Author Topic: Did the Successor States have an unofficial agreement to dial back on warships?  (Read 9916 times)

Dayton3

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I have a question:   Could dropships and aerospace fighters even do the kind of maneuvers they perform in Battletech with nothing more fusion reactors to power them?

In the book "Mirror Matter" Robert L. Forward maintained that the ONLY way you could have "space fighters" was if they had antimatter boosted power sources.     

Daryk

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You have to remember that BattleTech fusion reactors produce somewhere north of what pure matter/anti-matter conversion would.  It's one those "don't kill the cat girls" things about the universe.

Charistoph

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I have a question:   Could dropships and aerospace fighters even do the kind of maneuvers they perform in Battletech with nothing more fusion reactors to power them?

In the book "Mirror Matter" Robert L. Forward maintained that the ONLY way you could have "space fighters" was if they had antimatter boosted power sources.   

Well, as soon as we can make their fusion engines we would be able to properly answer that question.
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Dayton3

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Well from what I've read,   based on physics as we understand them today,  you would NEVER be able to build a 100 ton Stuka powered by a fusion reactor and five tons of fuel.

Instead it would be more like a 100 ton Stuka with 20 tons of that mass being the engine and 60 tons of that mass being fuel.

Daryk

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Yep... that's about right for real world math.  Jump drives are only the surface of completely unrealistic tech in BattleTech...

MoneyLovinOgre4Hire

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Didn't Cray say that the engine output on the average ASF was similar in scale to the entire North American power grid?
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Daryk

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If Cray said it, I'm sure it was more than that...

Jellico

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Those uses dont have as much relevance when it comes to spaceships against planets. Its still much cheaper to build defenses like missile silos. A Great big battleship cant take over a planet by itself. Their holds are filled with military forces. Firing at entrenched positions misses the point that battletech avoids those. From mechanized infantry, armored vehicles, battlemechs, aerospace forces, dropships. About the only static objectives are ones you dont want to fire on, mostly the infrastructure like battlemech factories.

Now if you want to blow up cities sure warships are great. You could just make unarmed drone ships and send them into kamikaze runs and have massive damage that can wrecks planets.

Warships costs Billions of C-bills. Battlemechs cost Millions. Cheaper combat vehicles costs less than a million.

The Jihad VS Warships can pretty much just be explained as Word of Blake nuking every ship.

In real life World War 1 was shown to have a massive military buildup and then quickly turn into anti-climaxes. The Battle of Jutland in 1917 was the largest concentration of battleships and by the end of it battleships as a factor. They still made them at a far smaller size for various reasons. a Large factor was proliferation of torpedoes and carriers. a much cheaper and smaller carrier could launch planes capable of destroying a battleship. Battleships never became cost-effective.

Now in universe its mostly about the loss of military grade shipyards to produce the warships. Jumpship shipyards are just transport vessels and even those are extremely valuable.

To clear warships are not useless. Even a weak warship would still be useful for fire support. The thing is the resources to make even a single warship could instead build an army, and not every planet has any defense at all let alone Warships.

If battleships were cost ineffective after WWI why did they keep building them? And no they were not hidebound idiots.


WarShips are the ultimate expression of concentrated offensive firepower in Battletech. Nothing kills a large craft faster. Without DropShips and JumpShips you don't have spaceflight. End of game.

Now clearly other platforms can perform this role too. Many times they are preferable. But the key word here is concentrated. A gunship can get in, apply firepower and get out faster than any ASF/DropShip combination.

Additionally a WarShip has better persistence. Small craft simply can't stay on station as long. Either through large cargo bays or the ability to take punishment.

Now for all the good a WarShip is not a panacea. They are stupidly expensive. Require massive infrastructure. Potentially easy to kill.

I tend to think of force structures in terms of infantry, cavalry, and archers. You need infantry. Cavalry and archers are nice force multipliers if you can get them. Well a WarShip is that trebuchet. Expensive. A pain in the neck to use. But real handy if you can manage one.

Daryk

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*snip*
Nothing kills a large craft faster.
*snip*
Faster than nukes?  ???

Minemech

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Faster than nukes?  ???
It takes a surprisingly long time for a nuke to leave one system and enter another on its own power. It takes ridiculous planning and precision for it to hit the large craft it was aimed at in the other system.

Daryk

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Clearly you're not a Taurian...  :D

Dayton3

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Yep... that's about right for real world math.  Jump drives are only the surface of completely unrealistic tech in BattleTech...

What's the rest of it?   Legitimately curious.   


Daryk

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Well, to start:
Fusion rockets exceed matter/anti-matter conversion efficiency
Myomer-like materials won't have a density sufficient for 'mechs sized as they are
Armor is vastly more effective against a huge variety of types of damage than any one material could be
Spacecraft armor is (at best) millimeters thick with the above performance
Weapon ranges (need I say more)
The disconnect between missile munitions at the vehicle and infantry scales (specifically for the same weight of missile)
Energy storage technology has ridiculous (and inconsistent) energy density (micro power packs are the worst here)
Hand held energy weapons (compare the energy required to damage a human being to any even remotely realistic efficiency, and anyone firing one should cook)

The list goes on...

Dayton3

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Well, to start:
Fusion rockets exceed matter/anti-matter conversion efficiency
Myomer-like materials won't have a density sufficient for 'mechs sized as they are
Armor is vastly more effective against a huge variety of types of damage than any one material could be
Spacecraft armor is (at best) millimeters thick with the above performance
Weapon ranges (need I say more)
The disconnect between missile munitions at the vehicle and infantry scales (specifically for the same weight of missile)
Energy storage technology has ridiculous (and inconsistent) energy density (micro power packs are the worst here)
Hand held energy weapons (compare the energy required to damage a human being to any even remotely realistic efficiency, and anyone firing one should cook)

The list goes on...

Good list.

Though to me I know we don't know how a real faster than light drive would actually work but I do like BTs huge restrictions on the K-F drives.     It taking at minimum hours (and often days) to charge up for use.    Effectively a 30 hour jump distance limit.

Note,  I had an idea for a Star Trek Romulan War era technology and fiction once and one of the limitations I put on the warp drives of that era was that ships had to basically sit still and divert all their power to their engines in order to jump  to warp.

What I found out with some impromptu back of the envelope war gaming was that this kind of restriction (like the K-F drive has) would make even the mightiest warships hideously vulnerable.

In BT,    you could have a giant million ton heavily armed and armored warship and all you would need is a few fighters or armed dropships following it to the jump point.    Once it stops and begins charging its drive you simply start salvoing missiles (probably with nuclear warheads) at what is now essentially a sitting duck target.

Daryk

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I like BattleTech's  FTL implementation too.  As for stopping at the jump point, there's no reason to.  The WarShip could charge its drive with its power plant on the outbound leg and jump as soon as it hits the limit.

chaosticket

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If battleships were cost ineffective after WWI why did they keep building them? And no they were not hidebound idiots.


WarShips are the ultimate expression of concentrated offensive firepower in Battletech. Nothing kills a large craft faster. Without DropShips and JumpShips you don't have spaceflight. End of game.

Now clearly other platforms can perform this role too. Many times they are preferable. But the key word here is concentrated. A gunship can get in, apply firepower and get out faster than any ASF/DropShip combination.

Additionally a WarShip has better persistence. Small craft simply can't stay on station as long. Either through large cargo bays or the ability to take punishment.

Now for all the good a WarShip is not a panacea. They are stupidly expensive. Require massive infrastructure. Potentially easy to kill.

I tend to think of force structures in terms of infantry, cavalry, and archers. You need infantry. Cavalry and archers are nice force multipliers if you can get them. Well a WarShip is that trebuchet. Expensive. A pain in the neck to use. But real handy if you can manage one.

Why did they keep building battleships? well they kind of didnt. Many were lost in WW1, others were scuttled, and some were remodeled. Few new battleships were actualy constructed. There were multiple treaties to limit navies especially battleship numbers, weapon caliber, and tonnage. Some tried to skirt this by making things like "pocket battleships" (really just battlecruisers) using more efficient methods to have smaller, faster, and still with armor and weapons. Eventually the treaties became null and void as eventually nations just ignored it. the last battleship was made in 1944 and its mission was shore bombardment.

WW2 battleship effectiveness was abysmal. High value targets that could be taken down by any ship or plane carrying torpedoes or bombs (and many were).

In game terms it would be like every single hit has a chance to instantly destroy you by getting into some weak point triggering an ammunition explosion, a reactor core overload, or engine failure.

The WOB Jihad had great usage of Nuclear weapons. When relatively common Aerospace Fighters are carrying tactical nukes at something around 1/1000th of the cost of a warship. After it most fleets had been devastated and the need to rebuild infrastructure was far more important that making more warships to fight non-existent battles against other crippled nations.
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Charistoph

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Well from what I've read,   based on physics as we understand them today,  you would NEVER be able to build a 100 ton Stuka powered by a fusion reactor and five tons of fuel.

Instead it would be more like a 100 ton Stuka with 20 tons of that mass being the engine and 60 tons of that mass being fuel.

Yeah, that's physics as we know them today.  We can't even create a sustainable fusion reactor that generates a positive energy flow, much less a 19 ton reactor/engine combo capable of putting a 100 ton craft through 4gs of acceleration.  Not too long ago there were things like the sound barrier, flight, and the steam engine that were beyond the physics knowledge of before their time, and there is still so much we don't know.

------------------

Oddly enough, it took events like the Battle of Coral Sea to demonstrate just how outclassed the battleship was to airpower.  Before that, even Yamamoto (the Pearl Harbor attack planner) believed in the supremacy of the battleship, even though he demonstrated one of the greatest examples of the superiority of the carrier. 

To be fair, it took the planes of WW2 to be able to make the carrier a superior force.  The planes of WW1 were a joke and weren't capable of any effective projection of power, and the navy admirals who rose commanding gunships had a hard time believing in the cost effectiveness of using aircraft against their beloved ships.
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victor_shaw

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Why did they keep building battleships? well they kind of didnt. Many were lost in WW1, others were scuttled, and some were remodeled. Few new battleships were actualy constructed. There were multiple treaties to limit navies especially battleship numbers, weapon caliber, and tonnage. Some tried to skirt this by making things like "pocket battleships" (really just battlecruisers) using more efficient methods to have smaller, faster, and still with armor and weapons. Eventually the treaties became null and void as eventually nations just ignored it. the last battleship was made in 1944 and its mission was shore bombardment.

This is a major misconception brought on by simplified history books. The reason there where not many battleships built during WW2 was because most of the main fleets had large numbers of them already, and it was always easier to upgrade these ships. then build new one. Contrary to popular believe, many battleships where involved in ship to ship combat in the Pacific. As for the Atlantic, the reason for the lack of ship to ship combat was mostly because Hitler was a infantry private and did not understand sea warfare. Add to this the huge gap in size between the British and the German navies and there you go.

WW2 battleship effectiveness was abysmal. High value targets that could be taken down by any ship or plane carrying torpedoes or bombs (and many were).

Ok, this is just utterly wrong. Few battleships where taken out by just a few torpedoes or bombs, examples: Bismark- took large numbers of 15in shell hit and multiple torpedo hits and still did not sink until the crew scuttled her. Tirpitz- Required a bomb make to destroy dams to sink it. The Yamato and Musashi both survived multiple air attacks during the war. Yamato required an attack by 386 American carrier aircraft during Operation Ten-Go, receiving 10 torpedo and 7 bomb hits before capsizing. Musashi was sunk 24 October during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, taking 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits before it was sunk. and these attacks where only possible because the US had achieved almost total air superiority at that point. As for the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone seems to forget that the ships defenses where for the most part unman during the opening of the attack and the fleet was anchored with no air-support, most of the ships sunk were either ships that had not been upgraded yet or took extremely unlucky hits. Add to this that all ships except the Nevada (which took very little damage) where stationary targets, unable to maneuver and avoid the attacks.

In game terms it would be like every single hit has a chance to instantly destroy you by getting into some weak point triggering an ammunition explosion, a reactor core overload, or engine failure.

You have never played battlespace/aerospace 2 have you. It takes forever to destroy most warships with anything less then an equally powerful warship. As for the Dire Wolf, the ship was neither destroyed or crippled by the fighter hitting it and was in full working order. The only reason the attacked did anything is because the ilKhan was killed in the attack. This lead to the Khans returing to the clan world to elect a new ilKhan nothing more, since the planet has already been conquered. If I remember correctly it took less then a day to repair the ship. Mostly just replacing the destroyed window.

The WOB Jihad had great usage of Nuclear weapons. When relatively common Aerospace Fighters are carrying tactical nukes at something around 1/1000th of the cost of a warship. After it most fleets had been devastated and the need to rebuild infrastructure was far more important that making more warships to fight non-existent battles against other crippled nations.

As for the nuke option. It is well within a Warships capabilities to survive all but the biggest nuke strikes (Santa Ana (50 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):100(9+)) vs armor on Texas class: 234-342. Add to this that these missiles can be shot down before they hit(see below), and these are huge warship grade missiles not the type that fighters can carry. So no, one nuke is not a guaranteed kill on a warship. As for fighter carry nukes. Only the Alamo my be carried by a fighter(Alamo (5 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):10(10+)). So again no a fighter is not going to make short work of a capital ship. The biggest nuke in the game (Peacemaker (500 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):1000(8+)) is a 150 ton missile the size of battlemech coming at you.

Total Warfare says capital missiles are immune to standard AMS. In Strategic Operations p.96-97, the Advanced Point Defense rules allow you shoot down the missiles by doing damage with point defense weapons equal to the damage inflicted by the missile. If you damage the missile but don't reach the destruction threshold, instead you add a +1 to its to-hit roll per 10 standard points of damage inflicted on it. If the to-hit number reaches 13 or higher, the missile automatically misses.

victor_shaw

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As for the reason behind the lack of warships.
It's simple, they don't fit the narrative they are trying to tell.
There is little reason to try to come-up with an in world reason since there isn't one.
They need the successor states to be easy pickings or the story doesn't work, that's all there is to it.
It's the same reason that after 150 years the Innersphere is still not able to mass-produce invasion era clan-tech.
And one of the reason that the story has gotten so contrived over the years.
So this discussion in pointless.
Its like asking why there is no FTL travel in Dune without the spice when they had FTL travel before they found Arrakis.
or why you need astropaths to travel the warp in war-hammer 40k, when they didn't need them before the Imperium.
The story needs it to be the case so that's why it is.

Dayton3

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Note:  In my proposed "rethink" of Battletech for a proposed television series,  I included there still being a handful of warships among the Successor states in the year 3045.

Federated Suns (FC)                        1
Capellan Confederation                    2
Free Worlds League                         4
Lyran Commonwealth (FC)               3
Draconis Combine                            2

Of course these pretty much spend their times in orbit around capital worlds or other vital locations like Hesperus.

Also

Wolf's Dragoons (secretly)                6
Comstar  (secretly)                         20-25 (roughly)

Alsadius

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Why did they keep building battleships? well they kind of didnt. Many were lost in WW1, others were scuttled, and some were remodeled. Few new battleships were actualy constructed. There were multiple treaties to limit navies especially battleship numbers, weapon caliber, and tonnage. Some tried to skirt this by making things like "pocket battleships" (really just battlecruisers) using more efficient methods to have smaller, faster, and still with armor and weapons. Eventually the treaties became null and void as eventually nations just ignored it. the last battleship was made in 1944 and its mission was shore bombardment.

WW2 battleship effectiveness was abysmal. High value targets that could be taken down by any ship or plane carrying torpedoes or bombs (and many were).

In game terms it would be like every single hit has a chance to instantly destroy you by getting into some weak point triggering an ammunition explosion, a reactor core overload, or engine failure.

The WOB Jihad had great usage of Nuclear weapons. When relatively common Aerospace Fighters are carrying tactical nukes at something around 1/1000th of the cost of a warship. After it most fleets had been devastated and the need to rebuild infrastructure was far more important that making more warships to fight non-existent battles against other crippled nations.

Battleships were built in fairly large numbers between the wars - it wasn't a pre-WW1 naval race, but they added up fairly quickly, especially given the naval arms limitation treaties. The Brits built Hood, Nelson, and Rodney before the treaties and four KGVs afterwards. The Americans built three Colorados, two North Carolinas, four South Dakotas, and four Iowas. The Germans built two Scharnhorsts and two Bismarcks, the Japanese two Nagatos and two Yamatos, the Italians three Littorios, and the French two Dunkerques and two Richelieus. That's 35 battleships between the major powers, and in terms of combined performance they could probably have beaten all pre-WW1 capital ships combined. (To be fair, some of those were laid down in WW1, and the Hood was nominally a battlecruiser. But they were all finished post-war, and Hood was a battleship in all but name.)

And while battleships weren't the primary striking arm in WW2, they did a lot of effective combat - gun duels were fairly common in the Mediterranean and more than a few happened in the Pacific, and the major air victories over them(most notably Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and Force Z) were all considered huge tactical victories because the ships were real, important military targets. They didn't clash gun-to-gun as often as people might have expected them to, but they provided local surface dominance that was extremely important to a wide range of roles, from convoying to bombardment to carrier protection. If I was a fleet planner in 1930, even knowing what I know now about how WW2 would be fought in broad strokes, I'd want to have at least a handful of battleships in my fleet(maybe one for every two carriers?).

Also, in Battletech terms, every shot does have a chance to trigger an ammo explosion or an engine failure. TACs exist, and we still use mechs. (Nukes, admittedly, are a bigger problem - I don't think they're really compatible with the setting BT wants to be, so they get ignored as often as we can)

chaosticket

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This is a major misconception brought on by simplified history books. The reason there where not many battleships built during WW2 was because most of the main fleets had large numbers of them already, and it was always easier to upgrade these ships. then build new one. Contrary to popular believe, many battleships where involved in ship to ship combat in the Pacific. As for the Atlantic, the reason for the lack of ship to ship combat was mostly because Hitler was a infantry private and did not understand sea warfare. Add to this the huge gap in size between the British and the German navies and there you go.

Ok, this is just utterly wrong. Few battleships where taken out by just a few torpedoes or bombs, examples: Bismark- took large numbers of 15in shell hit and multiple torpedo hits and still did not sink until the crew scuttled her. Tirpitz- Required a bomb make to destroy dams to sink it. The Yamato and Musashi both survived multiple air attacks during the war. Yamato required an attack by 386 American carrier aircraft during Operation Ten-Go, receiving 10 torpedo and 7 bomb hits before capsizing. Musashi was sunk 24 October during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, taking 17 bomb and 19 torpedo hits before it was sunk. and these attacks where only possible because the US had achieved almost total air superiority at that point. As for the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyone seems to forget that the ships defenses where for the most part unman during the opening of the attack and the fleet was anchored with no air-support, most of the ships sunk were either ships that had not been upgraded yet or took extremely unlucky hits. Add to this that all ships except the Nevada (which took very little damage) where stationary targets, unable to maneuver and avoid the attacks.

You have never played battlespace/aerospace 2 have you. It takes forever to destroy most warships with anything less then an equally powerful warship. As for the Dire Wolf, the ship was neither destroyed or crippled by the fighter hitting it and was in full working order. The only reason the attacked did anything is because the ilKhan was killed in the attack. This lead to the Khans returing to the clan world to elect a new ilKhan nothing more, since the planet has already been conquered. If I remember correctly it took less then a day to repair the ship. Mostly just replacing the destroyed window.

As for the nuke option. It is well within a Warships capabilities to survive all but the biggest nuke strikes (Santa Ana (50 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):100(9+)) vs armor on Texas class: 234-342. Add to this that these missiles can be shot down before they hit(see below), and these are huge warship grade missiles not the type that fighters can carry. So no, one nuke is not a guaranteed kill on a warship. As for fighter carry nukes. Only the Alamo my be carried by a fighter(Alamo (5 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):10(10+)). So again no a fighter is not going to make short work of a capital ship. The biggest nuke in the game (Peacemaker (500 KT) AS2 Damage(crit):1000(8+)) is a 150 ton missile the size of battlemech coming at you.

Total Warfare says capital missiles are immune to standard AMS. In Strategic Operations p.96-97, the Advanced Point Defense rules allow you shoot down the missiles by doing damage with point defense weapons equal to the damage inflicted by the missile. If you damage the missile but don't reach the destruction threshold, instead you add a +1 to its to-hit roll per 10 standard points of damage inflicted on it. If the to-hit number reaches 13 or higher, the missile automatically misses.

You just skipped over the parts about ships being remodeled or leftover WW1 models.

In terms of NEW battleships built DURING world war 2 were in the single digits and most of those already in construction beforehand. Japan had a navy focused doctrine and had made a whopping 2 new Yamato class battleships. There were a small number of battlecruisers and battleships made between WW1 and WW2.

Battletech armor rules have Armor as Hit Points for simplicity. Again it might not be fun if every time you get shot you risk a critical hit immobilizing your legs or an AC-2 piercing your chest armor and damaging your engine. I find it weird that "Armor-Piercing" and "fin stablized" autocannon ammunition are advanced technologies when now we have depleted uranium fin stabilized discarding sabot ammunition as standard and the battletech universe has most worlds being set up as equal to the real world.

I dont know every game system there is but Battlefleet Gothic was a good one. Massive ships with up to millions of crew members and they could be destroyed in a single engagement. Critical hits from every single attack are possible even before "piercing" armor.

If youre arguing that games rules make Battletech Warships just short of invincible, then theres no changing your mind. Arguing realism in games is a age old problem. Rule of Cool usually takes precedence .
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chaosticket

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Is anyone arguing over the fundamental points?

#1 Warships became Lostech during the Succession Wars, with only the Clans and Comstar still having functional Warships, and then it was the Clans that made NEW Warships as far as i know.

#2 Warships can only be made in advanced, costly, and special shipyards in a setting where regular space shipyards are extremely advanced, costly, and exist in small numbers.

#3 there are weapons to destroy Warships that dont require another Warship.

During and after the Clan Invasion Warships became more important as now the technology was in the Great Houses' hands. After the Jihad it was impractical to think of making space fleets when many planets became atomic, plagues wastelands.

Dark Age early on Warships were very important as almost none were in action. By 3150, I dont know. I dont think you can mass produce massive spaceships in a few years, especially in the battletech universe. Even a very small Warship would be almost lost technology and Dark Age is about being Faux-3025.
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Dayton3

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Did the Clans produce many warships during their so called Golden Century?    IIRC the numbers correctly 402 warships left with Kerensky during the Exodus.    Presumably at least a few of these broke down during the long voyage without shipyard maintenance and had to be abandoned and destroyed.

When it comes to the total numbers of Clan warships at the start of the invasion I don't remember in total many more than a few hundred.    With the Snow Raven fleet having the most (in the 40s IIRC) and that the Snow Ravens prided themselves as having more warships than the next two largest Clan fleets combined.

But aside from the Snow Ravens,  didn't almost all of the Clans have a dim view of warship combat as they are not really made for individual warrior dueling?

ActionButler

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You would think that a warship would be completely anathema to a faction that is 1) primarily based on single, face-to-face combat and 2) is also VERY limited in the volume of natural resources available.

HOWEVER, the existence of the Leviathan would suggest that there weren't quite as anti-warship as they probably ought to have been. 
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Charistoph

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But aside from the Snow Ravens,  didn't almost all of the Clans have a dim view of warship combat as they are not really made for individual warrior dueling?

The Mechwarriors and Elementals tended to.  The pilots generally had a different point of view.
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Vition2

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Did the Clans produce many warships during their so called Golden Century?    IIRC the numbers correctly 402 warships left with Kerensky during the Exodus.    Presumably at least a few of these broke down during the long voyage without shipyard maintenance and had to be abandoned and destroyed.

Most warships the clans built seemed to have actually been built during the Political Century and are as follows:
Fredasa       14+
Peregrine      2-4+ (stated as "a few")
Carrack        2+ (unknown number but SO states they were the first warships built by the Diamond Sharks and Nova Cats)
Molniya        1+ (first warship built by the Wolves according to SO)
Corone         1+ (first warship built by the Snow Ravens according to SO)
York          12+
Nightlord      8+

Leviathan      2 (built during the invasion era, 3rd built in the Inner Sphere)

*Everything has "+" as we don't know what was lost during this period, but it's not factoring into my following summary.

This is a total of around 21 million tons of warships, with potential for more, and a total of at least 40 warships.  Not a lot by the SLDF's armada, but about 10% that which left with Kerensky (though tonnage-wise, probably closer to 5%ish)

marcussmythe

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Most warships the clans built seemed to have actually been built during the Political Century and are as follows:
Fredasa       14+
Peregrine      2-4+ (stated as "a few")
Carrack        2+ (unknown number but SO states they were the first warships built by the Diamond Sharks and Nova Cats)
Molniya        1+ (first warship built by the Wolves according to SO)
Corone         1+ (first warship built by the Snow Ravens according to SO)
York          12+
Nightlord      8+

Leviathan      2 (built during the invasion era, 3rd built in the Inner Sphere)

*Everything has "+" as we don't know what was lost during this period, but it's not factoring into my following summary.

This is a total of around 21 million tons of warships, with potential for more, and a total of at least 40 warships.  Not a lot by the SLDF's armada, but about 10% that which left with Kerensky (though tonnage-wise, probably closer to 5%ish)

Vition - thank you for compiling that.  Thats... really an amazing accomplishment by the Clans, given their population, resource base, (often) marginally habitable worlds, second exodus, etc. etc. etc. 

Dayton3

  • Lieutenant
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  • Posts: 925
It would seem odd for the Clans to build warships anyway.    One of the overarching reasons for their dueling culture and emphasis on individual combat was to conserve resources.    People forget that the Clan worlds are resource poor.    And warships are a staggering resource investment.

smdvogrin

  • Corporal
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  • Posts: 85
It would seem odd for the Clans to build warships anyway.    One of the overarching reasons for their dueling culture and emphasis on individual combat was to conserve resources.    People forget that the Clan worlds are resource poor.    And warships are a staggering resource investment.

On the other hand, if they were serious about someday returning to the Inner Sphere, they had no way of knowing that the Succession Wars would wipe out the house Warship fleets -  they would have to be prepared to face off against Warships.