Heavy Transports

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Diablo48

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Heavy Transports

« on: September 16, 2008, 12:00:55 AM »

I was looking around on the internet today, and I wondered if there were any heavy combat transports that would have the capacity to quickly move an assault 'Mech. I couldn't find anything when I searched, but something like this seems like it would be necessary to bring most assault 'Mechs across uncrossable terrain like deep water, mountains, or cliffs. I also see a lot of utility for giving heavy equipment extra mobility if it was capable of VTOL/STOL, and would think that some military would want the extra mobility this offers. It would also be important for commanders with limited or no access to Dropships to have this type of transport because without it they couldn't move their heavy equipment between continents quickly enough to be useful. I was wondering if anyone here knows of anything like this, so anything you know would be great.


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #1 on: September 19, 2008, 07:27:58 AM »

Small craft, blimps, and fixed wing support vehicles can all carry mechs.


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Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #2 on: September 19, 2008, 10:30:55 AM »

Ok, that makes sense, but my question was more centered on weather or not there was anything with the armor to carry 'Mechs into or out of battle.


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xKamikazex

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #3 on: September 19, 2008, 02:33:54 PM »

As far as the CBT cannon is concerned, the main mode of transportation for the Mechs from place to place was the Dropships. Being extremely heavy and very expensive, it was normally never used for in atmosphere transportation (Which is why you usually saw Mechs traveling in a convoy to reach their location of choice for a mission on foot). Although, Heavy Air Transports are not uncommon. As the IS used the Karnov UR and the Clans used the Anhur to transport lighter Points/Lances consisting of Light to Medium armor as well as Battle Armor, this gave a little bit more mobility to Armor vs Mechs.

As you can see on our Factions page and are in the middle of the development of them, our Karnov and Anhur will do exactly that. We already have the ability to have it transport troops to the battlefield and we are now implementing a "Latching System" that will work similar to the Claw to bind the Vehicle inside the Cargo hold to the Transport and not "Lag and clip behind" the Transport. On top of which, the Transport VTOLs will double as a spawning point for any troops to spawn in and take the fight to the enemy on foot based from that location.


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #4 on: September 19, 2008, 02:49:48 PM »

Quote from: Diablo48 on September 19, 2008, 10:30:55 AM

Ok, that makes sense, but my question was more centered on weather or not there was anything with the armor to carry 'Mechs into or out of battle.

In that case your pretty much limited to small craft and dropships and even then you really want to avoid doing so as much as possible.

Rail (frequently maglev) and ship are common long distance transports just as they are for tanks today. Obviously mechs don't go into battle on a maglev train, but it would be just as silly to have them walk huge distances by themselves when they don't have to.


« Last Edit: September 19, 2008, 02:51:52 PM by Hellfire »	Logged

Landros Radick

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2008, 08:26:28 PM »

Don't forget the large amount of Aero-Dropships that were used both for atmosphere and limited space travel.


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Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2008, 01:23:14 AM »

Quote from: Hellfire on September 19, 2008, 02:49:48 PM

Quote from: Diablo48 on September 19, 2008, 10:30:55 AM

Ok, that makes sense, but my question was more centered on weather or not there was anything with the armor to carry 'Mechs into or out of battle.

Ok, that makes sense to me. I would assume that the profile of a small craft for this type of application would be somewhere between 150 and 200 tons based on how much armor and firepower (or lack thereof) it is carrying. I did a general theoretical run of numbers in my head while I was waiting for a reply to get a general profile for this, and I came up with this for a 200 ton craft.

100 tons cargo
40-50 tons engine
10 tons internal structure
20-30 tons armor
5-10 tons jump jets
0-25 tons free pod space

I included a lot of Jump Jets because you could theoretically use jump jets to propel a standard aircraft far enough into the air that it could preform a powered dive to build up enough airspeed to achieve flight with no runway. It could also use the Jump Jets to arrest its forward motion to greatly reduce or possibly completely eliminate the amount of runway required for landing. This would give a risky VTOL mechanism to a surprisingly heavy aircraft, and with the heavy armor a 200 ton machine can mount this could give it the ability to preform front line drops of heavy equipment. The obvious drawback of this is the severe shortage of free weight and space for weapon systems and defensive electronics.

I'm not sure if something like this is really feasible because I don't have any form of guidelines for BT aerospace design, but it seems to me like it could be workable.

Quote from: Landros Radick on September 19, 2008, 08:26:28 PM

Don't forget the large amount of Aero-Dropships that were used both for atmosphere and limited space travel.

That sounds like it could have something like what I was thinking of. Do you have any good links for any of this that I could check out?


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #7 on: September 29, 2008, 10:42:28 AM »

Quote from: Diablo48 on September 20, 2008, 01:23:14 AM

Skip the jump jets. There is dedicated VTOL equipment for conventional fighters and support craft. If you want a VTOL small craft, who wouldn't, you can just use a spheroid small craft. Unfortunately, the current ruleset doesn't have any temporary quarters so you have to give each crewmen a ridicules 5 ton berth.

Thanks to newer rule sets you can cram something like 50+ tons of cargo space on a aerospace fighter which all have some integral VTOL capability.


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Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #8 on: September 30, 2008, 12:35:22 AM »

Quote from: Hellfire on September 29, 2008, 10:42:28 AM

Thanks for the feedback. I saw some VTOL unit stats online, but it looked like they restricted the weight limits of those to something like 30 tons, which makes them totally incapable of hauling my target of 100 tons of cargo. I didn't see anything on regular aerospace fighters having VTOL capacity, and because I saw a special VTOL category I assumed that they behave more or less like conventional aircraft but they have the ability to go into space because they have a fusion reactor instead of an air breathing engine. If however VTOL gear can be mounted on any aerospace fighter with the free weight, that would be a safer alternative to the Jump Jets which would essentially catapult the fighter into the air where it would stall and have to recover before it comes back to the ground.

As for the small craft, I intentionally avoided them because they are not very fast or efficient for atmospheric transportation because they don't have lifting surfaces to take some of the load off their engines. This is a serious problem for a transport that is designed to be making front line drops and extractions because it needs as much speed, armor, and defensive equipment as possible to allow it to survive the trip in and out which, would almost certainly bring it into range of lots of heavy weapons.

If you have any good links to sites that I could check out any of this on in more detail I would appreciate it.


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #9 on: September 30, 2008, 08:58:09 PM »

Thanks for the feedback. I saw some VTOL unit stats online, but it looked like they restricted the weight limits of those to something like 30 tons, which makes them totally incapable of hauling my target of 100 tons of cargo.[/quote]If you want conventional aircraft bigger than 30 tons you have to use the support vehicle rules.

I didn't see anything on regular aerospace fighters having VTOL capacity, and because I saw a special VTOL category I assumed that they behave more or less like conventional aircraft but they have the ability to go into space because they have a fusion reactor instead of an air breathing engine. If however VTOL gear can be mounted on any aerospace fighter with the free weight, that would be a safer alternative to the Jump Jets which would essentially catapult the fighter into the air where it would stall and have to recover before it comes back to the ground.[/quote]VTOL gear can't be mounted on aerospace fighters, your stuck using their integral VTOL capability. The Kirghiz C is an example of a cargo carrying omnifighter from way back. Unfortunately, according to to the rules they have to land to disembark cargo. Which contradicts all of the fluff about stars of Kirghiz C's raining Elementals down on people.

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As for the small craft, I intentionally avoided them because they are not very fast or efficient for atmospheric transportation because they don't have lifting surfaces to take some of the load off their engines.

When your flying at high mach numbers(IIRC 4/6 is mach 7.18 at altitude at least for conventional fighters) using maneuvering thrusters and an engine that has similar thrust to modern heavy rocket lifters even on a fighter tacking load off the engine is pretty irrelevant.

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This is a serious problem for a transport that is designed to be making front line drops and extractions because it needs as much speed, armor, and defensive equipment as possible to allow it to survive the trip in and out which, would almost certainly bring it into range of lots of heavy weapons.

The main problem is you can only get about 50 tons of cargo on the things and all Spheroids have to be very careful when landing because it's easy to knock them off kilter and make them crash.

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If you have any good links to sites that I could check out any of this on in more detail I would appreciate it.

A good source, maybe I should say only source, for canon support vehicles, including the 200 ton King Karnov transport, is TRO: Vehicle Annex. It has everything from hover buses to fighter carrying airships.


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Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #10 on: September 30, 2008, 11:32:27 PM »

Quote from: Hellfire on September 30, 2008, 08:58:09 PM

If you want conventional aircraft bigger than 30 tons you have to use the support vehicle rules.

I see. Do you know if there are any good sources for that kind of information on the internet, because I don't really want to buy a book that I won't use again because I don't play the table top game.

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VTOL gear can't be mounted on aerospace fighters, your stuck using their integral VTOL capability. The Kirghiz C is an example of a cargo carrying omnifighter from way back. Unfortunately, according to to the rules they have to land to disembark cargo. Which contradicts all of the fluff about stars of Kirghiz C's raining Elementals down on people.

Hm, I have seen that before, but I passed it over because it has the limited cargo capacity I am hoping to overcome. As for the Elemental rain, while that would be awesome and makes for great fluff, I can see definite issues with that in game.

As for the VTOL, I would like to know what the landing rules are like because if Aerospace craft can function almost like a normal VTOL craft as is, it is unnecessary to worry about adding VTOL capability to a transport.

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Ok, I need to do a reality check on you here because you are using unrealistic numbers for the scenario we are looking at here, and because I can. The definition of "high altitude" they use is 72km or more, which puts the Aerospace fighter in question either close to or into space (common boundary is 100km). A much more realistic set of numbers to look at is the low altitude numbers because for tactical drops and extractions you don't have time to climb up and descend from space, and it is generally safer to stay close to the ground if you are moving against an entrenched opponent with static anti-air guns and radar. This reduces the maximum speed profile to mach 3.23, which is close to the max speed of the SR-71 Blackbird (mach 3.2+), although that was preformed at slightly higher altitudes than the "low altitude" bracket we are discussing.

Your point on using a rocket and maneuvering thrusters at that altitude is very true, but that is because the high altitude bracket has such negligible air pressure that aerodynamic effects are negligible which is what allows fighters to reach such tremendous speeds there. If you want a modern comparison, the space shuttle has an orbital velocity of 27,875kph, which blows away the top aerospace fighter speed of 15,750kph in the same environment. As for the relevance of taking advantage of aerodynamic lift, you have to remember that we are talking about a rather heavy aircraft, and any amount of work that can be shifted off the engine in the vertical direction frees up more thrust to propel the craft forwards, and for a 200 ton transport that is a lot of thrust.

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The main problem is you can only get about 50 tons of cargo on the things and all Spheroids have to be very careful when landing because it's easy to knock them off kilter and make them crash.

Well, I would go with a 200 ton aerospace fighter which does exist in the form of the Star League Aquarius, which could probably carry 100 tons of cargo if you stripped out all of its weapons and equipment.

As for the Spheroid, it sounds to me like you have already shot that idea down because a front line transport must be able to take off and land safely under fire or it is useless.

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If you have any good links to sites that I could check out any of this on in more detail I would appreciate it.

That looks great. Is there any way I could look at all or part of it on line, or just the basic rules defining how these things work in game without having to buy the book?


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #11 on: October 01, 2008, 08:25:41 PM »

Quote from: Hellfire on September 30, 2008, 08:58:09 PM

If you want conventional aircraft bigger than 30 tons you have to use the support vehicle rules.

Bit of an error there, what with the Mechbuster being 50 tons.

Quote from: Diablo48 on September 30, 2008, 11:32:27 PM

Unfortunately, no.
Edit: I spoke to soon. Check out this random spread sheet I just found. It looks like it uses the original rules set from Combat Equipment so take it with a grain of salt.

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Hm, I have seen that before, but I passed it over because it has the limited cargo capacity I am hoping to overcome.

You can safely strip all of the weapons pods out and convert it to cargo tonnage. Unfortunately, it's still going to be much less than 100 tons of cargo.

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As for the Elemental rain, while that would be awesome and makes for great fluff, I can see definite issues with that in game.

Your right it's not really surprising they didn't do that in the game.

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As for the VTOL, I would like to know what the landing rules are like because if Aerospace craft can function almost like a normal VTOL craft as is, it is unnecessary to worry about adding VTOL capability to a transport.

Its just a little harder for aerospace fighters than a proper VTOL equipped conventional fighter.

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True enough.

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There are 200 ton cargo carrying small craft. The problem is none of them can get anywhere near carrying 100 tons of cargo. They have trouble getting to 50 tons of cargo.

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As for the Spheroid, it sounds to me like you have already shot that idea down because a front line transport must be able to take off and land safely under fire or it is useless.

Small problem, if you want it to land anywhere but a runway it pretty much has to be a spheroid unless your using an omnifighter. That gets back to the basic unpracticality of the whole idea. Landing in the field while people are shooting at you is nuts. One AC2 hit can cause a control roll and send you careening into the ground regardless of how much armor you have.

Quote

That looks great. Is there any way I could look at all or part of it on line, or just the basic rules defining how these things work in game without having to buy the book?

There are four pages from the book here.


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Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2008, 11:24:55 PM »

Quote from: Hellfire on October 01, 2008, 08:25:41 PM

Quote from: Hellfire on September 30, 2008, 08:58:09 PM

If you want conventional aircraft bigger than 30 tons you have to use the support vehicle rules.

Bit of an error there, what with the Mechbuster being 50 tons.

Ok, just for reference, that was your comment you replied to, and the spreadsheet lists the max VTOL weight as 60 tons. However, it is irrelevant either way because a 60 ton VTOL craft still cannot possibly haul 100 tons of cargo.

Quote

Unfortunately, no.
Edit: I spoke to soon. Check out this random spread sheet I just found. It looks like it uses the original rules set from Combat Equipment so take it with a grain of salt.

Thanks! I just spent the last 2 hours playing with that thing, and got something almost respectable. I used a 200 ton fixed wing aircraft and added the lightest and most expensive gear possible while keeping the maximum defense allowed, and cut out sealing the aircraft and downgraded to STOL from true VTOL, but I did manage to get my target of 100 tons of cargo in.

I think that dealing with a real aerospace fighter type chassis instead of improvising with civilian equipment would probably allow me to reach my goal of true VTOL capacity without having to sacrifice weight for things like an air seal (2X chassis weight) and armored chassis (1.5X weight) because they should come in by default. It would also allow me to calculate numbers for a more reasonable crew of 1 or 2 because it really doesn't take 6 people to operate an aircraft with 1 cargo bay with 1 ramp, 1 forward firing LRM 5, and 2 AMS's, although it failed to add in the seats I provided for them for some reason Grin

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You can safely strip all of the weapons pods out and convert it to cargo tonnage. Unfortunately, it's still going to be much less than 100 tons of cargo.

I know, which is why I was thinking of using a 200 ton aerospace fighter. In my experience, you usually free up a higher percentage of your total weight as you get larger units because the engine and armor weight doesn't usually grow as quickly as the free weight in the chassis, so I figured that if you pushed it you could get a 200 ton aerospace fighter with more than 50% of its weight free after engines and armor, especially if you take advantage of weight saving materials.

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There are 200 ton cargo carrying small craft. The problem is none of them can get anywhere near carrying 100 tons of cargo. They have trouble getting to 50 tons of cargo.

I pulled it off, but I found the reason why you don't see them in the cannon configurations. My lifter wound up with a price tag of 7 million C-bills, although I did put money into armor and defensive equipment, as well as weapons and an advanced fire control system.

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Well, it sounds like you solved at least part of this issue because we can certainly specify omni capabilities.

As for the issue of rolling when you get hit, all you have to do is protect your vulnerable components with armor so hits don't break anything important easily, and let the inertia of a 200 ton aircraft and the hit geometry do the rest. Generally speaking, any hit that lands on a fighter must land fairly close to the center of gravity at least vertically, and as long as you don't try to drop down too far under fire you don't give the enemy much of an angle to generate vertical rolling torque along the distance from the center of gravity to the nose. This means that most hits won't apply too much torque in a way that can overturn the aircraft, so as long as the VTOL jets are strong which they have to be to lift the aircraft, all you need is a good computer to keep the aircraft fairly upright through the buffeting and some strong landing gear to absorb lopsided landings. This would of course take some weight away from the weapons payload, but I think that the ability to land under fire is probably more valuable than part of the meager amount of firepower this will be able to bring to bear.

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There are four pages from the book here.

Thanks. While they are not the best pages for this, I at least have a new site to poke around on later for more information.


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Hellfire

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #13 on: October 04, 2008, 11:49:32 PM »

Quote from: Diablo48 on October 01, 2008, 11:24:55 PM

Quote from: Hellfire on October 01, 2008, 08:25:41 PM

Quote from: Hellfire on September 30, 2008, 08:58:09 PM

If you want conventional aircraft bigger than 30 tons you have to use the support vehicle rules.

Bit of an error there, what with the Mechbuster being 50 tons.

Oh, I was just saying I made a bit of an error.

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Nebfer just updated that link I gave with performance specs. One of the new entries is for a 200 ton support aircraft with 100 tons of cargo space from the support vehicle TRO.

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I think that dealing with a real aerospace fighter type chassis instead of improvising with civilian equipment would probably allow me to reach my goal of true VTOL capacity without having to sacrifice weight for things like an air seal (2X chassis weight) and armored chassis (1.5X weight) because they should come in by default. It would also allow me to calculate numbers for a more reasonable crew of 1 or 2 because it really doesn't take 6 people to operate an aircraft with 1 cargo bay with 1 ramp, 1 forward firing LRM 5, and 2 AMS's, although it failed to add in the seats I provided for them for some reason Grin

.

I know, which is why I was thinking of using a 200 ton aerospace fighter. In my experience, you usually free up a higher percentage of your total weight as you get larger units because the engine and armor weight doesn't usually grow as quickly as the free weight in the chassis, so I figured that if you pushed it you could get a 200 ton aerospace fighter with more than 50% of its weight free after engines and armor, especially if you take advantage of weight saving materials.

I pulled it off, but I found the reason why you don't see them in the cannon configurations. My lifter wound up with a price tag of 7 million C-bills, although I did put money into armor and defensive equipment, as well as weapons and an advanced fire control system.

I was thinking of K1 DropShuttle. Every successive version of it has shrunk the cargo space from the original 55 tons. It's gotten so bad it only has 16.50 tons of cargo left. Every time I see it I just want to brutally maim the author.

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As for the issue of rolling when you get hit, all you have to do is protect your vulnerable components with armor so hits don't break anything important easily, and let the inertia of a 200 ton aircraft and the hit geometry do the rest. Generally speaking, any hit that lands on a fighter must land fairly close to the center of gravity at least vertically, and as long as you don't try to drop down too far under fire you don't give the enemy much of an angle to generate vertical rolling torque along the distance from the center of gravity to the nose. This means that most hits won't apply too much torque in a way that can overturn the aircraft, so as long as the VTOL jets are strong which they have to be to lift the aircraft, all you need is a good computer to keep the aircraft fairly upright through the buffeting and some strong landing gear to absorb lopsided landings. This would of course take some weight away from the weapons payload, but I think that the ability to land under fire is probably more valuable than part of the meager amount of firepower this will be able to bring to bear.

I was just referring to the game here. In the game when a fighter is flying over the ground and gets hit with something, even something really small like an AC2, the fighter has to make a control roll. If the fighter fails the control roll it looses altitude. Obviously, this can be very bad.

Here is a tweaked version of the K-1 DropShuttle for reference.

Code:

AeroTech 2 Vessel Technical Readout
VALIDATED

Class/Model/Name: K-1 Dropshuttle (Gio's DS&JS Version)
Tech: Inner Sphere / 2536
Vessel Type: Spheroid Small Craft
Rules: Level 1, Standard design
Rules Set: AeroTech2

Mass: 200 tons
Length: 28 meters
Power Plant: Pratt & Whitney 400 Standard
Safe Thrust: 4
Maximum Thrust: 6
Armor Type: Standard
Armament:
1 LRM 5
4 Medium Laser
1 Small Laser
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
==Overview:==
Like the KR-61, the K-1 and K-1C DropShuttles are long-range
shuttlecraft. The DropShuttles’ larger size, spheroid shape and lower
acceleration rates enable them to transport much more cargo, however. The
vessels’ 55-ton cargo capacities and six-passenger accommodations make the K-1
and K-1C more versatile than the KR-61, and these DropShuttles are a common
sight around jump points. The K-1 is equipped with a docking collar, allowing
it to attach to a JumpShip hardpoint. Such usage is rare outside of the Clans,
however, and more often the DropShuttle is relegated to the same duties as
other long-range shuttles.
The Clan K-1C carries much more armor than the Inner Sphere K-1 and
utilizes sophisticated pulse lasers to enhance the firepower and accuracy of
its arsenal. The two designs are nearly identical in all other respects.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Class/Model/Name: K-1 Dropshuttle (Gio's DS&JS Version)
Mass: 200 tons

Equipment: Mass
Power Plant, Drive & Control: 52.00
Thrust: Safe Thrust: 4
Maximum Thrust: 6
Structural Integrity: 6 2.50
Total Heat Sinks: 10 Single 1.00
Fuel & Fuel Pumps: 31.00
Bridge, Controls, Radar, Computer & Attitude Thrusters: 1.50
Fire Control Computers: .00
Food & Water: (75 days supply) 3.00
Armor Type: Standard (192 total armor pts) 10.50
Standard Scale Armor Pts
Location: L / R
Fore: 60
Left/Right Sides: 48/48
Aft: 36

Cargo:
Bay 1: Cargo (1) with 1 door 48.00

Crew and Passengers:
3 Crew (3 minimum) 15.00
1 Gunners (1 minimum) 5.00
4 Steerage Passengers 20.00
Weapons and Equipment Loc SRV MRV LRV ERV Heat Mass
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 LRM 5 Nose 3 3 3 -- 2 2.00
Ammo (LRM 5) 48 --- 2.00
1 Medium Laser Nose 5 -- -- -- 3 1.00
1 Medium Laser RW 5 -- -- -- 3 1.00
1 Medium Laser LW 5 -- -- -- 3 1.00
1 Medium Laser Aft 5 -- -- -- 3 1.00
1 Small Laser Aft 3 -- -- -- 1 .50
1 Lot Spare Parts (1.00%) 2.00
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTALS: Heat: 15 200.00
Tons Left: .00

Calculated Factors:
Total Cost: 8,696,850 C-Bills
Battle Value: 577
Cost per BV: 15,072.53
Weapon Value: 1,320 (Ratio = 2.29)
Damage Factors: SRV = 16; MRV = 1; LRV = 1; ERV = 0
Maintenance: Maintenance Point Value (MPV) = 1,454
(275 Structure, 920 Life Support, 259 Weapons)
Support Points (SP) = 3,152 (217% of MPV)
BattleForce2: MP: 4, Armor/Structure: 5 / 0
Damage PB/M/L: 1/-/-, Overheat: 0
Class: DS; Point Value: 6


« Last Edit: October 05, 2008, 12:02:37 AM by Hellfire »	Logged

Diablo48

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Re: Heavy Transports

« Reply #14 on: October 06, 2008, 04:56:36 PM »

Quote from: Hellfire on October 04, 2008, 11:49:32 PM

Nebfer just updated that link I gave with performance specs. One of the new entries is for a 200 ton support aircraft with 100 tons of cargo space from the support vehicle TRO.

I see. That is basically what I cam up with, although the use of more expensive advanced components allowed me to get some free weight for a light weapon and extra armor.

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I see, that is a horrible mutilation of what was originally a good vehicle. It looks to me like they could free up a lot of weight by cutting the officer out of the crew and not cut into the performance as much, although the new armor load is ridiculous for a civilian transport.

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Oh, I see what you are talking about now. Without knowing more about the rules I can't really asses how much of a threat this is, but I would think that a craft with VTOL capabilities would get some protection from this due to the nature of the VTOL equipment. I also do not know how bad a crash is, although I would think that a heavily armored VTOL aircraft coming in to land wouldn't take too much damage from a crash because it is designed to come down kind of like that, and it does have the vertical thrust assembly to help slow the fall even if it isn't well aligned.

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Here is a tweaked version of the K-1 DropShuttle for reference.

Code:

Thanks, although I saw the stats in the thread you linked me to already.


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