OBT Forum

I'd-of gone with 9xNAC-10s, 12xAC-10s (3 each fore, aft, side) and 12xAC-5s (6 each side) - original config - & 162xAC-2s (upgraded later to LB-2X & LB-5X) - (and don't forget the 'shuttles' aft)

Lysander Dropship (the original: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Lysander)

Class/Model/Name:  Lysander
Tech:              Inner Sphere
Vessel Type:       Civilian Spheroid Dropship

Mass:              26,000 tons
Safe Thrust:       3
Maximum Thrust:    5
Armor Type:        Heavy Ferro-Aluminum
Armament:         
    8 Barracuda Missile Launchers
         40 Barracuda Missiles
    12 ER Large Lasers
    6 ER Medium Lasers
    4 LRM-20s
    8 SRM-6s
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class/Model/Name:  Lysander
Mass:              26,000 tons

Equipment:                                                            Mass
Drive & Control:                                                      5,265.00
Thrust:  Safe Thrust: 3
      Maximum Thrust: 5
Structural Integrity: 43                                              2,236.00
Total Heat Sinks:    310 Single                                       226.00
Fuel & Fuel Pumps:                                                    2,040.00
Cargo and Consumables:                                                7,324.50
Fire Control                                                          132.00
Armor Type: Heavy Ferro-Aluminum (2307 total armor pts)               155.00
                           Standard Scale Armor Pts
   Fore:                                698
   Right:                               619
   Left:                                619
   Aft:                                 543

Cargo:
   Bay 1:  Fighter Bays (30) 4 doors                                   4,500.00
   Bay 2:  Super-heavy Vehicle Bays (4) 2 Doors                        800.00
   Bay 3:  Cargo (7,324.5 tons)                                        7,324.50
Crew and Passengers:
     103 Officers, Crew, and Bay Personel-1st Class Quarters           1,030.00
     30 Life Boats                                                     210

Weapons and Equipment      Loc        SRV    MRV    LRV    ERV  Heat   Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8 Barracuda Launcher       Nose       16-C   16-C   16-C   16-C 80     720
4 LRM-20                   Nose       48     48     48     48   24     40
4 SRM-6                    Nose       24     --     --     --   16     12
4 ER Large Laser           Nose       40     32     32     --   48     20
2 ER Large Laser           FR/L       16     16     16     --   24     20
3 ER Medium Laser          FR/L       15     15     --     --   0      20
2 ER Large Laser           AR/L       16     16     16     --   24     20
4 SRM-6                    Aft        24     --     --     --   16     12
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ammo
LRM-20 24 Rounds                                                       162.00
SRM-6 120 Rounds                                                       8.00
40 Barracuda Missiles                                                  1200.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other Equipment
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MASH Unit w/1 Operating Theaters                                       3.50
2 Field Kitchens                                                       6.00
Communications Equipment (15 tons)                                     10.00

In the Draconis Combine there are quite a number of worlds that manufacture their own Lysander Submarine Carriers, and use them to help defend their worlds. One such world, worried that the turbulence that was once again growing in the Inner Sphere, and situated near a border that was prone to raids, was looking for a more effective deterrent to enemy aerospace attacks. As with any time someone begins asking questions, people tend to take notice. Fortunately the people that took notice were sales agents from Universal Exports, and on [planet] also the company that held the license to manufacture the Lysanders. Seeing an opportunity for the newly started Yamato Project, they brought in the new team to make their proposal to the planetary governor.

When pitched, the project sounded crazy, and indeed it was, but it was too good to pass up. Universal Exports offered to use the hulls that were about to begin construction, to instead have Project Yamato build dropships, with nearly the same armament and logistical requirements, and they would do the first one for half cost. The governor's office insisted on attaching some of his own people to the project and it got underway. It was stipulated that the whole thing had to be done as secretly as possible.

So began construction, and underneath the dry-dock shipyards, even more construction began. Facilities were installed to manufacture many of the components needed, on planet, like interplanetary plasma drives, and sensor/fire control systems for the ship. The governor's office, for their part, simply expedited through customs anything marked for the secret project, which included additional personnel needed to plan the alterations to the structure of the hulls to prepare them for actual lift-off and flight.

It took almost double the projected time to get the prototype ready. There were many stories in broadcasts during that time about problems at the ship yards, but they were largely made up to explain why new hulls hadn't been coming off the line. Even when the prototype was ready, it went no where. A stipulation of the project was that it's maiden voyage would be in-combat, despite the hazards of sending untested ships into such conditions, the need for secrecy on the project was such that this was deemed a necessary evil.

Then the expected happened. A raiding force attacked, striking the spaceports first, and then landing and deploying a ground force to strike a militia depot, aiming to gather weapons and ammunition, no doubt. Imagine their surprise when an "unfinished hull of a submarine" lifted into the air, and not only destroyed the DropShip, but chased it's escorts all the way out of the atmosphere, destroying them. That has been the Lysander DropShip's only engagement so far however, as no one else seems interested in building or purchasing one.

I don't think 9 of the smallest Naval weapons would be a 'serious' threat to the SLDF, not with 5 houses armed to the teeth to worry about (& after the 1stSW she could hide from CS/WoB), just add a little more weight. Personally, I'd prefer using something on the list, that's why I suggested them.

I think ComStar would be much more accepting of Light SCCs, because they only hit as hard as an arrow IV, even if they do have capital range, where a bunch of NAC 10s would be capable of much more damage. It's enough of a difference that ComStar wouldn't have just let it wander around Terra's solar system.

When you add that to the fact that 9 NAC 10s would take a quarter of the ships weight, and mostly be serious overkill for the ship, NAC-10s really become a poor choice. I would have to drop it's already low speed of 2-3 down to 1-2 in order to fit those on.

I am not 100% certain what you mean by "on the list", but my choice of SCC was based partly on the first line of the Sub-Capital Weapon fluff on TO pg 343:

Derived from Terra’s rebuilt defenses (and likely scrapped naval weapon
concepts from the Age of War), the Word of Blake recently unveiled a new,
smaller class of naval weapons.

I went a bit further back than the age of war, since "likely" wasn't definitive, and since this is an AU anyway. I also made them "used only by this one eccentric" rather than scrapped naval concepts. The SLDF likely would have seen them and decided against pursuing them. A ancient SLDF report on it seen 950 years later could easily fit what someone might describe as "scrapped naval concept" even if the original prototypes were still active.

if you're going for AMS then you should put on AMS, the original config. had 24 × 25 mm Type 96 AA guns (8x3) & 4 × 13.2 mm Type 93 (2x2) so you could go with 24AMS and 4 MGs with the original design, or 162xAC-2s and 4xAMS for the '45.

AMS wasn't in production until 500 years after this ship was made, and AMS doesn't have a similar bit of fluff that it was developed centuries before it went into production.

There is also a massive difference in cost, and needed upkeep, and since there wasn't a military of government supporting this thing, that is a massively important distinction. A machine gun costs only 5000 c-bills, while an AMS costs 100,000. With this basically being small time anti-piracy, and there being 162 of them, it is more than enough PDS to handle the ships needs.

162 AC 2s would take over 900 tons, as opposed to the 81 tons that 162 MGs took. The 1200 tons of cargo the ship has is rather important. Between spare parts and ammo, to consumables like air, water, food, and medicine, and even some amount of trade goods or salvage. Changing those machine guns into AC 2s would leave less than 400 tons of cargo space. I won't be doing that to this design.

Lastly, if you look at TRO 3057 revised, you can see in the "Lost" warships section, several warships built before the advent of AMS using large bays of machine guns and small lasers exactly the same way, as point defense. Examples are the Pinto, Sylvester, and Atreus. So having something similar on this is not out of line at all.

...

(errr  I spent an hour working on a reply and the stupid system logged me off and I lost the whole thing so - sum-up: )

hadn't heard of SCCs before, never saw them in a book.

AMS predates the exodus (20th century tech) - the particular model found in the 2750 TRO dates back to 2617 not all of them.

Yamato was 64,000tn when built, her mass increased with modifications to over 72,000tn, no reason it wouldn't change further, replacing oil boilers and screws with fusion thrusters, so no reason not to increase to needed level (perhaps 100-120 KTn) also 'special ship' so use vehicle turret rules +10% for RBS-Nose-LBS and RBS-Aft-LBS.

upgrade LSCCs to MSCCs in turrets, replace AC-20s with triple LSCCs in turrets (the 15.5cm) for & aft, replace all other ACs with 12xLB-10X per side and add 4 AMS, 2 each side (in-place of 13mm) though I think the MGs are useless (don't know anywhere that allows them to act as AMS - that's what AMS is for.)

personally I think you should go with Musashi, sank in the Philippians without a complete upgrade, restore her to 9xM-SCC, 12xL-SCC (3 each F/A/R/L in turrets) 6xLB-10X each side (or 2 each RB/RBS/RA/LB/LBS/LA), 64xAMS scattered, and 4xMGs @ around 100-120 KTn.

Meabh Recon/Command DropShip

Class/Model/Name:  Meabh
Tech:              Inner Sphere
Vessel Type:       Civilian Spheroid Dropship

Mass:              25,000 tons
Safe Thrust:       8
Maximum Thrust:    12
Armor Type:        Heavy Ferro-Aluminum
Armament:         
    6 Sub-capital Lasers-3
    2 Sub-capital Lasers-2
    10 Sub-capital Lasers-1
    8 Light Sub-capital Cannons
    2 Killer Whale Launchers
        20 Killer Whale Missiles
    2 Manta Ray Sub-capital Launchers
        20 Manta Ray Missiles
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class/Model/Name:  Meahb
Mass:              25,000 tons

Equipment:                                                            Mass
Drive & Control:                                                      13,715.00
Thrust:  Safe Thrust: 8
      Maximum Thrust: 12
Structural Integrity: 35                                              2,236.00
Total Heat Sinks:    333 (666) Double                                 117.00
Fuel & Fuel Pumps:                                                    408.00
Cargo and Consumables:                                                570.50
Armor Type:  Heavy Ferro-Aluminum (1875 total armor pts)              126.00
                           Standard Scale Armor Pts
   Location:                            L / R
   Fore:                                506
   Right:                               503
   Left:                                503
   Aft:                                 503

Cargo:
   Bay 1:  4 Small Craft 2 Doors                                       800.00
   Bay 2:  Cargo (570.5 tons) 1 Door                                   570.50
Crew and Passengers:                                                     
     89 Officers, Crew, and Bay Personel-2nd Class Quarters            623.00
     15 Life Boats                                                     105

Weapons and Equipment      Loc        SRV    MRV    LRV    ERV  Heat   Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3 SCL-3, 1 SCL-2           Nose       11-C   11-C   --     --   124    950
1 SCL-1                    Nose       1-C    1-C    1-C    --   24     150
1 Killer Whale             Nose       4-C    4-C    4-C    4-C  20     150
1 Manta Ray                Nose       5-C    --     --     --   21     160
1 Hyperspectral Imager     Nose       --     --     --     --   --     7.5
1 Target Acquisition Gear  Nose       --     --     --     --   --     1
2 SCL-1                    FR/L       2-C    2-C    2-C    --   48     600
2 Light SCC                FR/L       4-C    4-C    4-C    --   24     800
1 Hyperspectral Imager     FR/L       --     --     --     --   --     15
1 Target Acquisition Gear  FR/L       --     --     --     --   --     2
2 SCL-1                    AR/L       2-C    2-C    2-C    --   48     600
2 Light SCC                FR/L       4-C    4-C    4-C    --   24     800
1 Hyperspectral Imager     AR/L       --     --     --     --   --     15
1 Target Acquisition Gear  AR/L       --     --     --     --   --     2
3 SCL-3, 1 SCL-2           Aft        11-C   11-C   --     --   124    950
1 SCL-1                    Aft        1-C    1-C    1-C    --   24     150
1 Killer Whale             Aft        4-C    4-C    4-C    4-C  20     150
1 Manta Ray                Aft        5-C    --     --     --   21     160
1 Hyperspectral Imager     Aft        --     --     --     --   --     7.5
1 Target Acquisition Gear  Aft        --     --     --     --   --     1
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ammo
Light SCC 320 Rounds                                                   160.00
20 Killer Whale Missiles                                               300.00
20 Manta Ray Missiles                                                  320.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Other Equipment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MASH Unit w/2 Operating Theaters                                       4.50
2 Field Kitchens                                                       6.00
Communications Equipment (15 tons)                                     12.00
Large NCSS                                                             500.00
Bloodhound Active Probe                                                2.00

With the success of the Luftenburg project, the High Command on Tharkad sought to commission a second dropship to accompany the huge carrier dropship, as an escort. Approaching TAG-Manufacturing, they proposed a second blue-water conversion project to not only fulfill this need, but to instill a 'renewed sense of national pride' by 'putting iconic vessels into the skies'. With the Nagelring actively donating to the project, TAG decided it would be much more difficult dealing with a bunch of so called Social Generals, than it would be to begin a new project. So they accepted the funding, and High Command immediately sent over their 'Liaison' to oversee the work *sigh*.

Initially, TAG desired to raise the venerable Jormungands into the sky, Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, however, had a different idea, and was able to push it through all objections. Hundreds of years ago Lyran forces operated numerous undersea command posts. To defend these posts, they used a Blue Water Vessel, the Meabh class Heavy Cruiser. With the decline of the sea bases, the Meabhs fell to disuse, and were decommissioned or turned into floating museums.

The last of these vessels to leave active service, the LCS Stadt Fischingen, was sunk sometime before the Jihad, and when the wreck was discovered, a petition to exhume the vessel back to it's museum duties was put forth. When the Jihad hit, the proposal was all but forgotten, however it had never actually been denied, and this vessel was the target of Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's plans. TAG set about exhuming the wreck.

That was not to be the last of Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's interference, no sir. He took an 'active' part in the design process, believing a hands on approach served everyone best *sigh*, and TAG co-operated as best they could.

The wreckage of the ancient vessel was in no condition to serve as the hull of a vessel, so plans were laid to instead incorporate it's lines, but also use it as the base material in the hull, and pattern much of the ship, cosmetically after the ship.

Initially intended to escort the carrier Luftenburgs, the design... strayed.. from that purpose. With the original class being designated as defense for the sea bases, Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord demanded they not only fulfill the role of defense, but take the sea base's role as well, of theater HQ. So plans changed to accommodate an amalgamation of escort and HQ roles.

The team met with approval when the presented plans for the massive drive that would propel the ship at up to 6 Gs of acceleration in brief sprints, allowing it, counter-intuitively for the role of HQ, to intercept anything closing on the larger carriers it is intended to escort. Much to the Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's delight, it was very reminiscent of the original design's speed.

For the role of theater command, it was deemed appropriate to not only install the finest sensor and communication systems in the Inner Sphere, but also to use Hyperspectral Imagers surrounding the ship to allow the ship itself to get real time views of the battlefield in order to aid command functions. [Liaison] insisted that adding Target Acquisition Gear would help the command functions by allowing the ship to direct artillery on the field more effectively. No one even bothered pointing out everything that was wrong with that thinking at this point, Hauptmann-General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord simply had too much pull with High Command, so they incorporated it into the design.

For the armament, the weaponry on the original design was simply insufficient, especially for something that was an escort, intending to also be theater command *eye-roll* *sigh*, so an upgrade was in order. [Liaison]'s part in this phase of design was simply to insist that the weapons give the ship the same lines as the original design. By this time, thanks to the interference, the ship was almost two and a half times the size of the original, and though the Luftenburg still dwarfed it by a factor of four, the design team was going to be able to put an absolutely massive payload on her, or a massive cargo capacity, since the ship's lines hat to be the same.

This was when one junior engineer earned a promotion by suggesting that with the massive payload, they could simply upgrade from standard scale weaponry into sub-capital ordnance. After some serious calculating, drafting, and swearing was done the design team knew this was going to work.

The result was a lot of massive weapons dotting the ship, and a payload that would allow the ship to command the battlefield from the skies while still engaging targets on the ground, and be a serious threat to anything in the skies.. In the end it allowed not only for the design to meet the Lyran sterioty-... I mean 'philosophy' that bigger is better, but it also met some points of Lyran Tactical Doctrine, like that Theater command can't stay on the Warship/JumpShips, but on one of the DropShips, and amusingly, also ends up meeting one other criteria about living up to it's predecessor's image: it is perceived by many to be the ego-stroking pleasure yacht of the Lyran Social Generals that it's predecessor was believed to be.

The first one was named Stadt Fischingen and stationed on Czarvowo, ostensibly pretending to be the Museum it's namesake was meant to be. It's not really fooling anyone there. Not one has yet seen an actual battlefield, despite ostensibly being intended for an escort role. Still, as long as High Command is purchasing them, TAG-Manufacturing will continue rolling them off the line. The last one bought was little more than a Nagelring graduation present. *sigh*

I haven’t read through Tac-Ops completely, Frankly some of the rules they added in TW were silly and I stopped reading (FEx: Mechs in Lvl 1 water only get the bonus for external HS in their legs? BS – the rules – from day 1 – stated that LvL1 water is WAIST deep which means the lower torso is also in water, so that means that at-least 1/2 the HS concealed in the EN are also under water and the rule stats (again from the beginning) “Maximum 6” which you can’t fit in the legs – so why would they have that as the max if that was their intent? Answer: they didn’t. From a Game-Play/Balance viewpoint – they said screw-you to the entire IS who can’t add DHS to the legs – so the clans can) they also said screw-you to all the players who have no vote in where the HS or (JJ for that matter) are placed in ‘book 'Mechs’. So I said screw you to the idiot who made up that rule and stuck the books on my shelf to collect dust. (anyway: todays rant brought to you by an idiot who can’t right rules correctly)

I can certainly appreciate that point of view, whether I agree with it or not lol. The people I learned BattleTech from in the 90s used the rule that only the legs got the heat dissipation from level one water, and I honestly don't remember if it was a house rule or not. That group used a lot of house rules, so it wouldn't surprise me.

Well, technically there is nothing in the fluff about the ship as a whole, and there is nothing in the rules that says there wasn’t a previous system – which is what I was suggesting – “it was originally built with the (insert-obsolete-system-name-here) AMS system but was upgraded in the mid-2600s to the current system” but if you want MGs – you could have fluff that it was built with MGs and later upgraded.

I like to think that huge bays of machine guns or small lasers are what eventually developed into AMS bays on ships. If this one was going to get upgraded, that would most certainly be an area. There are ships in TRO 3057 dated to prior to the AMS release date that have similar bays. If this ship had survived the Jihad it probably would have gotten upgraded. With pocket warships becoming a thing, real AMS would have become far more of a necessity. As it was, any piracy in Terra's Oort cloud was small time enough that it didn't warrant much attention, so the need wasn't there to have top-of-the-line gear, and this thing was never meant to tangle with a house military.

As to the guns, I strongly recommend at-least the slight increase in weight needed to upgrade to the Heavies – you took the smallest ones available for the massive 18” guns of the Yamato, so you kind-of left nowhere to go for the other ships, what’s the Iowas supposed to use, there is no Extra-Light, by upgrading to Heavy you leave the others the Med and Lt for their smaller guns (Med for 14-16” & light for 11-13.5”)

The SCCs aren't really a direct conversion of the 18 inch guns on the original, they were basically new weapons that used the same mountings. I chose the smallest SCCs on purpose, because the person was building this from scratch, out of pocket, basically in his garage, and from his own designs. I wanted them to be about the same as other DropShip weapons, with the range of capital weapons being the main thing that made it so much more dangerous to the small time pirates it encountered. With the Light SCC being the one that did 20 points of damage standard scale, it matched the AC-20 in damage, and I felt it fit the bill great. It would threshold most anything it was going to run across, and do it at much further ranges than it's prey could fire back at. When compared to the weapons on the other ships in it's environment, it has the biggest guns already.

The Project Yamato 2.0 I mentioned shouldn't have ships measuring themselves against this one. This one was intentionally built low-tech, and is from the dawn on JumpShips, where as anything that would fit into PY 2.0 would be a modern warship. Including if you made a rebuilt-from-the-scrap version of this. At that point, it would be completely acceptable to increase the size, and use larger guns.

While I can certainly appreciate this, it’s not really ‘making up’ rules so much as borrowing rule (from the vehicle section) with house adaptations, which may result in future rules changes if picked up on. There is certainly no reason that Warships can’t have turrets, they just left them out.

I completely agree that there is no reason warships, and in fact literally every unit type, shouldn't be able to have turrets. In fact we have aircraft that do have turrets today. We even have aircraft that fire weapons in broadsides, rather than BattleTech's nose/wing/aft set-up. But making my units with things like that would make them unavailable to anyone playing in a game that has to follow the construction rules. I want anyone to be able to use them. As far as porting vehicle turrets over, warships in particular have a lot of rules involving fire arcs. A lot. Turrets would affect all of them. Those rules would end up requiring addendum, revisions, and rulings, none of which I want to get into. The biggest effect I can see them having would be on BV2, which for warships is heavily affected by fire arc. Personally, I'd love to have a system in BattleTech that mimicked the rotating rings of turrets used by Captain Harlock's Arcadia, but I don't want to get involved in developing the rules for it lol.

I tend to assume that weapons on warships are turreted and the arc reflects where the turret can point (as well as 'up' and 'down' within the arc, even though the game maps assume that it's a 2-d battlefield)

This is what the drawing portray.