CLASSIC BATTLETECH CATALYST game labs

IIRC in canon TRO-2750 was labeled as C* fake and later redesigns as canon. Not sure though...

I wish we could get some decent visuals of the 2750 Designs...

I mean they MAKE MORE SENSE.

Chapter Thirteen - Part II

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SLS Yukon – Deep Space – 3045CE

Massing less than a third as much as the Zughoffer Weir the upgraded Riga Class Destroyer Yukon didn’t mount anywhere near as much in the way of firepower and most of its battery was forward facing so whilst the battleships presented broadsides to the enemy Yukon had been turning to point its nose at the closest Basestar whilst launching her fighters and dropships.

A hybrid of a Destroyer and a Carrier the Riga Class carried some fifty fighters, the same number as the more massive McKenna, and the Kirghiz and Visigoth aerospace fighters were scrambling through the hanger doors as the two dropships it was carrying began to launch their own fighters.

As the least powerful of the three SLDF capital ships being deployed Admiral Franks had compensated by giving Yukon his two most heavily armed dropships. The Titan Class was a light carrier, itself some two-hundred and fifty metres long and carried eighteen aerospace fighters plus a fairly formidable forward battery of its own. The two Titans had been in mothballs for decades and had never been upgraded since their construction so their weaponry was still as it had been when first designed way back in the 27th Century but they still added some much needed additional weight of fire to the Yukon Battle Group and the thirty-six additional aircraft they were launching should help deal with the swarms of Raiders that would be heading their direction.

Yukon opened up with her forward battery, mostly Naval Lasers but with her huge bore Naval Autocannon firing too, the projectiles from the latter lazily coasting through space at merely high-supersonic speeds by comparison. The beams cut deep into the hull of the basestar which had neither the thick bulky armour-plate of a Colonial Battlestar nor the more advanced ablative armour types used by the Star League that were intended to be slashed by Directed-Energy-Weapons.

Excited comms chatter from the battleships Zughoffer Weir and Bismark reported their own vicious broadsides of massed Heavy Naval PPC’s and Naval Lasers respectively had already done for two of the Cylon Capital ships and Bismark was already turning her forward guns on a third as she came about, mauling it with her array of eight forward-facing Heavy Naval PPC’s and the two huge Naval Autocannon she carried which were of a calibre that a munchkin could actually stand up in.

The basestar under Yukon’s own guns was venting atmosphere and seemed to be on fire, what the hell it was made of the Captain of the Yukon could only guess but it looked very spectacular through the telescope as the laser beams became visible in the gas and debris streaming out from the oddly shaped craft with its strange design aesthetic.

Missiles launched from the basestars towards Yukon had taken far longer to cross the gap between them but they were fighting back at least and doing so with considerable determination the Cylon capital ship firing every tube it had in a continual salvo of missies that streaked towards Yukon leaving multiple trails in their wake. Lacking decent point-defence the destroyer relied on its fighter complement to deal with this kind of assault, or the hundreds of Raiders that were now being vectored away from Galactica and Pegasus towards each of the SLDF vessels, and particle-beam and laser weapons from the aerospace fighters were already swatting down the missiles as best they could.

Not all of the fighters were the relatively modern Kirghiz and Visigoth omnifighters of Clan design, although it should be noted that even the newer Visigoth was now a century-old. New Circe had not yet replaced its entire aerospace fighter fleet and the mothballed Titans had been loaded with the best of the second-line fighters, in many cases being flown by pilots who were not SLDF Regulars but rather the weekend warriors of the reserves. The centuries old Tomahawk and Trident fighters had been the last scheduled to be replaced as New Circe modernised and sold on its older craft because they were lighter, more agile craft than the omnifighters and they were at least the upgraded “Royal” versions making them generally superior to what they were flying in the Inner Sphere in any case. The Tridents only massed a mere twenty-tons, barely twice what a tiny Viper did, and could sustain brutal accelerations, six gees without overthrust so they tore off ahead of the other fighters, pilots often twenty years older than the ones in the omnifighters acting very much like teenagers and having to be ordered not to try and take on the entire Cylon Fleet on their own.

Zughoffer Weir had turned and was now putting an HNPPC broadside from its starboard battery into one Basestar whilst accelerating hard towards a second, firing volleys from its forward Naval Autocannon as it went adding its own momentum to the muzzle velocity of the guns. For some inexplicable reason the basestars seemed to still be just standing there and taking it once the first shells arrived rather than manoeuvring to avoid, not that the SLDF gun-crews were complaining. Even though they didn’t seem to have much in the way of sub-light engines the Cylon capital ships should have been taking more evasive action as soon as the huge Naval Autocannon shells started smashing into them but although they did eventually start to react they had already paid the price for not doing so immediately by then.

The great Mercury Class Battlestar Pegasus was itself pounding a Basestar into floating debris. Her mass-drivers and heavy guns were orientated so that she could deliver maximum punishment straight ahead and her forward battery was far more effective against capital ships than her older less massive sister Galactica could achieve. Galactica herself meanwhile was exchanging fire with two Basestars with her main turrets, whilst her point-defence, like that of Pegasus, threw out a firestorm aimed at Raiders and incoming missiles alike.

Already in the thick of it the Vipers that Galactica had launched were now mixed in with those from Pegasus and over a hundred Mark VII’s all now equipped with medium lasers slung underneath, plus an additional squadron of aging Mark II’s launched from Pegasus were duelling in a gigantic dog-fight with thousands of Raiders and Heavy Raiders. Mixed in with the smaller fighters the twenty-two remaining Kirghiz fighters under the command of Wing Commander Defoe were overwhelmed with targets and Defoe only hoped she wasn’t going to accidentally flash-fry a poor Viper pilot with her LRPPC’s or shred one with her cluster-rounds as she pulled the nose of her hundred-ton machine about.

The Texas Class Battleship Bismark  had been carrying the Wolverines four Leopard CV dropships, small seventy-metre long craft that carried a mere six aerospace fighters apiece but the more the merrier and the Texas Class only carried forty fighters itself so another twenty-four was most welcome. The Leopards themselves had been upgraded once decades before with their original PPC armament replaced by the Enhanced Extended Range Particle Projection Cannon that was both the ancestor of both the Kerensky-Loyalist Clan’s CERPPC and the superior Wolverine LRPPC but they weren’t anywhere near as dangerous as the much larger Titans so their own contribution was limited to helping the fighters in an Anti-Raider and Anti-Missile roll. Nonetheless every platform counted and the Leopard CV’s were soon racking up kills in the amazingly target-rich environment that presented itself.

The Cylons were not really very skilful at war, their usual approach and tactics, such as they were, being largely based around being difficult to kill in an infantry firefight in the case of Centurions, or winning by sheer weight of numbers in the case of Raiders.  Their Basestars lacked the point-defence or heavy guns of the Colonial Equivalents with only missile racks for their own defensive and offensive capabilities and the thing that really crippled them was that the Hybrids, the interconnected “souls” of the Basestars were a very long way from being the rational, logical, single-minded and above all completely sane things they should be. As the Basestars were slashed by lasers, burned-through by particle beams and smashed and shattered by projectile weaponry the Hybrids screamed and their pain was felt even by the ships not being fired upon by the Thirteenth yet.  This was not a time for being their usually quite cryptic selves and being in distress too wasn’t helping the situation one bit, they babbled what the Cavils in particular viewed as superstitious nonsense between reports of damage and this was also starting to badly effect the mainly Centurion crews.

The original Basestars of the First Cylon War pre-dated the development of the Hybrids and would frankly have made a better fight of it in this situation, and for that matter the smarter Model 005 Centurions would have been able to adjust quicker too. It was taking the Cylons too long to react at every turn and having the enraged Cavils screaming orders and the Leobens being almost as cryptic as the Hybrids was not helping. Only Boomer Eight had a decent idea what to do, she was trying to get the others to accept a unified command and fight a lot more creatively in the Colonial Fleet fashion, run away if they had to, for now but it was chaos.

Yukon finally pounded her first target to pieces and the Destroyer and her two Titan Dropship escorts swung about and headed straight towards a pair of Basestars which had been throwing missiles at them. Hundreds of Raiders were tearing towards them preparing to volley off a massive salvo of their own shorter ranged missiles when they got into effective range but the Wolverine vessels had jumped in hundreds of kilometres away and the distance the Raiders had to traverse before they could fire back was a killing ground for the SLDF fighters. In the battle over Aquaria a mere two dozen Kirghiz had slaughtered better than half a Baseship’s worth of fighters before they could retaliate in a situation like this and Yukon and the Titans had deployed well over three times that number of aircraft.

It was pure unmitigated slaughter... the Wolverine fighter-jocks were having the time of their lives as their Directed-Energy-Weapons played over the thinly armoured Cylon warbirds.

Zughoffer Weir had her engines at half their maximum thrust heading straight towards an enemy Capital ship forward guns blazing, her Kirghiz and Visigoth fighters doing their best to keep the Raiders away. ‘Roll the ship, bring port and starboard batteries to bear on the second target’ Captain Ferry ordered as the ship prepared to unleash its full fury.

‘Sir, this will push our heat up into the red’ the Weapons Officer warned as the McKenna Class rolled. ‘We’ll have to cease fire with the forward guns at least’ he stated.

‘Do it’ Ferry responded and the Basestar ahead got a respite as the Zughoffer Weir stopped firing her forward guns.

‘Port and Starboard batteries are at correct elevations, ship rolling, starboard guns coming to bear in five, four three, two, one...’

‘FIRE!’ Ferry ordered and the twenty-four Heavy Naval PPC’s on one side of the ship burned into a Basestar some two-hundred and fifty kilometres distant, completely incinerating several dozen Raiders that had been unfortunate enough to be in the path of the particle beams. The Basestar was crippled and began to tumble in space as the air inside vented from compartments that had been holed, armour and bulkheads seared away.

As the ship slowly rolled the port batteries now began to line up. ‘Second broadside lining up’ the Weapons Officer reported. ‘Five, four, three, two, one...’

‘FIRE!’ Ferry ordered again putting a second broadside from the port guns into the same ship they ad just struck.

‘Massive secondary explosions, she’s coming apart Sir’ another officer reported excitedly as explosions rippled across the surface of the Cylon vessel.

‘Very nice Captain’ Admiral Franks told Ferry.

‘Thank you Sir’ Ferry replied. ‘Weapons Officer please resume firing on the target dead-ahead once we’ve managed to dump some of that heat into the sinks’ he said. One major problem with firing both port and starboard guns in quick succession was that forty-eight Heavy Naval Particle Projection Cannon produced a staggering amount of waste heat and you didn’t want to cook yourself doing that kind of thing too often.

‘We’re about a minute from being up to our neck in Raiders Captain’ the officer manning the Radar station announced.

‘Well we didn’t figure on getting away with this without taking a few knocks did we?’ Admiral Franks observed, looking to Captain Ferry.

‘Put the port and starboard batteries into anti-aircraft mode’ Ferry ordered. They weren’t actually all that effective at it but lacking Colonial style point-defence it was the best they had. ‘Warn our pilots not to get in the way’ he added. Any of the main guns on a McKenna would turn a hundred-ton Kirghiz into vapour.

‘Raiders launching missiles, they’re firing off everything they have, hundreds of inbounds already, ECM largely ineffective’ an officer reported. ‘Even with warheads designed to take out Vipers we’re about to have our paint-job ruined’ he added.

‘Okay I think we’ve demonstrated our conventional firepower enough, it’s time to stop screwing around’ Admiral Franks declared. ‘Signal Bismark and Yukon, we’re finishing this’ he said. ‘If the opportunity presents itself start nuking them at will’ he ordered. ‘Then send this transmission to the Basestars in Caprican’ he continued. ‘The Star League Defence Force wishes you a long and happy next life but advises it will be longer and happier if you stay the frak off our territory’ he said. ‘Then add this to the message afterwards’ he said. ‘When the universe turns bright, don’t look at the light, now bend down, put your head between your knees, kiss your ass goodbye and wait to be resurrected.’

‘Classy’ Captain Ferry told the Admiral, trying not to laugh.

‘No need to kiss my ass Captain’ Franks replied.


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Comments/Suggestions/Abuse? :p

The bulk of the SLDF aerospace fighters involved are the hundred-ton Kirghiz and sixty-ton Visigoth's but they are also using the older and smaller forty-five ton THK-63b "Royal" version of the Tomahawk  and the twenty-ton TRN-3Tb "Royal" Trident which are less heavily armed but faster. Even the Trident is twice the mass of a Viper and not as nimble but it can really accelerate!

The Texas Class Battleship SLS Bismark is smaller than the McKenna Class and less heavily armed but conversely it is more heavily armoured. Like the other clans the Wolverines had equipped all their ships with Lithium-Fusion batteries so they can make a double jump.

When we did see Basestars fighting they really did seem to explicably just stand there and take it rather than manoeuver or even jump away. They also never really deployed their Raiders effectively and often charged down Galactica's guns like lunatics. They'll learn fast after this debacle though! The SLDF can knock out so many ships so fast at long-range in a scenario like this that the Cylons can't really on weight of numbers to carry the day.

From what we saw of the Hybrids I can't see them reacting calmly to the ships they're directly connected with being savaged by heavy weaponry. It all just added to the monumental "clusterfrak".

I was drawn here from TTH and this is my first exposure to Battletech. Loving it so far, but could someone tell me a good reference manual that might list the many styles of mechs and weaponry so that I could follow these stories easier. Checked on Amazon and Ebay, but there are literally hundreds of choices and I have no clue where to start. Not looking for something deep into the rules of BT, more the canon mechs themselves. Thankyou.

www.chaosmarch.com has a listing of the majority of them. The more recent stuff hasn't been updated, but that'll get you a good start, including pictures.

Sounds more like surströmming perhaps?
Lutfisk is nothing odd, surströmming though is commonly preferred eaten outside for a good reason (the smell can be dreadful)...   



Anyways...   TAG!

I was wondering when Caprica Six was going to do something.

Would you like some crushed ice with that crushed nose?

you know, i'd have expected at least someone to comment on how similar a Trident looks to a old-school cylon raider...

One? I think your underestimating the number of stories Hotpoint is juggling at the moment. Two in this universe, the BtVS/Angel rewrite and continuation and the Fallout fic to my limited knowledge.

I didn't think that his previous rate of updates was humanly possible, which goes to show that our dear author is actually a Cylon.

*Airlocks!*

If I didn't have a full-time job I could write a lot more. Some evenings I don't feel like writing at all which reduces my output still further.


Thanks, glad you're enjoying the story,


The Cylons aren't beaten by a long chalk trust me.

Yup, they used the wrong game engine when they programmed the Cylons for war.. guess Zoe was a bad choice for the prototype!

Chapter Fourteen - Part II

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Cale Family Farm – New Circe – 3045CE

The sprawling farm was over three hours drive away from McEvedy City but getting dropped off by Raptor cut the journey down to a few minutes. It landed on the large VSTOL pad a kilometre from the farmhouse and surrounding barns and as it lifted off Geoff Cale put on the backpack containing most of his gear and then picked up duffel bag and the largest of his new wife’s bags too. ‘I can carry it myself’ Cally told him. ‘I’m pregnant, I’m not an invalid’ she said.

‘If we arrive at the door and there’s a woman with me, pregnant or otherwise, carrying luggage while I’ve got a free hand my father would disown me’ the mechwarrior replied.

‘From what I’ve seen of the women on this planet I can’t imagine any of them having trouble carrying their own bags’ Cally observed.

Cale laughed. ‘My Mom spends one weekend a month humping artillery rounds about in the Army Reserves but that’s not really the point’ he said as they started to walk towards the farm.

‘So why do you have somewhere to land aircraft?’ Cally asked.

‘Everywhere does’ her husband told her. ‘Every farm, mine and industrial facility outside the capital can be used as an emergency landing strip for helicopters or aerospace fighters’ he continued. ‘It’s the same reason why all our factories are designed to be dual use’ he said. ‘The plant where they make tractors and bulldozers can be switched over to tank production in days.’

Cally laughed. ‘You’re really paranoid people you know’ she told him.

‘Happy is that city which in times of peace thinks of war’ Cale quoted back at her. ‘If the Twelve Colonies had our level of military preparedness the Cylons wouldn’t have caught you napping.’

‘If we were like you I’d be two metres tall, built like a professional athlete and we wouldn’t have ever met’ Cally replied.

‘Much worse for me at least’ he observed, stopping to bend down and give her a kiss on the cheek.

‘I think you should have called ahead’ Cally told him as they neared the farm.

‘I had no idea that Colonel McEvedy was going to get us put at the front of the queue for screening’  he replied. ‘Did I tell you he’s going to get me made up to First Lieutenant as soon as the paperwork is approved.’

‘Only five or six times’ Cally told him with a smile.

‘It’s not a lot more pay but I’ll make Captain faster now and that’ll mean better married quarters’ he said brightly.

Cally frowned. ‘I’m still not sure I want to live on an Army Base’ she said.

‘Well I can’t afford a big enough house off the base on my salary and if we do live in married quarters, even for just a couple of years we can save enough to get somewhere really nice in McEvedy’ he said.

‘We could get one of the new houses being built in the City-State’ Cally told him. ‘I could get a job working ground-crew at the new airbase they’re constructing’ she suggested.

‘The SLDF is going to be buying Raptors and putting Raptor jumpdrives on our fighters’ Geoff reminded her. ‘They’ll need experienced people to look after them, you could do that at one of our facilities, maybe as a secondment from the Colonial Fleet.’

‘At least you don’t expect me to quit my job and be a full time mother’ Cally responded.

‘Sibling Companies are where kids go while their parents do their jobs’ he replied. ‘You’re so funny’ he said, smiling at her.

‘Oh yeah, the combination crèche and kindergarten where little Wolverine cubs get taught how to strip and reassemble assault weapons while they recite poetry about wars’ Cally replied.

‘Learning the Remembrance is good for language skills, promoting unity of purpose and teaching good citizenship’ her husband told her, ‘I didn’t learn how to strip an assault rifle or fire an Inferno Launcher until I was twelve’ he told her. ‘And wolverines have kits not cubs’ he added.

‘Twelve?’ Cally queried, raising her eyebrows ‘I was joking’ she admitted.

‘I was a Kit Scout, they don’t just take us camping in the woods and teach us how to tie knots, the idea is to give children a grounding in basic infantry skills’ he said. ‘It’s voluntary, or it would have been with different parents anyway’ he told her.

They must have been seen coming because a woman who looked to be in her late thirties came running out of the house calling out in English, some of which Cally understood. Geoff Cale put down the bags in his hands and embraced her. ‘Cally this is my Mom’ he introduced her in Caprican. ‘Mom this is my wife Cally’ he continued in English.

Good genes, Cally thought as she added another decade or so to the woman’s age, life expectancy here was a hundred and twenty she knew. The woman was a hundred and eighty centimetres, about average height for a civilian woman here and like everyone else looked disgustingly fit and healthy as she paused for a second looking at Cally before embracing her in turn saying something. ‘I don’t speak your language very well yet’ Cally replied as best she could in halting English.   

‘Mom says you should come inside and sit down and she’ll get you something to eat’ Geoff translated. ‘And now she’s ripping on me for not calling ahead’ he continued as his mother started berating him, her tone if not her words requiring little interpretation. ‘Dad is ploughing one of the fields on the far side of the river, my brothers and sisters are still at school or working but they’ll be back home soon’ he told her, ‘both my grandmothers are in McEvedy shopping and both my grandfathers are off in the woods supposedly hunting bears but are probably working their way through a keg of hembränt by now’ he said. ‘Best thing you can use potatoes for they always said’ he told her, laughing.

‘Why did you introduce bears, wolves and jaguars and things to this planet?’ Cally asked, ‘I always did want to ask’ she said. Cloning then releasing deer, reindeer and even wild boar into the forests made a great deal more sense than dangerous predators.

‘So we can shoot them’ the mechwarrior explained, odd question he thought.

Back at the capital Lord Protector Vaun and her cabinet were receiving a report from the three most senior officers who had gone on the Cyrannus expedition with Admiral Franks in attendance. Colonel McEvedy had already given his analysis of the performance of his forces against Centurions and Wing Commander Defoe had presented a short lecture on the capabilities of Cylon Raiders and now Commander Thorpe was explaining how Basestars measured up, which wasn’t well.

‘They’re really that bad, Query Affirmative?’ Vaun asked in surprise.

‘Affirmative’ Thorpe confirmed. ‘In terms of acceleration, armament and armour they are far inferior to their Colonial equivalents let alone our ships’ he said as a hologram of a basestar rotated in mid-air before them. ‘Their missiles are adequate but they don’t use them as well as they should and they lack other defensive or offensive weaponry just as the Colonials told us’ he continued. ‘It’s almost as if they have half a naval doctrine, they have un-armoured Fleet Carriers designed to carry a large number of aircraft but they didn’t realise they needed escort ships too if they were going to take that approach’ he said. ‘The Colonial Fleet would have been better off with a mix of carriers and battleships too, their battlestars are generalists and not optimised for either role, but at least they can do both jobs.’

Admiral Franks nodded his agreement with the Intelligence Officers assessment. ‘As long as we maintain our monopoly on Directed Energy Weapons any confrontation between our capital ships and enemy basestars is going to be very bloody for them’ he said. ‘Or hydraulic fluidy if you prefer’ he added with a chuckle.

‘That’s not to say that they wouldn’t have done much better than they did with better tactics’ Thorpe noted. ‘In both engagements we fought the enemy were fighting at ranges that were much better for us that them’ he said. ‘Two or three basestars jumping almost directly alongside one of our ships and throwing every missile they had at us from short-range range is going to hurt bad’ he said. ‘I would recommend a re-fit of our ships to deal with massed missile attacks’ he advised. ‘A mix of Colonial point-defence batteries plus Laser Anti-Missile Systems would drastically improve the ability of our ships to cope with that kind of battle.’

‘I concur’ Franks said. ‘The damage to the Zughoffer Weir could have been avoided if it was better able to defend itself from large numbers of fighters and missile barrages’ he told the politicians. ‘I would also argue that it would be in our interests to improve the defensive and offensive capabilities of the Colonial vessels, Galactica in particular as the forward battery on Pegasus is already a decent threat to just about anything at their typical engagement ranges’ he continued. ‘I have a slightly radical suggestion if I’m allowed to make it in this forum’ he requested of the Lord Protector.

‘Go ahead Admiral’ Vaun told him.

‘Zug is already heading for the orbital shipyard repair facilities, once everyone aboard Galactica is checked out by the Cylon detectors we’ll be jumping her back here too to repair battle damage and to replace her armour belt, even more of which is missing now’ he said. ‘I suggest we do more than fix the ships I suggest we take the opportunity to mix things up a little.’

‘Meaning?’ Vaun asked.

‘We dismount eight of the Heavy Naval PPC’s from the Zughoffer Weir and mount them as a forward battery on Galactica whilst taking a hundred or so of the dual point-defence guns from the battlestar and mounting them on our flagship’ he said. ‘We then add laser AMS systems to both vessels.

The Lord Protector and the Cabinet stared at him. ‘You’re serious?’ Vaun asked.

‘Yes Ma’am’ Franks replied. ‘Wing Commander Defoe already suggested that we equip the new Kirghiz jumpfighters we intend to put into production  with Laser Anti-Missile-Systems so we should be able to crank them out relatively cheaply as a long production run and also add them in number to all our other ships plus Pegasus’ he said. ‘Giving Galactica that much additional punch would enable her to pull her weight more in a capital-ship fight and I doubt the Colonials would say no to the deal.’

‘I think they’re getting the better end of it’ Vaun remarked.

‘With respect Lord Protector I don’t know if they will’ Commander Thorpe spoke up. ‘I would suggest that we negotiate to mount one of the salvaged battlestar jump-drives on the Zughoffer Weir too’ he said. ‘The ability to tactical jump one of our battleships alone is worth its weight in germanium.’

‘True’ Franks agreed. ‘Once both of the ships are fully re-fitted and operational again I would suggest we go through the same process with Bismark and Pegasus’ he said. ‘The Naval Lasers from the Bismark don’t have the firepower of the guns from Zug but Pegasus already has a decent forward battery anyway, they’ll just give her the ability to reach out further and hit even harder up close’ the Admiral continued. ‘I would also advise we convince the Colonials of the benefits to their own security of giving us jumpdrives we can fit to our Titan Class dropships to turn them into light-carriers with interstellar range and then do the same to our Leopard CV’s.’

‘It’ll be a while before they can make new jumpdrives but they could strip them from civilian ships’ Thorpe noted. ‘Their recovered production line for Raptor FTL’s will take a couple of months to get going which should give us time to get our own factories churning out the new autocannon and laser AMS units in numbers’ he said.

‘We’ve already increased aerospace fighter production to wartime levels both to replace losses and increase our fighter strength’ Franks noted. ‘This will require a reduction in battlemech production rates so our second brigade will have to soldier on with the old Pulverizers for a while I’m afraid.’

‘I’m not a mechwarrior but I can see a certain Brigadier General being a little annoyed he won’t be getting his full complement of Pulverizer II’s for a while yet’ Colonel McEvedy remarked. Although the armaments industry of New Circe was large to the point of being excessive all that plant and machinery was usually run at peacetime low-production rates, though ready to step-up when required. It would have been years before there were enough of the new Assault Mechs to arm all three brigades of the 331st and if workers and materials were going to be moved to fighter production it would be even longer.

‘We might also want to consider adding another fighter to our inventory’ Franks suggested. ‘We’ve had the plans for the Clan Avar Light Fighter for as long as we’ve had those for the Kirghiz we just never put them into production’ he said. ‘It’s a thirty-five ton design and is far faster and more manoeuvrable than even the Visigoth medium fighters we employ let alone the Kirghiz itself’ he continued. ‘I wouldn’t advise shutting down the existing lines but instead starting another for producing this cheaper less resource-intensive design that is also more suited for dogfighting Raiders for that matter, we could also offer it to the Colonials, it’s still over three times the mass of a Viper but it’s more like their idea of a fighter and a longer production run would lower unit costs.’

‘What do you think Wing Commander?’ Vaun asked Defoe. ‘You’ve flown against the Cylons.’

‘Even a light fighter design like the Avar won’t handle nearly as well as a Viper or a Raider but there were plenty of times I wished I was flying something that wasn’t so damn easy for the Raiders to out-turn Ma’am’ Defoe replied honestly. ‘Also an aircraft that can pull seven and a half gees of acceleration on overthrust like the Avar would be a bitch for the Toasters to deal with in a lot of situations’ she said. ‘They had trouble with the twenty-ton Tridents for that reason and the Avar isn’t that much slower.’

Lord Protector Vaun looked around the room at her cabinet. ‘We’ll discuss these proposals after lunch’ she told them. ‘We have won a great victory over the enemies of humanity but this will not be a short war and now we’re in it up to our vibro-bayonets we need to start planning and preparing for how we are going to prosecute the war long-term’ she said. ‘If you want to know my policy then it’s very simple’ she said. ‘I intend to make war on the Cylons from now until ultimate victory’ she declared before lowering her head as if in prayer. ‘God preserve the Star League in Exile’ she said in a reverent tone before looking up again. ‘And death to the enemies of the Clan’ she thundered.

‘Seyla’ everyone in the room intoned.

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Comments/Suggestions/Abuse? :p

The Avar is a Light Aerospace fighter introduced into service in 2878 making it a little long-in-the-tooth for a Clan fighter but it's still in service with them by 3045 and the best fighter of its size available to the Wolverines. Just over a third the tonnage of the Kirghiz it's much cheaper to build and compared to Raiders it's still a flying tank.

Eight Heavy NPPC's would give Galactica a lot more firepower but still leaves the Wolverine Flgship with a very creditable forty of them. The addition of Colonial point-defence is a must once the Cylons adjust tactics because SLDF capital ships are not well armed against massed fighter attacks or missile spam.

Hm. The Wolvies don't have the capability to construct new ones? Or just on such short order?

And get the Bucket some heat sinks. About 1000 should be enough, with PD factored in.

Swifts!  Everybody loves Swifts, right?  Right?  Hey...why's everybody looking at me like that?

Also, why rip NPPCs off the Zug?  She should have the heat sinks to handle some point defense guns, and she's certainly got the mass.  Do the Wolverines have major production bottlenecks on capital weaponry?