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. ;)