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[Darrian Wolffe]

Rob, it appears you're filtering by intro date instead of by era availability.  

Goddammit.

Of the fighters you named, we don't have access to the Sai -S4, Eagle -R11, Huscarl D, Stuka -K10, and Stuka -K15. 

GODDAMMIT.

OK, so here's the thing about areospace.  Unlike with BattleMechs, where even a 3025 Shadow Hawk if piloted well can stand a chance on a modern battlefield, the divide between areospace units with XL engines and areospace units without XL engines is sharp.  As in, once you've got XL-engine'd fighters on the field, your standard-engine fighters are basically suitable only as bomb trucks, because unlike Mechs, there's no downside to using an XL in an ASF.  It's purely free tonnage.

Which in turn means that, since we're playing in an era where XL engine'd ASFs are common, taking Intro-tech fighters is purely a waste of time.  An Introtech Stuka puts out an LRM20 volley and 2 large lasers per turn (12+16=28 damage), limited by heat sinks.  An advanced-tech Stuka, with DHS and an XL to strap even more guns on (and compensated for by the DHS) can put out 2 RAC/5s, an LRM20, 2 SRM6s, and 2 of its 9 ERMLs per turn (20+20+16+9+9+5+5=80 damage), limited by heat sinks.  With the same armor and speed.

I would have pushed for the Huscarl D, myself, for our second pair of fighters.  With that out of the picture, we basically have 3 choices:

-7D Sparrowhawk.  10/15 with x2 MPLs, x2 ERMLs, good armor, and DHS. Interceptor
F-92 Stingray.  6/9 with DHS and an ERPPC over a pair of ERLLs.  Looks sexy as hell.  Dogfighter
More Daggers.

(Corsairs, while wonderfully "Davion", are not sufficiently different enough from a Dagger to warrant the effort.)


Actually...wait.  Can somebody figure out the BV2 on the LTN-G16D Lightning?  It's a 50-ton attack bird that's explicitly made by the FedSuns (TRO3075) and shows up as being available to the FedSuns and Filtvelt in the Republic Era on the MUL.  Mounts twin RAC/5s and some MPLs.  Sarna.net says it's 1328 BV2, but I'm unsure of their maths, and the MUL doesn't list the BV.

[Riegien]

Going by the Recordsheet, LTN-G16D its 1328 BV2.  It carries 2 RAC/2, not RAC/5.  The 16O is the LBX-20 variant and is 1220BV2.  Both are available.

Also, if it helps, the CSR-12D is 8/12 not 6/9, and has 95 points of armor up front.  Its apparently carved from an even bigger brick of Ferro than the Dagger is, but the weapons load is a bit light.  That may put it fast enough to be in both interceptor and bomb truck roles.

[Death or Glory]

Good news everyone!  We have access to a few more aerospace fighters than I initially thought.  Because some of the Age of War aerospace units from TRO 3075 don't have their BV inputted into the MUL, I missed them in my initial sorting of aerospace fighters we have access to.  After further review, we have access to the following units that weren't on my list of available aerospace fighters yesterday:

Hellcat HCT-313
Sabre SB-28
Lightning LTN-G16D
Lightning LTN-G16O
Eagle EGL-R11 (Rob, I know you were asking about this one yesterday)
Vulcan VLC-8N

[serrate]

Aerospace:
I've got a lot of aero experience, but it's all Intro-tech, and almost all using vector movement (which I strongly prefer). Thanks for clarifying just why we shouldn't be using non-XL engine aeros Rob.  (^_^)b

I fully agree with the first 2 Daggers, and I'd like to see something complementary for the other 2 aeros. I'm partial to Sparrowhawks, I can't tell you how many times I've won aero dogfights with Sparrows that had nothing left but SI, seriously no armor. As lights go, they're well-armored (again, in my intro-tech experience) and yes, thrust is an armor all it's own (when using vectored movement). More thrust = more opportunity to dictate the opponents angle of attack as well as your own.

The Stingray doesn't have an XL engine, and you've convinced me on that point, so the Stingray's out, imo.

I also like that Corsair 12-D. I'd be fine with either the Sparrows or the Corsairs. I know it's tough to argue against the Daggers, but I'd prefer the flavor of keeping a little variety.

Battle Armor:
I defer to those who know better.  

edit:  Ok, I also like that Vulcan! Considering the Daggers are lights masquerading as mediums, I'd vote for either the Sparrows or the Vulcans. More options.

[Darrian Wolffe]

The Vulcan is available?  Really?  That's supposed to be a Rim Worlds fighter.

Also, Jon, I blame sarna for the Rotary/2 vs Rotary/5 thing.

LTN-G16D - A more radical update developed in the Federated Suns, the G16D features the Ferro-Alumunim armor and double heat sinks of the other recent upgrades, but also includes an XL Engine to free up space for a pair of Rotary AC/5s in the nose and a Medium Pulse Laser to each wing alongside the now upgraded ER mediums. BV (2.0) = 1,328[11]

...I have no idea why I keep looking at that site sometimes.

Also, Bryan, given that the fighters are likely to be used in atmosphere most of the time, vector movement isn't really likely...

[Darrian Wolffe]

Additionally, the question becomes "what do we want out fighters to do?"

The Daggers are acceptable "general-use" fighters.  They're fast, have plenty of armor, a good number of guns, and an acceptable fuel fraction.  They can be useful in essentially any role we want to throw at them, and the ability to reconfigure them only exacerbates that.

Since we've got two general-use fighters, I'm OK with the other two being "specialists".  So do we want recon birds?  A pair of ground attack craft?  Bomb trucks (which are *different* than ground attack craft)?  Air Superiority?  Answering what we actually want will basically dictate our choice of the fighter, as long as we're aware that unlike the Daggers, a specialist fighter will generally not fare well being thrown into a mission where its attributes don't come into play, and thus we limit our options a bit more.

[Death or Glory]

The Vulcan is available?  Really?  That's supposed to be a Rim Worlds fighter.

It was a RWR fighter, but apparently the Federated Suns started producing a variant making use of light gauss rifles of all things during the Jihad, which is the variant we have access to.

Additionally, the question becomes "what do we want out fighters to do?"

The Daggers are acceptable "general-use" fighters.  They're fast, have plenty of armor, a good number of guns, and an acceptable fuel fraction.  They can be useful in essentially any role we want to throw at them, and the ability to reconfigure them only exacerbates that.

Since we've got two general-use fighters, I'm OK with the other two being "specialists".  So do we want recon birds?  A pair of ground attack craft?  Bomb trucks (which are *different* than ground attack craft)?  Air Superiority?  Answering what we actually want will basically dictate our choice of the fighter, as long as we're aware that unlike the Daggers, a specialist fighter will generally not fare well being thrown into a mission where its attributes don't come into play, and thus we limit our options a bit more.

I'm tempted to say bomb truck, but what do you feel like would be the most useful?

[Darrian Wolffe]

It was a RWR fighter, but apparently the Federated Suns started producing a variant making use of light gauss rifles of all things during the Jihad, which is the variant we have access to.

o.O

I'm tempted to say bomb truck, but what do you feel like would be the most useful?

Unsure.  Travis?  Important question: adding external ordnance adds to the BV of a unit for as long as the ordnance remains attached.  How does that interact with our BV cap?  Why I'm asking is that there are a couple of really nice bomb trucks in the 1650-1750 BV range, but adding the ordnance would put them over the cap.  How you rule on this may thusly disqualify them from consideration...

[Riegien]

I'm ignoring ammo for sake of BV at the moment.

[Death or Glory]

If anyone has any opinions concerning vehicle or battle armor selection, now would be a good time to voice them as I would like to finish hammering out our non-battlemech forces in the near future.

[serrate]

If anyone has any opinions concerning vehicle or battle armor selection, now would be a good time to voice them as I would like to finish hammering out our non-battlemech forces in the near future.

Vehicle Lance 1 Squad 1: Spotting and battle armor transport
Maxim (I) Hover Transport (Standard) (larger infantry bay and TAG)
Maxim (I) Hover Transport (Standard)
or
Karnov UR Transport (BA) (greater maneuverability and LOS)
Karnov UR Transport (BA)

Vehicle Lance 1 Squad 2: Artillery
Schiltron Prime
Schiltron Prime

Vehicle Lance 2 Squad 1: Missile Fire Support
Heavy NLRM Carrier (better survivability and short range firepower)
Heavy NLRM Carrier
or
Heavy LRM Carrier (more missiles)
Heavy LRM Carrier

Vehicle Lance 2 Squad 2: Heavy Tanks, Fast Tanks, or More Missiles
DI Morgan Assault Tank (Gauss)
DI Morgan Assault Tank (Gauss)
or
Manteuffel Attack Tank Prime
Manteuffel Attack Tank Prime
or
Heavy NLRM Carrier
Heavy NLRM Carrier

Alrighty, a question first: Do we need BA carriers, or will we be able to carry our BA on Omnis? Because if we don't actually need them, I don't want 'em. If we do, then so be it. 

The Schiltron's I like, those are cool.

I'd vote for the Heavy NLRM carriers in L2 Squad 1. Regular LRM carriers in a campaign setting seem like a joke.

My only comment regarding the rest, is that it mostly seems like very expensive, heavy, optimized units. We're an ad-hoc force on the Periphery border, so having all the latest Omni-everything seems a little unrealistic. But hey, that's Travis' call. The vees themselves I've got no issue with.

[Riegien]

While the bulk of the forces in the area are Periphery March Militia and Filtvelt Citizen's Militia, you also have things like NAIS 2nd cadre, 2nd Ceti Hussars, 22nd Avalon Hussars, and the Thumpers (which were Defiance's "showroom" merc unit before becoming part of Filtvelt) assigned to that region.  Also the first gen omnis like the blackjack are 90 years old at this point and TRO: 3085 is 60 years old, so they've definitely filtered down to the lower ranks while the front lines have a higher composition of clan and heavy weight high tech things. I would call foul on a full lance of Scarecrows(XXL engine, clantech weapons, walking warcrime), but one or two in a short battalion is plenty reasonable to start with.

I would appreciate giving some thought to the idea of having forces that when you salvage that madcat mk4, it really feels like an upgrade though.

The only thing I want to point out is assignment to the campaign will be done by lance/squad.  Meaning if you are permitted to take 14 units, you're taking 3 fixed lances and 1 fixed pair of something else or 2 BA of your choice.  In my head, your vees represent something of a specializing unit that you can use to edit your load out to meet needs.  Something like hovers or WIGEs to provide fast support in open terrain for your attack lances because you dont want to give up the weight for your recon lance, or fire-support (like the Schiltrons and NLRMS) for when you need some weight for your lighter stuff.  If that's not how you want to go with it, that's ok too.

[Darrian Wolffe]

A logistically better layout for Vehicles is going to be something along these lines:

A Platoon: Hammer
Section 1, Vehicle 1: battle armor transport
Section 1, Vehicle 2: battle armor transport
Section 2, Vehicle 1
Section 2, Vehicle 2

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1
Section 1, Vehicle 2
Section 2, Vehicle 1
Section 2, Vehicle 2



-Hammer Platoon being made up of units which can move relatively quickly and deliver firepower (hovers, etc).

-Anvil Platoon being made up of essentially "Turret-tech-style" support units.  LRM carriers and artillery go here.

-Battle Armor Transport is whatever we want to use in this role (even if we have OmniMechs, I'd still prefer a mechanized method of BA transport as a backup option).  I rather prefer airborne-capable units in this role, but that means we really need jump-capable BA.  Having to land and disembark looks great in Vietnam footage, but doesn't work all that well on the tabletop.

Unit Suggestions:
1) At least 1 section of JES II Strategic Missile Carriers.  x4 LRM15s, x2 MML 9s.  Low BV.  They're amazing.  I don't think we can actually take Heavy LRM carriers anyway; those are Periphery General and Capellan/Canopian units (the NLRM carriers are fine, though).

2) If we want artillery, Schiltron Primes are the way to go.  I'm unsure if we really need artillery though.  a) it slows the game down, and b) in general, do we want to open that up to be used routinely against us?

3) DI Morgan (Gauss) are ridiculously good (as are Alacorns).  The issue here is that it's got C3.  So do the JES's.  Do we want to set up a C3 net?  We'll need to find a Master Vehicle, and that's where things get hairy for the FedSuns.

4) C3 Nets.  They're complicated, but crazygood when they work.  It'll mean doing weird things with vehicle allocations, though.  This platoon is easy to run:

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1: JES II
Section 1, Vehicle 2: JES II
Section 2, Vehicle 1: Ajax Prime
Section 2, Vehicle 2: Ajax Prime

...but everything has a C3 slave and there's no master AND no spotter.  Then we have this:

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1: JES II
Section 1, Vehicle 2: JES II
Section 2, Vehicle 1: Ajax B (Master)
Section 2, Vehicle 2: Fulcrum III (hover vehicle with Heavy Ferro armor and a C3 slave)

...which is a legitimate C3 net, with a spotter.  But it's more complex to run and doesn't break down into 2-unit sections as easily.

[Death or Glory]

Alrighty, a question first: Do we need BA carriers, or will we be able to carry our BA on Omnis? Because if we don't actually need them, I don't want 'em. If we do, then so be it.  

That depends on what battle armor suits we end up choosing and how many omnimechs we end up taking.  The one ton Cavalier and Infiltrator Mk II suits can mount up on omnimechs, but the two ton Fusiliers, Grenadiers, and Hauberks can't.  Basically, if we end up taking any heavy battle armor, then we're going to need to take some form of transport vehicle as well.  If we only take Cavaliers and Infiltrators, then we'd need eight omnimechs to transport all of our battlearmor, which I'm not sure we'll have.  Also, none of the omnimechs we have access to are particularly well suited to battle armor delivery (the Blackjack and Avatar are slow while the Centurion tends to use a lot of torso mounted weapons).  Overall, I'd say that if we want to employ battle armor with any degree of regularity, then we need to set aside two vehicle slots for transport duty.  I like the Maxim (I)s because they can carry a lot and can also pull double duty as TAG equipped spotters.

My only comment regarding the rest, is that it mostly seems like very expensive, heavy, optimized units. We're an ad-hoc force on the Periphery border, so having all the latest Omni-everything seems a little unrealistic. But hey, that's Travis' call. The vees themselves I've got no issue with.

We have six heavy vehicle bays and two light vehicle bays, so our vehicle force is going to be on the heavy side, but I do see what you're saying about having a bunch of assault class vehicles.  Our vehicle force does seem to be pretty optimized and shiny, but it is 3145.  Also, because we have limited slots for each mission, every vehicle we take represents a unit slot that could've been used on a battlemech.  As such, I feel like our vehicle force should be overall more optimized than our mech force, so that we're more likely to actually make use of conventional vehicles once the campaign actually starts.

A logistically better layout for Vehicles is going to be something along these lines:

A Platoon: Hammer
Section 1, Vehicle 1: battle armor transport
Section 1, Vehicle 2: battle armor transport
Section 2, Vehicle 1
Section 2, Vehicle 2

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1
Section 1, Vehicle 2
Section 2, Vehicle 1
Section 2, Vehicle 2



-Hammer Platoon being made up of units which can move relatively quickly and deliver firepower (hovers, etc).

-Anvil Platoon being made up of essentially "Turret-tech-style" support units.  LRM carriers and artillery go here.

-Battle Armor Transport is whatever we want to use in this role (even if we have OmniMechs, I'd still prefer a mechanized method of BA transport as a backup option).  I rather prefer airborne-capable units in this role, but that means we really need jump-capable BA.  Having to land and disembark looks great in Vietnam footage, but doesn't work all that well on the tabletop.

Unit Suggestions:
1) At least 1 section of JES II Strategic Missile Carriers.  x4 LRM15s, x2 MML 9s.  Low BV.  They're amazing.  I don't think we can actually take Heavy LRM carriers anyway; those are Periphery General and Capellan/Canopian units (the NLRM carriers are fine, though).

2) If we want artillery, Schiltron Primes are the way to go.  I'm unsure if we really need artillery though.  a) it slows the game down, and b) in general, do we want to open that up to be used routinely against us?

3) DI Morgan (Gauss) are ridiculously good (as are Alacorns).  The issue here is that it's got C3.  So do the JES's.  Do we want to set up a C3 net?  We'll need to find a Master Vehicle, and that's where things get hairy for the FedSuns.

4) C3 Nets.  They're complicated, but crazygood when they work.  It'll mean doing weird things with vehicle allocations, though.  This platoon is easy to run:

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1: JES II
Section 1, Vehicle 2: JES II
Section 2, Vehicle 1: Ajax Prime
Section 2, Vehicle 2: Ajax Prime

...but everything has a C3 slave and there's no master AND no spotter.  Then we have this:

B Platoon: Anvil
Section 1, Vehicle 1: JES II
Section 1, Vehicle 2: JES II
Section 2, Vehicle 1: Ajax B (Master)
Section 2, Vehicle 2: Fulcrum III (hover vehicle with Heavy Ferro armor and a C3 slave)

...which is a legitimate C3 net, with a spotter.  But it's more complex to run and doesn't break down into 2-unit sections as easily.

Rob, I like the idea of trying a C3 net for our vehicles, however I'm not sure if we can take the Ajax due to two of the five canon Ajax configurations being over 1800 BV.  The Manteuffel might work as a replacement as it has configurations with a C3 master.  Also, at 5/8 its fast enough to serve as an emergency spotter.  As far as artillery goes, I think its always a good thing to have in our tool box even if we don't bust it out every scenario.

[Darrian Wolffe]

Rob, I like the idea of trying a C3 net for our vehicles, however I'm not sure if we can take the Ajax due to two of the five canon Ajax configurations being over 1800 BV.  The Manteuffel might work as a replacement as it has configurations with a C3 master.  Also, at 5/8 its fast enough to serve as an emergency spotter.  As far as artillery goes, I think its always a good thing to have in our tool box even if we don't bust it out every scenario.

Then let's look for a BA transport VTOL with a C3 slave.  I'm not actually sure there is such a thing, but that's pretty clearly what we need.

Make one platoon-level network very similar to what I posted above (JES, Manteuffel, Fulcrum) and one platoon-level network based around faster units and BA transport (VTOL, VTOL, fast Master Unit, fast long-range support unit).  That way the VTOLs can double as spotters for that particular lance after they've dropped off their cargo.

We won't have company-level networks, but individual lance-level networks are still legit.

What that ALSO means is that we have no room for artillery platforms.