fielded anything comparable--Steiner not until the Tharkad, and Kurita...ever (which I find seriously hard to believe).   

And also remember that the first of those Monsoon replacements, the Cameron, turned out to be a king-sized lemon.

Though the official explanation (dating back to TRO 2750) was that the new battlecruisers were supposed to be command ships in the frontiers, notably of convoys heading into the periphery, and they specifically wanted something that handled better than a battleship "so it could keep up with the fast cargo dropships being built at that time".

cheers,

Gabe
So, now I'm imagining people boxing up Overlords for loading as cargo.  "Nope, totally not a DropShip.  Everyone knows you can't fit a DropShip in a WarShip!  It's...a ten thousand ton box of marshmallows!  Yeah.  For the Heavy Guards big annual smores party."
--Arkansas Warrior, on the possibility of carrying Dropships as cargo in Warship cargo bays.

TERRAN SUPREMACY DEFENSE FORCE.  For when you want to send the SLDF, but couldn't afford the whole kit and kaboodle.

marauder648

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #25 on: 10 March 2016, 02:14:06 »
Aye like you I find it hard to belive the DCMS didn't field their own battleship or battlecruiser.  It seems that the House fleets built like one or two designs of their own and everything else was meant to be a cast off and obsolete ex SLDF ship.  That makes no sense to me.  Its like the British army going "This is our new tank for the modern army and the 21st Century!" And they roll out a WW1 era Mk1 Heavy.

Whilst the House Lords can't come close to competing with the SLDF for production they should have their own designs instead of relying on musiem pieces that may well have hidden black boxes in them that could let the SLDF just turn ships off at the flick of a switch.
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glitterboy2098

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #26 on: 10 March 2016, 02:57:43 »
Low Priority . . . it was over sixty years.  They obviously had some form of naval equipment production because the 'equally' stranded Yggdrasil was mobile and shooting.  Not suggesting a Hero crash program, but replacing weapons, repairing armor, attitude thrusters . . . all little things that could (and should) have been restored, especially in the draw down era.

the difference is though that the Yggdrasil was a recent design. the infrastructure is there to build it's parts, the blueprints and tooling is around, the people who designed it and worked on it can be tracked down to provide expertise.

by comparison the factories and tooling were all wiped out in the succession wars, the blueprints and component specifications have been gone for over four centuries, everyone affiliated with its design and construction is long dead of old age if nothing else.. and it's previous owners aren't exactly around to help out with any of that. assuming that they actually bothered to repair it to the original specs when they got ahold of it in the first place, instead of McGuyvering repairs using parts never meant to go on that class. (which seems much more likely, even with BT's heavily standardized tech... odds are that even if the lyrans could dig up some old blueprints nd plans, they wouldn't be accurate anymore anyway)

further the Yggdrasil had been intentionally mothballed at hesperus II.. where there was a shipyard. Tharkad is a bit lacking in that regard. if the Invincible had any sort of structural damage (which is highly likely) it would have need a good drydocking to bring it to useful status. so Unless the Lyrans want to build a new warship capable shipyard over Tharkad...

gyedid

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #27 on: 10 March 2016, 03:50:21 »
Aye like you I find it hard to belive the DCMS didn't field their own battleship or battlecruiser.  It seems that the House fleets built like one or two designs of their own and everything else was meant to be a cast off and obsolete ex SLDF ship.  That makes no sense to me.  Its like the British army going "This is our new tank for the modern army and the 21st Century!" And they roll out a WW1 era Mk1 Heavy.

Whilst the House Lords can't come close to competing with the SLDF for production they should have their own designs instead of relying on musiem pieces that may well have hidden black boxes in them that could let the SLDF just turn ships off at the flick of a switch.

Davion did (a bit) better in that respect; they had the Davion II, Robinson, and New Syrtis classes for homegrown production; their experience with the Defender must've made them wary of trying to build large again.  The Tharkad gives the Lyrans 3 known homegrown Warship designs, in addition to the Commonwealth and Mako.

What the House navies were composed of during the Age of War, when everyone was fighting everyone else, still remains unclear.

cheers,

Gabe
So, now I'm imagining people boxing up Overlords for loading as cargo.  "Nope, totally not a DropShip.  Everyone knows you can't fit a DropShip in a WarShip!  It's...a ten thousand ton box of marshmallows!  Yeah.  For the Heavy Guards big annual smores party."
--Arkansas Warrior, on the possibility of carrying Dropships as cargo in Warship cargo bays.

TERRAN SUPREMACY DEFENSE FORCE.  For when you want to send the SLDF, but couldn't afford the whole kit and kaboodle.

Jellico

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #28 on: 10 March 2016, 16:47:06 »
Aye like you I find it hard to belive the DCMS didn't field their own battleship or battlecruiser.  It seems that the House fleets built like one or two designs of their own and everything else was meant to be a cast off and obsolete ex SLDF ship.  That makes no sense to me.  Its like the British army going "This is our new tank for the modern army and the 21st Century!" And they roll out a WW1 era Mk1 Heavy.

You are imagining the Houses as first rate powers that can fund their own military products. A better example is Britain announcing a new ballistic missile program and buying Trident.

The simple fact is when it comes to fighting the peace Hegemony ships are better than House ships.

gyedid

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Re: Warship of (last) month - The Tharkad Class Battlecruiser.
« Reply #29 on: 10 March 2016, 21:50:32 »
You are imagining the Houses as first rate powers that can fund their own military products. A better example is Britain announcing a new ballistic missile program and buying Trident.

The simple fact is when it comes to fighting the peace Hegemony ships are better than House ships.

By that argument, the post-Clan Invasion Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League are in better shape than they were from 2400-2787.  They managed to develop and build more Warship classes with (presumably) less shipbuilding infrastructure than they had at any time before the fall of the Star League.  Although the Combine was running into problems when it came to building big.

And I somewhat disagree with that last statement.  True in terms of large capital ships maybe, but at the lower end of the scale, the Houses put more into their corvette and destroyer-grade vessels than did the Terrans, with their (relative) legions of cheap, under-armoured and under-powered throwaway vessels.

cheers,

Gabe
So, now I'm imagining people boxing up Overlords for loading as cargo.  "Nope, totally not a DropShip.  Everyone knows you can't fit a DropShip in a WarShip!  It's...a ten thousand ton box of marshmallows!  Yeah.  For the Heavy Guards big annual smores party."
--Arkansas Warrior, on the possibility of carrying Dropships as cargo in Warship cargo bays.

TERRAN SUPREMACY DEFENSE FORCE.  For when you want to send the SLDF, but couldn't afford the whole kit and kaboodle.