S-2 Star Dagger — 30t, XTRO: RetroTech
All proposed fan-variants should be posted in the corresponding “FotW Workshop” thread. BattleTech writers have a long and honoured tradition of name-checking otherwise-undetailed designs in fluff as a way of giving texture to the BT universe, and BattleTech players have an equally enduring and venerated tradition of bugging those writers for the actual specs on these mystery machines, sometimes for years, until TPTBs cave and add another entry to a TRO to shut up the naggers and get back to less trivial aspects of universe-building. ::) The S-2 is another step in this ancient dance, first given a throwaway reference in TRO3039 as one of the Combine’s ‘ageing fighters’ that was superceded by the SL-21
Sholagar in the 29th century (incidentally, the other was the
Swift, though how the Dracs got their hands on that SLDF type eludes me).
‘Throwaway’ seems to have been the word of the day when it came to the
Star Dagger, because apparently it was a Terran Hegemony design that was pensioned off to the Dracs in the late twenty-fourth century. This is an interesting datum in itself: many BT designs serve for hundreds of years, yet the S-2 was introduced by the Terran Hegemony (established 2315) and withdrawn before the end of the same century, which says something either about the type itself or the simple march of technology. It’s probably the former, since
ER:AoW says the Hegemony didn’t introduce ‘modern’ BattleTechnology until 2470 (and, well, we’ll deal with the stats in a moment). Of course, the
Star Dagger’s unimpressive capabilities came with a very affordable per-unit cost, which might explain why the type managed to survive in the face of competition from the Combine’s own
Sabre and was only finished off by the
Sholagar. (Ignore the claim in the
Star Dagger’s fluff that the
Sabre came ‘centuries’ later; although the iconic SB-27 might just fall into that timeframe - although personally I doubt it - the original SB-26 was introduced by the Alliance of Galedon, somewhat
before the formation of the Terran Hegemony or said Hegemony could design all-new starfighters.)
Of course, the Jihad meant that RetroTech got a second glance by people who said “we need lots of replacements
now, which means ‘cheap’ and ‘fast’ and screw ‘good’!”, and the Protectorate Defence Conglomerate in what used to be loyal Taurian territory has resurrected the design and started unobtrusively shoveling new-build
Star Daggers out the door, patriotically selling half the units produced to the Calderon Protectorate’s defence-forces and cynically dumping the rest onto the open market for cash-in-hand, consciously treating legal niceties like ‘end-user certificates’ and ‘due diligence’ as little more than empty formalities as long as the buyer’s credit was good, so they can use that cash to expand their own production facilities. This means that it’s almost a statistical certainty that many of these machines are going to such ne’er-do-wells as low-end mercenaries, pirates, or Blaker front-companies - note the subtle hint to would-be scenario builders ;) - but the PDC has clearly spoken to Tagon’s Toughs and taken heed of their aphorism that “morality pays poorly”. ::)
Now, the early twenty-fourth century was before people had worked out certain fundamentals of starfighter design - though the
Centurion and
Sabre would come along to show them the way soon enough - and the
Star Dagger’s design reflects that. At thirty tons, it’s twenty percent heavier than the
Sabre which relegated it to benchwarmer status (see below), but its primitive contruction mandates that its mere 8/12 thrust-curve demands a 220 SFE that takes up a third of the spaceframe’s mass-budget. (The XTRO lists the engine weight at 11.5 tons, which puts the type 1.5t overweight; I raised this in the ‘Official Interaction’ boards, since it looks like someone started with a 240SFE for 10/15 thrust-curve, then forgot to correct the engine-mass when converting to primitive construction, but I’ve heard nothing about this and the .pdf hasn’t been corrected, which speaks to TPTBs having bigger fish to fry.) The fuel-fraction is a full ‘standard’ five tons, giving it 2.5 times the endurance of the SB-26 (which might explain why the S-2 stuck around so long), and there’s no need for additional heat-sinks above the base ten singles. The use of primitive armour hurts the type’s ability to withstand a hit, since six tons of primitive laminates only get you protection equivalent to four tons of standard (22/15/12); only the nose is immune to threshold-checks from a small laser, and the entire spaceframe is open to ML TACs. (Conversely, this might have been seen as quite tough in its day, since that same armour was immune to TACs from single SRMs, machine-guns, or AC/2s - which formed most of the AAA systems of that period.)
Offensively, the S-2 is... unimpressive. The nose houses two lasers, a medium and a small, both of which can threaten to threshold its own armour (which is probably typical for the mass-bracket and the era) but don’t deliver a massive degree of raw punch byeond that point; the rest of the armament volume is taken up by three machine-guns, one in each wing and a third covering the tail, fed from a common one-ton(!) magazine. Similarly, the weapons-load tops out at six tons at 6/9 thrust, which is daunting enough when you’re looking up at it from the ground but leaves the design meat-on-the-table against hostile interceptors; of course, it’s also just enough for a single Arrow-IV (AAM? Guided? Vanilla air-to-mud? Davey Crockett?), six RL/10s, or a trio of Lyran Light AAMs in the Jihad era and beyond, so the
Star Dagger can still make a meaningful contribution.
In the Star League or Succession Wars eras, I might have expected to find
Star Daggers in tertiary-level ‘reserve’ formations, relegated to aviation-militia units that couldn’t afford a full complement of
Sabres or something similar. In that combination, the SB-27s would be playing ‘interceptor/escort’, while the S-2s were used as bomb-trucks and strafers, ripping up pirate
looters infantry formations or, in a slightly more Draconian context, suppressing ‘riots’ by ‘disloyal citizenry and enemies of the Dragon’ with machine-guns and cluster-bombs. #P Even in the Clan or Jihad periods, such a practice might continue; after all, you don’t need super-sexy fighters to bomb the hell out of raiders and insurgents (witness the A-10 Warthog!). Of course, if you’re SOL for other options, the machine-guns also mean that a squadron of
Star Daggers can provide a limited degree of point-defence capability for heavier assets; it’s really, really
thin point-defence, but when the nukes are flying even a ‘thin’ defence beats the hell out of ‘grit your teeth and wait to die’.
Funny thing is, if ever there was a fighter I would have expected to see continue/resume production during the Succession Wars (if the Primitive-Tech rules had existed back then), something like the S-2 would be it. The lower technical demands of producing it would have let the makers put spaceframes in the sky when people who were stuck on building ‘modern’ designs were still sucking wind, and at the lower per-unit cost they could have done it in ‘Sherman swarm’ numbers. If nothing else, it could do what I said above and take over the ‘bombing peasants and pirates’ roles carried out by many fringe (and some interior-world!) militias, letting the brass reassign modern killware to the front lines. (Yes, you don’t need transatmospheric performance for a defensive bomber, but if the Duke of Planet X locates a pirate base and decides to get a little proactive, it becomes near-mandatory. Stamping out a band of pirates at their source is a laudable achievement in its own right, assuming you don’t get ‘invited onwards’ for shortstopping the JumpShip(s) you needed to do it. ::) )
Frankly, the
Star Dagger is only likely to see combat when ‘real’ machines are nowhere to be found, and if the other side has properly-maintained modern equipment, the S-2 drivers aren’t going to have much fun. Nonetheless, they’ve got a decent platform with which to deliver bombs, rockets, and stand-off missiles, though they’ll do better in those functions if someone else is keeping the enemy’s interceptors out of their faces and they manage to avoid concentrations of AAA like the bubbles of death they are. Attacking in numbers that look like sandstorms or swarms of locusts wouldn’t hurt the ‘mission success’ probabilities, either. Y’know, all that stuff you find in
Tactics 101. ;)
On the other hand, in good conscience I can’t recommend pitching these ships into an air-to-air fight unless there’s no alternative: by modern standards they’re far too slow for ships their size, and effectively unarmed to boot. If you find yourself at that dire extreme, however, send entire squadrons after a single target and pray you can give him the ‘death of a thousand cuts’ before he kills too many of your people.
Defensively, ground-commanders who know they’ll be facing
Star Daggers without fighter-cover of their own will make sure their Partisan crews and
Rifleman/
JägerMech drivers know there’s a bounty on each fighter they smoke, payable in cash (or better yet, free bottles of Scotch) after the operation’s end. ::) Any modern interceptor you care to name would be a good choice for shooting up S-2s, though you’d probably get extra style-points for doing it with
Sabres to reinforce exactly
why the older machine was retired. ;D
As to how I’d modify the
Star Dagger? Well, that’s why I set up...
THE WORKSHOPNEXT WEEK: MSF-42 Bluehawk/ASF-23 Protector (HB:MPS)
UPCOMING: MM-* Dragonfly (H:RW)
Měngqín (TRO:3085)