BattleTech - The Board Game of Armored Combat
BattleTech Game Systems => Aerospace Combat => Topic started by: mrbooth on 23 October 2015, 16:55:41
-
So with the release of XTRO Republic III I have to ask who is responsible for this beast? Because you sir I like your style. My first thougbt is this thing can take just about anything you can think to throw at it and just smile and say nice try.
-
So for the money impaird, any hints about it? what makes it so terrible beyond the fact that it's about 1 million tons bigger than anything else
-
My question is how far off of the stats to the Leviathan Prime are these?
-
So for the money impaird, any hints about it? what makes it so terrible beyond the fact that it's about 1 million tons bigger than anything else
20 docking collars and a full star of ARTS bays.
-
So for the money impaird, any hints about it? what makes it so terrible beyond the fact that it's about 1 million tons bigger than anything else
Insane armour, guns tied to guns, which in turn have guns stapled to them. Its a terrifying monster of a ship. It is terrible...and beautiful to behold.
And when I say insane I mean its got armour thicker than more than a few McKenna's tied together.
-
I'm not getting the armor hype here. It's not like it's the first canon ship to have 1000 points at each facing.
With 2.5M tons available, it's difficult to not come up with something brutal. Although I DO like the twist of having almost a whole Potemkin glued into this. Good thing the Clans barely care for C-Bills production costs, or I reckon this thing would almost be impossible to produce.
So having a PWS and supply dropship fleet of 20 around you, in addition to the heavy armor, makes the Leviathan III basically indestructible in the canon setting.
-
The DropShips and crews and support infrastructure probably costs more. It's not like they are going to mass produce them.
-
Indeed but that they built up that infrastructure also speaks volumes. The Bear's can't mass produce these things, they are basically the setting's version of a Super Star Destroyer, but that the dominion built this up as well as enlarging their tourman and dropship fleet as well as maintaining their current fleet and the like speaks a great deal about the raw industrial power the Dominion has at its beck and call.
-
Here's a question: 20 collars and 10 ARTS small craft bays. What mix of DropShips and small craft would you take with this beast? Remember that it still has 60 fighters onboard. The text suggests that eight Aesir, three Aqueduct, and three Mammoth DropShips will be a standard complement, but that leaves a half-dozen collars and the craft bays open.
...by the way, eight Aesirs would give the Leviathan III 300 fighters, nearly a Galaxy of just aerospace fighters. I suspect this behemoth is meant, at least partially, as a Castrum-killer.
-
...by the way, eight Aesirs would give the Leviathan III 300 fighters, nearly a Galaxy of just aerospace fighters. I suspect this behemoth is meant, at least partially, as a Castrum-killer.
With that many fighters, let alone if you field the whole Aesir capacity of 20 plus ASF complement, it is not a Castrum-killer, it is just a killer. It won't care what stands in its path as destruction is assured either way.
TBH, unless we see the HW Clans return in full strength and with whole squadrons of Leviathan Primes, this unit is a little boring as it is completely undisputed in the current setting. To make things worse, the only units able to challenge the Bears' new Levi 3, are their own Levi 2s... #P
-
Probably see a mix of Asir and Vanir's as well as Nagismaioakrm..wnn...the Sharkfoxes one thats as fast as an interceptor who's name I can't remember, many Clan RAC-5's.
-
Everything has a cost.
A Leviathan III TF is about 2 Galaxies in strength. That's 2 conventional Galaxies that don't exist elsewhere.
By extension you don't expect to defeat 2 Galaxies with a Cluster's worth of force so plan accordingly.
As for boredom. Yes. That is kind of the point. This thing is basically unplayable at less than a strategic game because it is a strategic asset.
At least unlike a McKenna or Leviathan II it has the option to divide its force and allow sensible games.
Again I repeat. This is two Galaxies of force. It is not a Battlemech and you can't treat it like one.
The above also applies to Castrums. You throw a Castrum TF at the Bears and they send a couple of Aesir Stars (look them up in FM3145) back at it. It is all about recognizing the force balances at this level.
As for a loadout...
I always figured 8 Aesir, 5 Nagasawa, 4 Vanir, and 3 supply ships rotating in and out as convoys arrived.
-
Yeah, gameplay-wise, I figure taking one of these in a regular game is like bringing a carrier battle group to a session of Squad Leader. O0
-
Oh indeed, i'd not expect to see something like a Leviathan III unless it was a scenario for a HUGE battle and you can bet that the Levi would not be alone either, its valuable enough for the Bears to put another Warship with it as an escort.
A Leviathan III with a full compliment of dropships and ASF would also be damn near uncontrollable in a game unless you had about 4 - 5 players with the Leviathan and its dropships and fighters.
Really i'd say that she's simply not usable in game terms. But as a fluff piece she's great and a most welcome addition, she works as that, a piece of the universe, a part of the plot, possibly even a plot device if the Republic does something to her and her yards and then pins the blame on someone else...
-
So rather than OMGing about it. How is the II and III different suggesting what the Bears consider improvements?
-
Its a great ship. Its better then a Lev 2, not by much. Its hard to make that ship better.
-
So rather than OMGing about it. How is the II and III different suggesting what the Bears consider improvements?
Main improvements seem to be in close to mid range defence against small ships, the armour is mad, but I assume that the lev II had that level of protection too. Its not revolutionary but is very evolutionary and quite logical.
-
Much lower requirement on manned ASF indicates the Bears realize that tying down a short Galaxy of aerospace pilots to a single deployment platform is excessively wasteful. Moving to a dropship-based parasite complement increases deployment options, and the use of ARTS bays shows the beginnings of an attempt to overcome personnel shortages.
-
Its a great ship. Its better then a Lev 2, not by much. Its hard to make that ship better.
Well I wished they had replaced the Gauss Rifles and the various Medium Lasers with some HAG-40s. :'(
-
Well, the fluff says that the Bears built it as part of a doctrine of Warships being critical as orbital bombardment platform during planetary assault. This is very different than the traditional doctrine of Warship as the ultimate tool of space supremacy, giving way PWSs.
-
The quote is orbital supremacy not bombardment. Key difference. A battleship will bash in the door when nothing else will.
Main improvements seem to be in close to mid range defence against small ships, the armour is mad, but I assume that the lev II had that level of protection too. Its not revolutionary but is very evolutionary and quite logical.
Well then you missed the improved bracketing NACs, standardized Naval Gauss and streamlined weight saving NPPCs. Also the doubling of the RoF of the AR10s.
Also the new armour type.
Much lower requirement on manned ASF indicates the Bears realize that tying down a short Galaxy of aerospace pilots to a single deployment platform is excessively wasteful. Moving to a dropship-based parasite complement increases deployment options, and the use of ARTS bays shows the beginnings of an attempt to overcome personnel shortages.
Very true. Note ARTS is very heavy and can't do a good a job as an astech so it is not used in the fighter bays.
Also using DropShips moves some of the responsibility for supporting the ASF to to DropShips cargo bay.
Well I wished they had replaced the Gauss Rifles and the various Medium Lasers with some HAG-40s. :'(
It is an evolution of an existing design (and art) so there are limits. Medium Lasers are weight efficient and engage beyond effective Alamo range. Gauss do solid slug in a world of Reflective ASF. There is no flak bonus in space.
I know where you are going with the HAGs but on a refit it is usually good form to retain existing themes.
-
I like the cost of the ship on the record sheet.
-
Regarding ARTS: do the Bears even have any drone fighters they could use with this? None are coming to mind.
-
It is an evolution of an existing design (and art) so there are limits. Medium Lasers are weight efficient and engage beyond effective Alamo range. Gauss do solid slug in a world of Reflective ASF. There is no flak bonus in space.
I know where you are going with the HAGs but on a refit it is usually good form to retain existing themes.
Are you sure about no flak bonus in space?
-
Also the new armour type.
Okay...now you've piqued my interest...
-
Are you sure about no flak bonus in space?
I would have to double check. It was bouncing around a few months back and I can't remember where it settled. The ship is over a year old.
Okay...now you've piqued my interest...
No I haven't. It has just gone from FC to FLC.
Regarding ARTS: do the Bears even have any drone fighters they could use with this? None are coming to mind.
ARTS just automates the bays and basic maintenance. No drones necessary.
-
ARTS just automates the bays and basic maintenance. No drones necessary.
Oh, interesting. Well, that makes it considerably more useful, then.
-
Where is Weirdo? I would have thought that he would have sensed this disturbance in the Force by now. ???
-
I just looked at this and all I have to say is if this doesn't spark the various Successor States and even the other Clans to restarting warship development and construction then nothing will. Because its a beast and I don't care what anyone says but it will pop PWS's like balloons.
-
The successor states are a bit busy either trying not to die, eating their neighbors, or coming back to life. A counter would definitely be on the agenda, but it might be drowned by immediate threats.
-
It will, but how many can they build? ignoring cost, because cost in Btech makes Adam Smith cry, if I have, say, 20 dropship yards, I can replace my dropships must faster than a guy with one uber battleship yard can replace his battleship.
And this produces a situation where in most cases, the Levi III may be too valuable to risk-- there's always the chance of the golden BB. I expect that in most cases, it'll be used as a fleet in being concept, forcing opponents to keep a lot of their forces at home for defense p urposes, which eliminates those ships from being used against the Bears quite as effectively as if they were blown up.
I expect, rather than full up warships, this will start to see increased work on CASPER style tech, because one problem with saying: economically, I can lose 40 dropships if I have to to swarm you undre is that the crews of said 40 dropships have been known to object to that.
-
Very true, the main issue is transporting 40 PWS's to deal with a Leviathan III. And the Leviathan III can bring PWS's of its own as well as an invasion force. In many ways its the perfect one ship task force. Its going to come down to that the Successor States and the Clan's are going to want to have something that can at least try to slug it out with one, even if it requires they build several smaller ships to match a single Lev-III. As noted these have to be uber-expensive to build and maintain but the Dominion is a big place. I think they can afford it. Particularly if they expand outwards. The question is will this be a one fleet wonder or are the Ghost Bears working on a escort ship design to protect the Leviathan-III's?
-
Where is Weirdo? I would have thought that he would have sensed this disturbance in the Force by now. ???
Trying to calm down enough to use a keyboard properly...and contemplating working up a Lev III battle group in SBF, so I can pit it against a SLDF Line Division, see how well groups of heavy WarShips do against a single superheavy WarShip.
-
Trying to calm down enough to use a keyboard properly...and contemplating working up a Lev III battle group in SBF, so I can pit it against a SLDF Line Division, see how well groups of heavy WarShips do against a single superheavy WarShip.
So. You want the AS values, SBF values, or ACS values? :D
-
Yes. :)
-
Very true, the main issue is transporting 40 PWS's to deal with a Leviathan III. And the Leviathan III can bring PWS's of its own as well as an invasion force. In many ways its the perfect one ship task force. Its going to come down to that the Successor States and the Clan's are going to want to have something that can at least try to slug it out with one, even if it requires they build several smaller ships to match a single Lev-III. As noted these have to be uber-expensive to build and maintain but the Dominion is a big place. I think they can afford it. Particularly if they expand outwards. The question is will this be a one fleet wonder or are the Ghost Bears working on a escort ship design to protect the Leviathan-III's?
Escort and forward repair facilities-- one way to hurt a levi is not to try to kill it all at once, but keep attriting its armor until you can kill it.
There's also the fact that if Btech warships are anything like RW warships, you actually need at least two, and prefreably three ships so you always have one out there when the other is in port for refit/training/repair.
-
Escort and forward repair facilities-- one way to hurt a levi is not to try to kill it all at once, but keep attriting its armor until you can kill it.
There's also the fact that if Btech warships are anything like RW warships, you actually need at least two, and prefreably three ships so you always have one out there when the other is in port for refit/training/repair.
Yeah, that will be the Leviathan III's main issues. I don't see the Ghost Bears building many of them. The TRO mentions there is further construction at the shipyard. Were guessing there building more Leviathan III's. But what if there building escort ships for them? The Conqueror Class was developed as the Leviathan's escort ship and its hinted at the Snow Raven's and the Ghost Bears are working together. Maybe there finally after all this time finishing the original agreement? It would be really nasty to pair Leviathan III's with Conqueror class escorts.
Then again I'm just really hoping this will drive the Inner Sphere to begin warship construction again even in a limited capacity. It would be nice to see a few Avalons floating about again.
-
Trying to calm down enough to use a keyboard properly...and contemplating working up a Lev III battle group in SBF, so I can pit it against a SLDF Line Division, see how well groups of heavy WarShips do against a single superheavy WarShip.
Imagine the ultimate in cheesing an opponent - three Leviathan III's, one of which has Castrums hanging off its collars, with the second loaded with ASF carriers and a third with the ground force. Or a second Castrum group.
That's what it'll take to end the imminent Homeworld Clan invasion. ;)
-
It's a pity the bears don't have access to SCLs. SCL1s give you very nice range and you could put them on escort dropshipos that would be able to shoot at fighters without leaving the protection of the levi.
-
I am not sure the tactical niche for cruisers and destroyers still exists. Too small for meaningful self defence.
The Bears do have access to SC1s as of 3091. See the back of FM3145.
In any case firing from under a Leviathan's guns is close quarter fighting. The III is configured to fight across multiple star systems.
In any case the Aesir's Piranhas are a more credible threat to fighters than SCL1s. The Aesir's ASF are an even bigger threat. And we aren't even talking about Vanirs yet. A ship I have seen take down squadrons of Eisensturms.
-
I am not sure the tactical niche for cruisers and destroyers still exists. Too small for meaningful self defence.
Oh there is a niche for them. Anti-PWS defence and escorts to bigger ships. Plus smaller ships and cheaper ships can 'gang up' on a larger warship. And would be a tad more survivable than PWS's being sent into a larger ships guns.
Of course this ignores the swarm tactic of just sending in lots of aerospace fighters armed with nukes to kill the Leviathans-III's. Wing Commander, now coming to Battletech!
-
There's also the fact that a cruiser is better than nothing than your levi, and it's unlikely even the bears could afford a fleet of nothing but levi IIIs.
-
Of course this ignores the swarm tactic of just sending in lots of aerospace fighters armed with nukes to kill the Leviathans-III's. Wing Commander, now coming to Battletech!
Have you seen the point defense on this thing? So long as the ammo and heat grid holds out, you're looking at a +4 to ALL large missile attacks, those that aren't destroyed outright. Good luck landing any nukes on it without having to get inside the range of that disgustingly useful conventional gun array.
Honestly, my advice for trying to bring down a Lev III (or a II, for that matter) would be to pepper it with as many individual hits as possible(of any size, it doesn't matter), and hope for natural 12s so you can eventually cripple it with crits.
-
Have you seen the point defense on this thing? So long as the ammo and heat grid holds out, you're looking at a +4 to ALL large missile attacks, those that aren't destroyed outright. Good luck landing any nukes on it without having to get inside the range of that disgustingly useful conventional gun array.
Honestly, my advice for trying to bring down a Lev III (or a II, for that matter) would be to pepper it with as many individual hits as possible(of any size, it doesn't matter), and hope for natural 12s so you can eventually cripple it with crits.
So, either swarm it with enough targets to overload the point defense, or hope to hit it with NPPC or Naval lasers. Or invent Phase Transit Cannons, like the TCS Concordia carried.
-
And you will get crits, which is the vulnerability of any big unit. The Levi III is scary, but honestly? As a single unit it can be handled. The question is what, in addition to its own forces, comes with it.
Of course, that form of employument makes the pragmatic considerations of how to run a game even more difficult, so...
-
could always do to it what they did to the Prime.
-
Have you seen the point defense on this thing? So long as the ammo and heat grid holds out, you're looking at a +4 to ALL large missile attacks, those that aren't destroyed outright. Good luck landing any nukes on it without having to get inside the range of that disgustingly useful conventional gun array.
The laser antimissile systems can engage eight hundred times in a single round, assuming the guns aren't shooting at anything else. The standard antimissile guns can engage two hundred and one times before running dry on ammunition. Given the shear scale of the ship and its supporting forces, two hundred missile launches (not nukes, just standard antiship or ASEW warheads) against it isn't an unreasonable occurrence.
So for a successful nuclear strategy...
1) Just leave the alamos home. Even if you can run the standard AMS dry, the laser AMS will still be enough to make the target impervious to them. To maximize effects, go for peacemaker warheads mated to killer whales.
2) Draw off/destroy escort ships. Any chance of overwhelming the missile defense is sunk if the guy just has a couple stars of pocket warships hanging over him. This will probably take several engagements.
3) Pray the enemy doesn't just withdraw the ship once you've somehow overcome its escorts and made it vulnerable.
4) Saturation missile strike using at least two hundred antiship/asew warheads. Enough warheads that the AMS has to run itself dry or risk catastrophic damage to the target.
5) Marvel again that your target still hasn't withdrawn even though you've somehow pulled off everything else.
6) Massed attack from every direction to strain the target's cooling system and reduce the ability of the laser AMS to engage
7) Simultaneous with #6) massed nuclear strike. Even if you've completed every previous step successfully, you will need an extremely large number of missiles to score the hits you need.
8 ) Hope another one doesn't show up.
Defeating a Leviathan III really seems to be a strategic rather than a tactical puzzle.
-
Don't forget that you have to transport everything to attack the Leviathan III as well. Want to throw 40 PWS at it? Then you need to potentially put those at risk as well, and that's a big bottleneck for the other factions if they have to dedicate 4+ JumpShips to the endeavor.
-
I'm honestly not certain any of the great houses or other clans have the capabilities to engage and destroy a fully supported Leviathan III without gutting their own naval capabilities. At least not as they are now.
The only weak point is the logistical tail. Unfortunately, unless you can predict where supply ships will turn up that aren't under the ship's guns, that's an iffy prospect. This is very much a "hit where it isn't" proposition. Target the ship's supporting infrastructure back home to try to draw it away.
All you have to do is get past the other Leviathan. :))
-
Ooh, a bit of wild mass guessing on my part. The real narrative purpose for the Leviathan III is not to overthrow the free world, but protect it against the coming storm. When the true downfall (the rise of the IlClan, homeworld invasion, Fourth or Fifth Transfer, what have you) begins, the Leviathan III shall become the flagship of a ragtag group of rebels fighting against the encroaching empire.
-
The Leviathan III just proves one thing...In space no one can hear you SQUEEEEEEE [AAAH]
-
Thats a good point could the Lev III be built with an eye to watching over the shoulder more than an eye towards the Inner Sphere? Also a question regarding the concept of IlClan. Lets say Clan X captures Terra goes "I R ILCLAN NOW!" despite having been gutted in the attempt. Would the other IS Clans go "Oh..okay, you're boss now, tell us what to do!" or could they and would they simply either ignore them, or be upset that they grabbed terra? If the Wolves grabbed Terra I can't see Malvina doing anything but this;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufsf_-a_H9Q
And then going on a rampage. Same if the Falcons took it. The Bear's I think don't even care any more and the Ravens and Horses simply are not in the running. The Bear's MIGHT grab it with a Warden esque 'we will protect the inner sphere' kind of thinking but the Wolves and Falcons want to grab the world for prestige and their age old rivalry.
But once a clan is declared ilclan, what do the others do? Flip out, laugh and ignore them or what?
-
So, either swarm it with enough targets to overload the point defense, or hope to hit it with NPPC or Naval lasers. Or invent Phase Transit Cannons, like the TCS Concordia carried.
Yeah... as Liam's Ghost summed up above... good luck with that. If you haven't fired any other weapons... 800 Alamos inbound is a "Meh... I am not at all worried" situation. The Lev III burps and laughs. 10,000 DHS + It's PD = You are having an ABSURD time trying to kill it with nukes. Even if it does fire all its weapons... it has enough heat capacity left over to basically empty the magazines on 3 of it's AMS mounts..., fire it's Laser AMS 120 times... or fire a combined Laser AMS/AMS 100 times.
Back on another forum I pretty much summed the "Overwhelm it with missiles" plan up with "Maybe you should put in a call to the Royal Manticoran Navy... because Battletech's Navies are going to have a hard time mustering the required missile spam."
-
The thing is, the Leviathan III and II are basically unchallengable in universe. Lets say that the Lyrans teamed up their surviving Mjolnir class ship and the Tharkad and sent them in with a full load of assault dropships and PWS against the Leviathan III, sure she's outnumbered but only in terms of ship hulls. Their fighter compliment combined comes to 72 whilst the Lev III carries 60 fighters herself without any additional dropships. Their combined dropship total comes to 10, the Lev III has 50% more and going into a combat zone she'd not have any transports aboard for supplies they would be a jump or two away.
Even then both ships are quite fundimentally outgunned, even if they engaged her from both sides, she outguns them. Sure she'd take a battering but the two largest IS warships would probably be destroyed or forced to withdraw.
I also doubt you'd see the Leviathan III alone, she's probably going to have at least one other warship as an escort, sure it might only be a destroyer but its something else you'd have to worry about.
Really what the Leviathan III represents is this;
(http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/laserdisk/sw5/gathering19.jpg)
A titan amongst minows and there's few titans available to challenge her, the McKenna class is afaik extinct save in the Homeworlds where maybe 2 exist, the Raven's have what..two Nightlords but they are fundimentally outgunned on every level and they are their allies.
The Lyrans have two big cap ships, Davion has I think one. I don't know what the remaining elements of the Bear's fleet is either sadly.
Basically there's nothing that can step into the ring with a Leviathan II or III without the folks who do so absolutely gutting their fleet.
-
Bears don't HAVE any other warships to escort it with.
Well... apart from a Leviathan II...
-
Bears don't HAVE any other warships to escort it with.
Well... apart from a Leviathan II...
Blimey! They have nothing left save the Rasalhague? I didn't know that.
-
Blimey! They have nothing left save the Rasalhague? I didn't know that.
Well... they have a Carrack. But I am not really going to mention that... given its the ultimate of SL-style armored transports.
-
Dang you beat me to it, Yeah we have the Yggdrasil. But having only a Leviathan II ain't bad, it'll take everybody having to come together to really threaten it. We team up with the Snow Ravens? thats a GYAKAKAKAKAKA moment.
-
Okay. Magic numbers. Very rough.
300 ASF. You need 300 opposing ASF.
20 DropShips. Assume a squadron each. 120 ASF.
420 ASF to displace the escorts. Interesting number. That is basically 2 Theras. A number many of us can measure in our heads.
So are 2 Theras worth a Leviathan III? They have about half the firepower and a third the armor each. So probably not quite enough but we haven't considered th3ir DropShips. But it gives us a mental scale many of us can recognize.
I will be back soon with a rough Alpha Strike comparison against an ASF force.
-
I think there's 3 Theras in existance but one's raven, one was last reported crippled and probably used as a monitor now and the other's active. Also they are on the other side of the Inner Sphere and would not be deployed against the Bears save perhaps the Raven's one but I don't see the Raven's turning on the Bear's any time soon.
Also going "Yeah swarm it with PWS/Assault dropships." isn't ideal either, we can assume that carrier dropships are rare and something like a Vengeance class is VERY rare indeed and you can't simply go "SPAM THEM!" So even if you managed to mass enough PWS and dropships to present a challenge this means you're probably gutting other areas of your space/border of them which makes you open to attack elsewhere and then there's transporting them, thats a huge commitment of jumpships needed and it places them at risk because they have to hang around and wait for the PWS/Dropships to either succeed or fail and then they jump out, they can't leave them there without jump support.
-
The number of Theras in the universe is irrelevant as they are merely being used as a measure of force in this case.
The argument against your point about massing DropShips is that a WarShip represents resources that could have been spent on DropShips massed into a single unit. A Leviathan is a cost that could have been spent elsewhere.
Anyway. Using Alpha Strike stats I have put a Leviathan III up against a lot of Stingrays. To keep it simple I assume the Stingrays sit in the aft arc.
Using the above it takes about 12 turns for 76 Stingrays to kill the Leviathan with about 8 surviving.
Assuming the Stingrays attack the broadside it takes about 9 turns for 109 Stingrays to kill the Leviathan and get mutually destroyed in the process.
Now under AeroTech the numbers will be different and probably a bit higher. It is probably well worth loading up with Alamos just to see what happens.
So to summarize you need about 550 ASF to take down a Leviathan III TF.
As a final note the Dragons Breath missile system has a 50% chance of spoofing AMS for both fake and real missiles. Typically 6 will be real and there will be say 6 ECMs or fakes.
-
Have you seen the point defense on this thing? So long as the ammo and heat grid holds out
That I didn't understand. Why mix LAMS with regular AMS? Just put more heatsinks/ammo in and use more of the same type of AMS. Currently, it just looks weird and takes up more space on the record sheet.
-
And you will get crits, which is the vulnerability of any big unit
Not as many as you would like to think since it is basically impossible to threshold if I'm not overlooking a rule.
-
That I didn't understand. Why mix LAMS with regular AMS? Just put more heatsinks/ammo in and use more of the same type of AMS. Currently, it just looks weird and takes up more space on the record sheet.
It's about having back ups. The regular AMS are more effective than LAMS, but their ammo is gone in a few turns of concentrated attack. You don't to leave your ship utterly defenseless.
-
The thing is, the Leviathan III and II are basically unchallengable in universe. Lets say that the Lyrans teamed up their surviving Mjolnir class ship and the Tharkad and sent them in with a full load of assault dropships and PWS against the Leviathan III, sure she's outnumbered but only in terms of ship hulls. Their fighter compliment combined comes to 72 whilst the Lev III carries 60 fighters herself without any additional dropships. Their combined dropship total comes to 10, the Lev III has 50% more and going into a combat zone she'd not have any transports aboard for supplies they would be a jump or two away.
Even then both ships are quite fundimentally outgunned, even if they engaged her from both sides, she outguns them. Sure she'd take a battering but the two largest IS warships would probably be destroyed or forced to withdraw.
I also doubt you'd see the Leviathan III alone, she's probably going to have at least one other warship as an escort, sure it might only be a destroyer but its something else you'd have to worry about.
Really what the Leviathan III represents is this;
(http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/laserdisk/sw5/gathering19.jpg)
A titan amongst minows and there's few titans available to challenge her, the McKenna class is afaik extinct save in the Homeworlds where maybe 2 exist, the Raven's have what..two Nightlords but they are fundimentally outgunned on every level and they are their allies.
The Lyrans have two big cap ships, Davion has I think one. I don't know what the remaining elements of the Bear's fleet is either sadly.
Basically there's nothing that can step into the ring with a Leviathan II or III without the folks who do so absolutely gutting their fleet.
You are forgetting that the writers made the Invincible a museum piece in Field Report LAAF. Also nobody in the whole Commonwealth was smart enough to contact the SharkFoxes to help out with repairs (probably because it's more profitable to sell museum tickets for the marooned ship).
So one of the two ships you mention in your hypothetical scenario does no longer exist in combat-ready condition.
Same thing happened to the Exiles' Full Moon IIRC. They thought it might be best to simply sell the whole ship to the Foxes instead of paying them to help maintain the ship.
Because with all the PWS carrier designs available to the Exiles and Commonwealth, it made perfect sense ;D
So in short, if you want to look for a naval force even remotely able to match a Levi 3, look elsewhere.
-
It's about having back ups. The regular AMS are more effective than LAMS, but their ammo is gone in a few turns of concentrated attack. You don't to leave your ship utterly defenseless.
So regular threat: LAMS, overwhelming threat level: LAMS&AMS, critical heat levels: AMS.
I guess that makes sense in a way.
-
If you really want to beat a Lev III, you will need a regiment of stealth-equipped battle armor launched from a Mule dropship that "just happens to be flying by with a delivery of spare parts."
-
Not as many as you would like to think since it is basically impossible to threshold if I'm not overlooking a rule.
Natural 12s get crit chances regardless of the Threshold. With units this big so much fire comes your way 12s happen a lot.
The separate AMS bays is basically a cheat. Bay damage rounds. 1.5 is the minimum needed to get the magic 2 damage. 10 AMS in a single bay only does 3 damage while two separate bays will do 4. Laser and ballistic is just a convenient excuse to split the bays.
-
The separate AMS bays is basically a cheat. Bay damage rounds. 1.5 is the minimum needed to get the magic 2 damage. 10 AMS in a single bay only does 3 damage while two separate bays will do 4. Laser and ballistic is just a convenient excuse to split the bays.
Interesting.
So in addition to being the biggest and baddest warship around, the Levi 3 is also an actually min-maxed canon warship design? }:)
-
The point of the Lev III is to strike fear in a fleet. Its a one ship fleet but can be destroyed but your going to lose a lot of your fleet. You need 6 ships to take on the Lev 2.
-
Yes, no, maybe.
Yes AMS.
No Naval Gauss Rifles.
Maybe 12 NL55s.
It is a mix. It min maxes some things, but at the same time has a genetic legacy going back to Battlespace and a different idea of how to build. Eg most ships designed post TRO3057 have conventional weapons cut and pasted across 8 arcs.
-
Don't forget this ship is in REPUBLIC XTRO so think Tepublic threats too. Republic has the Castrum, Interdictor, some Conquistidors IIRC, Tiamats, and Dragaus. That is a serious PWS force.
However transport of such a force comes into play. God for if they find enough Star Lords or Monoliths, and short of a Potempkin carrying 12 Castrums and a Conquistidors Blockade Runner... Your left with a ton of Jumpships carrying a potential threat...
-
I think this was pleasant super surprise. A great one. I'm glad they put out record sheet out, hopefully they can fix it little bit one more time. I hope i can explain to the other player who would ask me "How much is that Leviathan WarShip on the Record Sheet". :D
I picture Lev III being hybrid Combined Arms Heavy Transport than a straight up Heavy Battleship like Rasalhague is. There nothing currently fielded that could stop them, but Clans still have other WarShips out there. Hopefully the Bear's Valkyrie Clusters will be able keep those guys off the Lev III's back.
-
When I put the Lev III in HM:Aero, the BV isn't the same. I know BV2 is now in Aerotech, and HM isn't updated.
-
Question: How many Jumpships does it take to do to this what the Ancestral Home did to the Perigard Zalman?
-
1.
-
Then the brave sacrifice of Transport Vessel 8675309 will be remembered in the annals of history as she and her crew died protecting us from the rampaging Bear's Leviathan III.
TBH, I think I could sell three new naval stars to the FRR more easily than the Leviathan III. May as well build/rebuild an interstellar navy with an infrastructure around it. However, I still have problems justifying even that, when the Interstellar navies of the Innersphere range from a glorified systems monitor to a rather fragile cruiser star.
Unless the Bears are counting on going to war with the Snow Ravens or some such?
-
It's not that the Bears plan to go to war with the Ravens. It's all about mechwarriors. Because of the Leviathans, the number of mechwarriors lost because of enemy Castrums, Tiamats, Taihous, Nagasawas, Arondights, or even SDS installations will be exactly zero.
-
WarShips are like current day aircraft carriers. They are expensive vulnerable targets that not every nation can jave or should have. But they offer a nation a number of unique capabilites that enhance the capabilities the nation already has.
They are a high end trinket in a Real Time Strategy game. Not necessary like infantry but useful if your other needs are already met.
And from what I see the Dominion has loss factored in. That is why you plan the second. Heck driven properly the bad guys never see the WarShip. That's the difference between 300 fighters on your WarShip and 240 fighters on DropShips.
-
Which is a good point-- the greatest disadvantage of a PWS is the fact that if you kill its FTL transport, you maroon it.
But in this case, the transport is big, heavily armed and not something you can easily kill. So unless it's attacking an enemy with an immense numerical superiority, the Levi is a secure rear base/fall back position. Evne a force that can chase off the dropships, probably *really doesn't want* to chase them all the way back to mama bear.
-
The only downside to the Leviathan III is that all the materials and equipment onboard could have been used to build a fleet of Monolith Jumpships or Potemkin Warships. That is a lot of PWS's they could bring to a fight to cover smaller jumpships with landing forces. Quantity has a quality all its own. And a Potemkin can at least defend itself and has some real armor.
-
Unless you only have one or two construction slips. This was actually a problem for the US during WWII-- we had all the money we needed, but only so much production capacity for armor, which is why you saw a lot of hard decisions being made on what got produced. If the GB have only one or two slips and associated production nodes, it might not be One Levi III or a bunch of Potempkin's, but "One Levi III or one or two Potemkin warships."
-
If you go by "cost" (which is even more broke then BV for Aero) the cost of the Lev 3 is less then a Potemkin ship. Building a Warship that transports 20 DS vs 25 DS is cheaper because of the cost multiplier for a that KF drive that can carry the dropships. In HM:Aero the Lev 3 is around $51 billion and the Potemkin is somewhere around $66 billion.
-
C-Bill cost is not meant to be a game mechanic, and thus is not subject to balance concerns. Using it as a metric is inappropriate. Korzon77 is correct, the limiting factor is "number of slips," and the Bears appear to have only one. In the BattleTech universe, production is almost always more limited by the facilities available than by raw cost. You'll never see a BattleMech line idled because nobody can afford its products.
-
They've been working on this ship since 3132? It took them 15 years possibly more to finish it?
Its entirely possible that Lev III is possibly (and likely) only one of it's kind.
In the long view (game wise), this was sort of role if WarShips ever came back from near-extinction i'd imaged them taking. Big boat leading a fleet, providing over fire to the smaller ones while providing mobile base for the ground forces and ready rain death when needed. DropShips are cheaper of course, but if you want make it wee bit harder to knock it from the skies, this is the thing to use.
I would like to have seen a Small WarShip developed as well, since there basically two sizes in reality of the game. Small and Large WarShip. Small one could be less-vulnerable scout vessel and transport, not unlike the Fox-Class Corvettes (Built like Rock). While you have the big boys doing what the Lev III is doing, while i do say Lev III is the EXTREME :D ;D of this example of large.
-
You gotta remember, much of that time was rebuilding the capability to actually build Warships, most likely.
-
This vessels fits perfectly into the Bear's philosophy of "Leave us alone or you will be sorry." As others have stated, no currently existing Navy is going to be able to challenge this vessel without being gutted or going to extreme measures (aka nukes, ramming). Its the perfect Terror weapon as you really do not want give the Bears an excuse to use it and they tend to stay to themselves unless provoked (not counting the usual Clan trials and the occasional raid).
However, if the Bears really wanted to use it, well the Horses navy is only a Congress, a York and a Potemkin with a smattering of PWS and assault dropships and their capital Csesztreg is only two jumps away. A bunch of former Rasalhague worlds are a lot closer too. To that end, Terra is only two jumps from the newly acquired Ko system.
The Bears have several options to choose from if they want others to witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battlestat...er...battleship.
-
If someone was crafty, they could dock some Battlesats or Capital-Class Battlestations with their lovely capital ships weaponry onto a JumpShip and have a DropShip with Naval tug adapter push them into firing range of a planet and you can actually use that quote of "...fully armed and operational battlestation(s)." ;)
-
If you go by "cost" (which is even more broke then BV for Aero) the cost of the Lev 3 is less then a Potemkin ship. Building a Warship that transports 20 DS vs 25 DS is cheaper because of the cost multiplier for a that KF drive that can carry the dropships. In HM:Aero the Lev 3 is around $51 billion and the Potemkin is somewhere around $66 billion.
The HM:A cost calculations are heavily outdated. The Lev III would be much more expensive than what you suggest. Admittedly though, a Potemkin would indeed probably still be more expensive.
-
You gotta remember, much of that time was rebuilding the capability to actually build Warships, most likely.
Which makes me wonder. Didn't the Bears thwart all attempts against Alshain by the WoB during the Jihad? If IIRC, the Bears' aerospace industry didn't suffer even remotely as much as those of other realms.
-
Which makes me wonder. Didn't the Bears thwart all attempts against Alshain by the WoB during the Jihad? If IIRC, the Bears' aerospace industry didn't suffer even remotely as much as those of other realms.
It didn't from what I remember but the supply chain to make the parts in other systems did. Alshain in the assembly point and a major manufacturer of parts I think. But not everything is produced there.
-
And even if it was... it wouldn't have been left there sitting in "All we have to do is turn the key to start building warships" state. No, it would have been reconfigured to build something else in this time... like say, Jumpships.
Throw in Engineers who have no idea what they are doing (having to rebuild the institutional training from scratch), and of course wanting to do it right the first time (so you don't end up with some of those suboptimal early post-invasion IS Warships).
-
One thing I do note beyond the fact that the Ghost Bears have built a new Leviathan, is there a possibility it isn't meant for operations in the Inner Sphere? Could the Leviathan-III be the beginning of a attempt to send a expedition back to the Homeworlds? Or on the other hand could the new Leviathan be taking lessons from the one built in the Homeworlds during the WoR?
-
Bears are practical too, they knew they need rebuild their nation and cut back on costs when the Jihad ended.
With peace for such long time, they didn't really need really big and expensive things like WarShips, when they needed to maintain their standing Clan Warrior caste to fend off Clans and crazy Kuritas over their border.
But when the lights went out, frankly I guess they decided it was high and time to build another ship with same relevance as the Rasalhague but i guess more practical with lessons learned during the Jihad. Like more anti-missile defenses against nukes! It's Twenty DropShip capacity isn't anything to sneeze at, in pinch you can haul entire Galaxy and then some with you, when your not tying up vulnerable JumpShips assets.
If they had kept some of the Potemkins that Sea Foxes had, they "Might" have not gone and built the Lev III way it is now.
Bears have more conservative Clan leadership now then they used to have. If i'm reading into what been stated in the Field Manual and Era Report. If traditional or conservative means, i could only speculate that its rejecting Inner Sphere traditions and methods of doing things for more Way of the Clans suppose behave before coming to the Sphere.
-
I'd say that its going the other way, they are becoming more Spheroid than Clan, its a very curious mix of the two. Almost every other Clan has a very distinct US and THEM devide between them and the Spheroid populace unless its in fairly small and controlled conditions like industrial work (mech production) but even then its overseen by Clan Engineers/Scientists and they have the final word....well the Warriors do but you know what I mean.
The Bears instead went about integrating their populace and the FRR's populace, making efforts to not have an us and them mentality but all part of the Bears one big family kind of ethos. Their mech plants are run by spheroids, they have a Prince who is a member of the FRR's Royal Family and they have made the Kungs Armee not just 3rd or 4th rate solhama forces but front line units with front line kit.
Its not very clan like, but it is in some regards, but its still more a fusion of the two rather than being the staunch traditionalists and going "Nah Clan ways are the best."
-
So it holds two galaxies of fighters. Think about that. Yes it’s a hard nut to crack, but you’re putting all your eggs in that basket. Meaning that all your eggs aren’t somewhere else. It’ll be a huge drain on the aerospace touman to keep this thing at full power. So in practice, I’d expect this to hang over some critical planet, but never be supported to its maximum potential.
I’m wondering if it’s not planned for some epic battle over Terra.
-
I think the Bears would be hard pressed to field two Galaxies exclusively containing Aerospace fighters. they'd have strip many of their clusters to muster enough vet and least experienced people to do that.
The Valkyrie Galaxy was originally created to support Leviathans-Class WarShips. If they were able to rebuild the Galaxy from their two Cluster strength as of 3145 to full galaxy, then i'd find that more believe-able.
-
I think the Bears would be hard pressed to field two Galaxies exclusively containing Aerospace fighters. they'd have strip many of their clusters to muster enough vet and least experienced people to do that.
The Valkyrie Galaxy was originally created to support Leviathans-Class WarShips. If they were able to rebuild the Galaxy from their two Cluster strength as of 3145 to full galaxy, then i'd find that more believe-able.
I kind of expect that they were building Aerospace Fighters for the Leviathan-III at the same time they were building the ship itself and the pride and joy of several aerospace sibko's to be the pilots with a good helping off vets for cadre and stiffening. Then lots of training to season them. No matter what, its going to be a green ship even among its crew.
-
I kind of expect that they were building Aerospace Fighters for the Leviathan-III at the same time they were building the ship itself and the pride and joy of several aerospace sibko's to be the pilots with a good helping off vets for cadre and stiffening. Then lots of training to season them. No matter what, its going to be a green ship even among its crew.
Thing i believe is, this ship been making for what? 14 Years as of 3146 (when the book was suppose be reporting their findings to Republic's intelligence in January)? That should be enough time to get least one cadre of sibkos (young for sure) to ready escort big mother ship. The Dominion's population is massive, Clans have Freeborn Warriors they could call on too.
-
So it holds two galaxies of fighters. Think about that. Yes it’s a hard nut to crack, but you’re putting all your eggs in that basket. Meaning that all your eggs aren’t somewhere else. It’ll be a huge drain on the aerospace touman to keep this thing at full power. So in practice, I’d expect this to hang over some critical planet, but never be supported to its maximum potential.
I’m wondering if it’s not planned for some epic battle over Terra.
It dose not hold two galaxys of fighters, it holds 60, plus 10 small craft, it dose have 20 Dropship capacity. Which if they use 8 Aesir's the combo can bring 300 ASFs, which was the capacity of the old Levi IIs.
Add in six Vanir you can easily have 300 ASF and 52 Small craft.
It can bring 2+ galaxy's of ASF but it it self dose not hold that many.
Actually If we equate a Cluster as 3 trinarys that's 90 ASFs per cluster, with 3 clusters per galaxy a single galaxy would be 270 or so Fighters, so it would need to be carrying almost entirely Aesir's to have 2 galaxy's (at that point it would have a whopping 660 ASFs and 70 small craft).
-
I think that the Small Craft on board are likely to all be NL-45 Gunboats. >:D
-
The design was probably continually updating from 3080.
3132 was when things went south and war plans activated. Resources gathered and warriors grown.
Building was probably only 5 to 8 years.
Note that at any point everything could have been canceled.
-
So....
Much....
Hate....
Eighteen trinaries worth of fighters. And SBF/ASC building rules say you make them in groups of 5.
-
I think that the Small Craft on board are likely to all be NL-45 Gunboats. >:D
Doubtful. Small craft have more uses than military. For example ship to ship transfers.
-
I'd expect enough shuttles to haul a Star of marines, and the rest would be a mix of cargo shuttles and long-range pickets.
-
Sky full of Stars...of marines. ;)
-
one advantage of putting the fighters on the dropshipos is that you don't know where they are.
Normal operations? They're off on other jumpships handling police. You need to concentrate them? So long as their within one or two jumps (for LF jumpships) they can quickly collect at the Levi III.
-
Folks keep talking about the drain on the aerospace sibco's but you forget one thing. The Dominion's military is not Trueborn dominated any more, and if they need more pilots they simply recruit FRR ones. You can also bet that the Dominion and Scientists built a large number of Iron Wombs to make new Trueborn to defend their holdings, they have a far larger amount of space to defend so need more Warriors to do so. This means crank out the trueborn, make sure the Freeborn are loyal and well equipped (something the Bears have been focusing on for at least 50 odd years now if not more) and build up that way.
-
I'd expect enough shuttles to haul a Star of marines, and the rest would be a mix of cargo shuttles and long-range pickets.
Kirghiz-C's. >:D
-
Folks keep talking about the drain on the aerospace sibco's but you forget one thing. The Dominion's military is not Trueborn dominated any more, and if they need more pilots they simply recruit FRR ones. You can also bet that the Dominion and Scientists built a large number of Iron Wombs to make new Trueborn to defend their holdings, they have a far larger amount of space to defend so need more Warriors to do so. This means crank out the trueborn, make sure the Freeborn are loyal and well equipped (something the Bears have been focusing on for at least 50 odd years now if not more) and build up that way.
The launch date suggested in the stat block of the XTRO is 18 years after 3132. Just saying.
-
The launch date suggested in the stat block of the XTRO is 18 years after 3132. Just saying.
I don't quite understand, do you mean it took 18 years to build the Leviathan III?
-
I don't quite understand, do you mean it took 18 years to build the Leviathan III?
I assume he means that sibkos born when they started the project are now fully grown and operational.
Also, clan SOP is to have a sibko on almost every planet, though most of those would be freeborns (mostly for building up PDFs and garrison clusters), with the regional capital's sibko being trueborns. If the bears really wanted to they could easily trained up a huge number of freeborn pilots. Getting the ASFs to put them in, is another matter, though it does say the were working on it.
-
It has been stated in multiple sources that the Bears and some other Clans increased the output of their breeding programs after Grey Monday 3132. Obviously bad stuff was coming.
The XTRO fluff says planning started in 3132.
18 years is about how long it takes to make a Warrior.
So those smart little Bears probably did the math and arranged for the battleship to not be ready until a crew and ASF and DropShips were ready.
-
I don't quite understand, do you mean it took 18 years to build the Leviathan III?
Well resources may be tough and with other things going on like a couple of wars. Might slow things down.
-
Lets assume that the major worlds (Orestes, Rasauhague, Alshain) are producing Sibko's and not just one at a time, but you could be talking in 3 - 5 groups per world. Lets say that each major world in the Dominion produces 25 warriors from a group of 100, of which 15 are killed in training. You get 75 Trueborn warriors and 180 reassigned to lesser Castes.
Combined with other worlds you could be looking at maybe 200 warriors in total to spread across the Dominions tourman for its frontline units whilst assuming that testdowns are then put into some second line units as well.
This clearly isn't enough warriors so the Dominion could just well keep bulking up its forces with FRR recruits for the ground forces and aerospace units. The Kungs Armee element of the Dominion Tourman is not a dumping ground, but is properly equipped and trained, and with their larger population base to call upon i'd guess that Kungs Armee Galaxies are at full strength because they don't rely on the Sibko system.
The Dominion certinally has the industrial muscle to produce all the Mechs, tanks and ASF's it needs and with the enlargement of the dropship fleet you can bet they also ramped up production of ASF's to match those of mechs etc. Sure they might be a larger number of second line units like Ammon's and the like (not every units getting Ostrogoth's after all) but its enough to ensure that the best ASF's are available for the units that need them.
I bet you anything that the Leviathan III's ASF is pretty much solid and new omnifighters, yes other units might have to give up some craft but these can be replaced by new builds.
-
With the mention of the Snow Ravens possibly also being engaged in WarShip construction, and the Leviathan III floating around making people go weak at the knees, one question I'm very curious about is...
... how long before the Draconis Combine invades the Raven Alliance to secure the Alliance's WarShip manufacturing facilities, so that they can start manufacturing WarShips to fight the Bears and their Leviathan III with?
-
And go through the Alliance Naval Stars? I wouldn't hold my breath.
I f the Ravens decide to cut a bloody path to Luthien and glass it from orbit, there isn't much the DC can do to stop them. The Alliance can't conquer the combine, but they can burn it to the ground. It's one of those MAD scenarios, where both sides are more likely to cripple each other without gaining any advantage.
-
With the mention of the Snow Ravens possibly also being engaged in WarShip construction, and the Leviathan III floating around making people go weak at the knees, one question I'm very curious about is...
... how long before the Draconis Combine invades the Raven Alliance to secure the Alliance's WarShip manufacturing facilities, so that they can start manufacturing WarShips to fight the Bears and their Leviathan III with?
I strongly suggest having a peek at Objectives DC to see what survived the Jihad. You may be surprised at what survived unscathed.
-
It dose not hold two galaxys of fighters, it holds 60, plus 10 small craft, it dose have 20 Dropship capacity. Which if they use 8 Aesir's the combo can bring 300 ASFs, which was the capacity of the old Levi IIs.
Add in six Vanir you can easily have 300 ASF and 52 Small craft.
It can bring 2+ galaxy's of ASF but it it self dose not hold that many.
Actually If we equate a Cluster as 3 trinarys that's 90 ASFs per cluster, with 3 clusters per galaxy a single galaxy would be 270 or so Fighters, so it would need to be carrying almost entirely Aesir's to have 2 galaxy's (at that point it would have a whopping 660 ASFs and 70 small craft).
I was using other people's calculations. But I didn't state my point very well. In BT aerospace forces are relatively weak. What enemy was deemed to require this kind of power? Perhaps this ship is an overreaction to grey Monday.
-
With all this discussion about what the Ghost Bears can produce/create, I think we are missing a simple solution.
Trade with Clan Sea Fox and Clan Snow Raven.
If the Ghost Bears needed extra fighters, they could easily cut a deal with either Clan to provide them with raw materials, enclaves, technology, or military equipment in exchange for any fighters they were willing to spare. Add that to domestic production and you could quite easily build a force quickly.
-
Have you seen the point defense on this thing? So long as the ammo and heat grid holds out, you're looking at a +4 to ALL large missile attacks, those that aren't destroyed outright. Good luck landing any nukes on it without having to get inside the range of that disgustingly useful conventional gun array.
Honestly, my advice for trying to bring down a Lev III (or a II, for that matter) would be to pepper it with as many individual hits as possible(of any size, it doesn't matter), and hope for natural 12s so you can eventually cripple it with crits.
I could easily be wrong on the Aerospace rules, but isn't it still true that AMS can't shoot down a small craft? Put a nuke on a Battle Taxi.. or better yet on each of a swarm of them... because all it takes is one successful boarding check to vaporize anything from inside its own hull, a Leviathan III included.
That's not the sort of tactic that's "supposed" to happen in-universe, I know. But if you show up with a Lev III in the current climate you're already "not playing BattleTech". It doesn't matter if TPTB gives Rasalhague (or whoever) such a weapon, the side without it shouldn't have to go "Oh, you win.".
-
AMS won't automatically shoot down a shuttle, but looking at the conventional gun array, it doesn't need to. Those guns are more than enough to vaporize any shuttle that gets within a dozen kilometers of the ship. And yes, I know that you can beat this by finding out how many shuttles it can kill, and bringing one more. EVERYTHING dies if your opponent can just throw X+1 at it, so I'm not even going to bother with such cheese. What I will bother with is pointing out that no ruleset allows that tactic. The only existing rules for nuclear delivery on a spacecraft are for using missiles. If it's something you can't do to me in the middle of an aero game, why do I care about it?
(And no, nothing will convince me to interrupt a space fight to run an AToW fight in the middle of it to plant the nuke.)
-
I was using other people's calculations. But I didn't state my point very well. In BT aerospace forces are relatively weak. What enemy was deemed to require this kind of power? Perhaps this ship is an overreaction to grey Monday.
Maybe not an overrection. the thing is that the loss of the HPG's makes lone ships very vulnerable to defeat in detail tactics. The natural way to aovid that is to produce a ship that really largely can handle itself regardless of what it encounters, at least long enough to run away.
The other advantage of that is that if someone is trying to defeat the ship in detail, that means that ll your other ships/bases/etc are likely safe because they had to pull everything away to fight it.
On your side, the LeviIII is perfect for "defeat in detail" attacks because as one ship, it's going to be far harder to keep track of trhough your spies than someone trying to line up a dozen jumpships to transport a fleet in with.
In fact, ignore trying to take worlds-- imagine the impact the Levithian could have by going deep into an enemy territory and just smashing up infrastructure. You either pull everything back to fight it, or accept that you can't stop it.
-
Only time i've seen serious threats to a WarShip by smaller body is when the thing out of control and dead. Moving fast enough, a slow poke WarShip would like dump enough guns into it to make it so it doesn't hit. That comes with alot commissions. I mentioned, else where that a dropship out of control wiped out entire Clan Squadron of fighters during a battle using AT2 rules.
Essentially could a Lev III be "FCS Robert Davion"ed by dead-or-semi Dead Dropship size object using optional rules? I don't think it possible out right but i think there possibility of it happening.
-
(And no, nothing will convince me to interrupt a space fight to run an AToW fight in the middle of it to plant the nuke.)
That raises an interesting point. What sort of game are you playing where a Leviathan III is a hostile playing piece, if not ATOW?
A power would have to muster a sizeable fraction of its entire naval might to have a chance at killing or even driving off that ship. Is it worth risking that percentage just to assemble an equitable BV task force, where you'd still presumably have a 50% chance of losing that sizeable fraction of your navy?
Most of the time, a Lev III would simply be a big stick that enemy forces just flow away from. It serves strategically as the ultimate area denial tool. Nothing will stand against it because a fair fight can't be feasibly constructed to oppose it.*
So if you have a mind to tell the Lev III's owner that no he can't do whatever he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants, you simply have to fight in ways other than "fair".
I actually wonder what TPTB's motives are in canonizing the Lev III. I can see a role in being so tough that hostile naval forces simply refuse to fight it, because it's so much concentration of force that an unacceptably large portion of a navy has to be risked in battle against it just to have a 50/50 "fair fight" shot at it. The problem I see TPTB as having created is there's little, barring such "slip a nuke on board" shenanigans aside, from stopping a faction with a Lev III battlegroup from touring a hostile empire and just glassing every strategic asset is has from orbit. There's not even a macguffin that needs to be protected to keep an uberwarship flying. Blow up its shipyard? Great. It'll just keep roving your systems, one by one, blowing up anything and everything it wants.
As something other than a Dominion fanboi, my hope is that someone does something terrible to the shipyard that aborts that abomination from ever being unleashed on the game. Not on the Inner Sphere, but on the game.
* I guess maybe a desperate faction can scrape together what it physically can in a last ditch effort to protect its capital or a major mech factory, but it only goes to further incentivize "nuking the bastard". With missile-proof AMS, what option really remains besides kamikaze shuttles or nuke-armed boarding parties to flesh out an under-strength space force futilely fighting an outclassing force? Even if the Lev III and/or its escorts wipe out all attempting boarders before they clamp on, all that fire was fire not directed at the PWSs and ASFs opposing it.
-
That raises an interesting point. What sort of game are you playing where a Leviathan III is a hostile playing piece, if not ATOW?
StratOps. Battleface. Strategic Battleface. ACS. Starmada. Pick a starship game with a construction system. That's where you'll want to use a combat starship.
I'm already working up an ACS fight that would pit a Lev III battle group against the Alliance Naval Star(plus similar escorts). It will be a balanced-points fight, with no nukes of any kind. I expect it to be fun for BOTH sides.
-
Worth pointing out that under proposed ISaW rules, a Levi III represents several year's worth of RP by itself for any faction who isn't the First Star League. That's without and dropship or ASF support, too. :)
-
Worth pointing out that under proposed ISaW rules, a Levi III represents several year's worth of RP by itself for any faction who isn't the First Star League. That's without and dropship or ASF support, too. :)
Well, that's somewhat reassuring, as a "Grand Destruction Tour" is honestly more of a worry in player-driven wargames than in the canonical storyline. Still, it sounds like even in ISaW a Lev III is in effect more of a victory condition than a warfighting unit.
Player 1: I've begun construction of a Lev III!
Everyone else: We have X turns to successfully raid that system before he wins the game....
-
Well, that's somewhat reassuring, as a "Grand Destruction Tour" is honestly more of a worry in player-driven wargames than in the canonical storyline. Still, it sounds like even in ISaW a Lev III is in effect more of a victory condition than a warfighting unit.
Player 1: I've begun construction of a Lev III!
Everyone else: We have X turns to successfully raid that system before he wins the game....
Nahhh... don't worry, even a Lev Prime can be killed.
-
Honestly, I think the developers have finally listened and are throwing us all a bone and going to kickstart a minor, very minor naval build up. Probably only a few ships of old design for players to play with. Have the Davion's build Davion Destroyers again or Fox Corvettes or the FWL to finally gather its whole navy together again or even just something like the Lyrans pulling a end run and salvaging a few warships destroyed in the Jihad.
That or the Leviathan-III is meant to break down the surviving warships in the Clan Occupation Zones.
-
Worth pointing out that under proposed ISaW rules, a Levi III represents several year's worth of RP by itself for any faction who isn't the First Star League. That's without and dropship or ASF support, too. :)
So how many ASF is that RP worth? I suggested before somewhere between 100 and 200 ASF would be enough for a conventional kill depending on the ruleset.
-
So how many ASF is that RP worth? I suggested before somewhere between 100 and 200 ASF would be enough for a conventional kill depending on the ruleset.
Over 300 Medium-weight wings like the 1st Knights have, or about 110 heavy Clan trinaries.
Granted, that's without Dropship or Jumpship support for those fighters.
-
So you can get into a naval race, or you can build 18 x 600 ASF groups capable of dropping a Levaithan III TF. It puts the costs of the Leviathan programs into stark relief. Just how much firepower the Bears (or the FWL with its Thera programs) gave up.
-
Yep. Though again, this is just currently the proposed costs. They still make sense going from the fluff though.
-
So you can get into a naval race, or you can build 18 x 600 ASF groups capable of dropping a Levaithan III TF. It puts the costs of the Leviathan programs into stark relief. Just how much firepower the Bears (or the FWL with its Thera programs) gave up.
Given that the Dominion Touman is one of the largest militaries in 3150*, I'm not sure they actually gave up anything in the storyline. If the story says they get a Lev III, then they get it without losing anything else the story says they get. The story can say they get two or even three of them, and it doesn't ultimately "cost" anything more than getting none of them.
Of course the only reason we know about that chunk of "RP equivalent" naval investment in the canonical storyline is because it went into one really big basket. I suppose one might be able to infer that if the canonical storyline were tied to RP expenditures, the Dominion's rivals might actually have such numbers of ASFs (and/or PWSs) that could have otherwise been bought with those (or a fraction of those) RPs.. but 1) it seems unlikely given the low low numbers of battlemechs in the Dark Age and 2) I don't think there's any reason to believe in the premise that the canonical storyline is somehow representative of a RP expenditure system.
*=Edit: Barring of course some dramatic shifts in army sizes between 3145 and 3150. I suppose it's possible that the Dominion's peers might have "spent their RPs" more on ground forces, and swelled say their battlemechs. I'm not really familiar with ISaW, but if an investment in a Lev III could have bought 10,800 ASFs, I presume it probably could have bought a like number of battlemechs. That's 100 regiments worth, which seems pretty bloodly unlikely a scale of military expansion given the short period of time and overal climate of the Dark Age. If the investment were shared by three factions (perhaps the RotS and Ravens are buying in) it'd represent otherwise having expanded each army/touman by 33 regiments or so. I suppose that's remarkable but within plausibility... but then who'd get the 1 resulting Lev III? Would they Time-share it?
-
Well, the various powers have also been ramping up new factories and replacing lost equipment from combat. That takes resources too.
-
One other thing to note about that is that since the blackout, the Bears haven't been getting all that involved in the fires that have cropped up all over the place (even limiting their involvement with Omega galaxy's shenanigans), so they've had the resources to devote to such a massive undertaking. All their neighbors have needed to work to replace losses.
This doesn't really explain the Ravens and their possible new warship, but that may have instigated the 'trouble on the ground' issues the Raven's have been having as they devote resources to their shipyards rather than their ground forces.
-
The Ravens are interesting. The Republic thinks that they are involved with two expensive projects in this XTRO. Can they afford one, can they afford both, can they afford any?
I am not that knowledgeably about military sizes. For example the Wolves run more Clusters than the Bears but at lower numbers and inferior tech. I have no idea who is equal to who at the moment.
The important note from FM3145 is all the Clans who could got preparing in 3132. Some of them have then used those preparations or totally thrown them away like the Wolves. The Bears have largely sat this out so far (like the Ravens or Foxes) so some time around 3040 a decision would have had to be made. Build more conventional navy, or replace the battleships they lost over the last 50 years. At least they had the infrastructure ticking away on maintenance duty.
Good decision, bad decision, who the heck knows.
-
The Snow Ravens may be getting resources from the Ghost Bears for there warship program. Particularly if ships to be built are earmarked for the Ghost Bears fleet.
-
If the Levi III goes down from a stray missile hitting an exhaust port, I will be so laughing my ass off.
-
That is something I'm wondering about. Since this design hasn't launched yet, and the design is such a game changer, might we never see it launch? Destroyed in production, rather than allowing it to change the universe as such?
-
That is something I'm wondering about. Since this design hasn't launched yet, and the design is such a game changer, might we never see it launch? Destroyed in production, rather than allowing it to change the universe as such?
Well, that might be what the purpose of this vessel is supposed to do. Perhaps it is supposed to change the game universe. We have been told that a new era in the game is coming and we have the book that shall not be named coming down the pike sometime in the future. Perhaps this Leviathan III is what makes the Ghost Bears the IlClan? Or perhaps it is destined to die in some epic battle against the IlClan that through its death gives another faction a chance of survival or stops an invasion from the Homeworld Clans? There are several options here.
-
That is something I'm wondering about. Since this design hasn't launched yet, and the design is such a game changer, might we never see it launch? Destroyed in production, rather than allowing it to change the universe as such?
This raises another question: How did Leviathan, Great Bear, and Rasalhague change the Battletech universe? I'm fairly certain that the Bears would still have moved to the IS without them, and while their presence certainly helped, none of them can really be said to have won any wars or destroyed any factions by themselves, as some folks are predicting the Lev III will.
-
The Leviathans are giant "Don't go here," signs. As long as they have one, they know that no one can really resist attacking them without a massive expenditure of resources that far outstrips what any other faction would need. During the Jihad, they basically had to be handwaived away, with the last one being destroyed by a weapon system that CGL should've just left as a fluff weapon considering it has a 1% chance of working ingame.
Adding a second Leviathan to the GB's touman simply allows them to project an almost unstoppable force against any point they choose, and since its their second, they have two options. They can send the II with the III for an even more overwhelming attack, or they can leave the II home as a defensive measure.
And lets face it, the only reason the Leviathans haven't been major players (other than the Jihad) is because of the faction. Would there be any question about them changing the universe if the Leviathans were in the hands of the Wolves or the Falcons?
-
The ravens have what 20+ Warships, would trading 1 or 2 or even 5 to the Bears for a few galaxies worth of troops really be considered that unlikely. Seems like the deal of the century for both parties involved.
-
Hmm, i would never image that Ravens would think to trade their precious WarShips.....However, they don't have the man power to use them so it maybe do able deal. It's possible.
-
maybe the Bears are trading for something less physical with the Ravens, maybe trading for spaces in the raven sibco's for pilots and warship crew. though i don't know off hand how good the Bear aerospace and warship crew training is.
-
The ones who should be worried is the Combine. The Ghost Bears and the Snow Ravens might someday decide better relations means closer borders.
-
The ones who should be worried is the Combine. The Ghost Bears and the Snow Ravens might someday decide better relations means closer borders.
One can dream >:D
-
The ones who should be worried is the Combine. The Ghost Bears and the Snow Ravens might someday decide better relations means closer borders.
Its three jumps to Luthien for the Bears and two jumps to New Samarkand for the Ravens.....all those new and refurbished warships....a lot of Combine soliders off fighting the Davions....opposing borders mostly empty or just mercs.... >:D
-
Its three jumps to Luthien for the Bears and two jumps to New Samarkand for the Ravens.....all those new and refurbished warships....a lot of Combine soliders off fighting the Davions....opposing borders mostly empty or just mercs.... >:D
That's pretty much exactly what happens in the april fool's outline of the ilClan SB. Only the two of them seem to fight over who gets Luthien. As a Kurita fan, all I can hope for is that's just april fools and has absolutely nothing to do with where the story is actually going to go.
-
It would make for an interesting scenario. Especially if the two of them kicked it off as the Combine was invading some important world that needed all there warship support and a lot of troops and Jumpships...like say New Avalon.
-
The ones who should be worried is the Combine. The Ghost Bears and the Snow Ravens might someday decide better relations means closer borders.
You read what happened to the Uras Major during the 2nd Combine-Dominion War right? Where entire Warship Fleet ganged up to destroy the Bear's Nightlord, taking most of the Combine capital ships in the fight. If ANYONE had to grind ax to bring the biggest toy out for payback, it's GB vs Draconis Combine.
-
You read what happened to the Uras Major during the 2nd Combine-Dominion War right? Where entire Warship Fleet ganged up to destroy the Bear's Nightlord, taking most of the Combine capital ships in the fight. If ANYONE had to grind ax to bring the biggest toy out for payback, it's GB vs Draconis Combine.
Thanks for reminding me >:/!
If anything i could see it being used for what leviathans are typically known for...Invading Terra and soaking up the space defenses for other factions x.#
-
If ANYONE had to grind ax to bring the biggest toy out for payback, it's GB vs Draconis Combine.
Nah its Clan Nova Cat or what's left of us!! >:D
-
The point is the Combine has nothing to use against a Leviathan on one side and the Snow Raven Fleet on the other. The entire Inner Sphere would stand up and take notice if they did invade and attempt to bring there borders together. It would be an act like the Wolves moving form one Occupation Zone to conquering a whole new Empire. Another massive change of the map.
-
The ones who should be worried is the Combine. The Ghost Bears and the Snow Ravens might someday decide better relations means closer borders.
As a Snow Raven, I approve of this plan. It will be good to have our brother Bears as a secure border. The Bears can take Luthien and we will take New Samarkand.
-
as both a Bear and a Combine fan i have mixed emotions. But...Maybe the combine will let us take the worlds bordering the periphery....you know...to guard against any potential homeworld clans. ;)
-
As long as we can have New Samarkand, it is Bargained well and done. ;)
-
Although I honestly expect the Ghost Bears to use this new Leviathan as a Fleet-in-Being inside there territory. The Bears control quite a slice of Inner Sphere and a very small fleet to protect it. Load it up and any incursion across the Ghost Bears borders could lead to a fearsome counterattack. The real interesting thing is this is the fourth Leviathan the Ghost Bears have built and they lost two during the Jihad showing they could be killed. I am surprised they hadn't built many smaller ships instead.
-
It occurs to me that the CCAF has two Feng Haung class Cruisers with 123 fighters and six Dropships each. That's not a terrible force to engage the Leviathan with.
On the other hand that means the Bears going a long way in the opposite direction
-
The point is the Combine has nothing to use against a Leviathan on one side and the Snow Raven Fleet on the other. The entire Inner Sphere would stand up and take notice if they did invade and attempt to bring there borders together. It would be an act like the Wolves moving form one Occupation Zone to conquering a whole new Empire. Another massive change of the map.
Oh good. I hadn't noticed the part where the Snow Ravens used their WarShip superiority and the Dominion their other Leviathan to tear chunks off the Combine in the last 50 years.
Okay yes the DC is stuck in the FS. But by the same token the Alliance bit off more than it could chew occupying three FS worlds with minimal opposition. To imagine that the Alliance could occupy somewhere like Samarkand in the face of continual DC reinforcement is fanciful.
The Dominion could and has successfully invaded Luthien. Though again they probably couldn't hold it. Probably the best they could do it glass LAW etc to hinder the DC war effort.
In any case WarShips aren't war winners on BT. They are good at assaults and glassing stuff you can afford to lose. Otherwise they are too easy to dodge.
-
We realize this. We're just imagining what a better world would look like. :'(
-
A much better world. One without the Draconis Combine in it. Or at least one that is half the size that is.
As for the Snow Raven Fleet, it was drawn down partly due to the after effects of the Jihad and to help integration with the Outworlds Alliance right? Its been a few generations, integration has happened as best as it can. Maybe not as effective as the Dominion but its happened and just about the right time to start up the fleet. The Snow Raven's pride and joy. And didn't the Diamond Sharks trade warships to the Snow Ravens? A Nightlord and a Essex? Or am I reading Era Report: 3145 wrong?
-
Just to throw a little soothing napalm on the raging bonfire...
The Council of Six. Six major Inner Sphere realms. A pet Successor State for every Clan!
-
And didn't the Diamond Sharks trade warships to the Snow Ravens? A Nightlord and a Essex? Or am I reading Era Report: 3145 wrong?
*sigh* please don't remind us... :-[
-
Hopefully the Rabid Foxes have taken the Word of Blake's handbook on taking down Warships when you don't have one yourself to heart and performed a clinic on the Snow Raven fleet.
-
A much better world. One without the Draconis Combine in it. Or at least one that is half the size that is.
As for the Snow Raven Fleet, it was drawn down partly due to the after effects of the Jihad and to help integration with the Outworlds Alliance right? Its been a few generations, integration has happened as best as it can. Maybe not as effective as the Dominion but its happened and just about the right time to start up the fleet. The Snow Raven's pride and joy. And didn't the Diamond Sharks trade warships to the Snow Ravens? A Nightlord and a Essex? Or am I reading Era Report: 3145 wrong?
If I read Era report 3145 right the Ravens have been reactivating ships and getting crews trained up on those that are active as well as using their Monitors to help familiarise crews and act as bases for new aerospace pilots. And yes the Foxes traded away their Nightlord the Terror of the Deep and an Essex class DD.
-
Hopefully the Rabid Foxes have taken the Word of Blake's handbook on taking down Warships when you don't have one yourself to heart and performed a clinic on the Snow Raven fleet.
I think the Rabid Foxes are likely a little preoccupied at the moment. At best, the Ravens are a tertiary threat behind the Combine and Confederation.
-
Mhh...it doesn't take much to kill a warship unconventionally. Some Blakist methods took very little. With the state of the Innersphere navies, that's going to be how these things are dealt with.
-
If I read Era report 3145 right the Ravens have been reactivating ships and getting crews trained up on those that are active as well as using their Monitors to help familiarise crews and act as bases for new aerospace pilots. And yes the Foxes traded away their Nightlord the Terror of the Deep and an Essex class DD.
And the Alliance ground forces are getting the short end of the stick. FM 3145 has more details but things aren't rosy in the Alliance.
-
And the Alliance ground forces are getting the short end of the stick. FM 3145 has more details but things aren't rosy in the Alliance.
Yar lots of Spheroids upset at being the bottom in the relationship with no chance for advancement, and as you said they are not expanding their already meager ground forces to try man the fleet.
-
Okay yes the DC is stuck in the FS. But by the same token the Alliance bit off more than it could chew occupying three FS worlds with minimal opposition. To imagine that the Alliance could occupy somewhere like Samarkand in the face of continual DC reinforcement is fanciful.
The Dominion could and has successfully invaded Luthien. Though again they probably couldn't hold it. Probably the best they could do it glass LAW etc to hinder the DC war effort.
In any case WarShips aren't war winners on BT. They are good at assaults and glassing stuff you can afford to lose. Otherwise they are too easy to dodge.
There is a flaw to that logic. You park a Warship Fleet over Luthien and New Samarkand at the same time, you threaten to bombard the current capital and ancestral homeworld of the Draconis Combine and their industries....well, those samurai are not going to try avoiding those warships. They are going to come straight at them. No ground troops needed.
Luthien and New Samarkand are the nerve centers of the entire Draconis Combine militarily, poilitically, economically, spiritually and historically. You threaten those worlds and the hot headed, honor bound samurai with no reliable HPG network and a potential split in the leadership might just do something a bit rash. And what remains of the AFFC is not going to let them just leave without a few shots in the back.
And I say this as someone who plays the Combine quite frequently too :) It would be an interesting development and if we do get an actual IlClan, the Combine is going to have to be brought to heel in some fashion.
-
There is a flaw to that logic. You park a Warship Fleet over Luthien and New Samarkand at the same time, you threaten to bombard the current capital and ancestral homeworld of the Draconis Combine and their industries....well, those samurai are not going to try avoiding those warships. They are going to come straight at them. No ground troops needed.
Luthien and New Samarkand are the nerve centers of the entire Draconis Combine militarily, poilitically, economically, spiritually and historically. You threaten those worlds and the hot headed, honor bound samurai with no reliable HPG network and a potential split in the leadership might just do something a bit rash. And what remains of the AFFC is not going to let them just leave without a few shots in the back.
And I say this as someone who plays the Combine quite frequently too :) It would be an interesting development and if we do get an actual IlClan, the Combine is going to have to be brought to heel in some fashion.
Oh how that would be fun. Really, really fun. Wonder if it would end with a shake up in the Coordinators seat and a new Kanrei in power.
-
It has been done. It was called the Jihad.
Give me two Combine Wings of ASF, kamikaze spirit and nukes and I will drop any WarShip Star the Alliance cares to send.
Rinse and repeat until the Garrison Regiments run out of aircraft. The Alliance and the Dominion will be out of WarShips first.
And if you really want to play the glass the world game, the DC has proven that it can survive the loss of Luthien. The Alliance is far more vulnerable to the loss of industrial worlds. Three strikes would defeat the Dominion.
-
It has been done. It was called the Jihad.
Give me two Combine Wings of ASF, kamikaze spirit and nukes and I will drop any WarShip Star the Alliance cares to send.
Rinse and repeat until the Garrison Regiments run out of aircraft. The Alliance and the Dominion will be out of WarShips first.
And if you really want to play the glass the world game, the DC has proven that it can survive the loss of Luthien. The Alliance is far more vulnerable to the loss of industrial worlds. Three strikes would defeat the Dominion.
Your very words just confirmed the basis of the entire thread. There is no Inner Sphere state that can conventionally match the Leviathan III. They would have to go to extremes like kamikaze pilots with nukes to even attempt to deal with it. As soon as you go that route, the gloves are off and Battletech essentially breaks down. It then becomes a game of who can glass whom first. If you want to play that game, then I can damage or destroy all the Jumpship and Warship construction yards within the Combine using Super-Jump Drive equipped jumpships transporting dropships with nukes within a couple days by launching from the Dominion and the Alliance. But, that's not a fun game ;)
Also, while the Combine survived without Luthien, it was because they moved the capital to New Samarkand, the original capital of the Combine. Losing both of those worlds would be a huge blow to the Combine.
As for two wings of ASF (36 fighters) with Kamikaze pilots and nukes defeating any naval star they encounter....you did see the earlier post where the Leviathan III was destroying several wings of fighters without including its own aircraft and dropship complement in the equation right? Also, the Raven's have a Thera which last we looked could contain over 200 fighters not counting any dropships or attack craft which the Raven's have been creating lately. Nor is that counting any of the other warships and their fighter and dropship contingents in the Naval Star. You are going to need a lot more than two wings to beat that and as this is the Dark Age, I have doubts that the Combine has that many fighters just sitting around while they are currently engaged in offensive operations against two other states. Not to mention having pilots that would be willing to go kamikaze and have the nukes on hand for quick loading when the warship fleets pop up in orbit.
And finally, the Dominion and the Alliance have more than just three worlds for their industry. The Objective series from the end of the Jihad confirms that. They probably have more since that time as well. Meanwhile, Luthien and New Samarkand are still the cultural, political, military, spiritual and economic linch pins of the entire Combine. Invasion or bombardment of these worlds is going to cause them some major issues. Even Hanse Davion and his intelligence officers feared how the Combine would break up if Luthien fell during the Clan Invasion.
-
At the end of the day, it would take an inordinate amount of Fighters and PWS to take the Lev III down. More than I think could be found in any single system short of Terra, or whichever system the Lev III Task Force is in.
With the Lev III you just jump in smash all Aeorspace assets and use LFB to jump into uninhabited sytem, wash rinse repeat ad infinitum. Then follow up with ground forces an Jumpships.
Once you start using uninhabited systems, the enemy is either forced to patrol those systems, eating a week of time and spreading forces out, or just focusing on important worlds. Leaving the rest to twist in the wind. Would the DC exist with only a couple dozen systems defended.
It would just be like the invasion of Japanese held territories in WW2. Island hoping on an interstellar scale. Plus with the IS Clans connection to the Sea Foxes, I am willing to bet the GB would have far more accurate intel than operation Revival. However with the Combine you will end up with massive numbers of Guerrillas and Insurgents.
However at the end of the Day it just takes a Tyra Miraborg to change the outcome. One Lucky Pilot whose is motivated and has a H-Bomb.
-
I, for one, welcome our new warship overlord and the inevitable arms race it must spawn.
-
*uses a Scout jumpship to Ancestral Home the Leviathan III right before Liam's eyes*
Oh, Liam?
-
Even if a Lev III-less navy can't stop a Lev III, Murphy can. Its strategic nimbleness of being so much firepower tied to a single warp drive is paradoxically also a weakness. One drive failure wipes out much more when it's a Lev III than if it's a conventional JumpShip toting a few PWSs and/or ASF carriers.
Granted, a new warpdrive is probably more reliable than one that's been held together for centuries with wire and duct tape, a Lev III still represents an awful lot of investment dependent upon a single point of failure. And strategically, it doesn't require a catastrophic misjump to render it a mission kill. Simply having to take a couple of days to affect minor repairs can throw an entire invasion off... an invasion plan that might have survived the absence of half a dozen PWSs/ASF carriers due to not showing up on schedule.
-
I, for one, will be quite irritated if it doesn't go down fighting - even if it's not fully functional at the time. I would be okay with another Ancestral Home type incident, but the ship sacrificing itself is gonna have to be able to withstand a few turns of fire from the Lev III, and there really aren't all that many of those still in the IS.
Adding a massive ship to the universe and not allowing it actually do anything is gonna make me think: why'd they even bother statting something so useless up?
-
It's the reason Levi Prime isn't stated she breaks the game only the Ancestral Home's (special equipment here) allows it to survive as long as it does
-
I, for one, will be quite irritated if it doesn't go down fighting - even if it's not fully functional at the time. I would be okay with another Ancestral Home type incident, but the ship sacrificing itself is gonna have to be able to withstand a few turns of fire from the Lev III, and there really aren't all that many of those still in the IS.
Adding a massive ship to the universe and not allowing it actually do anything is gonna make me think: why'd they even bother statting something so useless up?
To be honest there's nothing that could take a volley from a Leviathan III if it broadsided it, a McKenna could take it but it would take a fearsome pounding doing so and its not got the punch to get through the Lev III's armour and there are no McKenna's left safe the mcKenna's pride over Strana Mechty. The Ravens have a fleet that could take her on if they swarmed her with EVERYTHING, same with the Falcons but they'd have to send every cap ship they have at the Leviathan III and god help you if they saw this massed fleet gathering and had her joined by the CGB Rasalhague, those two operating as a pair would be near unbeatable simple as.
As for what she will serve in the universe even if she is basically untouchable, she's a Leviathan Prime, she's a plot device and a death star. If someone put her down on the table you'd probably be well within your rights to punch that guy in the the throat. What I think they did is go 'here's a thing!' and instead of letting us get our knickers in a twist about this mega ship that we don't have Stats for (Leviathan Prime, Ancestral Home i'm looking at you here...) they gave us the stats for the leviathan III even if she's basically unusable outside of scenarios or as a plot device.
-
You are really overestimating the fighting capability. 500 point broadsides aren't unusual. 6000 points of armor are and that is where the difference is.
-
You are really overestimating the fighting capability. 500 point broadsides aren't unusual. 6000 points of armor are and that is where the difference is.
Perhaps but still there's basically noting afloat that can take her on without having to gut the whole fleet to do so. The Republic has a few capships and a fairly large amount of PWS but even if they massed them it might be hairy.
-
Perhaps but still there's basically noting afloat that can take her on without having to gut the whole fleet to do so. The Republic has a few capships and a fairly large amount of PWS but even if they massed them it might be hairy.
I wonder if their will be any ships left after the aftermath of the fall of the Republic.
-
I suspect that the Leviathan III is meant to be the instrument of the extinction of warships. :'(
-
I suspect that the Leviathan III is meant to be the instrument of the extinction of warships. :'(
maybe after the Clans invent Capital PPC Capacitors.... just kidding... O:-)
-
I suspect that the Leviathan III is meant to be the instrument of the extinction of warships. :'(
I suspect there's only three ways it could reasonably turn out.
The first is an escalating arms race to counter the ship.
The second is the destruction of the ship and its infrastructure, and formal agreements by all the powers not to do that again.
The third is total domination for the one force able to build and support it.
-
I'm working up that Leviathan III vs Alliance Naval Star fight, and ran a comparison that turned up some surprising factoids when I combined all of Alliance's vessels into one 'ship'
When comparing damage, I added together bow, aft, and one of each side arc, looking at medium capital and long conventional range. Leviathan III totals to 1018, and Alliance beats it out by a noticeable margin with 1340. In practice,a notable portion of Leviathan III's firepower comes from conventional guns, and thus easier to outrange. Conversely, Leviathan's capital bays bracket better, so it might break even.
Unsurprisingly, Leviathan III wins on armor, though I was amused to find that it added up to EXACTLY twice that of Alliance.
To flip things around, Alliance Naval Star has exactly twice the SI of the Leviathan III.
Fighters are pretty close, with Alliance beating out Leviathan 70/60.
Alliance wins again on shuttle bays, with 22 to Leviathan's 10.
If boarding actions are allowed, Alliance definitely wins, with 525 Elemental marines versus Leviathan's 225.
Leviathan's biggest advantage over Alliance(aside from armor) is in docking collars.A 20/5 advantage is huge, especially in light of the monsters the Bears are going to be bringing. Alliance Naval Star will definitely need to bring substantial additional escorts on JumpShips to compete here.
Leviathan III definitely still holds the advantage in a fight, I'm not disputing that. However, I think it might be closer than a lot of people think, especially if you give the Ravens an additional medium ship to help balance out their increased vulnerability to attrition.
-
Those 300 fighters are decisive.
Assuming 300 Stingrays you have a "WarShip" with 600(C)damage and 5400 armor. Basically a whole Leviathan by itself.
-
Leviathan III definitely still holds the advantage in a fight, I'm not disputing that. However, I think it might be closer than a lot of people think, especially if you give the Ravens an additional medium ship to help balance out their increased vulnerability to attrition.
Interesting to hear, but I still question that there's any plausible chance for a balanced fight including a Lev III occuring in canon. Maybe the April Fools timeline may come true enough for Rasalhague and the Ravens to squish the Combine between them and then fight over the spoils, but barring that what chance is there for the Raven fleet to find itself engaged in combat against the Lev III? The Kurita fan in me wants to dismiss the april fools timeline which leaves the thought mentioned upthread about the Lev III's meta purpose possibly being just to wipe out everyone else's warships once and for all. (presumably thereafter it misjumps and is never seen again, if wiping warships out of the setting is the point)
I'm sincerely curious: Can a balanced fight involving the Lev III be constructed that does NOT include the Raven fleet? I mean plausibly, not a "Hey what if a Successor State threw 10,000 fighters at it..." scenario. But I suppose what is and is not plausible is inherently subjective.
-
If we don't include the Ravens, I think the only remotely plausible opponent to give a good fight would be the Republic of the Sphere. Four warships, and they produce some of the scariest pocket warships in the inner sphere.
It would, I'd say, have to be a "final boss battle", probably over Terra itself, and see a maximum commitment of forces on the Republic's part, probably including the aerospace drones that have been hinted at.
-
If we don't include the Ravens, I think the only remotely plausible opponent to give a good fight would be the Republic of the Sphere. Four warships, and they produce some of the scariest pocket warships in the inner sphere.
It would, I'd say, have to be a "final boss battle", probably over Terra itself, and see a maximum commitment of forces on the Republic's part, probably including the aerospace drones that have been hinted at.
I can never remember. Do the record sheets for PWSs (and I'd presume other dropships) show armor in the same scale as Warships? So do the Castrums have 1,000+ capital scale armor or ASF-scale?
-
Dropships use standard scale. The Republic would hemorrhage.
-
The DC has been producing Nekohono'os from 3 or 4 production sites for the last 65-70 years, so swarming with them is a possibility - though they'd suffer horrible losses in the attempt.
-
The DC has been producing Nekohono'os from 3 or 4 production sites for the last 65-70 years, so swarming with them is a possibility - though they'd suffer horrible losses in the attempt.
I wonder if the DCA could assemble a sufficiently large swarm of Nekohono'os, but that's exactly what they were designed for: countering clan Warships via boarding actions. At 90 battle-armor marines per Neko, it'll take far fewer of them to generate an overwhelming number of boarders than it would to produce a fair shooting match. It's probably Kurita's only shot though in the event they have to face the Lev III. But there's no way TPTB would ever let Kurita ever capture it. As damaging as it is to the continuity of the universe as is, it'd be tons worse in their hands. The only worse scenario would be Malvina getting it ;)
EDIT: actually with the OOzes and Dragonstars being canon now, each Neko can actually throw all 108 marines at a ship in boarding attempts.
-
You know IF an ilClan is crowned and IF it is an ilClan in a traditional sense that means all others fall into line behind the ilClan you could have the scenario that the Bears and Ravens are ORDERED to crush the DC between them by the ilKhan
Now tradition has of late been thrown to the winds but it might be such an event that sees it happening
I still think that having ilClan (whoever crowned) Clan conquest of Inner Sphere then timejump 100 years and the succession state families (of today) are the resistance leaders of the future fighting Clan oppression could be a lot of fun
-
You know IF an ilClan is crowned and IF it is an ilClan in a traditional sense that means all others fall into line behind the ilClan you could have the scenario that the Bears and Ravens are ORDERED to crush the DC between them by the ilKhan
Unless one of them refuses the order, it still doesn't explain how the Lev III and the Raven fleet might end up shooting at each other.
Edit: NM, I think I get what you were saying. THEN they fight over the spoils of what used to be the Combine. In other words, they still might come to the end result of the april fools timeline even w/o following that time line, got it.
-
Unless one of them refuses the order, it still doesn't explain how the Lev III and the Raven fleet might end up shooting at each other.
Miss communication/frustration at not getting the whole prize themselves
-
Yeah, that does raise an interesting spin on envisioning a Lev III vs Raven navy battle. I choose to envision it as:
The Lev III previously ran afoul of of a PWS fleet including about a dozen Nekos and its thousand marines, and with it now in Kurita hands the Ravens have to save the ilClan.
-
If we don't include the Ravens, I think the only remotely plausible opponent to give a good fight would be the Republic of the Sphere. Four warships, and they produce some of the scariest pocket warships in the inner sphere.
It would, I'd say, have to be a "final boss battle", probably over Terra itself, and see a maximum commitment of forces on the Republic's part, probably including the aerospace drones that have been hinted at.
"As you can see, my young Ristar, your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational Space Defense System."
-
Frankly I've always thought of Stone being BT's Palpatine. The kind old grandfatherly character that everyone likes, who just wants to rule the galaxy with an iron fist.
-
Frankly I've always thought of Stone being BT's Palpatine. The kind old grandfatherly character that everyone likes, who just wants to rule the galaxy with an iron fist.
I thought that David Lear was Palpatine to Stone's Darts Vader. That's why Stone basically fell apart after the former's death...
As for ships, I almost want to see a Leviathan III in Republic hands. Then they could make their journey to the Dark Side complete...
-
As for ships, I almost want to see a Leviathan III in Republic hands. Then they could make their journey to the Dark Side complete...
That's what I said five pages ago! :p
But seriously though this would be interesting only to see what PWS the Republic would slap onto her collars: 10 Castrums? Or a fleet of everything else? Then the fighter bays, and whatever else they've been cooking up in their secret labs like Superheavy Mechs or Drones or LAM/ QuadVee Hybrids
-
I'm sincerely curious: Can a balanced fight involving the Lev III be constructed that does NOT include the Raven fleet? I mean plausibly, not a "Hey what if a Successor State threw 10,000 fighters at it..." scenario. But I suppose what is and is not plausible is inherently subjective.
Why isn't 10,000 fighters plausible? It requires less infrastructure, is cheaper, and is multipurpose compared to a WarShip program.
Someone before mentioned Supremacy, Superiority, Denial, etc. Denial is the tool of the lesser power and is usually much cheaper than Superiority. It is a perfectly valid way of countering a gold plated assault platform like this. It might not be in place tomorrow but a battleship has a 100 year lifespan and appropriate defences can be in place in 10 years and expanded faster than battleships can be built.
-
Why isn't 10,000 fighters plausible? It requires less infrastructure, is cheaper, and is multipurpose compared to a WarShip program.
I'll take your word on the cheaper side, but for the rest?
I'm not even sure if there are 10,000 ASFs in the IS. Certainly not for any single house - that would mean having the capability of putting a couple of wings on every single planet, big and small.
Infrastructure? To mobilize it you'll need at least 250 Vengeance class carriers, and 80 jumpships. You'll need most of the defense budget of a couple of houses just to maintain it. You can't concentrate in one place, mainly because you'll need to shift your entire logistical apparatus to support it, making it extremely vulnerable with such a massive umbilical cord attached to it.
Sooner rather than later, this 10K force will succumb to attrition much faster. If a Warship loses half her armor, it can retreat and be repaired; if an ASF force loses half it's planes and retreats, those planes are gone. If you take out an ASF force's carriers, they are dead; in most cannon examples of that happening, the ASFs almost immediately surrender if they are in deep space, or landed and abandoned their crafts if they are near a planet.
It's like saying that the best way to counter a Battlemech is to throw a couple of PBI regiments at it. The number looks right, and in a stand up fight the battlemech will be squashed in no time. In reality the battlemech would pick them apart a company at a time, while continually outmaneuvering them. Trying to disperse their force in order to negate his maneuverability, will only make it easier for him, as he continues to destroy them piecemeal, and going through them like a bullet through wet tissue paper. And the end of the day, even if you succeed all you can say is "well we stopped that one pirate guy, and we only lost a couple of hundred guys. That should teach them!".
10,000 fighters are nice and all, not saying they are completely useless. Very helpful on the tactical scale, just not really a game changer on the strategic scale.
-
It is a good thing 1,000 fighters will do the job then. Including escorts.
You are really overestimating WarShips here. Yes, they lose firepower slower than you lose fighters, but fighters are far better armored. The idea of a half damaged WarShip is nice, but executing it is much harder. The WarShip has to hope it survives before it can reach a speed the ASF are willing to continue beyond.
The math is pretty simple. WarShips (and heavy DropShips) kill large craft quickly. They tear off big chunks of armor with their big guns but require huge mass to carry said weapons.
Fighters kill large craft slowly (potentially factors of 10), but are much harder to kill and have negligible mass.
The PBI comment is not necessarily wrong, but the difference is capabilities is much closer for ASF and WarShips. More importantly a 'Mech as a mobility advantage that allows it to disperse PBI. WarShips are the slow pokes, at least at a tactical level.
Faced with a problem like a "Leviathan Program" my first aim would be to get large ASF forces over my major facilities. This is a work in progress and will take time. But it uses infrastructure that is in place already.
WarShips are basically untrackable. I can't follow a JumpShip. I have to guess where it might turn up. If I am going to have to spread my forces it may as well be cheap ASF doing point defense in orbit rather than a generation of nonexistent WarShips.
Someone did the costings for a Leviathan Star above, but you get thousands of ASF for the same cost. The Bears get a mobile death machine. I make a few worlds unapproachable with change, and the Bears don't have change left to defend their own worlds.
This is the basic issue with all WarShips. They don't offer a huge tactical advantage and come at a huge opportunity cost. Their cost and rarity (even in the Star League) makes them useless for defense restricting them to offense. But then the offense need to be important enough to justify their presence which makes likely targets more obvious.
-
But if you are dumping all your ASF's in Important systems, it leaves the other systems open for invasion.
Because of scarcity the leader will have to choose, feed your military or provide equipment for your military. Not counting the loss in Jumpships as you are moving forces around. You'd have to dragoon civilian ships, to make it happen without stripping your military of their transport, a stranded Brigade is effectively combat ineffective if no one comes to them to fight.
A leader would not just have to think about the current war but the net one as well. If you burn through a significant percentage of your Naval/ASF forces in a single engagement, it will leave you wide open for some opportunistic realm to exploit that weakness.
The Lev III screams island hoping, bypassing heavily defended words, for those other worlds that will allow you a foothold and beach head for the next wave.
-
But if you are dumping all your ASF's in Important systems, it leaves the other systems open for invasion.
Because of scarcity the leader will have to choose, feed your military or provide equipment for your military. Not counting the loss in Jumpships as you are moving forces around. You'd have to dragoon civilian ships, to make it happen without stripping your military of their transport, a stranded Brigade is effectively combat ineffective if no one comes to them to fight.
A leader would not just have to think about the current war but the net one as well. If you burn through a significant percentage of your Naval/ASF forces in a single engagement, it will leave you wide open for some opportunistic realm to exploit that weakness.
The Lev III screams island hoping, bypassing heavily defended words, for those other worlds that will allow you a foothold and beach head for the next wave.
If the Lev III is just serving as a hyper expensive jumpship (ie, not glassing planet surfaces) it's no big deal. It's got 20 docking collars, yes, but if it's just ferrying troops into hostile systems it's not any more worrying than a handful of jumpships with the same 20 docking collar capability. Arguably even less since it can't split up and go to multiple places at the same time.
That goes to illustrate the destabilizing nature of the Lev III's very existence. There's a direct analogue in Tom Clancy's Red October where its caterpillar drive ultimately means the vessel only has one intended use... actively unleashing WMDs rather than deterring it from happening.
Why go through the bother of building a Lev III if you don't intend to glass hostile planets. There is no rational reason to do so.
-
A friend just read the stats on the Leviathan III and his reaction was "What the heck? They gonna convince the other Clans to invade the Homeworlds? Because thats the only reason they could possibly need something that big. Especially as they know there was a Leviathan built there during the WoR."
-
So how many of these beasts are there ?
-
Just the one at the moment. . . that we know of.
-
Most of one. It may or may not see completion.
-
The point is just the resources and effort required to make regional capital "Leviathan-proof", would strip the defenses of every other planet in the nation; making them ripe targets for any large scale assault, Leviathan-led or not.
If this thing goes on-line, can the already stretched DCMS afford to go full steam on the Suns&Republic fronts, risking being caught utterly flat-footed in case the bears decide to make a move? Especially since with all respect to the horsies and green pigeons, the Combine is probably the highest priority on the Bear kill-list.
-
If the Lev III is just serving as a hyper expensive jumpship (ie, not glassing planet surfaces) it's no big deal. It's got 20 docking collars, yes, but if it's just ferrying troops into hostile systems it's not any more worrying than a handful of jumpships with the same 20 docking collar capability. Arguably even less since it can't split up and go to multiple places at the same time.
That goes to illustrate the destabilizing nature of the Lev III's very existence. There's a direct analogue in Tom Clancy's Red October where its caterpillar drive ultimately means the vessel only has one intended use... actively unleashing WMDs rather than deterring it from happening.
Why go through the bother of building a Lev III if you don't intend to glass hostile planets. There is no rational reason to do so.
Un-glassing a planet is probably even more expensive that the Lev III. While not quite the Ravens in regards to hoardyness, wasting perfectly good planets with their resources natural and human, isn't something the Bears are likely to do as a normal course of action.
Why bother? Many reasons; keep enemies off balance, everyone agrees forces would be moved around to defend key wolds from this monster, leaving others ripe for picking. Deterrent, attack us and we will savage your realm and eat a massive portion of ASF/Naval Assets. Arms Race, developing Warships means not dumping money into BA, Combat Vees and Mech. Finally, a prelude to something bigger, RotS invasion, HW Clan Invasion, Trial of Annihilation, or to repulse said invasion from the HW Clans or RotS.
Maybe even the Bears and Ravens have decided to partition the Draconis Combine, why not a 2 way Trial of Absorbtion, The entire periphery edge has to be thinly guarded with ops on the FedSuns and the Former RotS Prefectures. By the time the DCMS got back, there might not be anything to get back to, other than a 500 LY journey through Hostile Territory. Half the DCMS is hundreds of LY's from tradition Draconis Combine Borders. Cut off the supply and logistics tail and they might not even be able to make it back period.
The DCA could even be put into a position of, scuttle their own Warship yards or let them fall to the Bears. Take Midway and you get Yards and a Mech Factory with 2 Lines at least. Destroy them and you deny them to the DCA/DCMS.
However if you destroy them you can expect your own to be destroyed in turn, and with a LevIII in the spacelanes, the gloves would come off.
Like others have said the Lev III is either the return of Warships or the Death of them.
-
It is a good thing 1,000 fighters will do the job then. Including escorts.
This is the battletech universe, even 1000 fighters in one place isn't particularly realistic. Your reasonable and battletech's reasonable aren't the same thing.
-
This is the battletech universe, even 1000 fighters in one place isn't particularly realistic. Your reasonable and battletech's reasonable aren't the same thing.
The Great Lee Turkey Shoot, was 6 CCAF Fighter regiments, against assumingly a larger number (2X or more) of FedSuns ASFs. However it gutted the CCAF Air Corps for Decades.
The Battle of Cholame would have been another notable large ASF engagement. 100's of Warships, at a minimum would have close to 24 ASF Regiments for the FedSuns alone not counting ASF Carriers and Assaultships. Massive loses ensued and only 1/4 of the Fedsuns fleet returned, though they took an equal amount of DCA vessels with them.
It does happen, but it also happens to gut one or both of the combatants ASF/Naval Forces.
-
Cholame (or the similar naval battle at Skondia) was also at the peak naval strength for both sides during the first war. I dare say the last time anybody in the inner sphere* would have been able to bring that many fighters (1000 fighters works out to 18.5 regiments) to one place was the battle of Terra at the end of the jihad, and that was a massive undertaking on the part of everybody in the inner sphere. Given that inner sphere aerofighters are supposed to be significantly rarer than mechs and the mech regiments of each house tend to total south of forty, the various states simply might not have that many fighters to use.
*The clans may be able to. They've always had a much higher ratio of aerofighters to mechs among their forces than the inner sphere. The dreadful truth is that in aerospace the Bears could probably match whatever assets the Inner Sphere put into play, assuming we're talking a single decisive battle.
-
I really doubt a clan that has had Part of 8-ish worlds to their name for 200 years has the same # of ASF as a realm with 500 worlds of resources. Even with growing to 40 or so in 3050's, they still don't have nearly the production capacity of an IS nation.
-
The Battle of Tukayyid could have had upwards of 4500, though 3500 is probably closer. 12 full strength ComGuard armies amount to a little over 2800 ASF (so 72 divisions at 39 ASF apiece).
Also, an average cluster will have between 20 and 30 ASF in it, so a clan with 50 clusters is likely to be able to pull 1000 ASF off on their own.
-
The Battle of Tukayyid could have had upwards of 4500, though 3500 is probably closer. 12 full strength ComGuard armies amount to a little over 2800 ASF (so 72 divisions at 39 ASF apiece).
Also, an average cluster will have between 20 and 30 ASF in it, so a clan with 50 clusters is likely to be able to pull 1000 ASF off on their own.
That would however be all of the ASF fighters, and next week Clan Curbstomp declares a Trail of Absorbtion. Yes getting a 1000 ASF in one place is possible, but would be hideously risky, more of a last stand type of deal, as losing would be your last stand.
-
This is the battletech universe, even 1000 fighters in one place isn't particularly realistic. Your reasonable and battletech's reasonable aren't the same thing.
Of course it is not currently realistic. I never said that it was.
What I have been saying is that it is a more affordable response than building battleships of your own.
For all those suggesting pulling hardware off other worlds and leaving them vulnerable? It may be necessary. Given enough time it may not.
But you are forgetting to ask the question what the Bears didn't build in order to build a WarShip? The other factions are just a decade behind in making that decision themselves. The Leviathan just forces the issue.
But as Liam reminds us Battletech's reasonable is a strange and unknowable beast. The correct response could well be a Catgirl rain dance.
-
I wonder, what do the Diamond Sharks have fleet-wise these days? Pretty sure the casualties they'd take killing the Lev III wouldn't be worth the cost for them, but if we are merely talking a theoretical 'Who COULD do it' scenario...
-
but if we are merely talking a theoretical 'Who COULD do it' scenario...
Well, if we're going down that path, ANY IS clan could, though for most it would absolutely gut their spaceborne forces (the only ones who might still have a respectable space force afterwards are the Ravens and maybe the Sharks). In addition to the clans, ANY of the 6 greater nations could, though doing so would probably leave a neighboring nation with a large advantage over them for quite some time. The Magistracy and Taurians probably don't have much chance, and the lesser periphery states are straight out.
edit: Clarified IS clan since we have no clue as to the HW clans.
-
I really doubt a clan that has had Part of 8-ish worlds to their name for 200 years has the same # of ASF as a realm with 500 worlds of resources. Even with growing to 40 or so in 3050's, they still don't have nearly the production capacity of an IS nation.
And yet... :D
It's been noted a number of times that the clans' militaries are closer to "realistic" than the inner sphere relative to their tiny tiny population. They tend to average a binary per cluster as I understand it, while an inner sphere unit is doing well to have a wing per regiment (and many are just happy to have a squadron).
Of course it is not currently realistic. I never said that it was.
What I have been saying is that it is a more affordable response than building battleships of your own.
Potentially in raw cost. The ideal strikes me as being drone fighters (shielded ASRCS is apparently a technology the republic possesses), energy based and cheap so you can deploy them in impossible numbers as basically space mines. You don't even need to train pilots for that.
But as Liam reminds us Battletech's reasonable is a strange and unknowable beast. The correct response could well be a Catgirl rain dance.
I like to believe the correct response will be climactic boss battle.
-
For the Ghost Bears it would be the best time to build something like this as they are still not actively engaged in any large scale conflict . And for them it might be more about Janes and Joes vs Armor and autocannons Tro 3145 states they only increased there sibcos in 3132 so for them it might make more sense to build a single large unit with more limited warrior requirements . if I`m not mistaken only officiers and gunners are warrior the rest of warship and dropship crew are lower caste personnel ? So for a Leviathan 2 that is 195 officiers and 211 gunners (haven't got the new pdf yet) which isn't too bad a number to gather up for a crew . and I noticed in this discussion that they radically cut the fighter compliment from the 2 to the 3 which to me implies they could have a pilot shortage or a lack of ability to produce airframes or a combination of both .
-
I wonder if the creation Leviathan III suppose support their trust beyond Vega Protectorate area into the heard of the Falcon's area in the exRepublic. Protecting their corridor would be important.
-
I think it will be the Ilclan’s future flagship. It will be the spearhead of the Terran invasion and after the Clans establish their new capitol on Terra, it’ll hang in orbit as the primary space defense of the system.
-
To be honest I doubt the Bears would go for IlClanship,really now days the whole point of it is damn near irrelevant and moot and is more about bragging rights than anything.
If the Bears wanted to expand they would have taken serious advantage of the chaos of the Blackout and Grey Monday or the storm of combat that's consumed most of the Inner Sphere. Yet except either retaliatory raids and small attacks they've done little but sit in the Dominion and do what ever the hell it is they are doing, which seems to be 'build up'. They concentrated on their infrastructure, their heats and minds campaign with the FRR's populace and basically camped like a damn dirty sniper. If the Bears were going to go for Terra then we'd have seen them move and start taking worlds in Republic space or off the DCMS or anyone else really, but they didn't. Could this be a case of 'wait for the Leviathan III and some other stuff and THEN go'? I really don't know.
If anything i'd say the Bear's would take a swipe at the Draconis Combine, the two sides have sparred a LOT and that now long and thinly guarded border they share whilst DCMS troops are busy in the Fedsuns must look VERY tempting and unless Malvina does something REALLY stupid to provoke the Bear's the other Clans are going to leave them alone as they are simply outgunned and out numbered by the very large Bear tourman. At this point the Dominion is a Inner Sphere house realm in all but name.
And whilst the Lev III (she really needs a name) is not a world conqueror on her own, if she gets into orbit then the battle is over as she can either turn her guns towards the surface or ensure dominance of the air through her aerospace wing and those aboard her dropships; ensuring that any defenders can't really interfere with landings of Mech forces and having aerospace fighter assets on call to attack ground targets.
-
Clanners make for terrible neighbours. If the Bears are planning an offensive, I think the obvious target isn't who we think it is.
Yeah the Combine is also a problematic neighbour, but right now they're knee deep in the Davion muck, and will soon open a second front against the Republic. They completely denuded the bear border. That makes them vulnerable, but it also mean that they aren't a threat to the Bears.
The Horses aren't winning any popularity contest in the Dominion. But they're gearing up for a possible Trial of absorption from Malvina. again not really a threat at the moment.
The Hommies? The Bears left the homeworlds voluntarily, why would they launch a crusade to get back to a place that was already on his last legs resource wise?
The Falcons are the real wild card. They didn't make any big moves against the bears, they seem mostly focused against the Lyrans and republic, so no threat right? Wrong. The Falcons have the problem of being led by a crazy person. Malvina is too unpredictable to turn their back on her. The Bears can't commit to any large scale offensive, without dealing with the Falcon touman first.
-
Only Illclan ship there should be is McKenna's Pride, which is the ship symbolizes formation of the IlClan. I'm not holding my breath for that. ;D
-
Well, I wasn’t exactly suggesting that the Bears would be the Ilclan. Just that the greatest warship ever seen in the IS would be assigned the defense of the Clans’ new Strana Mechty.
But I could see the case for a Bear Ilclan. They might simply want to ensure that the position doesn’t fall into the wrong hands and the only way to do it is to take the position for themselves. They have probably the strongest military in the IS so it’s something they could pull off.
-
The Falcons are the real wild card.
QFT. Although I do think the Horses' Operation NOYAN that's coyly mentioned in TRO3150 may end up being something that annoys Rasalhague.
The Bears and Kurita have had a relationship punctuated by a few wars, but the status quo outside those wars is hard to pin down. It was probably tense, given Kurita was one of the players involved, but was also apparently warm enough for some decently large-scale tech trades and armaments sales. But solmanian is right in that while Kurita is a neighbor noone would want, at least Kurita is for the time being a known factor. They won't be harrassing the Bears b/c their potential for harassment is all accounted for already elsewhere.
Malvina is not only as warlike as the Combine, she's unpredictable. Just because she's got a major war going on with the Lyrans it's dangerous to think she'd be rational enough to not open a new front. Unlike the Combine, she's got a bunch of troops on the Dominion border to boot, now that the Vega Prefecture is under Dominion control. And worst of all, she's not only got a Warship fleet but demonstrated a willingness to use it like a munchkin would in a wargame... glassing planets when she gets upset. The powder-keg of Falcon and Rasalhague garrisons entangling each other can be viewed as lending support to the idea that the Lev III is meant to finish off Warships in the BTU, starting with the Falcon navy.
I think it's more likely however that the Lev III will indeed come to be the keystone unit establishing the ilClan. Tucker Howell teased us with promise of "deals being struck". The cover art of TRO3150 all but assures at least one of those deals was with Julian Davion. I predict the Bears coming to save the Republic will prove to be another one, with the Lev III being key in propping up the Republic or betraying the Republic and establishing whoever else as ilClan.
-
I think it's more likely however that the Lev III will indeed come to be the keystone unit establishing the ilClan. Tucker Howell teased us with promise of "deals being struck". The cover art of TRO3150 all but assures at least one of those deals was with Julian Davion. I predict the Bears coming to save the Republic will prove to be another one, with the Lev III being key in propping up the Republic or betraying the Republic and establishing whoever else as ilClan.
Ghost Bears have really conservative Clan leadership according to Field Manual: 3145. I'm wondering how that would effect things. The Dominion invaded Vega to stablize the region as part of their friendship of the Republic. But it changed. Outcasts of Clan society ended up there after the Protectorate became reality, then absorbed into the Dominion. Question is, would Clan Ghost Bear cut deal with the Republic to absorb the multi-cultural and freedom loving Republic of the Sphere and allow them be free under their "protection."
-
Not Clan Ghost Bear. Rasalhague Republic. The one with all those civilian voting rights?
-
IMHO the construction of the Lev III shows that the era of a Clan-dominated/ruled Inner Sphere has begun.
There is nothing comparable the IS can field.
Further new gear as to the new Stormcrow shows the deadly power of the IS Clans who have been using their resources for an ever increasing effective and expanding military industrial complex.
-
IMHO the construction of the Lev III shows that the era of a Clan-dominated/ruled Inner Sphere has begun.
There is nothing comparable the IS can field.
Interesting thought, sure. But a problem with the Lev III being an avatar of a coming Clan dominated Inner Sphere is it's coming from an Inner Sphere state that happens to have benefited from the first Clan to willingly have subordinated itself to its formerly conquered IS people.
I'm not saying there won't be a Clan-dominated Inner Sphere... it's just that the Rasalhague Dominion isn't an example supporting that trajectory.*
*EDIT: The Dominion could well be foreshadowing what's to come in the Clans being drowned in the population of the Inner Sphere. The Wolf Empire is on the same track. The Clans might come to dominate the Inner Sphere while paradoxically ceasing to be distinct from it. But that's an argument for another thread.
-
I know the Leviathan III is the future and part what is to come. We should move talk about possible turn of events to different thread or create one. Future Republic Aftermath or something.
-
The only thing that can take on a leviathan 3 is another leviathan 3. It's a fleet killer.
-
The trick is coming out of that fight in useful condition. As mentioned before, the greatest threat to a Lev III is the sheer number of hits it will be taking, and thus the chances of taking crits from natural 12s are very real. Being one ship against many, any crits inflicted will affect the Lev player much more than comparable crits on any one of the opposing ships. Hell, I'm tempted to actually try a missile route and see if I can punch any decent-sized White Shark bays through that point defense, simply because one or two successful crits in the right places can be so game-changing.
-
Nose arc. Take that ECM out.
-
Yup. ECM and fire control would be real game changers, suddenly giving the attackers range bands where their fire is a LOT more accurate than the Lev's.
-
You know after playtesting Dierion I can't stress this method enough. With Eagles, Aggamemnons and Theras there WoB had a huge advantage in Collars which were filled with things like Mules. A Leviathan drifting with 50% armour was a real possibility through natural 12s.
Perhaps spam is the answer? I would avoid Capital Missiles because of the +8 the AMS is adding before gunnery skill etc. But large numbers of direct fire weapons into the bow could have surprising results. Anyone want to do the maths on how many bays need to hit before the Leviathan is unable to return fire?
-
Actually, those point defense guns only inflict a +4, not an eight. Surmountable, especially if you can predict the Lev's turn-by-turn movement and reliably drop missiles tuned for short range on bearings-launch activation points right in the ship's path. Interestingly enough, the Castrum ChibiDreadnought is well suited to this approach, with missiles clustered in bays big enough that the overall flight will survive the raw damage of the PD, and does so with the full-size missiles you need for decent crit chances. Shame we don't really have any ships that can pump out true Kraken spam.
A side effect of a missile-based approach is that if you're actually playing a game with the Lev's full complement of escorts, the Bear player is likely to keep at least some of his DropShips and/or fighters in close to provide additional point defense. Anything that ties assets down to the Leviathan reduces the amount that can be sent elsewhere, making it easier to try and defeat those assets in detail.
Direct-fire would also work. You'd want ships that can hit long range, preferably with bracketable bays. Arondights might work here, preferably with Excalibur or two hanging back and trying the missile approach. A Marik player could also try this approach, spamming the battleship with Merlin R1s, backed up by Mules.
Of course, in both cases the casualty lists would suuuuck. #P
-
Well it could be worse, just imagine the Bears and Ravens forming a Grand Fleet together..... >:D
-
Well it could be worse, just imagine the Bears and Ravens forming a Grand Fleet together..... >:D
I like it.
-
Yup! Gathering all of that navy in one place :D
*Unleashes the Scourge of Galedon on each and every vessel and then has special ops teams jump them all into the nearest star*
-
Leviathan III - Star Admiral to his Khan....."Now witness full power of this fully arm and Operational WarShip!"
-
Actually, those point defense guns only inflict a +4, not an eight.
Rule change? 2 per PD bay. Normal firing arcs so the bays overlap everywhere except dead fore and aft which aren't easy to target. Right?
-
There is no overlap. Because PD bays attack missiles when in the hex adjacent to the ship, and the Lev III does not mount any PD in the broadsides, there's no point where a missile flight is engaged by more than one arc.
If you look at the firing arc diagram in StratOps on page 95, it's easy to explain. If our example Congress were refitted with a full load of PD exactly like a Lev III, the arcs would be as follows:
Bays in the nose arc would engage missiles when they pass through hex 1011 only. The front-side bays would cover hexes 0912 and 1112 respectively. Aft-side bays would engage hexes 0913 and 1113, and aft guns would only cover hex 1013.
The point at which non-broadside arcs overlap reach other is 2 hexes out, too far for point defense guns to take advantage. You want overlap coverage, you have to use the broadside.
-
So how many Castrums can you buy for one Levi III?
-
So how many Castrums can you buy for one Levi III?
Given that cost on XTRO saying, "Seriously? No." I say it be regiment at least worth of them. :D
-
So how many Castrums can you buy for one Levi III?
Well, Castrums work out to (very) roughly 6 billion each and the Lev III works out to (very) roughly 60 billion so around 10. Now be glad Castrums don't come equipped with HPGs, or that'd change the ratio to only 2. *shakes fist at DS cost multipliers*
-
I wonder though if Leviathan III will be alone (warship wise) when it goes into battle. Like many ships during the Succession Wars in end, like last of the Atreus class Battleships, went out because of Lyran Aerospace Fighters swarming it. Sorry, I'm speculating.
The Leviathan III certainly can protect itself with it's fleet of DropShips and attached units. It will be spectacular read and exciting game if they do.
-
well she'd have her 20 dropships and 60 integral fighters and assuming that she's coming to a system to take control of space and the orbital area around a world she's not going to have mules or anything with her or even mech carriers. its going to be assault dropships. The Dominion has been spamming Aesir/Vanir type ships for years and you could easily imagine 2 maybe 3 mixed stars (3 Aesir Escorts 2 Vanir carriers) with her and the final mix made up of either older ships like Noruff's or the new Nagaskai...the Shark Foxes one that can go as fast as a medium fighter.
That's going to be a monster to fight through.
And god help you if the Rasalhague comes along too, thats another 300 ASF's and 8 dropships.
-
True, but what do they have at home to proect themselves? Btech economics are bad, but if they built the doom ship the Ghost Bears have to have skimped on something else unless we want to assume they just have far more money than all of the surrounding powers.
-
The way I see it, those pair would operate together only for a critical battle. Lets say the Dominion wanted to grab a District Capital from the DC they'd be going for it presumably after a longer campaign where other worlds have been taken and part of a broader strategic goal.
So lets say the Dominion takes advantage of the DC's weakened borders after getting simply fed up of being constantly poked by the DCMS and launches a general offensive the Lev III and Rasalhague in this would not operate as invasion ships, they would operate in support of the invasion, carrying nothing but assault dropships/PWS whilst the invasion forces would be carried on normal jumpships.
A Leviathan can jump in, do its thing and secure orbital supremacy and make sure the ground forces get down before simply jumping out again. Her LF battery gives her the strategic mobility to do that, jumpships don't have LF batteries and are slower strategically than a warship who can jump twice for every one jump they make.
This means that whilst they only have two warships they are still more mobile than the threats they face from the Inner Sphere and indeed the only ones who can match them are the Warships of the Falcons.
-
True, but what do they have at home to proect themselves? Btech economics are bad, but if they built the doom ship the Ghost Bears have to have skimped on something else unless we want to assume they just have far more money than all of the surrounding powers.
Of course, its entirely possible they've been planning this for a long time, so the damage to their economy is limited. But they do have a rather robust economy, perhaps the best out of all the Clans really. Their touman is noted as remaining relatively static, but its still just behind the Jade Falcon's in term of Clusters.
-
Which is sort of a problem I have with the bears. They have a larger (per capita) military, compare favorably with other groups, have been able to build very large ships, and are integrating their population-- they don't seem to be paying any price for these benefits.
-
Which is sort of a problem I have with the bears. They have a larger (per capita) military, compare favorably with other groups, have been able to build very large ships, and are integrating their population-- they don't seem to be paying any price for these benefits.
Being fairly passive and going back to being just a Clan that's 'there' barring a few bits of adventurism. They also have not overly expanded their Tourman as one might expect and they have done little in the way of expansion, they 'pay' for it by being rather boring.
-
Being fairly passive and going back to being just a Clan that's 'there' barring a few bits of adventurism. They also have not overly expanded their Tourman as one might expect and they have done little in the way of expansion, they 'pay' for it by being rather boring.
True, but it's last knives they have worry about in their backs while their doing military adventuring. Look what happened to the FedSuns and Ravens. Ravens turned on them just as Combine's made it's move. Mistakes were made, but that about size of it. Keep your eyes on your "enemies" and "Friends".
-
I'd say the Bear's are having to keep a very windward eye on the Falcons, their Khan is quite simply insane as we know so they can't go RARARARARARA in DC space without opening themselves up to attacks by the falcons.
-
Which is sort of a problem I have with the bears. They have a larger (per capita) military, compare favorably with other groups, have been able to build very large ships, and are integrating their population-- they don't seem to be paying any price for these benefits.
They'll be hit first and hardest when the Homeworlders start rolling in. Notice how the Wolves, Falcons, and even (to an extent) Horses are moving away from the Periphery? They know something. Or else they're afraid of something (and given the machismo inherent to Clan culture, they must be very afraid).
-
They'll be hit first and hardest when the Homeworlders start rolling in. Notice how the Wolves, Falcons, and even (to an extent) Horses are moving away from the Periphery? They know something. Or else they're afraid of something (and given the machismo inherent to Clan culture, they must be very afraid).
Well the Wolves were just sick and tired of being squished between Clans and without decent infrastructure. Rather than build it and tempt further predations, they chose to just go conquer some fresh infrastructure instead. That they were able to do so without technicians, logistics, resupply, and etc is pretty much the biggest head-slapping moment in BattleTech history since Operations GALAHAD and THOR actually fooled anyone into thinking they were just wargames.
Those incidents actually tie into the discussion about what the Dominion "gave up" to produce the Lev III.
The BattleTech story developments aren't driven by any approximation of in-universe resource allocation, like the events of a game of ISAW would be. The Dominion can have its Lev III and the one of the largest militaries in the Inner Sphere at the same time, despite having fewer resources than any Great House because it's not about that at all.
Fiat and Mary Sue are terms that get thrown around alot, but they miss the point. It's more about Faces and Heels. Heels (Kurita, Clan Jade Falcon) exist to serve as foils to the Faces (Davion, Clan Wolf). Faces always win in the end, but Heels get enough wins to make those inevitable Face victories feel more satisfying and less pre-ordained.
Rasalhague? They're one of those Faces that occasionally turns Heel. That's why what they're going to do with the Lev III is so interesting/potentially unhinging.
-
it seems straight forward to me as I stated before FM 3145 stated they only expanded there sibcos from a peacetime birth rate to an expanded wartime rate in 3132 so depending on what time of the year the decision was made the soonest these increased numbers would be available would be late 3148 to early 3149 . and with that increase it also allows an increase in native trooper recruitment while maintaining the 80/20 ratio .
As for the production of the III they are the only group it makes sense for ,The Jihad never touched there Naval Infrastructure so all they had to do was restart there yards from mothballs . although I do question the decision to increase the weight instead of just incorporating the lessons learned in the Jihad in the original hull . In my mind it creates a problem with logistics as the II and III`s aren't totally compatible with spare parts due to transit and jump drives being different .
-
They'll be hit first and hardest when the Homeworlders start rolling in. Notice how the Wolves, Falcons, and even (to an extent) Horses are moving away from the Periphery? They know something. Or else they're afraid of something (and given the machismo inherent to Clan culture, they must be very afraid).
Better real estate plain and simple. The closer you get to Terra the better the quality of worlds. A core world, say 100 LY from Terra is easily worth ten or even twenty worlds in the periphery, especially the north periphery. Those area have very poor infrastructure. No point ruling a bunch of dirt farmers, where the only means to expand their touman are whatever they brought by themselves. Taking a world in the periphery doesn't contribute anything other than storage space.
-
So why had they all been sitting more or less immobile since the Tukayyid Truce expires in '67? The Clans had actually invested quite a lot into improving the infrastructure of those world's in the intervening 70 years or so. It doesn't make a lot of sense to up and abandon them in order to fight for worlds that might be marginally better, but where you're going to have to spend more time and effort upgrading the facilities to clantech.
-
Not marginally better, a lot better. A world like Hesperus II is worth their entire OZ combined.
-
Sure, but there's exactly one Hesperus II in the Sphere. Most of the world's aren't notably better than what they're leaving behind.
-
Thinking about it. Only ship i can think of that could come close to fighting Leviathan side from maybe some of Snow Raven ships would be the Mjolnir-Class Battlecruiser Yggdrasil. She no Heavy Battleship, but she Inner Sphere's strongest ship class remaining in service i know of in this time period if you don't count the three warships of the Republic of the Sphere's navy fighting as one.
However, she was so beaten up after fighting the Emerald Talon over Skye in 3134, its was unclear if there was a shipyard that could repair the ship.
EDIT: Re-read the Field Manual: 3145, she was repaired. I guess they must have some kind of shipyards big enough fix her up.
-
Has anyone flown this thing in battle yet? Given it a full run through its paces?
-
Thinking about it. Only ship i can think of that could come close to fighting Leviathan side from maybe some of Snow Raven ships would be the Mjolnir-Class Battlecruiser Yggdrasil. She no Heavy Battleship, but she Inner Sphere's strongest ship class remaining in service i know of in this time period
I don't know about this. The author of that novel apparently thought that a Nightlord would actually be superior to a Mjolnir (which quite frankly, it is not, despite all the short-comings of the Mjolnir-class). So one would have to assume that in-universe, the Lyrans have proved incapable of getting their act together when it comes to producing decent warship crewmen and commanders. So the few remaining naval academies have suffered in quality since the Jihad. I don't think the LCS Yggdrasil would stand a chance against a Leviathan III and her attachments, considering how Catalyst chose to write the Yggdrasil in the current timeframe.
Re-read the Field Manual: 3145, she was repaired. I guess they must have some kind of shipyards big enough fix her up.
I think I read (don't know where however) that they had to do it "by hand" directly over Hesperus, which is why it took so long for them to repair the damage.
AFAIK they never bothered to turn Gibbs into a shipyard that could handle warships, no matter the size.
-
Training would be a problem for just about anyone-- warships are so rare in this era that nobody uses them in combat, and it's likely that i most cases, they don't even get much training time.
-
Training would be a problem for just about anyone-- warships are so rare in this era that nobody uses them in combat, and it's likely that i most cases, they don't even get much training time.
I would think that training would be most of what they do.
-
Training would be a problem for just about anyone-- warships are so rare in this era that nobody uses them in combat, and it's likely that i most cases, they don't even get much training time.
I would assume that the training for most warship crew would be almost identical to dropship crews. I have to assume that the technology to cycle the air and water would have to be similar, just on different scales. Same thing with most internal equipment, with scale and manufacturer being the only difference. More wires, more or bigger waste recyclers, more armor, thicker bulkheads, More light bulbs and more surface area to paint, more electronics. I would even assume that most bridge stations with the exception of the Jump Drive operator would be identical too. Though a Warship Bridge is probably going to have far more spots for Weapons Bay operators, or multiple communications systems.
Beyond that it would just be the massive numbers of technicians, though the RasDom does have a decent quality education system, so you would definitely have the numbers of technicians, all that would be required to teach them would be the details of their station, with maybe some cross training and fire suppression training thrown in. With the clans use of Sims in Naval Training, I assume in short order it could be set up rather quickly, especially with Ravens help.
Where the difference really come in would be weapons, tactics, and those responsible for running and maintaining the Jump Drive.
-
Tactics, weapons and damage control are probably the big three areas where the Inner Sphere powers have to struggle to build up institutional know-how. Even for the clans, a major construction program would tax their fleet sibkos to the limit, and require either relaxing of standards to meet the needed figures.
The best way for someone to take Levi III down is going to be sabotage though. It will be most vulnerable in the construction and fitting out stages, but any time it takes on cargo, there's an opportunity for someone or something to slip on board. I'm not sure if it would be harder to slip a bomb or an expert sabatour on board, so perhaps one should cover all the bases. Not sure what the most effective way to disable it would be-the jump drive is a large and obvious target, but how to cripple it without the crew noticing until it's too late?
-
I suspect that the loadmaster would be running a railroad worthy of the Fat Controller. Imagine the logistical challenge of emptying supply ships then dispersing the cargo to the appropriate DropShips.
-
Aren't their portable shipyards? Someone of them could be transported to the site, small ones weigh no more than a Dropship. It doesn't help, but it would improve odds of repairing the ship. Thou small unpressurized and pressurized shipyards and factory satellites aren't known for having dockcollars/kf-booms like more recent Snowden Class space stations. ( I say recent as rules wise/designed with more current rules).
-
Anyone want to do the maths on how many bays need to hit before the Leviathan is unable to return fire?
On getting a crit on the basis of a natural 12 on the to-hit roll, and assuming capital armor suffers crits the same way standard scale, it then requires an 8+ on 2d6 to score a crit after that nat 12:
It takes 24 rolls to hit to have a 50% chance of scoring a nat 12.
It takes 2 nat 12s to have a 48% chance of scoring an 8+
Under the Lucky Shot Aerospace rule, you should get a "Golden BB" and a roll on the critical hit chart approximately every 48 shots taken on any target, a Lev III included. Capital missiles would get two rolls, but the only thing getting through their AMS is Kraken-T missiles. Surely anything with those launchers will get popped quickly by Capital bays, so I don't know that Missiles are any kind of an option.
-
Capital missiles would get two rolls, but the only thing getting through their AMS is Kraken-T missiles.
Or any single bay that fires a heavier salvo than two barracudas.
-
Or any single bay that fires a heavier salvo than two barracudas.
Hrm. I got the impression AMS can fire at each capital missile, even when the missiles when fired as a single bay.
-
Nope. Unless nukes are involved, missile bays are essentially treated as one big honking missile, just like any other bay. Nukes always get split off individually, so they would be treated as you imagine.
-
On getting a crit on the basis of a natural 12 on the to-hit roll, and assuming capital armor suffers crits the same way standard scale, it then requires an 8+ on 2d6 to score a crit after that nat 12:
It takes 24 rolls to hit to have a 50% chance of scoring a nat 12.
It takes 2 nat 12s to have a 48% chance of scoring an 8+
Under the Lucky Shot Aerospace rule, you should get a "Golden BB" and a roll on the critical hit chart approximately every 48 shots taken on any target, a Lev III included. Capital missiles would get two rolls, but the only thing getting through their AMS is Kraken-T missiles. Surely anything with those launchers will get popped quickly by Capital bays, so I don't know that Missiles are any kind of an option.
Not if they're sitting back out of range making use of teleoperated or bearings-only launches.
-
Nope. Unless nukes are involved, missile bays are essentially treated as one big honking missile, just like any other bay. Nukes always get split off individually, so they would be treated as you imagine.
Not true, I actually checked on this a while ago.
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=38671.0 (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=38671.0)
-
Not if they're sitting back out of range making use of teleoperated or bearings-only launches.
Well in light of the erratum linked above, I think that makes Kraken-T boats firing from beyond extreme range the way to go. Make the Lev III's escorts go after the space artillery, which leaves the battleship itself more prone to Golden BB syndrome at the hands of fighters and dropships not being handled by those escorts.
-
Not true, I actually checked on this a while ago.
http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=38671.0 (http://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=38671.0)
That makes no sense whatsoever. I'll take it up with the rules folks.
-
It makes using naval missiles a painful exercise in balancing risk, math, and expenditures.
-
That makes no sense whatsoever.
It would actually only make sense in an abstract rule situation. In a hypothetical real life combat situation, it wouldn't make any sense at all to treat all missiles fired from a single bay as one big missile.
In contrast, it seems more reasonable to think of four heavy NPPCs firing at the exact same spot as one giant NPPC.
-
It doesn't really make sense in the abstract rule situation, since capital missile bays are fired as a single bay, and their damage resolution and crit check are handled as a single bay. Page 239 of of W says "A player only makes one critical roll per missile bay."
So they're launched as a single bay, their damage is resolved as a single bay, and their crit chance is resolved as a single bay..but then AMS treats them as separate missiles?
edit
Of course, amusingly, AMS is ineffective against Capital missiles if you're playing TW :)
/edit
-
Since Alpha Strike is how I like my BattleTech, I've been thinking about the Lev III in that lens. I thought I'd share the ships stats converted to AS (shouldn't piss off TPTB.. not only am I an amateur at this and likely got something wrong somewhere along the line, but also you can't reverse the process to generate CBT stats. If you want CBT stats, you'll still need to buy the XTRO)
Alpha Strike Leviathan III
TP:WS SZ:4 MV:3 PV:LoL (technically: 5011, if I did everything right)
Nose arc: 162/153/57/21 LRM:13/13/13/0, PNT6
Nose capital weapons: 432/432/432/312 CAP
Nose Missile weapons: 12/12/12/12 MSL
Side arcs: 145/133/72/31 LRM:13/13/13/0, PNT3
Side capital weapons: 348/348/348/318 CAP
Side Missile weapons: 27/27/27/27 MSL
Aft arc: 162/153/57/21 LRM:13/13/13/0, PNT6
Aft capital weapons: 126/126/126/126 CAP
Aft Missile weapons: 3/3/3/3 MSL
Armor: 2000
Structure: 75
Threshold: 167
Specials: SPC, KF, LF, HPG, SLG, CRW:8, IT225, AT60-D5, ST10-D2, DT-20, CK51.495-D12
So, a couple of observations about its Alpha Strike incarnation:
In its nose arc is where you don't want to be, as opposed to the broadsides. (This is an outcome of the way 8 firing arcs are compressed into 4.)
Alpha Strike makes MSL attacks auto-miss vs PNT2 or higher, so the ship is at least in Alpha Strike, immune to capital missiles.
Its threshold of 167 is hilarious. Gallows humor hilarious. That's more than the heaviest of dropships have in total armor. No golden BB effect vs the Lev III in Alpha Strike.
Alpha Strike does somewhat nerf its effectiveness by grouping all capital weapons into 4 bays. Furthermore, warships are only allowed to make 8 attacks total. While its consolidated monstrous bays will smash targets they hit, it can still only smash 8 discrete targets per turn. That's a bit of an advantage for the opposition facing the Lev III vs CBT/SO rules. If you can manage to get your whole fleet in only 2 or even 1 arc of the ship, you can further limit the devastation it can wreak per turn.
Edit: as another point of comparison, my conversion of the Castrum places its PV at 521. In Alpha Strike you could just about bring 10 of them for the Lev's PV... but even 10 castrums stand no chance under Alpha Strike (they have 154 armor and are dealing hits in the high 20s w/o their capital missiles, or 36 damage if the Lev sportingly turns off its AMS to let the Castrums missiles get thru)
-
Just to be clear PV is more a measure of a ship's ability to kill ASF. That +5 against specific targets makes a universal PV nearly impossible.
-
Could the Star Destroyer for the April Fools product have a chance in short range against the Leviathan??
-
April Fools product
Which one exactly?
-
Could the Star Destroyer for the April Fools product have a chance in short range against the Leviathan??
Continuing to speak in Alpha Strike terms here... but the Lev III can vaporize a McKenna at short range in one round if it hits with both the conventional and capital weapons in the nose or side arcs. A Nightlord class barely survives that, and is massively overkilled on round 2.
-
Which one exactly?
Welcome to Nebula California, it has monitor type Warships called Star Destroyers. 2.5 million tons, record sheets and Alpha Strike Cards.
Could the Star Destroyer for the April Fools product have a chance in short range against the Leviathan??
I seriously doubt it. Ignoring parasite attached escort fighter/ships for the Leviathan III, the long range weapons would pound the Star Destroyer from Medium Range. Those guns have be in same hex to do anything. They'll damage dickens out of the Lev III if they managed get in range, but 1000 point hull against SD's 91...but i forgot about the deflector shields. So it would be "maybe" in my mind.
-
The Bear's can't mass produce these things, they are basically the setting's version of a Super Star Destroyer,
Except that Super Star Destroyers were mass produced.
-Jackmc
-
Except that Super Star Destroyers were mass produced.
-Jackmc
Warning, EU can of worms!
-
Well the SSDs in EU could be counted on one hand or two IF you stick to the original class.
-
Well the SSDs in EU could be counted on one hand or two IF you stick to the original class.
Seriously, off topic can of non-euclidean geometry.
-
Except that Super Star Destroyers were mass produced.
-Jackmc
No more so than Nimitz-class carriers were mass produced by the US. There were what, a dozen, maybe a couple of dozen SSDs?
-
No more so than Nimitz-class carriers were mass produced by the US. There were what, a dozen, maybe a couple of dozen SSDs?
The current wookieepedia article (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Super_Star_Destroyer) on the topic. Basically, their numbers and what defined a super star destroyer expanded at the speed of plot. Even the size of the classic super star destroyer. I still remember a time when an eight kilometer length was considered extreme.
But, bringing it back around, the point is valid. The idea of running into more than one Leviathan serving as the centerpiece of a fleet is a bit unreasonable. Like the super star destroyer, it's an end boss/command ship, not a main line fleet element.
(I kinda want to see the Ravens building upgraded Conquerors personally)
-
Seriously. One person asked an off-hand question about how the Lev III compares to the (non-canon) Star Destroyer. We don't need a damn argument every time.
-
In its role the Leviathan III would be a Super Star Destroyer, the nexus and command hub for a larger fleet. She's both a CVN and BB in one and if the Bears still had a fleet other than the two Levi's and a Carrack you'd expect to see her hiding behind a screen of cruisers, destroyers and dropships at the center of a fleet. Its because Warships are sadly barely a thing now that the Leviathan II and III are put in a mainline combattant role when in reality they are both a combattant and a fleet command vessel.
Also as a question, what ships can threshold a Leviathan III and more importantly are there any left? I think the Falcon's Aegis could do it but they would have to swarm the Lev III. Also what book has the naval strength of the Clans in it in the current period? I could not find anything in the WotR supplimental for the Homeworld clans and is there info on what the IS clans have left somewhere?
Also this damn thing needs a name!
-
In its role the Leviathan III would be a Super Star Destroyer, the nexus and command hub for a larger fleet. She's both a CVN and BB in one and if the Bears still had a fleet other than the two Levi's and a Carrack you'd expect to see her hiding behind a screen of cruisers, destroyers and dropships at the center of a fleet. Its because Warships are sadly barely a thing now that the Leviathan II and III are put in a mainline combattant role when in reality they are both a combattant and a fleet command vessel.
Also as a question, what ships can threshold a Leviathan III and more importantly are there any left? I think the Falcon's Aegis could do it but they would have to swarm the Lev III. Also what book has the naval strength of the Clans in it in the current period? I could not find anything in the WotR supplimental for the Homeworld clans and is there info on what the IS clans have left somewhere?
Also this damn thing needs a name!
It's impossible to threshold 1000 capital armor unless you employ mass drivers that go beyond 100 Capital damage (or you play with additional StratOps rules that require you to determine the new threshold each time the armor in the location in question is reduced).
But generally, everything above 700 armor (or in most cases 600) is safe from being thresholded.
-
Also this damn thing needs a name!
SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
...what? ;)
-
SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
...what? ;)
A++ Double Heresy!
(http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1s5bb3OXF1r2mtzq.png)
*BLAM*
Well..we'll see eh? :P
-
The Leviathan III is a flagship and kinda a 1 off. This would be the ship to have during the SL Era. Would of been great going up against the Caspars going after Terra.
-
It's impossible to threshold 1000 capital armor unless you employ mass drivers that go beyond 100 Capital damage (or you play with additional StratOps rules that require you to determine the new threshold each time the armor in the location in question is reduced).
But generally, everything above 700 armor (or in most cases 600) is safe from being thresholded.
So... the Erinyes, then? Hmm, I wonder where she is...
-
The Leviathan III is a flagship and kinda a 1 off. This would be the ship to have during the SL Era. Would of been great going up against the Caspars going after Terra.
Oh, I'm sure 200-600 Warships guided by the strategies of the hegemony's best Admirals ever, would mess it up rather fast.
-
Oh, I'm sure 200-600 Warships guided by the strategies of the hegemony's best Admirals ever, would mess it up rather fast.
In the SL Era the Lev III would be in a Battle Group or Task Force of dozens if not hundreds of ships.
-
In the SL Era the Lev III would be in a Battle Group or Task Force of dozens if not hundreds of ships.
The problem is, the if the liberation of Terra is any indication, all those drones would target the Leviathan III...
-
SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
...what? ;)
A++ Double Heresy!
Agreed. It would never be SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner. It would be SLS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
The problem is, the if the liberation of Terra is any indication, all those drones would target the Leviathan III...
If so, mission complete. War ships are made to be lost in combat. It is part of the job description. Every Leviathan ever built was designed to take a beating. The battle of Dieron highlights the result nicely. The rest of the fleet walks away basically unscathed. If the battle didn't have certain RoEs it would have seen all the escorts dead and a badly damaged battleship.
-
The problem is, the if the liberation of Terra is any indication, all those drones would target the Leviathan III...
Thus allowing your McKennas, Luxors, Lolas, Aegis, Assaultships, and ASF's to pick them off. Even in Chess sometimes you sacrifice the queen. If a major portion of your drone network goes after one target, they is now a giant hole in their coverage.
To be honest I would use the Lev III in just that way, Skeleton Crew, load it with Nuke missile, have it spam whatever comes after it.
If the Drones bite, the rest of your task force now has an easier go, it it sniffs out the bait, and they go back, you bring in the Lev III at very high Velocity and just weed whack whatever is in the way as you pass them.
-
Agreed. It would never be SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner. It would be SLS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
Gratefully conceded for the correction. O0
-
Agreed. It would never be SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner. It would be SLS ilKhan Alaric Steiner.
No No No. His real name would come out, SLDS ilKhan Alaric Steiner-Davion.
Then you get effect of having horrible thing floating above your world aka Leviathan III.
-
I vote for the name "RDS Ragnar's Claw"
-
Well, I don't know what for sure TPTB have in mind for the vessel with regards to the upcoming plot, but I am however pretty confident in saying its name should be Deus Ex Machina.
-
Suggestion for name:
RDS/CGB Ursa Invictus
The Invincible Bear or Unconquered Bear...
Nice salute to the lost Ursa Major...
-
It a good ship with some Anti-fighter firepower. That is something the SL ships lacked. It would of been a game changer in the SLDF, and the other nations would of built up big ships to compete with it.
-
IIRC, the superior bracketing of SLDF ships partially compensates for their lack of fighter-scale weapons. Plus deploying in fleets with overlapping fields of fire, flotillas of assault dropships, etc.
-
Bracketing does very little for AA because it doesn't work with small craft at short range.
What does work for the SLDF's AA is lots of big guns. An 11 to-hit isn't so bad when a NAC20 is an instakill.
For example an Aegis and an Avalon have very similar AA capabilities probably favouring the Aegis.
Another example is that the Leviathan II's capital weapons are probably more effective as AA weapons than the nominal AA weapons. Of course they weigh a lot more.
What lets the SLDF down is armour or lack thereof. And that is largely a function of the rules at the time.
-
It a good ship with some Anti-fighter firepower. That is something the SL ships lacked. It would of been a game changer in the SLDF, and the other nations would of built up big ships to compete with it.
I highly doubt that. If the McKenna and Texas couldn't trigger a naval arms race among the Houses, neither would a Leviathan.
-
I highly doubt that. If the McKenna and Texas couldn't trigger a naval arms race among the Houses, neither would a Leviathan.
In all fairness, you have to remeber that a McKenna or Texas are not in the same league as a Lev III. 200-300 armor can be dealt with. 1000 armor requires meta rules to not be invincible to everything except a near parity ship.
This is a what-if... the SLDF would have had the navy to escort a death star unit with far more effectiveness than 20 PWSs.
-
My point is that if the Houses couldn't match those two BB classes(and most didn't even try), what would they possibly do in the face of a Lev, that is so far beyond them?
-
My point is that if the Houses couldn't match those two BB classes(and most didn't even try), what would they possibly do in the face of a Lev, that is so far beyond them?
I think we disagree more about the "why" in the Houses' failure to respond in kind to TH BB's. I'm more in that they didn't bother as opposed to they COULDN'T. A ship like the Lev III would have changed the calculus that resulted in the choice to not bother.
-
We'll have to agree to disagree, then. It'll take an Act of Dev to convince me that the Houses had the ability to respond to the Texas or McKenna classes, but merely chose to surrender total space supremacy instead.
-
We'll have to agree to disagree, then. It'll take an Act of Dev to convince me that the Houses had the ability to respond to the Texas or McKenna classes, but merely chose to surrender total space supremacy instead.
The TH had a stranglehold on certain spacebuilding capacity, in a less-extreme sense as did ComStar in the 31st century.
I'll agree that it's true that the Houses were too reliant on the Hegemony to build competing battleships. I suppose we can agree to disagree as to whether the Houses COULD have duplicated the infrastructure they relied upon for imports from the Hegemony. I say they didn't bother because the CBA just wasn't there. Sure, they can't compete 1:1 with McKennas and Texases, but if push came to shove those ships could be defeated or interdicted without needing to have comparable ships.
The Lev III is such a different animal that the CBA would have worked out differently. It would have been in the Houses' interest to go ahead and pay for building the infrastructure necessary to build a ship that can counter it. I think that's it's pretty plainly obvious that there's no reason that infrastructure couldn't be constructed.... assuming the decision to invest was ever actually made. If the yards producing the Lev III could be built in the 31st-32nd century without any reliance on imports from Terra, those same yards could have been built in the same system(s) in the 26th-27th.
-
My point is that if the Houses couldn't match those two BB classes(and most didn't even try), what would they possibly do in the face of a Lev, that is so far beyond them?
I am pretty sure that there is a table somewhere saying what tonnage the Houses could build when. Maybe IO.
In all fairness, you have to remeber that a McKenna or Texas are not in the same league as a Lev III. 200-300 armor can be dealt with. 1000 armor requires meta rules to not be invincible to everything except a near parity ship.
This is a what-if... the SLDF would have had the navy to escort a death star unit with far more effectiveness than 20 PWSs.
1000 points of armour is a failure or abuse of the rules by the original author. But that bridge had been already crossed by the authors of the Mjolnir and Avalon. It was pretty clear 300 armour was a lot in the existing ships. These ships took that convention and threw it out of the window. Arguably for the worse.
1000 armour does not require meta rules to defeat. This hue and cry did not follow the introduction of the Leviathan II, it was merely a challenge to overcome. The Leviathan III is not significantly different from the Leviathan II as a tactical unit. Armour is the same. Firepower is basically the same. It is harder to put a missile into. It is a little more accurate at long range, but you need to find a way to hold an enemy there. AA has received a boost. Armour is now Lamellor, to match the Odysseys and Hunters built at Alshain. The major change is those docking collars. But that is an extension of Star League doctrine and a lack/obsolescence of destroyers.
Now you might say that in 3070 the Houses had the ships to kill Leviathan IIs. Maybe. WoB and the FWL did. But no one else did and it didn't end the world. The Dominion and Combine fought a hot war and the big battleship was basically an irrelevance. WarShips are too easily avoided to keep the 'Mech dominant.
Now as for if the Star League built one? Well Potemkins exist don't they? Practically, if you don't want to use ASF or something, 3 modern Aegis will get the kill, probably mutually. So teams of Tharkads or Atreus could do the job, likewise New Systis can take the ASF approach. The big issue is not the inability to kill a single battleship. It is that the Hegemony could build 200 of them, and this is no different to a McKenna.
-
How can you easily avoid a warship? If you fight an offensive campaign and want to take that one really important planet: How exactly do you avoid it if said warship is in orbit?
If you fight a defensive campaign and have those couple of really important planets to hold, whoops, a bunch of warships just popped out of the blue and rain hellfire on your troops. Tough luck.
If you play a bait and chase game, sure, things might look different. But when it comes to holding and attacking planets, warships change the whole equation, sometimes even a single one will do the trick.
-
Easy. You don't play the Warship's game. Let's say I'm attacking Da Bears. Well that Levi III really worries me but fortunately for me, there are multiple worlds with strategic value to attack. Send forces after Orestes and open a front aimed at penetrating to Rasalhague. If the Levi III deploys to either of those, you launch an attack on Alshain.
-
Don't forget to make plans for the other Leviathan. ;D
-
Still have three fronts planned. That's one more than two :D
-
Oh no, I totally agree, but it just seems like the Leviathan III has overshadowed her older sister. Rasalhague needs some love!
Basic idea, present a Leviathan level threat at more places than they have Leviathans to defend, saving the target you desperately want to destroy for last while the Leviathans are elsewhere.
-
Fair enough, fair enough. And yeah...that's how you handle supervessels. There is no such thing as a planet you *must* capture or defend in Battletech.
-
Besides, a WarShip in orbit is what is known in the business as a target. Everyone can see it and word will get out. The bad guys then know they need to apply WarShip+1 force to make it go away. This is why WarShips are bad defensive platforms. Better they remain on the offensive picking on the unsuspecting weak.
How can you easily avoid a warship? If you fight an offensive campaign and want to take that one really important planet: How exactly do you avoid it if said warship is in orbit?
If you fight a defensive campaign and have those couple of really important planets to hold, whoops, a bunch of warships just popped out of the blue and rain hellfire on your troops. Tough luck.
If you play a bait and chase game, sure, things might look different. But when it comes to holding and attacking planets, warships change the whole equation, sometimes even a single one will do the trick.
Read that again, but replace "warship" with "aerospace regiment". Unlisted aerospace regiments have been with us since the House Books. Same basic level of force as a WarShip. Why aren't they uniquely destructive?
As for avoiding WarShips even at an orbital scale a single ship is easy to avoid. Drive plumes are bright and easily seen. Planets are big. Do the maths right and you can catch a WarShip out on the wrong side of a world. Even easier with two DropShips. You will have a couple of hours to get cover.
As for hellfire out of the blue? DropShips can do that these days. I am sure people can tell you all about being high altitude bombed by a Wing of ASF.
But for me it always comes back to bringing a knife to a gun fight. If you know there is a WarShip there bring cover to deal with it (WarShip, ASF, suicidal JumpShip, whatever). If you attack a world defended by a regiment with a company people will rightly call your strategy risky. So you bring a force appropriate to expected opposition. And if the bad guys transfer in a WarShip or regiment later? That is just bad luck.
-
why isn't a aerospace regiment as destructive as a warship?
because the odds of every fighter in the regiment hitting the same target with their weapons in the same area is impossible. Aerospace fighter squadrons come across as more powerful than dropships since the AT2 rules group all the squadrons weapons in a single hit in capital scale. In ground combat, the fighters weapons become individual conventional weapons again and concentrating that much firepower is ridiculously unlikely
-
Aside from weapons that fail their to-hit rolls, the odds of all weapons in a large fighter group hitting their assigned target are roughly 100%.
Just because you've brought a lot of fighters, it doesn't mean that some of your birds are going to spontaneously shoot at the wrong mech or WarShip. The only way that can happen is if your opponent willingly or otherwise marks the damage on the wrong record sheet.
-
in AT2, the squadron fires as a group so everything hits the same location. Using that same squadron (or regiment) in a battletech game each fighter fires individually. If the whole regiment fires at one mech and the majority of shots hit, there still wont be anything left, but to get a regimetn worth of fighters in a position to all strike at the same time isn't in any way possible. different ranges, different gunnery skills, etc will all have a detrimental effect on total damage.
capital class weapons deal massive amounts of conventional damage and have the range to do bombardment, unlike the fighters that have to be in range with conventional weaponry
-
I'm little out date, but Squadrons rules were cap to 6 fighters per Squadron record sheet wasn't it? Thus why Clan's 10 fighter Stars formations care split 6 and 4 fighters record sheets. Old AT2 and Revised fighters were hideously powerful, the old Trial of Possession for the Leviathan II - Rasalhague had entire fighter stars of 10 in 1 grouping doing capital grade damage to warships and DropShips alike.
That's why they split things up, making so a Galaxy of fighters were scourge of the universe.
-
I used to have a program that let you build full stars and squadrons, and as of AT2, aerospace squadrons were killers in space, and dropships were laughably weak. I ran a game with a large WoB fleet against the Great Bear and the dropships were little more than flares to distract the Leviathan for a couple of rounds.
-
I am pretty sure that there is a table somewhere saying what tonnage the Houses could build when. Maybe IO.
1000 points of armour is a failure or abuse of the rules by the original author. But that bridge had been already crossed by the authors of the Mjolnir and Avalon. It was pretty clear 300 armour was a lot in the existing ships. These ships took that convention and threw it out of the window. Arguably for the worse.
1000 armour does not require meta rules to defeat. This hue and cry did not follow the introduction of the Leviathan II, it was merely a challenge to overcome. The Leviathan III is not significantly different from the Leviathan II as a tactical unit. Armour is the same. Firepower is basically the same. It is harder to put a missile into. It is a little more accurate at long range, but you need to find a way to hold an enemy there. AA has received a boost. Armour is now Lamellor, to match the Odysseys and Hunters built at Alshain. The major change is those docking collars. But that is an extension of Star League doctrine and a lack/obsolescence of destroyers.
Now you might say that in 3070 the Houses had the ships to kill Leviathan IIs. Maybe. WoB and the FWL did. But no one else did and it didn't end the world. The Dominion and Combine fought a hot war and the big battleship was basically an irrelevance. WarShips are too easily avoided to keep the 'Mech dominant.
Now as for if the Star League built one? Well Potemkins exist don't they? Practically, if you don't want to use ASF or something, 3 modern Aegis will get the kill, probably mutually. So teams of Tharkads or Atreus could do the job, likewise New Systis can take the ASF approach. The big issue is not the inability to kill a single battleship. It is that the Hegemony could build 200 of them, and this is no different to a McKenna.
I remember the Max Armour rule from Battlespace. It was...350 I think
-
Battlespace is among the few truly old books I have (pre-2000), and I'm not seeing a max armor rule. I have the "Corrected 1996" printing, which might matter, though.
-
Firstly, bear in mind that AT2 is years out of date. StratOps has been the ruleset inn question for a very long time now.
to get a regimetn worth of fighters in a position to all strike at the same time isn't in any way possible.
Sure it is. There's no stacking limit in the air or in space. Just put them all in one hex, and you've done the supposedly impossible.
-
Firstly, bear in mind that AT2 is years out of date. StratOps has been the ruleset inn question for a very long time now.
While true, it did have an effect on the creation of the early warships of the setting. If there was an armor cap, the armor levels we see on the older ships make a lot more sense. Though, they still would seem to function poorly as true warships.
-
For your definition of warship. Current day warships have no armour beyond splinter protection but they are still warships. One of the big challenges for players of this game is separating what they image things should be with how they actually are. The game may be giving you sow's ears but if you try and use them as silk purses you will be disappointed. Use it like a sow's ear and you might be surprised.
-
Fry 'em up and make pork rinds? ;D
-
Considering the armor on a warship even as heavily armored as the Lev 3 is still less the 1/2 % of the weight of the ship there isn't as much of a weight savings as you think. There are many of weapons that mass more then the armor of the ship.
-
Armour's dirty secret is that you have to pay for th3 structure to mount it.
Take a 750000 2/3 ship.
75 S I weighs 56250 tons and allows flanks of 150 points using Ferro Carbide.
To have flanks of 300 the ship needs a SI of 145 weighing 108750 tons. Of course a 2/3 ship maxes out at 90 so you need a larger enginw too.
Dragging ships under a million tons up to "adequate armour " requires a lot of SI which will compromise the guns.
-
The "hue and cry" about the Lev is that it mounts both 1000 armor per facing AND still carries the firepower to instagib any contemporary thing that can threaten 1000 armor.
Without the Lucky Hits rule (allowing natural 12s on to hit rolls to roll for crits w/o regards to armor or threshold levels) the Lev is unparalleled, if you look beyond a vacuum and into a context.
Now granted, that might be the intended point all along from a meta pov. Maybe the Lev III is supposed to eat the few warships left in the Inner Sphere. Maybe it's supposed to carry a faction to ilClan-dom. Maybe it's supposed to spark a new "golden age" for warships as other factions begin to ramp up shipyards to create options for dealing with it. The point is, and I think still stands as valid, is that the Lev III "breaks" the 3145 setting. We can trust that TPTB know what they're doing and they intended to break the setting. Or maybe they didn't realize what sort of a genie they let out of the bottle. Until TPTB show us their cards, we don't know for sure.
(Lest I sound like chicken little, I'll state for the record that I'm prepared to take on faith that TPTB do know what they're doing in this case.)
-
Battlespace is among the few truly old books I have (pre-2000), and I'm not seeing a max armor rule. I have the "Corrected 1996" printing, which might matter, though.
The record sheets that came in the original box set had a maximum of 350 armour boxes per location, much like a blank mech sheet has a maximum number of armour circles printed on it. Intended or not, this became the maximum.
-
Armour's dirty secret is that you have to pay for th3 structure to mount it.
Take a 750000 2/3 ship ...
I am reminded of one of my father-in-law's old adages "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
With the evolution of the Aerospace arms race via the rise of PWS's, the recovery of the SL-era firing programs and the invention of sub-cap weapons, if we have seen the passing of of the age of warships massing under a megaton, and a move away from the 2/3 thrust curve due to the associated armor limitations?
-Jackmc
-
I just had a thought. Scary thing that it is. What if the Lev III isn't for the Ghost Bears? What if they are building it for someone else? Imagine if the Ghost Bears send that thing to the Davion's and say 'You orders finished. Want another Julian?"
-
I just had a thought. Scary thing that it is. What if the Lev III isn't for the Ghost Bears? What if they are building it for someone else? Imagine if the Ghost Bears send that thing to the Davion's and say 'You orders finished. Want another Julian?"
I dont see the GB's building one to trade/sell off, however the Ravens with the activity in the OA.....they'll trade warships for stuff!
-
Ravens need people. that their biggest problem. They don't have enough to man their existing equipment.
Maybe need for Harvest Trials
-
I reckon the Ravens could crew their fleet, remember that WarShips in Battletech don't have absolutely massive crews, these are not star destroyers with crews of 36k plus, but at most its 300 or so maybe 400 for a really big ship. They've got enough cold bodies to easily man them but they would be VERY inexperienced crews and far below the standards the Ravens would want serving aboard ship.
The bottleneck for the Raven Alliance is how fast they can turn out a trained cadres of men and women for the ships and keeping them aboard active ships for on the job training. This also goes with the problem of the basic costs of operating a large number of warships with a fairly small financial base like the Alliance has.
-
1,215 crew for a Lev III, including pilots and Elementals. The Bears don't need to go to the Ravens for personnel, either. It's reasonable to assume that they can transfer gunners and technicians from their DropShip and JumpShip fleets.
-
Or they increased Sibko production and recruitment while the Lev III was being built in anticipation of the ships launch. Then using those new green crews to replace PWS crews and other warship crew to give the new Lev III a working start up crew.
-
Well we know the Dominion had apparently been expanding its aerospace and dropship crews with Aesir/Vanir's on jumpships becoming the usual go to problem solvers and even if they didn't use Freeborn there's probably enough slack for the trueborn to be churned out to act as the crew. But it does make sense they'd rotate the most experienced crews off their drop/jumpship fleet and replace them with green crews whilst forming the Lev III's crew out of better trained and more experienced personnel.
-
Well we know the Dominion had apparently been expanding its aerospace and dropship crews with Aesir/Vanir's on jumpships becoming the usual go to problem solvers and even if they didn't use Freeborn there's probably enough slack for the trueborn to be churned out to act as the crew. But it does make sense they'd rotate the most experienced crews off their drop/jumpship fleet and replace them with green crews whilst forming the Lev III's crew out of better trained and more experienced personnel.
Take half the Officers and NCO from Jumpships and Dropships, put them in Warship School, replace what is needed in Dropships, Jumpships and Warships, with green crews or newly promoted NCO's and Officers. I would also assume that you might be able to troll the merchants for good navigators, and technicians as well. Keeps experience everywhere and jump starts experience transfer.
-
Or they increased Sibko production and recruitment while the Lev III was being built in anticipation of the ships launch. Then using those new green crews to replace PWS crews and other warship crew to give the new Lev III a working start up crew.
Plus don't forget that the rank and file "enlisted" don't have to go through the sibko training bottleneck since they are technician and laborer caste.
-Jackmc
-
Plus don't forget that the rank and file "enlisted" don't have to go through the sibko training bottleneck since they are technician and laborer caste.
-Jackmc
Also true. Crewing the new ship isn't as much of an issue as people think.
-
The more I think about this vessel, the more I believe that it is a plot device. It's the ilClan's Death Star.
-
The more I think about this vessel, the more I believe that it is a plot device. It's the ilClan's Death Star.
I agree. That's why I said its name should be the Deus ex Machina .
-
I agree. That's why I said its name should be the Deus ex Machina .
Things can serve a role without being blatantly named as such.
-
Things can serve a role without being blatantly named as such.
Of course then can. But that kind of humor is a tradition in Battletech... from the beginning all the way up to contemporary products.
-
Of course then can. But that kind of humor is a tradition in Battletech... from the beginning all the way up to contemporary products.
Not everyone appreciates it.
-
Fortunately, those who don't can be safely ignored.
-
Fortunately, those who don't can be safely ignored.
Like me? I'm sick of the stupid jokes, okay?
-
In this situation, you are actually correct. As a moderator, I'm not allowed to use the Ignore function on anyone.
-
Like me? I'm sick of the stupid jokes, okay?
The whole world is aware. One would think that someone who encourages others not to harp on the same complaint over and over again would avoid doing the same.
-
Maybe CGBS Banhammer? :D
-
Of course then can. But that kind of humor is a tradition in Battletech... from the beginning all the way up to contemporary products.
Eh, that would be a bit too much to me.
-
Eh, that would be a bit too much to me.
Pretty much. It's a shame really, because "God from the Machine" would have been a great name for some Word of Blake/Manei Domini superweapon if it didn't have so much literary baggage attached.
-
Maybe CGBS Banhammer? :D
Has the Dominion kept their ship names prefixed with CGBS, or are they something like RDS now?
-
In this situation, you are actually correct. As a moderator, I'm not allowed to use the Ignore function on anyone.
#P
Pretty much. It's a shame really, because "God from the Machine" would have been a great name for some Word of Blake/Manei Domini superweapon if it didn't have so much literary baggage attached.
See "Machina Domini" Interface Armor.
-
The more I think about this vessel, the more I believe that it is a plot device. It's the ilClan's Death Star.
I have to think of the *Tiamat* super warships presented in Ben Rome April Fools fake ilClan sneak preview.
Maybe the LevIII was this design behind.
-
Also true. Crewing the new ship isn't as much of an issue as people think.
Yep. Aerospace sibko washouts would provide all the manpower needed and capitalize on the training they’ve already received.
-
Still don't have the record sheet for the ship modified with the Heavy Mass Driver attached to it.
-
Alshain, they will name it Alshain. What better name than there new Capitol World and one that is a garuntee to annoy the Combine enough that they will attack?
-
(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5e/bb/44/5ebb4461c483dc110d318b7fcf73a6b8.jpg)
All things considered this looks like an offensive weapon more than defensive (which would be aerospace fighter fleets), in keeping with the Bears' foreign policy: poke me and I'm coming for you with all phasers set to "GLASS!" The capital armament appears fairly moderate to be honest.
CGB Ghost Bear. Because it is what it is, and also for the giggles and accusations of tempting fate when it meets its inevitable demise.
-
All things considered this looks like an offensive weapon more than defensive (which would be aerospace fighter fleets)
Shades of Hunt For Red October.
-
I still say Ursa Invictus is the perfect name. Of course the wall could drop and we find the Republic has built 20 McKennas...
-
Alshain, they will name it Alshain. What better name than there new Capitol World and one that is a garuntee to annoy the Combine enough that they will attack?
If the Ravens get one, I would suggest the CSR New Samarkand. >:D
-
Yep. Aerospace sibko washouts would provide all the manpower needed and capitalize on the training they’ve already received.
Why? You only need roughly 25-75 warriors (ie. Line officers) + whatever ASF pilots/Elementals you carry to crew the thing. Clan WS doctrine dictates that non-Line officers (engineering, Med, Sensors, ect.) and enlisted crew (even the gunners) are not from the warrior caste.
-Jackmc
-
I still say Ursa Invictus is the perfect name. Of course the wall could drop and we find the Republic has built 20 McKennas...
Except the Wall has dropped, and we know they didn't.
-
Why? You only need roughly 25-75 warriors (ie. Line officers) + whatever ASF pilots/Elementals you carry to crew the thing. Clan WS doctrine dictates that non-Line officers (engineering, Med, Sensors, ect.) and enlisted crew (even the gunners) are not from the warrior caste.
-Jackmc
Sounds like we're in agreement. Washouts are not warriors. They are civilians - technicians, laborers etc.
-
Except the Wall has dropped, and we know they didn't.
Some of us don't have tro 3150. After buying all the pdfs I decided against the print collections as well. I have gad A LOT of other expenses this year...
-
Some of us don't have tro 3150. After buying all the pdfs I decided against the print collections as well. I have gad A LOT of other expenses this year...
TRO 3150 doesn't tell us much anyway. There are teasers, but that's it. It entices conjecture about whether or not New Avalon has been captured rather than actually saying it did fall, for example. The plot details that are given are so few and narrowly focused that the "is it a joke or isn't it" ilClan timeline where the HomeClans invade the Inner Sphere could already be underway while being compatible with what's given in 3150. (I'm not saying it IS underway, mind you.. just that due to the lack of coverage on the big picture presented in TRO3150 leaves that much room open for a possibility of that magnitude)
So there's certainly room for the Republic to have unveiled any manner of nasty surprises that were deliberately not (yet) mentioned in TRO3150 so as not to spoil the official/real ilClan plot.
-
Some of us don't have tro 3150. After buying all the pdfs I decided against the print collections as well. I have gad A LOT of other expenses this year...
I was referring more to Field Manual: 3145, which while being set just before the Fortress fell, makes pretty clear what the Republic had ready.
-
Except the Wall has dropped, and we know they didn't.
Except, you don't know. The one point of reference is TRO: 3150, and it doesn't state the Republic's full strength. You'll have to wait for the Field Manual, or ilClan to provide an exact accounting of the RAF once the Wall comes down.
-
Except, you don't know. The one point of reference is TRO: 3150, and it doesn't state the Republic's full strength. You'll have to wait for the Field Manual, or ilClan to provide an exact accounting of the RAF once the Wall comes down.
But we do have FM: 3145, and no mention of squadrons of Battleships.
-
IIRC the Republic has like a Lola and something else as their Warships, their main naval strength is Tiamat, Interdictors and i'm going to guess a lesser number of Castrums.
-
IIRC the Republic has like a Lola and something else as their Warships, their main naval strength is Tiamat, Interdictors and i'm going to guess a lesser number of Castrums.
Lola III and Aegis, with a Dante operating outside the fortress.
There are indications that they're getting into drone weapons, though. Painfully large swarms of drone fighters and/or assault ships present a more real possibility than the republic secretly having a battleship fleet.
-
Maybe they have a painfully large fleet of drone battleships!
-
Maybe they have a painfully large fleet of drone battleships!
...
I must build this.
-
Must be one of the few Aegis outside of Jade Falcon service left, good to see the Dante's are still around, even if its a single ship.
Also speaking of ships, I just put a Warship of the month up, if ya wanna read it.
-
But we do have FM: 3145, and no mention of squadrons of Battleships.
Correct, but the book is not an indicator or barometer for 3150 or after. That would be like saying Field Manual ComStar (written in 3062) was an accurate indicator of the WoB's strength in 3067.
Just saying...
-
The more I think about this vessel, the more I believe that it is a plot device. It's the ilClan's Death Star.
Or perhaps there will be a "concentrate all fire on that super-star destroyer" moment.
-
In regards to the RoTS. So we know that they have the Titan Yards or what's left of them. However don't the Belters have Yards too, lots of them? Or were they smashed in the Jihad too?
I was under the impression that they did not get along with Comstar/WOB, and were more or less left alone. However didn't Stone's Coalitionrun Spec ops missions from there habitats?
-
Correct, but the book is not an indicator or barometer for 3150 or after. That would be like saying Field Manual ComStar (written in 3062) was an accurate indicator of the WoB's strength in 3067.
Just saying...
Conceded. Looking back at FM: 3145, despite purporting to be an internal document, it's awfully hazy on a lot of things.
-
In regards to the RoTS. So we know that they have the Titan Yards or what's left of them. However don't the Belters have Yards too, lots of them? Or were they smashed in the Jihad too?
I was under the impression that they did not get along with Comstar/WOB, and were more or less left alone. However didn't Stone's Coalitionrun Spec ops missions from there habitats?
The Belters have yards, and they produce jumpships. (Type unconfirmed but lets just guess typical Invaders)
I believe C* had them on a leash in the SW to keep JS #'s low, but post Jihad there is a quote about them cranking up production to bring the IS back out of their "traffic jam/parking lot" slow pace of intersteller commerce.
Honestly, even if it took 20 years to bring Titan back on line & only produced 1 Warship every 5 years, I'd still have expected something to get produced in secret in the depths of the Sol system.
-
Well if the belters have produced any large number of jumpships and the load them up with carrier dropships. Then you could just destroy the leviathan by mass aerospace assets. Jump in and give the ghost bears a pearl harbor moment.
-
On the subject of what the Republic might do the counter the Leviathan III, it recently occurred to me that the Republic could theoretically have cracked the location of the last Hidden Worlds (Jihad:Final Reckoning details how those locations were stored and protected, and their biggest defensive measure would have gone down with the HPG network).
Maybe the Blakists had a nice, industrial grade "Bear Repellent" stored away...
-
RoTS probably did go the drone route. Lots of light drones with nuclear kamikaze payloads.
-
I thought the RotS was getting away from Drones given what they did to the Tiamat & Dragau ??
That said, I don't think there is any concrete figures on just how many of those are around.
At even 1/year you can have some defensive fleets of assault droppers in large #s around quite a few republic worlds.
And we all know DS are produced faster than that.
Jumping in to find an "SDS" type defense of 30+ Dragau is going to make for a very bad day for some fleet.
Just look at that they did to the Dragoon Assault & Case White.
-
I thought the RotS was getting away from Drones given what they did to the Tiamat & Dragau ??
That said, I don't think there is any concrete figures on just how many of those are around.
At even 1/year you can have some defensive fleets of assault droppers in large #s around quite a few republic worlds.
And we all know DS are produced faster than that.
Jumping in to find an "SDS" type defense of 30+ Dragau is going to make for a very bad day for some fleet.
Just look at that they did to the Dragoon Assault & Case White.
I think initially they wanted to get away from WoB-associated things like drone tech, but eventually (especially in the Fortress era) realized that they had significant manpower shortages and were going to have to go to drone tech to solve the problem.
-
And while it's a bit out of game, having drones will make your people much happier than saying: Okay, 500 fighter pilots, go in and kill that warshpi and we'll honor all five of you who make it back.
-
You know the Celerity & Revenant do point in that direction actually.
The idea that the RotS went back to Drone-Dragaus makes me happy >:D
Those things give the concept of "highspeed pass" a whole new lease on life when you add in the sudden braking of having them collide into the Warship. Finally, Davion Naval Warfare as it was meant to happen !!
-
Now I'm not completely up on knowledge of warships, but HOLY CRAP!!!!! If i'm reading it right it can completely NO sale a barrage from a squadron of missile cruisers, with PWS. I'm imagining any Naval commander having a brown pants moment when ever this bad girl jumps into your system. I'd guess you better hope for a fighter to crash into its bridge.
-
Fighter, hell. You'd need at least a large dropship, if not a small warship.