Warship Armor

[A. Lurker]

I tend to view "strategic" movement as the mode the engines of larger craft are primarily designed for and "tactical" as the equivalent of switching on the afterburners -- hideously inefficient because you're essentially dumping "raw" fuel into your exhaust pipe to get the extra kick you need to maneuver quickly right now, but once your life or death depend on having that option available you'll be thankful to have it anyway. (The analogy hobbles somewhat since we're taking about fusion-powered rockets rather than air-breathing turbines here, but the principle stays roughly the same.)

As for not making sense, BT engines canonically break the laws of real life physics in terms of raw efficiency anyway. There is no way to have a million-ton spacecraft constantly accelerate at 1G for under forty tons of reaction mass per day -- at least, not in ways that don't involve huge amounts of pixie dust that polite folk don't talk about in public. Just roll with it. ;)

[rlbell]

Oh I know that [they're in StratOps], I just think they havn't been discussed much in the history of naval combat in battletech. They seem like they would be very effective tactic.

They are a very high risk  tactic and a taskforce of asymmetric vessels that mounted the equivalent of both broadsides along the one side of the vessel (if it was legal in BT) and used a mix of NAC's, NGauss, and Cap missiles would be really nasty.  Miscalculate and both forces are destroyed as the victors pass through the debris clouds of the losers.  If you want to destroy the enemy, and have no concern about recovering anything, you may want a high speed pass.  If you are trying to protect a ship in your task force, high speed passes are to be avoided or evaded.

If you know your opponents are very light in missiles and projectile weapons, and you task force is heavy with them, then a high speed pass is a good gamble.

[rlbell]

Under advanced rules, an 8/12 thrust 2.5 million ton warship  will "fly" circles around a 5/8 fighter.

If they have the same thrust ratings, the only thing the fighter will have over the warship is an initiative bonus.

Even a 5/8 warship can fly rings around a 5/8 fighter, as the 5/8 fighter does not have the fuel to keep up with a maneuvering warship.

[verybad]

i think you may be looking for a role that has long been done. I know you know about defnse in depth and leaving titans and nagas out on the threat axis rather than acting as close escort.

No harm in looking at different methods of doing that sort of thing. The cheaper aspect of Dropships is appealing. Plus I kind of like the idea of dropships dashing ahead, hitting the nuke carrying WOB ships and so forth.

[rlbell]

Unfortunately, we are playing a game where slowing down is important.   They don't slow down unless you do so.   Say we got a Conqueror class cruiser...   It thrusts up to the speeds that the rule book says counts as 'fast'...  5000+.    Our mighty Conqueror spends 16.6 hours thrusting up to this mythical speed.  Burns off 2/3s of it's fuel and assuming all it ever wants to do with the rest of it's life is to have an outbound trajectory to see if it can catch the Voyager probes...  since it can't ever return to what might be considered a normal speed.  Lets hope someone sent a tanker out to meet up with it on it's outbound flight.

There is another mechanism that keep the velocities down-- entering a star system via a jump drops your velocity to zero, relative to the primary (or zero relative to the pirate point).  There are a few places where pirate ponts are moving quickly, but they are near stars orbitting supermassive blackholes.