The Terran Hegemony Needs a New Cutter! (Design challenge)

[Cannonshop]

Request for proposal:

A medium-scale transportable Wing in Ground Effect unit capable of serving the role of a v-hulled frigate.

Requirements:
1. the ability to support one company of light to medium weight vehicles, with bay doors sufficient to deliver submersibles in the 50 ton range directly into the water.
2. The ability to support coastal amphibious operations, including the deployment of the Prowler amphibious assault vehicle or equivalent Hovercraft.
3. sufficient capacity to support and deliver up to four VTOL craft while stationary (landed) at sea
4. Orbit-to-surface insertion capability using known techniques. (WiGE vehicles can be orbital dropped).
5. Patrol endurance of 30 days with full ship's company and embarked personnel.
6. Credible defensive armament with at least one major offensive system.

[Daryk]

Am I the only one seeing the SHIELD Hover Carrier in their mind's eye?  ::)

[maxcarrion]

Are there new WIGE support vehicle rules?  The Tech manual rules max a WIGE out at 240T so the ability to support a company of light vehicles with bay doors (600T) is not possible without TARDIS tech

[maxcarrion]

Also, again unless something new says otherwise, orbital insertion can only be done from a combat ready bay (vehicle, mech, infantry) so there's an upper limit of 200T for a Super Heavy bay too.

[Cannonshop]

so run it in packs.

[maxcarrion]

So, I have previously done a Submersible Light Cruiser Battlegroup based on a Rapier Hull displacement (and therefore transportable in the Rapier cradles)

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=51927.msg1198264#msg1198264

And it included a 100T support WIGE with a light vehicle bay and some support equipment

https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=51479.msg1187731#msg1187731

I would suggest that you cannot make a 100T support vehicle with a light vehicle bay or a 200T support vehicle with 2 light vehicle bays that also performs as a credible combat unit, you've simply surrendered too much load to the key systems and the cargo space.  It's simply too much transport vehicle to also support a credible combat platform.  As such there are 3 plausible paradigms I see

1 - Separate transport and combat elements - have the WIGE's designed much like the Nessie as a non combat unit and provide out of combat support for in combat units.  Either the units being carried by the WIGE's or additionally dropped units such as other orbitally dropped WIGE units.  Transporting a medium vehicle company would require twice the weight in WIGE support

2 - Big WIGE, small carry - a 200T WIGE with 1 light vehicle bay and a small amount of cargo could possibly mount armour/weapons to credibly take on a medium combat vehicle in direct confrontation.  A Medium vehicle company could require up to 4 times the weight in WIGE support

3 - Token combat transports - Like option 1 but with token weapon systems instead of secondary support equipment - e.g. remove the lift hoists and cargo bay from the Nessie and fit 10T of armour and weapons.  You could mount "sufficient" combat payload but loses against serious combat units would be grievous

[Cannonshop]

Thanks for the feedback guys. 

[maxcarrion]

So, having processed this a bit overnight.  I'm going to pitch "The Tender"

This 200T Tech E SFE WIGE can carry a single light vehicle bay and over 40T of cargo space with a single lift hoist for recovery operations.

With just 4T of armour and no weapons "The Tender" is intended to stay over the horizon and support the force that's dropped with it and should avoid direct confrontation at all cost.

Due to the large cargo stores The Tender is intended to support a flotilla larger that it can store internally, as such a common Tender led company may be 8-12 medium WIGE combat vehicles orbitally dropped separately alongside 6 Tenders and internally carried VTOL and submersibles (split 2/4 either way depending on mission), with every combat vehicle using a flotation hull of some kind the Tender WIGE can repair, rearm and resupply the rest of the company in the field

A new breed of micro-submersibles - 5T combat subs mounting an LRT5 - can easily be stored in the cargo space allowing a single Tender to deploy multiple submersibles however only a single bay limits them to being prepared and deployed one at a time.