M^3 Support Airship

[Lagrange]

The M^3 Support Airship support "Maintenance, Medical, and Morale" for a Lance-scale unit.  It is comparable in capabilities to a M^3 support craft with a M^3 Support Track with an extra twist.  Eliminating the Rube-Goldberg aspect of a combined Small Craft + Vehicle reduces overall crew requirements, and the price tag is over an order of magnitude cheaper while adding some additional capabilities.

The baseline capabilities are:

• Morale: A Field Kitchen with an extra 3 crew reduces fatigue for up to 150 (see SO page 41).
• Medical: A MASH unit with a medical squad of 5 (see SO page 169) treats up to 25 wounded.
• Maintenance: A Mobile Field Base with a tech squad of 7 (see SO page 169-186) can maintain, rearm, and repair several vehicles.

You gain several additional capabilities.

• 4x Lift Hoists provide an airlift capability of 400(!) tons (see TW page 136-137).  Movement is by RAW unaffected, because there is no Walking/Cruising MP to reduce.  However, it's sensible to reduce the Safe Thrust by 1 for loads over 100 tons to be consistent with the effect on Cruising MP.  This is a huge upgrade over the Small Craft/Track approach since capacity is increase by a factor of 4, and Airship velocity is effectively measured in mapsheets.
• An Arresting Hoist provides the capacity to launch and recover VTOLs at elevation.  There's a small bug in the rules here because VTOLs operate off elevations and Airships operate off altitudes, but there's a clear intention that this should work.
• The system can function as a secure high-altitude base, at least in an environment with air superiority.  This means there is little need to worry about ground security most of the time.  Even relatively fast ground based forces with LRMs capable of hitting altitude 20 can generally be avoided by flying away from them.
• Since Airships can easily hover, you can pick up (via lift hoists) units pretty much anywhere.

You of course lose quite significant capabilities as well.

• Airships are confined to the low altitude map while Small Craft can naturally reach space.
• Airship armor is anemic compared to a Small Craft.  They can't really take any significant amount of damage and should never be used in situations at risk of taking damage.

Given the large cost savings and other advantages, the M^3 Airship seems like a plausibly useful alternate approach to handling the support mission.  Given the drawbacks however, it can't fully eclipse the Small Craft approach.

The M^3 is minimally armed with 4x LRM-5s in the aft arc, as it is expected to run away from any source of danger.

Code: [Select]

M^3 Support Airship
Type: Airship
Mass: 200 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Introduced: 3025
Mass: 200
Battle Value: 315
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-E-D-D
Cost: 1,307,640 C-bills

Safe Thrust: 2
Maximum Thrust: 3
Heat Sinks: 0
Structural Integrity: 4

Armor (BAR 7)
    Nose: 18
    Sides: 17/17
    Aft: 18

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Infantry (Foot) (bay, 5 tons, capacity 30)     1 Door   
    Bay 2:  Light Vehicle (1)       1 Door   
    Bay 3:  Cargo (26 tons)          1 Door

Equipment:
   Mobile Field Base, MASH, Field Kitchen, Arresting Hoist, 4x Lift Hoist
4x LRM-5 (Aft Arc)
2x LRM-5 ammo
Advance fire control system

Crew:  1 officer, 7 enlisted/non-rated, 2 gunners, 35 bay personnel


[Daryk]

All it would take is a single Mechbuster fighter hitting once.  So yeah, I'd take the Small Craft version any day! :)

[Lagrange]

All it would take is a single Mechbuster fighter hitting once.  So yeah, I'd take the Small Craft version any day! :)

It's actually highly likely to survive _one_ hit from a Mechbuster and if it's very lucky, it might survive 3.  That SI of 4 tops things up nicely :-)

But yes, this just should not be used in situations where air superiority does not exist. 

[Daryk]

Don't forget the extra crit chance for using only BAR 7 armor... ;)

[Lagrange]

Don't forget the extra crit chance for using only BAR 7 armor... ;)

That's somewhere back of the line of concerns :-)

As scary as the mechbuster is, a couple Bodyguards are worse.  Two would do more damage with more crit chances at long instead of short range with a cheaper price.  This does bring up a question though: should an airship like this be armed similarly? It's a tough call because things have gone very wrong if it's in the line of fire.  On the other hand, things do go very wrong sometimes.

[Daryk]

Anything likely to be shot at should be able to shoot back... :)

[Lagrange]

Anything likely to be shot at should be able to shoot back... :)

Yeah, but that's not the question here.   Instead it's "what if you are unlikely to be shot at?"

I think I'll stick with no weapons and just deploy something like the Bodyguard if there are any possible worries the backfield militia somehow has flight capability.

[Daryk]

That sounds like a doctrine question... and one the enemy is unlikely to agree with your answers to... ;)

[Lagrange]

Alright, I added 4x LRM-5 in the aft arc to at least make the Mechbuster be at serious risk.

[Daryk]

That should do the trick, yeah! :)

[maxcarrion]

The problem with airships is they are extremely vulnerable to any air asset. There's not a lot of places to hide and your allies can't always loiter.  I think there may be arguments for an M^3 airship where air superiority is pretty complete and ground threats are unable to get into firing positions unobserved (a single good volley could take down the asset and everyone on board so hidden units could be very lethal) but I think I would generally lean towards ground crawlers for more robust support needs like medical, maintenance and morale where high value aero assets were unavailable.

I think separating these functions would generally be desirable for a wide variety of reasons, you may not always want the same mix of food trucks, medical support and engineering support as a single vehicle boasting all 3 can supply and being able to mix and match would likely be advantageous.  If I were to design a support and logistics team to cover these areas I'd probably use 4 separate vehicles
 - MASH truck - ~ 10 tons with a mash unit
 - Field Kitchen ~ 10 tons with a field kitchen
 - Field Base ~ 50 tons - the Savior is 60T and does the job
 - Recovery and Logistics - Something like a Tonbo ~ 50T+ VTOL with lift hoists can recover an assault mech, lift the other vehicles into position etc.  I'd redesign the Tonbo to have a 10T internal cargo bay so that your logistics vehicle can carry a MASH or Kitchen internally and design some cargo/people movers that fit into the same space.  As long as you aren't dropping into combat a few minutes to unload shouldn't be an issue.

Naturally these could all fit into a small craft if required, possibly 2 small craft if you want to bring the VTOL too. 

[Lagrange]

The problem with airships is they are extremely vulnerable to any air asset. There's not a lot of places to hide and your allies can't always loiter.  I think there may be arguments for an M^3 airship where air superiority is pretty complete and ground threats are unable to get into firing positions unobserved (a single good volley could take down the asset and everyone on board so hidden units could be very lethal) but I think I would generally lean towards ground crawlers for more robust support needs like medical, maintenance and morale where high value aero assets were unavailable.

Generally agree.

I think separating these functions would generally be desirable for a wide variety of reasons, you may not always want the same mix of food trucks, medical support and engineering support as a single vehicle boasting all 3 can supply and being able to mix and match would likely be advantageous.  If I were to design a support and logistics team to cover these areas I'd probably use 4 separate vehicles
 - MASH truck - ~ 10 tons with a mash unit
 - Field Kitchen ~ 10 tons with a field kitchen
 - Field Base ~ 50 tons - the Savior is 60T and does the job
 - Recovery and Logistics - Something like a Tonbo ~ 50T+ VTOL with lift hoists can recover an assault mech, lift the other vehicles into position etc.  I'd redesign the Tonbo to have a 10T internal cargo bay so that your logistics vehicle can carry a MASH or Kitchen internally and design some cargo/people movers that fit into the same space.  As long as you aren't dropping into combat a few minutes to unload shouldn't be an issue.

Naturally these could all fit into a small craft if required, possibly 2 small craft if you want to bring the VTOL too.

A difficulty with many individual machines is that you increase your maintenance burden.

[Daryk]

Every individual vehicle requires a full tech team (1 Tech and 6AsTechs).

[maxcarrion]

Every individual vehicle requires a full tech team (1 Tech and 6AsTechs).

Maybe that is RAW, I can't remember as I never use the RAW maintenance rules.  But it's also clearly ridiculous thinking that 3 pre-warp ICE trucks take a team of 21 full time mechanics to keep running.  Although that would explain why burger vans have to charge so much at festivals.

A difficulty with many individual machines is that you increase your maintenance burden.

Again, this might be represented RAW but is not a good representation of the real world if it is.  You don't put a kebab skewer in the ambulance so that you don't have to maintain a separate food truck.  Unless they are in severely hostile environments the trucks themselves don't require that much maintenance, maybe a couple of hours a month, maybe 10 hours a month in a desert environment.