Field Reports 2765

[Giovanni Blasini]

I was just baffeled the lack of ams of any sort since the missile must have been the big guns of the Navies prior to Dreadnought.

Don't forget NACs. They first debuted around 2200.  The Dreadnought, presumably, was just bigger, meaner, and packed a true compact core KF drive, which allowed it to have a higher mass fraction for payload while still going twice as far per jump.

[Liam's Ghost]

I adore everything naval about this Field Report. The Cruiser is gorgeous. The Narukami is sexy.

Anybody else notice there's a non-primitive Star Dagger hidden in there? It actually looks fairly impressive considering its origins.

[I am Belch II]

The Narukami is a nice ships, make a refit with some more heat sinks and armor it would be a pretty good warship.

[I am Belch II]

The Narukami is a nice ships, make a refit with some more heat sinks and armor it would be a pretty good warship.

[Jellico]

The Narukami is a nice ships, make a refit with some more heat sinks and armor it would be a pretty good warship.

??? Provide a munchkin ship and they are still not happy.
In destroyer land only the York, Davion II, and Whirlwind (Clan) carry more armour. Narukamis have typically 25% more than contemporary SLDF ships.
There are HS for a full broadside. Use some optional rules and you can squeeze out more. I know some people love diving into melees with their WarShips but it is rarely smart. Besides DC ships aren't known for their high heat tolerance.

In BV terms the Narukamis sit somewhere between a Monsoon and an Avatar. That's the movement points kicking in. My own point system rates the Narukamis between the Dart and Davion II. It is the king of all destroyers despite its age. A pair are enough to take on any cruiser. Those big 70 point bays mean a single Narukami against a contemporary Aegis would be frighteningly close.

Pushing the design further would be hard to justify in the existing universe.

[Wrangler]

Is it possible were not really seeing these ship's potentials because alot of us don't have opporunity to actual get to use these things that often?  :(

[Jellico]

Yes and no. the Narukami is as subtle as a brick. The trickiest thing about it is the 70 point bays meaning a single hit will nearly kill a SLDF destroyer, while it will get crit hits against anything short of a Leviathan II. At the same time it is deceptively fragile.

OTOH the Cruiser is more of a thinking man's ship. The missiles lack firepower, but they have more creative rule options. For example, bow on the Cruiser can put 10 missile bays on target.

[VhenRa]

Or of course, keep the range up best you can and lob missiles on bearings only at them from outside non-missile range.

[Trace Coburn]

I adore everything naval about this Field Report. The Cruiser is gorgeous. The Narukami is sexy.

Anybody else notice there's a non-primitive Star Dagger hidden in there? It actually looks fairly impressive considering its origins.

  You just made me look at the RATs, Liam’s Ghost, and... wait, there it is, in a footnote.  Hmmm... that is fairly decent, isn’t it?  }:)

[Liam's Ghost]

Makes a pretty good predecessor to the Sholagar.

(or makes the Sholagar pilots miss their old birds when their new ones start crashing into each other)

[cray]

OTOH the Cruiser is more of a thinking man's ship. The missiles lack firepower, but they have more creative rule options. For example, bow on the Cruiser can put 10 missile bays on target.

With one of those rule options, pre-programmed waypoints, you can get 14 missile bays on target. There might not be giant, messy holes in the target, but death-by-crits starts to look more feasible at the capital scale.

[Korzon77]

Which ironically makes the Cruiser, one of the oldest warhsips we've seen, more viable in the "modern" era.  the concept of a missle boat, one that *stays far away* from the enemy and salvoes missile after missle, especially if you have screening forces, works much better than wading in with your big guns and getting equally big holes blown in your ship. 

[Jellico]

Maybe. Evasion makes targeting solutions difficult. Way Point attacks require guessing where the enemy will be. You need those Barracuda -2s to make the hit, and Barracudas only crit on 11s.

Also in the case of the Cruiser, 10 round magazines mean you can't maintain this kind of battery for long without resorting to reloading operations which have all sorts of explosive penalties.

This leads into the whole WarShip CV vs DropShip CV argument. Some of us feel that the SLDF WarShips like the McKenna rarely had to fire their guns at all. Instead acting as supply depots for Titans and their ilk with DD support. When they did fire they were well equipped to bracket and fight at 40hexs plus.

I suppose the question for +50 hex fighting, is it worth using missiles or more effective to send an ASF out?

[cray]

Which ironically makes the Cruiser, one of the oldest warhsips we've seen, more viable in the "modern" era.  the concept of a missle boat, one that *stays far away* from the enemy and salvoes missile after missle, especially if you have screening forces, works much better than wading in with your big guns and getting equally big holes blown in your ship.

That's noted in the text: the Cruiser was designed by people with no experience in space warfare drawing on lessons from the early 21st Century, like the Second Soviet Civil War. As a result, it looks "modern."

Maybe. Evasion makes targeting solutions difficult. Way Point attacks require guessing where the enemy will be.

Waypoint launches allow a missile to make a single hex-face change within the first 3 hexes of their launch. It essentially allows a weapons bay to bend into another arc. These should be no guessing involved, since it's a 1-turn attack.

[Jellico]

Opps. Mixing Bearings-Only and Way Point launches.

How are you getting all 14 missile bays on target? The aft bays will need more than two hex turns to get into the correct arc.

[Weirdo]

It's bulky as all hell and unlikely to ever happen, but if you combine waypoint and bearings-only shots, there is a small area right next to the firing ship where you could fire most of the bays normally in one fore-side direction, fire the aft and opposite broadside bays as close to that direction as you can, and their detection arcs would overlap. Of course, pulling off such a salvo requires getting a LOT closer than most Cruiser COs would like.

[cray]

How are you getting all 14 missile bays on target? The aft bays will need more than two hex turns to get into the correct arc.

I think I miscounted missile tubes for bays. :)

[Dragon Cat]

An AMS point defense bay (on a large craft) can engage any missile volley in range in one turn, no matter what the target of the missiles is.

There was also the point of canon. Despite recent retcons, WarShips weren't really demonstrated as carrying standard weapons until the 31st Century and early Inner Sphere prototype WarShips. The entirety of the SLDF and Clan WarShips made do without point defense until relatively recently.

Change the munitions to be a little more nuclear. The 22nd Century version never left CAD drawings, though. The Separatists disappeared with a whimper, so the WarShips never got built.

Considering the rules for AMS I personally would retcon every single canon SLDF WarShip with a ton of AMS.  It's never made much sense to me that neither WarShips, their DropShips or Small Craft carried AMS in early eras.  I know there was tons of them and the SLDF thought nothing of losing a couple of ships but AMS made perfect sense if I was on the ships, in the fleet, an Admiral or a member of the general public I'd be screaming for AMS on WarShips and DropShips

It would have probably made for more tactical battles instead of the slugging matches I always get the impression the SLDF had.  The WarShips of the SLDF almost engage each other like ships of the 18th century get in a line blast the crap out of the enemy until one side retreats or is destroyed.

<<< Not nearly an expert just an opinion

[Giovanni Blasini]

I suspect that Jellico may have the right of it:  SLDF WarShips, at least their largest vessels, may never have gotten close enough to their enemies for that to have ever been an issue, with assault and carrier DropShips extending their reach, screens of destroyers and corvettes encountering the enemy well before the cruisers and battleships ever get to range, and fighter screens doing a large part of the work.

Consider a McKenna by itself for a moment: with six docking collars, it could take two aerospace regiments of 54 fighters each, plus six dual-role carrier/assault DropShips in the form of Titans, plus its own 40 aerospace fighters, forming a considerable combat force, without ever bringing its own guns into the mix.  Let them soften up the enemy, focusing on opposing ships with capital missiles, then send in the battleship.

Now, multiply that by four, for a four-battleship "squadron".  Throw in its escorts, such as a destroyer or four per battleship. Maybe add a cruiser or frigate or two.

Now, consider the Narumaki has no capital missiles, nor did the Atreus or Du Shi Wang, or Davion, Robinson or Samarkand.  The Winchester only had 6 Barracudas.  The Wagon Wheel is a notable exception with a dozen White Sharks, as is the Tharkad.

In all, I think the Member States may have needed AMS far more than the Terrans.

[Dragon Cat]

so the SLDF limited the spread of Capital Missiles so they didn't have to develop ships with AMS?

I really like the WarShip concept I've just never understood why they didn't have a lot more defences.  I know the initial WarShip concepts were so far removed from game play it's almost funny (they were myths of the past long forgotten) but as designs have gone on and it's quite obvious that the modern designs are built for the current rules with weapons for every occasion.

You look back at what could arguably be classed as the Golden Age of WarShips the Star League-era where everyone had a prized fleet and find that they have few if any defences it's just really strange to me.  Each of the member state ships (modern designed for the past) have secondary armaments.

Now I'm pretty sure the argument for that in universe is the SLDF has hundreds of ships they can afford to take a couple of losses while the member states have far smaller fleets and need the protect themselves with anything and everything they have.  That I could almost accept but the question would be why the SLDF cared so little about losing ships and didn't at least in some cases match the member states with special models of their ships.

I'd have really liked "Royal" versions of the SLDF's fleet that wasn't how many guns can we fit on this hull but something that kept true to the class but also brought it along almost like a modern design for the past like the member states get.  Maybe just me I really should stop I don't want to completely derail this thread sorry

Erm....  :-\ ah yes Field Manual Draconis Combine where were we  :P

EDIT: even if you discount the SLDF completely jump into the First Succession War where member states have the old designs and the newer designs the battles look like they are going to be slug fests forget your McKennas look at an old Baron taking on a Davion II or a Tharkad running amok against old SLDF designs.  Wonder if any of the states modded any of the old SLDF designs - that could be fun see how much they messed them up.

 it sure explains why the WarShip fleets didn't survive.

[Weirdo]

Now I'm pretty sure the argument for that in universe is the SLDF has hundreds of ships they can afford to take a couple of losses while the member states have far smaller fleets and need the protect themselves with anything and everything they have.  That I could almost accept but the question would be why the SLDF cared so little about losing ships and didn't at least in some cases match the member states with special models of their ships.

It's not that they could afford to replace losses such defenses would prevent, it's that they didn't NEED the defenses. Star League ships operated in far larger squadrons than House ships did, to say nothing of the solo operations post-Clan WarShips must udertake. They had plenty of fighter and DropShip support, plus the bracketing equations that made their capital guns perfectly suitable for usage against smaller craft. The occasionaly missile hit will happen, but a SLN commander that screws up so badly that a sizable missile or fighter strike actually gets to his ships is likely to be brought up on charges, the least of which will be gross incompetence.

[Jellico]

SLDF cared so little about losing ships and didn't at least in some cases match the member states with special models of their ships.

Assuming five 40 ship fleets we have 200 House ships.
The SLDF has 280 McKennas.
Is that a match?

You really need to get beyond 1:1 match ups and look at the systems as a whole.

As a rule the Houses have small fleets built around short range combat. Even when they do have ASF they are weaker older models. Look at the Hellcat II on the DCMS and CCAF RAT. Now check FM:SLDF. The Hellcat II and its Active Probe of doom is as common as hell. A House ship fighting the SLDF is doing so without ECM and without bracketing. If it gets through the ASF screen in the first place.

I have play tested this repeatedly. Even with Achilles support a Davion II gets smashed by a Lola III in these conditions.

Food for thought.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I see Weirdo and Jellico have already replied, but that's OK, since my book took a while to write in reply:

so the SLDF limited the spread of Capital Missiles so they didn't have to develop ships with AMS?

More like the effectiveness of capital missiles in a non-nuclear environment is such that there are far better alternatives out there, specifically naval autocannons, naval energy weapons and aerospace fighters.  And, if you're unlikely to be facing large numbers of capital missile, tying up massive amounts of fire control and personnel for AMS batteries isn't as useful as some of the alternatives

I really like the WarShip concept I've just never understood why they didn't have a lot more defences.  I know the initial WarShip concepts were so far removed from game play it's almost funny (they were myths of the past long forgotten) but as designs have gone on and it's quite obvious that the modern designs are built for the current rules with weapons for every occasion.

Yes and no.

Some of the designs you're seeing, especially the early Terran Hegemony designs, were thought up in-universe during an era when space warfare was new, no one was quite sure what a real space battle would look like and, as a result, experimented heavily.

House ships have almost always been about getting as much bang for their buck out of individual hulls as possible.  Even then, the results of SLDF vs. House ships can be surprising, like Jellico's old test run of a Lola III vs. Davion II that he posted after Strat Ops shipped, where the Lola III, on paper the weaker ship, handily won.

I always had the impression that SLDF WarShips were designed with two ideas in mind:  streamlining for *massive* construction runs, and supporting the SLDF's vast military.

You look back at what could arguably be classed as the Golden Age of WarShips the Star League-era where everyone had a prized fleet and find that they have few if any defences it's just really strange to me.  Each of the member state ships (modern designed for the past) have secondary armaments.

In other words, the Member States have never, ever changed the essence of how they design WarShips.  They build knowing they can never produce the number of hulls they actually need and, as a result, try to get the most bang for their buck from each hull, trying to fulfill as many use cases as possible.

Also, secondary armament is often not that useful on a WarShips.  Case in point:  would you rather have a gauss rifle with two tons of ammo in each of your WarShips's arcs, or, alternatively, a pair of LPLs, each doing 2 points of capital damage...or would you rather have a fighter bay?  Personally, I think the fighter will be more useful most of the time.

And, by the same token, ignoring cost (which, really, isn't that much of an issue on a WarShip), would you rather have seven aerospace fighters, or a docking collar that allows you to carry a Vengeance class?

Now I'm pretty sure the argument for that in universe is the SLDF has hundreds of ships they can afford to take a couple of losses while the member states have far smaller fleets and need the protect themselves with anything and everything they have.  That I could almost accept but the question would be why the SLDF cared so little about losing ships and didn't at least in some cases match the member states with special models of their ships.

The SLDF ships are often far more potent than their specs immediately reflect.  The Lola III, with its bracketing NAC bays, is an example of this, giving it far more accuracy at range than its competitors.

I'd have really liked "Royal" versions of the SLDF's fleet that wasn't how many guns can we fit on this hull but something that kept true to the class but also brought it along almost like a modern design for the past like the member states get.  Maybe just me I really should stop I don't want to completely derail this thread sorry

Royal SLDF WarShips?  Yeah, that's not going to happen, for a variety of reasons.

Erm....  :-\ ah yes Field Manual Draconis Combine where were we  :P

EDIT: even if you discount the SLDF completely jump into the First Succession War where member states have the old designs and the newer designs the battles look like they are going to be slug fests forget your McKennas look at an old Baron taking on a Davion II or a Tharkad running amok against old SLDF designs.  Wonder if any of the states modded any of the old SLDF designs - that could be fun see how much they messed them up.

 it sure explains why the WarShip fleets didn't survive.

Once you throw nukes into the mix, all bets are off.  Just look at the Jihad.

What do we see after the Jihad?  Pocket WarShips, vessels you can send into combat and lose without the crippling replacement costs of a WarShips.  Massive increases in the use of anti-missile systems, to fend off nuclear-tipped capital missiles.  Fighters and small craft designed to boost point defense, by adding more AMS batteries that can target those missiles.

Setting aside out-of-character arguments that WarShips take away from Battletech's focus on ground combat, post-Jihad, everyone realized that, unless you can build enough WarShips to really count, and can afford to lose them, you're better off building what you *can* afford to lose, and what you *can* build in number.

Should we see new WarShips built in the post-Dark Age era, you'll likely see some of these lessons taken to heart: expect to see things like Naval C3, or mass batteries of AMS, or more consideration to anti-fighter defenses (though, as I mentioned above, the best defense is more fighters).

[Wrangler]

I hate drift into if there future for WarShips in battletech.  I'm big time naval fan, still think dropships are very poor substitute for a WarShip no matter how you stretch it.  Future of Warship are bleak.  I'm getting enjoyment having additional designs coming out for perhaps the final time.

[Wrangler]

Drifting back on Aerospace side of the report itself.  DCA, has 8 fleets with total of 42 Warships (H:LoTv1) in total active(?) service  as of 2765.   The DCA section of the book suggests the fleet is light weight, but not to be misjudged.     Narumaki is pretty nasty customer if used correctly, but i can't imagine them winning big fleet battle their suppose to fight when the first Succession War breaks out unless the FedSuns has Admiral version of Lyran Social General.    Whatever the Defender is suppose to be or the Golden Lion (if there one in the same), FedSuns has the arguably most filled out fleet/balance(?) feet of the Great Houses in comparsion to others.  Though they have a destroyer, medium carrier navy verses the DCA's Light WarShips fleet built around their Escort Carriers.

[Giovanni Blasini]

DCA structure is odd another way: with 42 total vessels, two of which are permanently assigned to one unit, the remaining 40 ships are then split up into eight squadrons of five ships each, one of which we know to be a Samarkand.  The remaining four ships per squadron?  No one ship class is present in all of them.

Did we ever get a count on the number of Aegis given to the Combine?

[Liam's Ghost]

There were thirty Aegis class ships distributed among the houses, I suspect six ships for the Combine is a fair guess.

I noticed there's a couple of mentions of ships being mothballed (the Narukami in particular) due to maintenance problems. I wonder how strong the DCA might have been able to become if an emergency led to their reactivation.

[Jellico]

Drifting back on Aerospace side of the report itself.  DCA, has 8 fleets with total of 42 Warships (H:LoTv1) in total active(?) service  as of 2765.   The DCA section of the book suggests the fleet is light weight, but not to be misjudged.     Narumaki is pretty nasty customer if used correctly, but i can't imagine them winning big fleet battle their suppose to fight when the first Succession War breaks out unless the FedSuns has Admiral version of Lyran Social General.    Whatever the Defender is suppose to be or the Golden Lion (if there one in the same), FedSuns has the arguably most filled out fleet/balance(?) feet of the Great Houses in comparsion to others.  Though they have a destroyer, medium carrier navy verses the DCA's Light WarShips fleet built around their Escort Carriers.

As noted the DCA is one of the few fleets to run true carriers.
And as Trace can assert, their traditional fighters are stronger than most.
So you are looking at a doctrine of light forces and fighters to overwhelm a faction with a more heavy unit focus. (I assume the Fed Suns here based on what we know of their class mix. There weren't that many New Syrtis in service after the Reunification War. And that war, and the next one. And the one after that. And the Civil War. And the Jihad. And Palyra suggest a theme of a certain level of competence.)

[Giovanni Blasini]

Well, as soon as the FSN realizes that WarShips aren't expendable munitions you ram into other ships...

[Wrangler]

Well, as soon as the FSN realizes that WarShips aren't expendable munitions you ram into other ships...

Or ordinance for orbital bombardment.