Snipe Racer VTOL

[Lagrange]

The Snipe Racer VTOL is, as it's name suggests, an excellent VTOL for racing.  Despite a build to military standards it's completely unarmed and the primary design for a VTOL racing circuit.   It is possible to make a faster VTOL with 3025 tech, but you have to give up on the minimal armor or use a supercharger which is radically more expensive.  This design was settled on as the best tradeoff of cost and survivability for VTOL racing.  Completely innocent, we just love VTOL races, particularly ones where pilots have to make many tight turns on a complex course.

The Snipe Racer is also, as the other part of it's name suggests, an excellent bomb delivery vehicle.  Strapping a bomb to it the movement become 26/39.  The maximum TMM for moving 25+ hexes is +6, so the Snipe Racer VTOL can move 25 hexes with a single turn to get a +7 modifier for targeting, enough that there is a reasonable chance that the bombed unit (implicitly at range 0) has a pretty significant difficulty returning fire and other units can easily hit impossible target numbers.  Of course, if it's hit, the Snipe Racer is easily destroyed by all but the lightest weapons (AC/2 or MG).  For a mission profile of "drop 1 bomb" that's typically good enough.  The damage from a FAE is 20/10/5 with just a +2 penalty to hit ignoring target and terrain, so success in bombing is realistic and meaningful. 

Incidentally, the BV with the FAE bomb is 85 and the FAE bomb costs 18K so 20 of these have a modestly less BV than a 3025 Assault Mech, can deliver 400 points of AE damage, and cost about 1/6th the price all-up.   If you can get a racing league on world and borrow the frames in an invasion situation, the price of the bombs alone is another factor of 4 cheaper.  The quartermaster smiles.

Code: [Select]

Snipe Racer VTOL

Mass: 5 tons
Movement Type: VTOL
Power Plant: 85 Fuel Cell
Cruising Speed: 291.6 kph
Maximum Speed: 442.8 kph
Armor: Standard
Armament:
Manufacturer: Unknown
     Primary Factory: Unknown
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 3025
Tech Rating/Availability: E/X-D-D-C
Cost: 63,972 C-bills

Type: Snipe Racer
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Movement Type: VTOL
Tonnage: 5
Battle Value: 48

Equipment                                          Mass
Internal Structure                                  0.5
Engine                        85 Fuel Cell            3
Cruising MP: 27
Flank MP: 41
Heat Sinks:                   1                       0
Control Equipment:                                  0.5
Lift Equipment:                                     0.5
Power Amplifier:                                    0.0
Armor Factor                  8                     0.5

                          Internal   Armor   
                          Structure  Value   
     Front                   1         2     
     R/L Side               1/1       1/1   
     Rear                    1         2     
     Rotor                   1         2     


Weapons
and Ammo              Location    Tonnage   
<none>


[Daryk]

I'm getting 35/53, and haven't even managed to figure out a VTOL Jet Booster yet? ???

[Lagrange]

I'm getting 35/53, and haven't even managed to figure out a VTOL Jet Booster yet? ???

With 3025 tech?

You can get an XL up to 35/53 and an XXL up to 44/66, but those are developments for a later age.  I'm not sure either is worth it for what I'm looking for though: a cheap civilianish design that turns into something with teeth if an invasion occurs.  The cost here is 64K, while the XL would cost 235K and the XXL 1363K.  At those prices the AE damage seems rather expensive.

A benchmark here is the Zero Support VTOL which does 130 AE damage at a cost of 250K after a 127K refit.  2 Snipe Racers dropping a total of 7 FAE bombs has a similar price and AE damage total. 

Could the Snipe Racers typically survive ~3.5 bombing runs?  I'd tend to expect 'yes' against many enemies with the use of swarm tactics.   For example, 20 Snipe Racers fly in a stack from elevations 6 to 25, all of them swarming past the Atlas and dropping their bomb in a single turn.  The Atlas has a target number of 11 (base gunnery 4) with 7 weapons giving an expected .6 hits (~= kills).  In the meantime, 20 bombs falling with a target number of 6 will do an expected 289 damage from hits, plus a bit more from near scatter misses---the Atlas will be wrecked and very lucky to limp away.

I'm not recommending this for friendly gameplay---it's a super unfair tactic.  At the same time, it seems like a quite credible defensive force, since you can eliminate an assault mech for a price about 1/24th the cost.  From the viewpoint of force design that's quite potent.   It's even superior to the Zero Support VTOL approach which is in turn superior to ASF bombing with lawn dart checks.

The drawback I see from a force design perspective is that the Snipe Racer is a waste of a transported vehicle bay.  You could carry as cargo of course, but I foresee defensive deployment (i.e. defending major cities on a planet) rather than offensively due to the transport inefficiency.

[Daryk]

Ah, missed the 3025 bit... though I'll say a Jet Booster is 3025 tech (it was introduced in 3009).

[Lagrange]

Ah, missed the 3025 bit... though I'll say a Jet Booster is 3025 tech (it was introduced in 3009).

It could be done.  And, on a straight-away, it would allow for a faster racer.

But there are drawbacks here. 

As a racer, you have to lose all your armor to provide the necessary tonnage, and the cost then increases by a factor of 16.   But, if you have a curvy track all attempts to use the jet booster require side slip rolls as per TW page 67.  These will be failed, and the odds of survival are pretty low.   So the net effect is a massive increase in cost to create a suicide machine.  Racers may be crazy, but maybe not that crazy.

As a military bomb dropper, the critical thing is a cruise of 27, since with a bomb it becomes 26, and with a turn you can cover 25 hexes, still generating the maximum movement modifier.  Speeds faster than that are ok of course, but don't affect survivability that much.  Speeds lower than that keep you from being able to line up well vs a target, since the VTOL will rarely start perfectly lined up against its target.   Using flank speed (possibly with a VTOL jet booster) makes bombing success more difficult because of sideslips.

Overall, the drawbacks don't seem worthwhile from either view.

[Daryk]

Fair points! :)

[Lagrange]

I looked through past custom VTOL designs (linking for reference).  These seem to achieve good speed--19/29+ML, 23/35+Recon Camera, or 25/38(50)+Recon Camera (your design).

Using hardpoint items and accepting the degradation in speed implied by that seems to be counterintuitively effective.  For example, you could also use this one as a 26/39+Recon Camera.

[Daryk]

Thanks for digging that one up!  I've added it to my sig block... :)