The United Hindu Collective has always believed strongly in armed neutrality, as part of a broader effort to ensure peace and trust between nations. The UHC's primary goal with the proposed "Ares Convention" is to ensure that it does not indirectly encourage war by concealing the inherent horror of blood being shed for the aggrandizement of princes. A sailor who dies in a missile strike is no less dead than one who dies in a nuclear strike, and a soldier crushed under a tank's treads is in the same place as one who died to orbital bombardment or in the sack of a city. Any treaty which does not acknowledge this reality is inherently ignoring the realities of warfare, and the Collective has no interest in lying about the glories of war.
However, for greater clarity, we do hereby affirm that the UHC's traditional policy against the initiation of conflict includes nuclear conflict and the use of other weapons of mass destruction. Under no circumstances will the UHC begin a war of our own accord, and we will only use weapons of mass destruction against those who have initiated their use, or in the final defence of civilian population against indiscriminate slaughter on a similar scale.
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The UHC has initiated its own system defence station program. Dubbed the Raksha, the new station is intended for close defence of a planet, and is intended to be used in bulk instead of as a single standalone station in deep space like the Pratham. Unlike the popular trend in station design of having a "primary" facing like the Marathon, Scutum, or Ancile, the Raksha follows in the Pratham's footsteps and is intended for use against any axis of threat without needing to slowly turn about-face. Numerous cost-saving measures were included in the station, such as the smaller naval laser mounts, but the most obvious was due to an unexpected glut of small missile mounts on the market in Basantapur. Rather than using large missile mounts with expensive on-board fire control system, smaller and individually less capable mounts have been used in larger quantity instead. The proliferation of gunner's mates keeps the mess hall busy, and the numerous light turret mounts on the hull give the Raksha a somewhat warty appearance, but the cost savings were seen to justify it.
Class/Model/Name: Raksha
Tech: Inner Sphere
Ship Cost: $489,210,025.00
Magazine Cost: $52,876,000.00
BV2: 41,999
Mass: 225,000
K-F Drive System: None
Power Plant: Station-Keeping Drive
Safe Thrust: 0.0
Maximum Thrust: 0.0
Armor Type: Standard
Armament:
216 Machine Gun (IS)
216 LRM 5 (IS)
72 Naval Laser 35
72 Capital Launcher AR-10
Class/Model/Name: Raksha
Mass: 225,000
Equipment: Mass
Drive: 2,700
Thrust
Safe: 0.0
Maximum: 0.0
Controls: 225
K-F Hyperdrive: None (0 Integrity) 0
Jump Sail: (0 Integrity) 0
Structural Integrity: 1 2,250
Total Heat Sinks: 2640 Single 2,522
Fuel & Fuel Pumps: 500 points 102
Fire Control Computers: 27,576
Armor: 486 pts Standard 810
Fore: 81
Fore-Left/Right: 81/81
Aft-Left/Right: 81/81
Aft: 81
Dropship Capacity: 0
Grav Decks:
Small: 1 50
Medium: 0
Large: 0
Escape Pods: 40 280
Life Boats: 40 280
Crew And Passengers:
51 Officers in 1st Class Quarters 510
39 Crew in 2nd Class Quarters 273
216 Gunners and Others in 2nd Class Quarters 1,512
182 Bay Personnel in 2nd Class Quarters 1,274
# Weapons Loc Heat Damage Range Mass
36 Machine Gun (IS) Nose 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 Machine Gun (IS) Aft 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 Machine Gun (IS) FR 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 Machine Gun (IS) FL 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 Machine Gun (IS) AR 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 Machine Gun (IS) AL 72 (7.2-C) Short-PDS 18
36 LRM 5 (IS) Nose 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
36 LRM 5 (IS) Aft 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
36 LRM 5 (IS) FR 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
36 LRM 5 (IS) FL 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
36 LRM 5 (IS) AR 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
36 LRM 5 (IS) AL 72 108 (10.8-C) Long 72
24 Naval Laser 35 Nose 1248 840 (84-C) Long-C 16,800
24 Naval Laser 35 AL 1248 840 (84-C) Long-C 16,800
24 Naval Laser 35 AR 1248 840 (84-C) Long-C 16,800
24 Capital Launcher AR-10 FR 480 960 (96-C) Extreme-C 6,000
24 Capital Launcher AR-10 FL 480 960 (96-C) Extreme-C 6,000
24 Capital Launcher AR-10 Aft 480 960 (96-C) Extreme-C 6,000
Ammo Rounds Mass
Machine Gun (IS) Ammo 27200 136
LRM 5 (IS) Ammo 18000 750
Capital Launcher Barracuda Ammo 720 21,600
Capital Launcher Killer Whale Ammo 720 36,000
Capital Launcher White Shark Ammo 720 28,800
Number Equipment and Bays Mass Doors
20,000 Cargo, Standard 20,000 2
6 Bay Small Craft 1,200 3
48 Bay Fighter 7,200 6
2 Bay Conventional Infantry (IS), Foot 10 0
BUDGET: $26,000m
Maintenance (@150%): $10,620m
Raksha R&D: $489m
16x Raksha: $7,824m (Deployed 10 to Panpour and 6 to Basantapur)
600x fighter: $3,000m
100x small craft: $1,000m
Research: $3,000m (1A, 1S, 1M)
Remaining: $67m
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Ok. My present understanding is here.
Thanks for the link. Looking at it again, I think I'll keep it as-is. Steerage quarters are cheap (even on the Potemkin, they're only $160M of the final cost), so it doesn't affect all that much. It makes sense to me that quarters cost more than bulk cargo space, so while I suspect you'll probably be ruled correct by Xotl, I prefer the rules as the spreadsheet does them. Also, it's easier to be sure I don't break the sheet if I don't change it, and it means we don't need to re-calculate all those previous ships.
Well, I guess what it turns on is what modifiers are out there?
Rules-As-Written there is only 'normal sailing' and 'evasive action'. Ships taking evasive action take a penalty to their fire, and fire against them is penalized.
So, assuming that normal sailing is in fact normal, there isnt really an 'unengaged ship bonus', like there was in theory in the real world - outgoing fire is not penalized by incoming fire, nor advantaged by its lack.
...
Now, as noted above, choosing to go evasive penalizes your fire, and your enemies, and any ship that anticipates RECIEVING more fire than it would be delivering, or otherwise serves as a high priority target, should consider evasive action. However, normal sailing gives neither benefit nor penalty - and is here presumed to be the norm. (If all ships are evasive at all times, save when they intentionally stop doing so, then there would be an advantage to even fire distribution, to discourage the enemy from having unengaed ships stop evasive manuvering).
RAW, a fighter going evasive gets +3 to be hit when evasive but cannot fire, and large craft (DS/WS) get +2 to hit and to be hit. So assuming flat dice across the board, any ship being targeted by more than its own weight of fire should go evasive. These are more generous rules than I remembered(I've only used them for fighters), as long as we're not up to kill-per-salvo fleet sizes, so I should probably work them into more battles. I was thinking that real evasive action was fairly difficult, but the tabletop rules make it surprisingly easy and effective.
Then we get into the trenches of damage effects on ships:
1.) IRL ships do not have ablative armor. Each incoming hit is a (largely) independent event.
2.) IRL ships were often rendered combat ineffective LONG before their destruction.
3.) IRL ships were also often subject to sudden, total destruction from a low-probability hit.
4.) Battletech ships have ablative armor. Each hit is largely meaningless, save for the last few.
5.) Battletech ships retain the majority of their combat power until very late in their effective combat lifespan.
6.) Battletech ships are very unlikely to be destroyed by a single hit.
I've been using "semi-ablative" as my rule of thumb. Crits happen - you'll note lots of mentions of turrets blown off, mission kills, etc. - and I've been assuming that if a ship takes enough damage to rip off whole facings of armour it'll lose significant amounts of combat power before its last SI goes away. It's more ablative than IRL on the whole, but less ablative than tabletop StratOps gameplay.
As for golden BBs, I've had a few of those, mostly to implement the results of the luck roll on the dice. Usually that's what happens in my head when a ship suddenly gets hit in the fusion reactor or the magazine. Again, I think I'm partway between TT and IRL here.
That said, even with the evasive concern, I think points 1-3 (IRL ships) and 4-6 (BT ships) illustrate that while distributed fire made very, very good sense at Jutland (more chances for the golden BB, greater spread of damage reduces enemy fire more quickly), concentrated fire makes more sense over Vega under the Rules As Written (ships killed by depletion of SI, ships retain most firepower until SI is depleted).
The winning naval strategy is to silence as many guns as possible on the enemy side as quickly as possible. Under the BT RAW, this is accomplished most efficiently by punching through the armor facing and depleting the SI, as hits to armor that do not impact rarely silence guns, and hits to SI do not silence very many guns until the last of SI is depleted. Further, ships are most efficiently removed when destruction is sudden and total, denying a damaged ship the opportunity to roll ship, go evasive, or otherwise mitigate damage.
Your last point is very important here, but a big part of that is the effect of TT breaking combat into rounds. There's a few parts of our battles that are normally done in rounds - missile strikes being the most obvious, but also high-speed engagements - but the underlying combat model is continuous. As such, there's more time to go evasive in response to being targeted here than there would be in a TT battle of similar scale. It's not perfect, and light-speed weapons should probably have a real advantage when fighting someone who goes evasive, but it's not as simple as "push button, kill his mans".
For the above reasons, it appears that under RAW, combined fire is and always will be the proper approach, assuming sufficient weight of fire is available to render at least one target unit combat ineffective per unit time. If there is not such weight of fire, then a decision has to be made between broad depletion of enemy armor/hunt for lucky crits, or focusing fire on one target WITHOUT killing it - possibly forcing it out of line or into evasive action, but at the same time reducing the value of subsequent fires against that target, due to greater range or that evasive action.
In any event, as fleet sizes climb, the threshold for condition #1, one or more hard kills per salvo, will eventually obtain. What fleet size and firepower allows that goes to underlying assumptions about engagement ranges, gunnery skills, and the actual armor and firepower of the engaged vessels - but it seems that at some point that threshold will be reached, if it has not already. Similarly, longer range weapons will increase in value as fleet size increases, as they grow in ability to silence shorter ranged guns before the range can be closed.
RAW, combining fire is definitely superior. In this game, my gut is that it's probably better in most cases, but it's not a slam dunk the way it is in TT. And sometimes the strategies go the other way - your fleet escaped at Vega by going for massive crit spreading, after all, and not by Lanchestering down single enemies sequentially.