Author Topic: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth  (Read 11348 times)

Trace Coburn

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Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« on: 04 February 2011, 07:12:36 »
Visigoth - 60t, TRO3055
Originally posted 15 Dec. 2004.

  All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding "FotW Workshop" thread.


  Clan society is ruthlessly youth-oriented: anything new is automatically better - unless it can kick ass and take names, in which case it can stick around until it loses that ability.  The Visigoth was introduced more a hundred years ago and is still going strong, despite the introduction of would-be usurpers like the Jagatai.  I trust you can draw the appropriate conclusion from these two statements.  ;)

  The base Visigoth chassis is a mixed bag.  A 300XL powerplant and five tons of fuel means you have a 7/11 thrust curve and as much gas as almost any other design flying (and more than its supposed successor, the Jagatai!); this means that it can out-manoeuvre almost any other medium or heavy it meets, especially those in Successor State service.  10.5 tons of Clan Ferro-Aluminium armour sheathes the airframe - not as much as it could have carried, but it does leave a lot of space.  I question the inclusion of six fixed DHS over and above the base ten, but it does offers the chance to use energy-biased configs without the wrench-benders having to muck about with hooking up additional heat-sinks to the internal system.  And finally, the crown jewel of the Visigoth: twenty-six (26) tons of pod space, almost half of its total mass, available for all those ClanTech systems we've come to know and loath/love/munch-out on.  Even by the standards of OmniFighters, the Visigoth has a great many options open to it.

  The Prime configuration mounts an LB-10X autocannon in the nose, along with three tons of ammo (allowing an ample supply of whatever ammo type the pilot needs at the moment) and a trio of ERMLs; each wing holds an SSRM-4 and an SPL; twin ERMLs guard the stern arc.  The AC gives this configuration much-desirable long-range, low-heat firepower and a decent throw-weight, and anyone who tries to 'get under' the AC will meet a near-wall of Streak missiles and laser-fire.  Frankly, I'd like to use this model for ground-attack strikes: against 'Mechs, slug rounds and the ERMLs open the can, while the Streaks reach inside and chew up all those wonderful squishy bits within the shell; against ground-vehicles, a blast of LB-10X proximity-fused shells and a pair of SSRM-4s are a crit-seeking nightmare.  Best of all, the heat-curve is brilliant: even if you alpha-strike all your forward ordnance (which is unlikely), you're still five points under capacity!  :o  Not to mention that a Visigoth can carry twelve tons of bombs and still move at 4/6, which is a pretty fair clip for a bomber.

  (Momentary digression: it might have escaped most peoples' notice before, both out-of-universe and IC, but those small (pulse) lasers make the Visigoth Prime one of the few canonical Clan ASFs to possess even minimal point-defence capability in the pre-Jihad era.  Not a big deal before the last Star League conference, but when the Blaker Tantrum began and the nukes started flying, you can bet that the Visigoth-P rapidly became even more of a 'must-have' item for Clan commanders who'd suddenly realised how vulnerable their 'Mech transports (or WarShips!) really were.  ;D)

  The Alpha profile is my personal favourite, if only because it seems to have been inspired by one of my favourite IS fighters, the bad-ass-looking, "Buck Rogers"-esque Gotha.  An ERPPC and twin ERMLs are set in the nose, while each wing holds an Artemis-enhanced LRM-20 and a glorious twelve salvos per launcher; the twin ERMLs in the stern are retained.  That C/ERPPC will crit any fighter in the sky, even that @!#$%*^& flying brick the Hydaspes; so will the LRM mounts (assuming the other guy doesn't pack an AMS or ECM); for that matter, those 'secondary' nose-mounted ERMLs are ignored at one's peril.  This config does require better heat-discipline than the Prime, as alpha-strikes push the heat-scale to a full +5 (assuming the aft lasers stay unfired), but with that said, the particle cannons and missiles of a Star of Visigoth-Alphas can give a DropShip or WarShip a brutalising perhaps better imagined than described.  As our own resident WarShip-looney said: "Be vewy, vewy qwiet - we're hunting Bwack Wions, hahahaha!"  :o

  The Visigoth-Bravo is a fairly good idea marred by shoddy execution.  A single MPL aft keeps away tail-gaters, while four LPLs - two in the nose, one in each wing - provide fearful hitting power.  Unfortunately, not a single extra heat-sink is mounted, making for a nasty eight-point overheat if all those large pulsers are used.  The fluff cites this as an 'ideal' ground-attack configuration - which is true, assuming that you can cool off after each strafing run without being molested by enemy fighters.  However, it also calls the Bravo an ideal aerospace-superiority config, which is a bald-faced lie: no air-to-air fighter which has to leave a quarter of its arsenal unused or risk departing controlled flight in the middle of combat has any business being called 'ideal'.  If you have the choice, use this loadout as a 'slashing' dogfighter, firing with the nose-guns and the engaged wing then blowing past to break contact; otherwise, avoid the loadout completely.

  The Visigoth-Charlie is what the Bravo should have been.  One of the nose-mounted LPLs is traded away for MPLs in the nose and each wing, and the aft-mounted MPL is replaced with, of all things, an SRM-4 and a ton of ammo.  This config is much, much better for what the Bravo's supposed to do, especially in terms of heat-management.  An alpha-strike generates a ten-point overheat, which is very firmly in my "Bad Thing" category, but anything less will stay on or under your capacity and still cause the other guy all manner of grief (oh, those lovely -2 TH bonuses... ;D) - you switch out one LPL for the MPLs at knife-fighting range.  The only weakness of this layout is the SRM-4 - not the best tail-gun in the L2 era, and certainly not sufficient deterrent against other Clan fighters, but enough to give pause to most light fighters (especially IS ones).

  Visigoths must have left a wide, bloody swathe behind them when they first appeared in the Inner Sphere; most IS medium and heavy fighters couldn't turn with them, and the lights lacked the armour to get past aft-mounted Clan 'medium' lasers that reach as far and hit as hard as an IS large laser.  Since then, the technological pedulum has swung back some and the Visigoth's main weakness, relatively poor armour, would have started to make itself felt; even without IS2 tech becoming widely deployed, the Successor States have always held the numerical advantage over the Clans and would exploit it ruthlessly.

  When using Visigoths in air combat, you must remember that your primary advantages are speed/agility and firepower, not stand-and-deliver toughness.  Leave mixing it up with enemy interceptors to the Batus, that's why you brought them along; what you need to do is go after the mediums and heavies that are providing them with fire-support and/or going after your own high-value targets and chew them up.  With the enemy fighter force fully engaged, use Visigoth-As to butcher their heavy assets.  In the furball, formation discipline is crucial; never leave your Point-mate, and have your Points support each other.  Most of your configs may pack rearward firepower that demands respect, but that doesn't mean that someone won't try their luck anyway - fighters like the SYD-Z4 and the Chaeronea can actually outrange your tail-guns, and those little bastards always travel in hordes that could easily swarm under and overwhelm isolated Visigoth Points.

  If you want to kill a formation of Visigoths, you have three choices: speed and firepower, speed alone, or firepower alone.  The first assumes you have something bad-ass like the -Z4 Seydlitz or certain of the heavier 'light' Clan fighters, which can get inside a Visigoth's turn while being able to hang back far enough to plink them to death without getting smacked by return fire.  The second assumes you don't care about losses, in which case you just dive right into his rearward fire-arc with an interceptor packing lots of MLs (SYZ-Z2/-Z2A Seydlitz, SL-21L Sholagar, Batu-B, I'm looking at you!) and hope the crit rolls go your way before his tail-guns burn you out of the sky.  The last is where, since you lack the agility to mix it up with the Visigoths, you don't try, instead hanging back with heavy-hitters like the Shilone or Lucifer and try to smash them out of your airspace with all those big guns, preferably by having someone lure/drive a Point or so before your muzzles.  Despite all their firepower, Visigoths are actually quite fragile.

  [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=1136.0 .

  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.  ;)

Moonsword

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #1 on: 04 February 2011, 08:28:11 »
A solid, capable all-around aerospace fighter.  It's all that and a bag of chips as a fast dogfighter, beating out its smaller competitor the Turk handily.  The Jagati is bigger but lacks the thrust curve while the Sabutai actually has less armor.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #2 on: 05 February 2011, 01:40:28 »
ah, my go to fighter. this is the first clan fighter i reach for, with the A config being my personal favourite. just a solid machine all around.

again Trace, thanks for reposting this.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #3 on: 05 February 2011, 09:52:29 »
Trace, for these Clan Omnifighters you made a revision to the originals to add the new configuration each one got in TRO: 3055U.  Do you still have those blurbs on the new variants?
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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #4 on: 05 February 2011, 14:54:56 »
  The Prime configuration mounts an LB-10X autocannon in the nose, along with three tons of ammo (allowing an ample supply of whatever ammo type the pilot needs at the moment)  ........... against ground-vehicles, a blast of LB-10X proximity-fused shells


  The Alpha profile is my personal favourite, ........  That C/ERPPC will crit any fighter in the sky, even that @!#$%*^& flying brick the Hydaspes; so will the LRM mounts (assuming the other guy doesn't pack an AMS or ECM.............. but with that said, the particle cannons and missiles of a Star of Visigoth-Alphas can give a DropShip or WarShip a brutalising perhaps better imagined than described. 


  The Visigoth-Bravo is a fairly good idea marred by shoddy execution.  A single MPL aft keeps away tail-gaters, while four LPLs - two in the nose, one in each wing - provide fearful hitting power.  Unfortunately, not a single extra heat-sink is mounted, making for a nasty eight-point overheat if all those large pulsers are used.  The fluff cites this as an 'ideal' ground-attack configuration - which is true, assuming that you can cool off after each strafing run without being molested by enemy fighters.  However, it also calls the Bravo an ideal aerospace-superiority config, which is a bald-faced lie: no air-to-air fighter which has to leave a quarter of its arsenal unused or risk departing controlled flight in the middle of combat has any business being called 'ideal'.  If you have the choice, use this loadout as a 'slashing' dogfighter, firing with the nose-guns and the engaged wing then blowing past to break contact; otherwise, avoid the loadout completely.

  The Visigoth-Charlie is what the Bravo should have been.  One of the nose-mounted LPLs is traded away for MPLs in the nose and each wing, and the aft-mounted MPL is replaced with, of all things, an SRM-4 and a ton of ammo.  This config is much, much better for what the Bravo's supposed to do, especially in terms of heat-management.  An alpha-strike generates a ten-point overheat, which is very firmly in my "Bad Thing" category, but anything less will stay on or under your capacity and still cause the other guy all manner of grief (oh, those lovely -2 TH bonuses... ;D) - you switch out one LPL for the MPLs at knife-fighting range.  The only weakness of this layout is the SRM-4 - not the best tail-gun in the L2 era, and certainly not sufficient deterrent against other Clan fighters, but enough to give pause to most light fighters (especially IS ones).

1st off, Great article.   [applause]
That said, you might check out the areas I highlighted, they don't really apply now under TW cluster rolls damage allocation in 5 point groups and automatic usage of Cluster & Ultra fire modes.


I disagree on the use of the Bravo config,  I don't mind the overheating because I have to assume that I will not always get lined up for a perfect (single row of hexes) shot of all 4,  in fact, MOST the time I probably won't.
Actually, I feel the B & C could have been combined into a single model,  put 3 LPL in the nose for long range shots and then pack on MPLs to the Wings/Aft to flavor for when your in close.
It would have made for a better over all firing pattern....... IMHO.


I'm not a fan of the Prime or newer versions but the A-B-C models will always find a place in my forces.

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Trace Coburn

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #5 on: 05 February 2011, 20:45:26 »
Trace, for these Clan Omnifighters you made a revision to the originals to add the new configuration each one got in TRO: 3055U.  Do you still have those blurbs on the new variants?
  I believe so - I'll have to check.  Assuming I do, they'll be folded into each OmniFighter article as it's reposted.  ;)

  Oddly, though, to my knowledge the Visigoth didn't get any new configs in '55U.  Who knows: maybe the Clans had an attack of common-sense and decided they didn't need to fix what wasn't broken.  :D

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #6 on: 05 February 2011, 21:02:45 »
Apparently the Bears did think it was broken, and called their fix the Ostrogoth  ;)

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Trace Coburn

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #7 on: 05 February 2011, 21:11:40 »
Apparently the Bears did think it was broken, and called their fix the Ostrogoth  ;)

Cheers,
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  It was the Jihad, LastChanceCav - everything was 'broken' around that time.  Wasn't that the whole point of a period when "everything blows up everywhere forever"?   ;D

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #8 on: 05 February 2011, 21:33:19 »
Yeah, except that unlike a lot of "fixes" and "replacements" around here, the Bears actually got it right.  The Ostrogoth is significantly tougher and has a few more tons of pod space even after accounting for the Visigoth's fixed heat sinks and they did it without stripping the gas tank.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #9 on: 05 February 2011, 21:42:22 »
Yeah, except that unlike a lot of "fixes" and "replacements" around here, the Bears actually got it right.  The Ostrogoth is significantly tougher and has a few more tons of pod space even after accounting for the Visigoth's fixed heat sinks and they did it without stripping the gas tank.
  ... sounds like I have my first victim candidate for when I start writing entirely new articles.  :D  (Once the reposts are complete, that is.)

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #10 on: 05 February 2011, 21:46:37 »
The heavy use of LRMs is interesting, as is the heat balance.  I'm looking forward to your take on it.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #11 on: 14 February 2011, 18:31:48 »
  I believe so - I'll have to check.  Assuming I do, they'll be folded into each OmniFighter article as it's reposted.  ;)

  Oddly, though, to my knowledge the Visigoth didn't get any new configs in '55U.  Who knows: maybe the Clans had an attack of common-sense and decided they didn't need to fix what wasn't broken.  :D

There should be a D config with dual UAC/10, 4 tons of ammo, and two HMLs all mounted in the nose.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #12 on: 20 December 2011, 15:30:18 »
It has been some days since we covered the Turk E, so let us move on to Visigoth E.

Looking at the record sheet of the E, it seems to concentrate on putting out many clusters. So, my conclusion would be that it is meant to hunt light ASFs where the clusters will allow for many threshold hits.


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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #13 on: 20 December 2011, 16:29:30 »
Although there's many medium and even heavy fighters which are going to be looking at a threshold from those ERMLs, and if 6 Visigoth Es are used together in SO's squadron rules, the laser bay will Fatal Threshold every canon design, even with an average number of hits.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #14 on: 20 December 2011, 19:38:08 »
I don't dabble in AeroTech, but even then, comparing the Visigoth E to all its other configurations I didn't need to look at the BV to realise that this bird is one of the true winners of the TW update.

I want that E configuration on a 'Mech!

(Edit: which would be the Kingfisher F. And that's one great 'Mech. But look, it weighs 1.5x as much as the Visigoth E. The E rocks. And I'll be quiet now, lest I embarrass myself beyond redemption.)
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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #15 on: 20 December 2011, 20:54:55 »
Massed ER Mediums. When a Clanner wants to say, "We don't care that you are armoured like a small DropShip."

What can I say? This matches my belief that Clan mediums and heavies don't emphasise medium range combat enough. At practical combat ranges it will have a targeting bonus, practical alpha capability, and the mobility to put it on target. The only shame is that the ERMLs are wing mounted. In normal combat it means 3 lasers and a HAG, badly over heat sinked. Of course in squadrons it means wing of doom.

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #16 on: 22 December 2011, 22:14:32 »
Yeah, except that unlike a lot of "fixes" and "replacements" around here, the Bears actually got it right.  The Ostrogoth is significantly tougher and has a few more tons of pod space even after accounting for the Visigoth's fixed heat sinks and they did it without stripping the gas tank.
Are you making this comparison based just on stats or also on BV?  By BV, I'd still take the Visigoth any day.
« Last Edit: 23 December 2011, 02:37:35 by RedDevilCG »

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Re: Fighter of the Week, Issue #005 (repost) - Visigoth
« Reply #17 on: 22 December 2011, 23:13:01 »
I was talking about the stats.  They actually produced a worthy successor that is a solid improvement on the Visigoth's performance without dropping the ball somewhere.  Yes, that's pricy in BV terms.

 

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