Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
...well, as I recall, there was at least one rather infamous incident...
False Prophets (BattleTech CYOA)
- Thread starter Acyl
- Start date
-
- Tags
- battletech mechwarrior cyoa
...well, as I recall, there was at least one rather infamous incident...
TimEd
Meteor maker
no, you are looking at the end result. What I mean is the fact that Heat in mechs is a constant problem. So has any clever eggheads decided to try and weaponize that very same problem?
can you share the story with the class?
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Flamer.
There's two kinds.
One squirts space napalm on stuff, so it starts burning and keeps burning.
The other works like a jump jet, except instead of focusing at being efficient at generating thrust for the mech its mounted on, it focuses on projecting a lot of heat in the general direction the muzzle is pointed.
Aside from that, forcing the enemy to overheat to shut down (or at least force them to fight conservatively) is a classic way to punch above your weight and neutralize enemies with far superior firepower and protection. Inferno gel is always popular, later tech stuff like plasma adds to the fun.
TimEd
Meteor maker
huh. This is what I was looking for exactly. Good to know and thanks for the info.
TimEd
Meteor maker
i did, but it didnt clarify on the flamer point. Most were still chemical based (not what I meant) and those who werent, werent totally clear on what it was.
More cross reference reading indicate the Plasma weapons as what is the dream, but is supposedly the future of future tech. So there is that.
Although it still wasnt as much help heatwise than I would expect.
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Heat-management is a core part of the table-top game which kinda prohibits solutions that make it a non-issue purely from a game-design perspective.
- Location
- Singapore
Erandil's got the meta reason, really. But even then there are a couple more examples in-setting of people getting creative with heat. Offhand, I can think of... Triple Strength Myomer, which makes a 'Mech run faster and hit harder, but only when the 'Mech is under heat load - there's some chemical thing involved, the special myomer bundles must be heated. The 'Mech must be moderately hot, it's useless to 'Mechs that run ice cold. This does mean that a MechWarrior in a 'Mech with TSM may potentially fire their weapons at nothing (esp. laser weapons with no ammo) in order to spike their heat on purpose, to activate TSM.
Or there's Laser Heat Sinks, a Clan technology which converts waste heat from the 'Mech into visible-spectrum light and so on. Doesn't 'weaponise' it in the sense that it doesn't hurt anything, but it means a hot BattleMech is outright glowing and releasing a battle aura, or looking fabulous.
Alternatively, clearly there's an episode where each of the three presenters get a few million C-Bills and some weeks to modify an UrbanMech...
That was precisely what I was thinking of when I got to that point.
VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I am talking about using the heat as a weapon. Jump Jet attack involves pointing your leg mounted JJs at the enemy and igniting the JJs to use the exhaust/heat as a weapon.
Its basically a Flamer. This is not a DFA.
Hilariously, the original gen TSM didn't actually have any issue with heat requirements to turn on.
It also had that big achillies heal of a catalyst that caused it to explode inside the mech if exposed though.
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TimEd
Meteor maker
yeah this is much more on point and a better window into Battletech than what I was working with. Thanks.
this makes much more sense. By what I understand, this whole idea is basically a primitive Plasma Weapon already. So yeah. Kudos all round.
The thing about heat waste is that all engineers everywhere struggle to get rid of or repurpose it by default in order to maximize the design's efficiency, and what you're seeing here is what is left after every method they could think of that yielded net gain has been used. So it's not that nobody thought of it, it's that weaponizing those any further is impossible without either paying the cost in tonnage and hardpoints or advancing the overall technology level of the mech beyond what the current designers could achieve at their best.
Cyclone
Robotech Nerd
- Location
- Earth, Sol System
Ignite, not explode, I'm pretty sure.
Jonen C
F.M.D.G.
- Location
- Lincopense, Ostrogothia, Suecia
Apply proper accelerant and the difference is meaningless.
Laser sinks are supposedly more impressive when used in space on ASF since they retain their efficiency regardless of environment unlike normal heatsinks. This means while Chiller & Freezer performances degrade when in space, Laser sinks allow their machines to release heat efficiently like they were operating planetside. This theoretically means they can fire their weapons more often than if they used normal heatsinks.
- Location
- Oakland CA
Don't forget making the ASF using it look like something out of an anime. Turns the heat into visible spectrum light.
Imagine Solaris matches with mechs decked out in RGB laser heat sinks.
Of course if the mech is carrying any ammo, the difference is moot.
Pretty sure it's gonna cause balance issues. It's essentially a kick attack, but you have to point the jet at the mech for an extended period to actually do something.
Fast Travel 7.6
- Location
- Singapore
Fast Travel 7.6
DHD F. SPENCER CHAPMAN, TANIA BOREALIS
5 APR 3019
Times were different, now. Not too long ago, military operations on the border of Free Worlds League and Lyran Commonwealth space would have been seen as a prelude to invasion.
Now, the climate was different. Officially the Fighting Tigers were once again on maneuvers and joint exercises with House Marik forces… the same cover we'd used for Helm, back in 3016, and more recently for the New Dallas mission.
Our presence on the border was logical enough, since we were now a unit that had been blooded against the Lyran Commonwealth. And due to our business and training arrangements, such as collaboration on BattleMech manufacturing, it was well known that the Fighting Tigers, and by extension Dalian, were friends of House Stewart and the Stewart Commonality. House Stewart did not manage all of the border, but the Stewart Commonality was the most prominent province in the region. Tania Borealis was certainly a Stewart system, nowadays.
However, with the new peace deal in effect… the Lyrans had been informed about the exercises. Everything from the scheduled duration to the force strength involved, as a matter of courtesy. Presumably the Lyrans still saw a veiled message in it, that although the Free Worlds League had drawn down forces on the Free Worlds-Lyran frontier, the Free Worlds League was still ready to defend its territory and spring into action, if necessary.
That was true. Of course, there was another reason we were in Tania Borealis, but that particular piece of information hadn't been conveyed to the Lyran Commonwealth, not officially. That said, the Lyrans would probably find out, eventually. Their human intelligence assets in the Free Worlds League were too good, and the outbreak of peace and reconciliation didn't stop House Steiner from spying on their neighbours, and vice-versa.
But efforts did need to be made. Principle of the thing, and all.
"Beginning final deceleration burn," said the helm officer of the F. Spencer Chapman. "Igniting main drive in five thousand, four thousand, three thousand, two thousand, one thousand. Ignition."
I braced myself in the chair. The sensation wouldn't be violent, since this was just bleeding off the last of our outbound velocity. Still, I was strapped in, of course. So was everyone else on the bridge. They were mostly experienced spacers, and they weren't flouting procedure. It would have been stupid of me to do otherwise.
I was in command, nominally speaking. But at the moment there were no executive decisions for me to make, and I was just glorified cargo. It was best to let the professionals handle things.
Coming to a stop in space was no easy feat. To accomplish it, the Chapman and the other DropShips in our little flotilla had to spin on maneuvering thrusters, such that the main engine output was facing the opposite way from where we were heading. Then the drives had to burn, countering the speed built up on the way out.
Thankfully, DropShip fusion drives were frankly bullshit. I wasn't a naval officer, so my grasp of the theory was slipshod. But I had studied ship drives in passing, both in regular school on Dalian and at Sandhurst on Terra. I'd seen the numbers, I'd tried to understand the math. The amount of thrust that even a humble Leopard engine could put out was phenomenal, to say nothing of the larger drives on ships like the Chapman.
"Full stop," reported the helm officer. "Main drive offline. Station-keeping only."
"Excellent, Mister Jolo," said Captain Elene Cruz. "My compliments on another well-executed maneuver. Mister Dare, inform all decks that they are free to release restraints, and resume microgravity operations. Miss Ruark, what is the status of the other ships?"
"The Feng Yang Hua Gu is slightly out of position, but within acceptable range, barely," Ruark responded, from the communications station. "Captain Sheng sends his apologies. Other ships are on station. Lydia Litvyak is deploying fighters for combat aerospace patrol. Ephyra and King Aeolus are preparing to launch small craft as well."
Most of that news was good, and it was gratifying to hear that our pocket carrier, the DHD Lydia Litvyak, and her fighter contingent were on the ball. Fighter ops had thus far been the weakest link, or one of the weaker links, in the Tigers. As the battle for Helm had proven. That wasn't the fault of Celeste Rayna, my fighter boss. Historically, aerospace had never been a strong suit of Dalian as a system… there simply hadn't been that many qualified and available pilots to hire, at least domestically.
That issue was more of a Capellan border world holdover than a Free Worlds trait, considering that the Free Worlds League and particularly Andurien, did place more overall emphasis on aerospace. Granted, in the Inner Sphere and Periphery at large, a myopic emphasis on ground forces over air and space ops was a common malady. Still, we were doing our best to correct that. Gratifyingly enough, we were also running out of DropShip berths to carry the air wing. The Lydia Litvyak alone was no longer sufficient. Other ships in the Tigers fleet did have small craft or fighter berths, or had been modified to carry them at some point in their history, but eventually we would need another carrier ship or three.
The Feng Yang Hua Gu did have a small craft bay, unusually for a Mule. That wasn't standard for the freighter class. But our Mule was actually an old SLDF hull, with a considerably thicker layer of armour and, yes, the ability to carry fighters and small craft. What it didn't have was the naval missile launchers, having been demilitarised and converted back to a conventional cargo layout some time in the past couple hundred years. Admittedly, even if the ship had retained the launchers, we wouldn't know what to do with them. Capital ship weapons were virtually unknown in the present day, with the effective banishment of proper WarShips from the spacelanes.
So the Feng Yang Hua Gu was basically just a Mule, just an idiosyncratic one. I knew the engines were finicky, for one thing. Nowhere near bad enough to demand a tear down and rebuild, or a replacement, but enough that it did annoy the crew. But for the opening stages of our mission, the Feng Yang Hua Gu didn't need to be bang on station. We were using the freighter's cavernous holds to transport parts and supplies for the expedition, mainly. It probably wouldn't be the first freighter making the trip to the fringes of the Tania Borealis system. Depending on what the teams found, our trip might just be an initial foray, and others would have to complete what we started.
Still, those facts didn't stop the other Tiger ship commanders from giving John Sheng a tough time about the state of his ship and its fusion drive. There was a certain amount of competitiveness among the skippers and their teams, not unlike what I was used to in the MechWarrior and ground arms.
I couldn't see Elene's face clearly, since her back was towards me. But I thought she rolled her eyes. "Inform Sheng that he's bringing the drinks for the next captains' meeting. He must get that engine room in shape, or find other personnel capable of doing the job."
"Aye, captain," Ruark said, with a grin. From my vantage point, I could catch Ruark's expression, at least. She was amused.
Elene turned to me. "Colonel, I suppose we are ready to proceed, at your discretion."
I nodded, and gave a thumbs-up with one gloved hand. "Thanks, Elene. Comms, can I get a line to the Ephyra's boarding and tech team?"
It would be more normal to radio the bridge, but the person I needed to talk to would already be suited up and ready to go, along with the rest of her handpicked specialists.
The Ephyra was the latest addition to the growing collection of Fighting Tigers aerospace assets. We didn't own the ship fully, yet, but we had a rent-to-own arrangement going with House Marik. I was a little surprised that they'd signed off on letting us have the Ephyra, since it was a rare design, no longer in production outside ComStar, and hardly sighted outside ComStar's Ross and Luyten fleet bases… but then, I'd been one of the people to get the whole Tania Borealis mission going, together with Illium Shipyards. Illium was, of course, only technically an independent corporation, seeing as how the vast majority of its shares were held by either the FWLM or SAFE.
The King Aeolus was a sister ship to the Ephyra, of the same class. The Aeolus belonged to Illium Shipyards, though I rather suspected that under a different name and registry, it might have been used for SAFE work in the past. It was in excellent fighting condition, better than the Ephyra. Notably, the Ephyra was missing its LosTech armament. The guns and missile batteries had long since been stripped of valuable Star League technology. The King Aeolus, on the other hand, still scanned as having most of that firepower. That was a little too much punch for a ship that supposedly mainly worked around the yards as a tug.
The Ephyra and King Aeolus were tugboats. But they were SLDF tugs. The Model 96 Elephant had been designed by Nimakachi Fusion Products Limited to faintly ridiculous Star League contract specs. The ships had retractable magnetic locks in their noses, allowing them to clamp on to other vessels. And the drive on an Elephant could put out thrust matching four multiples of Terran gravity, and keep it up all day.
For whatever reason, the SLDF had demanded that the Elephant-class tug also be able to function as a combined arms battalion transport, able to drop a company of 'Mechs with vehicle, infantry, and aerospace fighter support. And they'd wanted enough firepower on the ships such that they could work as planetary invasion vessels, too. Since the Model 96 existed, obviously one manufacturer had been able to meet the dual requirements, but the history books also said that Nimakachi was the only shipmaker that had submitted a workable contract bid.
But… at the moment, firepower and troop carrying wasn't what we needed the Model 96 tugs for. No, they were here because they were tugboats, and good ships to support salvage and space repair operations. The tugs were capable of latching onto and eventually moving even the largest of vessels, including JumpShips… and WarShips.
"Patching you through, Colonel," said Ruark. "You're live in three thousand, two thousand, one thousand, mark."
"Doctor Murad," I said. "This is Erin Larkin. How's it going?"
"Good, very good," came the cheerful reply from the small craft bays aboard the Ephyra. "We're ready to go, Colonel. The shuttles are already buttoned up for launch, and we're eager to go over and get started."
Doctor Farah Murad was rated as a minor security risk by SAFE, since although she was a Regulan native and had started her studies at the University Atreus, her two doctorates in physics and mechanical engineering were actually from Sian University. Sian University was legitimately one of the finest educational institutes for applied sciences, but it was also in the Capellan Confederation, on the Confederation's capital world.
However, I'd pushed for her inclusion as the chief expert on this mission. I was trusting her to work miracles, after all. And I had the benefit of knowing that Farah Murad was one of the best.
"Just checking," I said, equally friendly. "Don't want any last minute hiccups. Okay, official word, and we'll let Aeolus know… you're good to go whenever."
Doctor Murad laughed. "You'll be watching, with the Illium representatives? I'll have the crews put on a good show."
"Alright," I said. "I'll leave it up to you and try not to get in your way. Larkin out."
As an assault vessel intended to land a battalion, the F. Spencer Chapman wasn't perfectly ideal for a space recovery mission, but the extensive command centre aboard the Tigers' lead DropShip was just as capable of tracking an operation in space as it was on the ground. The company-sized infantry bunks on the Chapman were also useful for housing the various mission specialists, similar to how we were using the infantry accommodations aboard the Model 96 tugs.
And we needed that small army of engineers and technicians, because salvaging the FWLS Olympic would be a colossal undertaking.
On the Chapman's main holotank, I and everyone on the bridge of our ship could see our target, what we were here to recover, all seven hundred and twenty-five metres of it.
Officially, this phase of the exercise in Tania Borealis was a full-on boarding and salvage operation, involving several DropShips and a long-derelict JumpShip on the outskirts of the system. Technically this was true, because the FWLS Olympic did qualify as a JumpShip, insofar as all WarShips did.
The Olympic was an Aegis-class heavy cruiser, originally built in the twenty-fourth century as a Terran Hegemony vessel. THS Olympic and her sisters had been mothballed in the twenty-sixth century, before being revived decades later for the SLDF… though some ships, like the Olympic, ended up being turned over to the Star League's member states. The Olympic had therefore become the FWLS Olympic, serving in the Free Worlds League navy until 2838. The Olympic had been abandoned after a battle with the Draconis Combine in Tania Borealis, and she'd been drifting in the outer reaches of the system ever since.
Until now. Until today. If everything went well, that fate would change.
Doctor Farah Murad claimed that she could get any ship flying. It was time to put that boast to the test.
I expected it would take many long months before Doctor Murad and Illium Shipyards finished restoring the Olympic. Possibly years, even with the technical data from the Helm and New Dallas memory cores. But the proof of concept would be getting the Olympic mobile once again, both intra-system and for Kearny-Fuchida jump.
The fact was, the naval battles of the Succession Wars were a matter of record. If you knew to look in the right records. Often ships hadn't been destroyed entirely, but rendered inoperable, unable to jump. By the time the dust had settled, most of the Successor States' yards and compact Kearny-Fuchida drive factories had been turned to scrap, and the Great Houses weren't in any position to bring ships back from the grave. Tania Borealis had just been a skirmish, but… for example, a dozen Capellan capital ships and half that number of Free Worlds League vessels had died in Calloway. Battlefields like Second Chance were probably worth picking over, too.
If this worked, the Olympic wouldn't be the last hulk that the Free Worlds League got back into service.
DHD F. SPENCER CHAPMAN, TANIA BOREALIS
5 APR 3019
Times were different, now. Not too long ago, military operations on the border of Free Worlds League and Lyran Commonwealth space would have been seen as a prelude to invasion.
Now, the climate was different. Officially the Fighting Tigers were once again on maneuvers and joint exercises with House Marik forces… the same cover we'd used for Helm, back in 3016, and more recently for the New Dallas mission.
Our presence on the border was logical enough, since we were now a unit that had been blooded against the Lyran Commonwealth. And due to our business and training arrangements, such as collaboration on BattleMech manufacturing, it was well known that the Fighting Tigers, and by extension Dalian, were friends of House Stewart and the Stewart Commonality. House Stewart did not manage all of the border, but the Stewart Commonality was the most prominent province in the region. Tania Borealis was certainly a Stewart system, nowadays.
However, with the new peace deal in effect… the Lyrans had been informed about the exercises. Everything from the scheduled duration to the force strength involved, as a matter of courtesy. Presumably the Lyrans still saw a veiled message in it, that although the Free Worlds League had drawn down forces on the Free Worlds-Lyran frontier, the Free Worlds League was still ready to defend its territory and spring into action, if necessary.
That was true. Of course, there was another reason we were in Tania Borealis, but that particular piece of information hadn't been conveyed to the Lyran Commonwealth, not officially. That said, the Lyrans would probably find out, eventually. Their human intelligence assets in the Free Worlds League were too good, and the outbreak of peace and reconciliation didn't stop House Steiner from spying on their neighbours, and vice-versa.
But efforts did need to be made. Principle of the thing, and all.
"Beginning final deceleration burn," said the helm officer of the F. Spencer Chapman. "Igniting main drive in five thousand, four thousand, three thousand, two thousand, one thousand. Ignition."
I braced myself in the chair. The sensation wouldn't be violent, since this was just bleeding off the last of our outbound velocity. Still, I was strapped in, of course. So was everyone else on the bridge. They were mostly experienced spacers, and they weren't flouting procedure. It would have been stupid of me to do otherwise.
I was in command, nominally speaking. But at the moment there were no executive decisions for me to make, and I was just glorified cargo. It was best to let the professionals handle things.
Coming to a stop in space was no easy feat. To accomplish it, the Chapman and the other DropShips in our little flotilla had to spin on maneuvering thrusters, such that the main engine output was facing the opposite way from where we were heading. Then the drives had to burn, countering the speed built up on the way out.
Thankfully, DropShip fusion drives were frankly bullshit. I wasn't a naval officer, so my grasp of the theory was slipshod. But I had studied ship drives in passing, both in regular school on Dalian and at Sandhurst on Terra. I'd seen the numbers, I'd tried to understand the math. The amount of thrust that even a humble Leopard engine could put out was phenomenal, to say nothing of the larger drives on ships like the Chapman.
"Full stop," reported the helm officer. "Main drive offline. Station-keeping only."
"Excellent, Mister Jolo," said Captain Elene Cruz. "My compliments on another well-executed maneuver. Mister Dare, inform all decks that they are free to release restraints, and resume microgravity operations. Miss Ruark, what is the status of the other ships?"
"The Feng Yang Hua Gu is slightly out of position, but within acceptable range, barely," Ruark responded, from the communications station. "Captain Sheng sends his apologies. Other ships are on station. Lydia Litvyak is deploying fighters for combat aerospace patrol. Ephyra and King Aeolus are preparing to launch small craft as well."
Most of that news was good, and it was gratifying to hear that our pocket carrier, the DHD Lydia Litvyak, and her fighter contingent were on the ball. Fighter ops had thus far been the weakest link, or one of the weaker links, in the Tigers. As the battle for Helm had proven. That wasn't the fault of Celeste Rayna, my fighter boss. Historically, aerospace had never been a strong suit of Dalian as a system… there simply hadn't been that many qualified and available pilots to hire, at least domestically.
That issue was more of a Capellan border world holdover than a Free Worlds trait, considering that the Free Worlds League and particularly Andurien, did place more overall emphasis on aerospace. Granted, in the Inner Sphere and Periphery at large, a myopic emphasis on ground forces over air and space ops was a common malady. Still, we were doing our best to correct that. Gratifyingly enough, we were also running out of DropShip berths to carry the air wing. The Lydia Litvyak alone was no longer sufficient. Other ships in the Tigers fleet did have small craft or fighter berths, or had been modified to carry them at some point in their history, but eventually we would need another carrier ship or three.
The Feng Yang Hua Gu did have a small craft bay, unusually for a Mule. That wasn't standard for the freighter class. But our Mule was actually an old SLDF hull, with a considerably thicker layer of armour and, yes, the ability to carry fighters and small craft. What it didn't have was the naval missile launchers, having been demilitarised and converted back to a conventional cargo layout some time in the past couple hundred years. Admittedly, even if the ship had retained the launchers, we wouldn't know what to do with them. Capital ship weapons were virtually unknown in the present day, with the effective banishment of proper WarShips from the spacelanes.
So the Feng Yang Hua Gu was basically just a Mule, just an idiosyncratic one. I knew the engines were finicky, for one thing. Nowhere near bad enough to demand a tear down and rebuild, or a replacement, but enough that it did annoy the crew. But for the opening stages of our mission, the Feng Yang Hua Gu didn't need to be bang on station. We were using the freighter's cavernous holds to transport parts and supplies for the expedition, mainly. It probably wouldn't be the first freighter making the trip to the fringes of the Tania Borealis system. Depending on what the teams found, our trip might just be an initial foray, and others would have to complete what we started.
Still, those facts didn't stop the other Tiger ship commanders from giving John Sheng a tough time about the state of his ship and its fusion drive. There was a certain amount of competitiveness among the skippers and their teams, not unlike what I was used to in the MechWarrior and ground arms.
I couldn't see Elene's face clearly, since her back was towards me. But I thought she rolled her eyes. "Inform Sheng that he's bringing the drinks for the next captains' meeting. He must get that engine room in shape, or find other personnel capable of doing the job."
"Aye, captain," Ruark said, with a grin. From my vantage point, I could catch Ruark's expression, at least. She was amused.
Elene turned to me. "Colonel, I suppose we are ready to proceed, at your discretion."
I nodded, and gave a thumbs-up with one gloved hand. "Thanks, Elene. Comms, can I get a line to the Ephyra's boarding and tech team?"
It would be more normal to radio the bridge, but the person I needed to talk to would already be suited up and ready to go, along with the rest of her handpicked specialists.
The Ephyra was the latest addition to the growing collection of Fighting Tigers aerospace assets. We didn't own the ship fully, yet, but we had a rent-to-own arrangement going with House Marik. I was a little surprised that they'd signed off on letting us have the Ephyra, since it was a rare design, no longer in production outside ComStar, and hardly sighted outside ComStar's Ross and Luyten fleet bases… but then, I'd been one of the people to get the whole Tania Borealis mission going, together with Illium Shipyards. Illium was, of course, only technically an independent corporation, seeing as how the vast majority of its shares were held by either the FWLM or SAFE.
The King Aeolus was a sister ship to the Ephyra, of the same class. The Aeolus belonged to Illium Shipyards, though I rather suspected that under a different name and registry, it might have been used for SAFE work in the past. It was in excellent fighting condition, better than the Ephyra. Notably, the Ephyra was missing its LosTech armament. The guns and missile batteries had long since been stripped of valuable Star League technology. The King Aeolus, on the other hand, still scanned as having most of that firepower. That was a little too much punch for a ship that supposedly mainly worked around the yards as a tug.
The Ephyra and King Aeolus were tugboats. But they were SLDF tugs. The Model 96 Elephant had been designed by Nimakachi Fusion Products Limited to faintly ridiculous Star League contract specs. The ships had retractable magnetic locks in their noses, allowing them to clamp on to other vessels. And the drive on an Elephant could put out thrust matching four multiples of Terran gravity, and keep it up all day.
For whatever reason, the SLDF had demanded that the Elephant-class tug also be able to function as a combined arms battalion transport, able to drop a company of 'Mechs with vehicle, infantry, and aerospace fighter support. And they'd wanted enough firepower on the ships such that they could work as planetary invasion vessels, too. Since the Model 96 existed, obviously one manufacturer had been able to meet the dual requirements, but the history books also said that Nimakachi was the only shipmaker that had submitted a workable contract bid.
But… at the moment, firepower and troop carrying wasn't what we needed the Model 96 tugs for. No, they were here because they were tugboats, and good ships to support salvage and space repair operations. The tugs were capable of latching onto and eventually moving even the largest of vessels, including JumpShips… and WarShips.
"Patching you through, Colonel," said Ruark. "You're live in three thousand, two thousand, one thousand, mark."
"Doctor Murad," I said. "This is Erin Larkin. How's it going?"
"Good, very good," came the cheerful reply from the small craft bays aboard the Ephyra. "We're ready to go, Colonel. The shuttles are already buttoned up for launch, and we're eager to go over and get started."
Doctor Farah Murad was rated as a minor security risk by SAFE, since although she was a Regulan native and had started her studies at the University Atreus, her two doctorates in physics and mechanical engineering were actually from Sian University. Sian University was legitimately one of the finest educational institutes for applied sciences, but it was also in the Capellan Confederation, on the Confederation's capital world.
However, I'd pushed for her inclusion as the chief expert on this mission. I was trusting her to work miracles, after all. And I had the benefit of knowing that Farah Murad was one of the best.
"Just checking," I said, equally friendly. "Don't want any last minute hiccups. Okay, official word, and we'll let Aeolus know… you're good to go whenever."
Doctor Murad laughed. "You'll be watching, with the Illium representatives? I'll have the crews put on a good show."
"Alright," I said. "I'll leave it up to you and try not to get in your way. Larkin out."
As an assault vessel intended to land a battalion, the F. Spencer Chapman wasn't perfectly ideal for a space recovery mission, but the extensive command centre aboard the Tigers' lead DropShip was just as capable of tracking an operation in space as it was on the ground. The company-sized infantry bunks on the Chapman were also useful for housing the various mission specialists, similar to how we were using the infantry accommodations aboard the Model 96 tugs.
And we needed that small army of engineers and technicians, because salvaging the FWLS Olympic would be a colossal undertaking.
On the Chapman's main holotank, I and everyone on the bridge of our ship could see our target, what we were here to recover, all seven hundred and twenty-five metres of it.
Officially, this phase of the exercise in Tania Borealis was a full-on boarding and salvage operation, involving several DropShips and a long-derelict JumpShip on the outskirts of the system. Technically this was true, because the FWLS Olympic did qualify as a JumpShip, insofar as all WarShips did.
The Olympic was an Aegis-class heavy cruiser, originally built in the twenty-fourth century as a Terran Hegemony vessel. THS Olympic and her sisters had been mothballed in the twenty-sixth century, before being revived decades later for the SLDF… though some ships, like the Olympic, ended up being turned over to the Star League's member states. The Olympic had therefore become the FWLS Olympic, serving in the Free Worlds League navy until 2838. The Olympic had been abandoned after a battle with the Draconis Combine in Tania Borealis, and she'd been drifting in the outer reaches of the system ever since.
Until now. Until today. If everything went well, that fate would change.
Doctor Farah Murad claimed that she could get any ship flying. It was time to put that boast to the test.
I expected it would take many long months before Doctor Murad and Illium Shipyards finished restoring the Olympic. Possibly years, even with the technical data from the Helm and New Dallas memory cores. But the proof of concept would be getting the Olympic mobile once again, both intra-system and for Kearny-Fuchida jump.
The fact was, the naval battles of the Succession Wars were a matter of record. If you knew to look in the right records. Often ships hadn't been destroyed entirely, but rendered inoperable, unable to jump. By the time the dust had settled, most of the Successor States' yards and compact Kearny-Fuchida drive factories had been turned to scrap, and the Great Houses weren't in any position to bring ships back from the grave. Tania Borealis had just been a skirmish, but… for example, a dozen Capellan capital ships and half that number of Free Worlds League vessels had died in Calloway. Battlefields like Second Chance were probably worth picking over, too.
If this worked, the Olympic wouldn't be the last hulk that the Free Worlds League got back into service.
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Oh Erin, I am not sure if this is really such a smart move. I get that the idea of matching the Clans in space combat is an attractive one and perhaps even a necessary measure considering their fleet capacities and willingness to use them (even if not anywhere near the level they could, at least in canon). But of all the things Erin has done in the past it is this reactivating warships "en mass" that is in my opinion the one most likely to result in very extreme escalations and retaliations...
I don't think any of the big factions in Battletech has forgotten the horror and sheer destruction of planetary bombardments, or at least I would hope so considering how many planets are still marred by the scars of it, and the prospect of any one faction regaining that capability in any significant manner has to be horrifying both from a morale as well as strategic perspective. And it certainly isn't a good look for a state that just helped to fund Star League 2.0 at least partly on the idea of limiting weapons of mass destruction... Also, it is in my opinion one of the few actions that should almost certainly result in a massive Comstar retaliation since it more than anything else endangers the superiority and security of Comstar and Terra.
I don't think any of the big factions in Battletech has forgotten the horror and sheer destruction of planetary bombardments, or at least I would hope so considering how many planets are still marred by the scars of it, and the prospect of any one faction regaining that capability in any significant manner has to be horrifying both from a morale as well as strategic perspective. And it certainly isn't a good look for a state that just helped to fund Star League 2.0 at least partly on the idea of limiting weapons of mass destruction... Also, it is in my opinion one of the few actions that should almost certainly result in a massive Comstar retaliation since it more than anything else endangers the superiority and security of Comstar and Terra.
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VhenRa
MechWarrior
- Location
- Auckland, New Zealand
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You can only do it to units an elevation below you... or if you are sprawled out on the ground. Unlike kicks where you can kick anything at same elevation as you.
Dakkaface
Extra Shooty Wordsmith
Why hallo thar Dr. Murad. Will the Fighting Tigers be heading to Axylus soon?
Not unless the Arano share the information about it, and it doesn't look like they'll face a succession crisis to force their hand this time around - any kind of troublemaking will just serve as an excuse for the Solaris signatories to eat up the offender.