Well the Fed Suns currently have quite a few designs currently being built, Davion Destroyers and Congress cruisers, both of them do well to round out the fleet along with the New Syrtis Carriers.
I'm pretty sure the Congress Cruisers are being built more as independent patrol units for commerce protection (something badly needed but often ignored in Btech) in the rear areas. The improved Davions work quite well with the Fox + Avalon + New Sytris formations mind you, assuming you can have them in the right ratios, for a very nicely balanced, flexible and powerful fleet unit.
Fighters are amazingly fragile and there are several weapons that warships have to reduce their threat. Large missile batteries can rip into fighters on the way towards the capital craft while good normal scale weapons car target nuclear missiles also. That also means fighting through the CAP to launch the strikes along with probably having to waste nuclear attacks to help clear the way.
Honestly, when I've gamed it out, its been pretty much 100% impossible to stop a properly formatted strike package (as the Inner Sphere discovered when the Warships got obliterated during the first two Succession Wars for that matter exactly this way). Warships are far too much glass hammers; you only need ONE hit as a rule of thumb to kill them - even the Leviathan needs a lot of luck to be able to survive nuclear ordinance. Fighters not THAT fragile; they are flying tanks. You can't simply point an ERPPC at one and say 'die!' - by the time you reach the range of anti-fighter weapons, you're pretty much already in nuclear strike range. And even if the fighters hold off firing until point blank (to logically give the AMS belts zero reaction time to deal with it) you have to try and take down the flying tanks INCREDIBLY quickly, which just doesn't happen. Especially when the fighter strike can (and should) concentrate on a single threat axis, meaning most of the warships guns are unable to be brought to bear. Not to mention headaches defensibly if your opponent is also laying down their own covering fire with long range capital missile strikes either to open a gap (through kills or evasive maneuvering) in the enemy fighter screen, or, directly targeting nukes on the enemy warship too...
Capital missiles have their own problems being used in anti-fighter fights - partially around baiting fire and the difficulty of hitting until you get close and the sheer absurd number of missiles you have to put into the sky to really grind down a heavy strike - missile magazines are not unlimited after all. You might survive one strike only to not survive the next one in those situations.
I've played these scenarios out only a couple of times I'll admit, but every time we did even if it took 30-40 aerospace fighter losses, the fighters broke through the screening enemy dropships and fighters and last ditch defensive firepower to nuke the enemy warships. Granted you have to be a bit cold hearted to send pilots to die, but you can also do things to improve their chances (like small craft gunships with EW support + heavy AMS to escort the strike packages, developing improved EW gear systems like the Dragons Breath used to format your strikes and so on, but thats probably getting out of scope).
The other thing is that in story no one has used nuclear weapons and no one will do so until someone else such as the Word of Blake does so first.
Uh, they did. They nuked the crap out of several ComStar warships trying to escape from the Case-White like ambush. There is nothing magical about using nuclear weapons in space against enemy warships. If Peter had gone in hard that way, the Falcons warships would have been obliterated and his ground forces would have mopped up everything on the ground cleanly, sending a message best described as '****** off and die' to the rest of the Clans about how the Lyrans are going to treat this kind of 'yay, lets play a new round of attack the Lyrans!' going forward.
Without nuclear weapons warships have a near decisive advantage over Assault Dropships and Fighters, you need to bring rather large forces to break through especially against the better non Clan designs. A properly designed force is likely to bleed any attempts by the fighters to get close without overwhelming numbers.
Yes, but I'm clearly predicating my tactics on the assumption of having nukes. If the Combine is bringing its warships into play, gloves come off. Plus, you don't need to simply charge at the warships and disregard losses, if you bring along carriers then you'll have the reserves and numbers of aerospace units to clear the way through the escorting dropships. Plus supporting fire from your own light warships if you want to play things that way.
You can use missiles however the larger ships will of coarse carry enough AMS to require either very dense salvo's or a lot of luck to get through and delivery damage. No one has yet to reintroduce Sub-Capital weapons either, I can see the Lyrans digging through the achieves to bring them back, they need space combat ability with both the Wolf and Falcon threats.
Build better missiles is the blunt answer. No-one in Battletech ever seems to think of that though. But you'd only in my scenario use missiles to target screening craft and enemy aerospace fighter concentrations, not the enemy warships. Either destroy them outright, or force them to scatter and evade, opening the way for your strike package to sweep through. Subcapital weapons have their uses, but honestly, dealing with enemy heavies is NOT what they should be used for.
I personally feel that there is a need for new Dropship Carriers, the Vengeance is less than an Escort Carrier and more of a Fighter Bus with almost no cargo for repairs and rearmament. 64 tons of cargo total for 40 fighters. Not good for long term space operations. You have 1 engagement and then you will use all the cargo to repair if you are lucky. You then either need to cycle them through the Warship bays in the fleet or else land and bring your attached Mule carrying supplies.
Honestly I prefer carriers rather than dropship carriers, simply because the dropships are too soft a target. With that said, the Vengeance is definitely a fighter replacement carrier, or, at least needs to be docked to an SLDF warship with their massive cargo bays to support operations directly (as a parasite to historical SLDF ships that had limited or no fighter capacity it makes perfect sense; its a bolt-on launch bay that can directly resupply from the warships own cargo hold).
Carrier dropships for fleet actions IMO have to make too many compromises. The Titan has too few fighters, the Vengaance can't fight or support its fighters, Union and Leopard CVs are fine for the 3rd succession war, not for the clan war.
The best niche for a carrier dropship in the AFFS is probably an RCT fighter carrier. Capable of holding one wing of fighters, so two of these carriers are assigned to each RCT. Big enough to hold the fighters and support them through sustained operations, tough enough to take on assault ships directly and win. The Navy OTOH are better off spending their dropship slots on pocket warships and assault ships (and even then, looking to the next generation of them).
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Anyway, on the latest chapter, man Peter is sounding sulky for someone who is getting an absurd bargin. He is giving up a wrecked Battleship he cannot repair or put back into service ... for three fully loaded Corvettes with dropships and fighters, two more in the pipeline he has to pay for (and one thing the Lyrans are not short of is cash) plus options on buying as many more as he needs going forward. Clan Wolf are getting one of their warships fully repaired, two new Corvettes fully loaded, new omnifighter lines and all THEY are paying is a cluster of troops who can be replaced with Wolves soon enough. And just the troops; he's not even loosing equipment as Victor is replacing that!
Honestly Victor has given away so much I'd expect some level of blowback from the High Council over this. He's given 5 warships plus support ships and fighters away, tied up a yard to repair at their cost a Clan warship, tied up the next two Fox's for export as well from a yard, given the Smoke Jagaurs more troops (who lets face it, should be getting a LOT more scrutiny then they are seemingly getting from DMI and MIIO as they rebuild)...
All for one wrecked Battleship?!
Whatever everyone involved was smoking on Tharkad, it must have been GOOD.
