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Colonel
Posts: 13901
Comstar Explorer Service - Lost in Spaaaace!!!!
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WarShip of the Week: Samarkand Class Carrier
Yes, everyone, I finally got this one finished, and, believe me, this one has been killing me! Welcome to this week's (month's? year's?) WarShip of the Week, which might be the last one for a while (need...more....ships!). I apologize a bit for my tardiness, but besides my scary work schedule, I've had some trouble puzzling out today's subject, and exactly what I wanted to say about what may be, for now, the last of this series of articles.
Today, as the subject line said, we're talking about the Draconis Combine's Samarkand class carrier. First produced in 2581, the Samarkand, we're told, is Hehiro's plan to boost the Combine's economy, and bolster the DCA in preparation for the inevitable Reunification War, because, as we know, military spending is always a great economy booster...well, at least until the spending stops. Of course, in the Draconis Combine, that's hardly an issue, because military spending never stops! So, yay? Anyway, Hehiro's big plans needed ships sooner than later, so when he first came up with the idea, and called for the class, the manufacturers were told they had two years to complete the first vessels.
Yes, you read that right: two years to design and build a new class of faster-than-light WarShip. This is not much time, people, and the end result of these kinds of rush jobs are usually flawed in the extreme.
Such was not the case with the Samarkand: despite time constraints, those unnamed manufacturers managed to avoid the pitfalls so common on rush jobs, and produced one hell of a ship. At 350,000 tons, the Samarkand is near the upper end of what we consider corvette tonnage in the Battletech universe, but well below what we attribute to destroyers. Weaponry, like we'd expect, is somewhat light on the Block I, with a smattering of anti-fighter weapons and actual point-defense guns backing up a limited array of capital guns: a medium naval PPC in the nose, NAC/10s in each forequarter, a light NPPC in each broadside, then twin NL35s in the aft-quarters and twin NL45s dead aft. Personally, I would've standardized more, but it is in keeping with a ship rushed into production, the idea being to use what they've got available. Her 950 heat sinks allow the Samarkand Block I to fire a full three-arc broadside, while also firing both her bow and stern chasers or, alternatively, fire one full broadside, and combine it with the fore-quarter and broadside arc on the opposite side.
The Block I , then, can produce 24 capital points on a combined broadside, and 19 points nose or aft, with sufficient heat sinks to fire up to five arcs, if you choose carefully. That's not astounding, but it does edge out the contemporary Vincent and earlier Vigilant. Also edging it out is armor, with the Block I carrying a 48/38/38/40 arrangement of standard armor backed by a whopping 71 SI. In essence, then, the Samarkand could function on its own as a relatively swift, agile and durable corvette with a fairly average array of firepower which, for the most part, didn't require much in the way of ammunition. Placement of the naval lasers aft meant that the Samarkand, when supporting the Dragon's glorious ground forces, could hover above a fixed position in orbit, use her drive system to keep from falling into the atmosphere and burning up, and provide pin-point orbital fire support in concentrated zones that didn't have to suffer from lag-time.
Secondary weaponry on the Samarkand Block I isn't too shabby, either: five LRM-20s and four medium lasers in the nose, quad LRM-10s and three SRM-4s in each fore-quarter, two large and two medium lasers in each aft-quarter, and twin medium lasers aft all provide the Block I with a notable layer of anti fighter defenses. These are supplemented by what is, for the era, serious point defense: ten machine guns in each broadside, another six in each aft-quarter, and six more dead aft.
However, where the Samarkand Block I really shines, and its real offensive power, is in its fighter complement: fully 72 aerospace fighters and 12 small craft call the ship home, and a team of thirty Marines to provide counter-boarding security, or to board opposing vessels in those small craft. The penultimate episode of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica had a line in it, to the effect that a Battlestar's heart, its core reason for being, its primary function, is to launch fighters...well, they said "Vipers", but the meaning is the same. The Samarkand is no different. Make no mistake: the Samarkand is a carrier first and foremost, and everything about the ship should be viewed in that light. Just like Galactica, launching her 72 aerospace fighters and dozen supporting small craft is the Samarkand's main reason for existing, too.
This, too, is in keeping with the Draconis Combine, and one of the reasons why Hehiro Kurita probably mandated that the Samarkand class be a carrier: as the entry on the Sabre in TR3075 shows us, the Draconis Combine took to aerospace fighters early on and, in those days before the BattleMech, placed a great deal of emphasis upon them. Even in the modern era, while the Mechwarrior may be revered, the aerospace fighter pilot is still a highly honorable profession for the Combine's samurai. Also, in keeping with the "economic boost" the Samarkand class was meant to provide, increased production of fighters to fill these carriers would enrich those companies, too, keeping workers employed building fighters, their spare parts, munitions, etc., which probably factored heavily into Hehiro's thinking as well.
The Samarkand's thrust is a solid 4/6 (2 Gs safe, 3 Gs full), impressive for its era, and helpful towards maneuvering around a star system at high thrust to deliver her fighter payload where it's needed most, or to get herself out of harm's way. With over 2500 tons of fuel, the Samarkand has enough to supply her birds and maneuver, though supplemental fuel in her cargo holds is advisable for long duration patrols. Fortunate, the Block I has over forty-six thousand tons of cargo, making that not at all hard to do. Three DropShip docking collars allow the Samarkand to either supplement her cargo holds with cargo DropShips, support a ground invasion with troop transports, or to carry assault DropShips to screen the carrier. In practice, I'd recommend sticking with the last of those: the Achilles class DropShip went into production only three years after the Samarkand, and, since later on manufacturing of the Achilles was centered in the Draconis Combine, it's not at all unrealistic to think that this might have been the case prior to the fall of the Star League, as well.
So, all in all, the Block I of the Samarkand was an excellent ship in her own right and, when combined with the offensive firepower her fighters provided, able to fight well above her throw weight, making her a notable threat to WarShips which, individually, are well above the Samarkand's "throw weight", making the Samarkand a fitting vessel to hold the name of what was, at the time, the Draconis Combine's capitol.
Now, it's a century after the introduction of the Samarkand, and your ship's starting to feel a bit long in the tooth. Perhaps your neighbors, the Federated Suns, are building more of their premier destroyer, the Davion Block II class. The Star League has recently started building a number of new vessels, such as the updated Lola III, and the Texas and McKenna class battleships. As part of the Star League's buildup, they're looking for ships, too (let's face it, their corvette, the Vincent has gone way past being "long in the tooth". What do you do?
You revamp the Samarkand.
Debuting in 2668, the Samarkand Block II is a notable improvement over the Block I, and that's saying something. In fact, it's saying it's "a notable improvement over the Block I." Remember how I mentioned the Block I of the Samarkand was a pretty nifty ship? The Block II is better. Much, much better.
First, the Block II retains several key elements from the original Block I: seventy-two aerospace fighters, twelve small craft, 4/6 thrust, and a generous fuel bunker. Then, though, are the improvements: structural integrity was increased to 73, and her armor went way up, thanks to the switch to ferro-carbide: 91 points foreward, 70 points in each fore-and-aft side, and 80 points aft. Ladies and gentlemen, that's damn near cruiser level armor, and puts her well ahead of the frigates of the time, such as the Congress. Add in a fourth docking collar, increase the Marine complement to 100, and, if nothing else had been changed, the Samarkand Block II would already be a major improvement on an already good WarShip.
But, those weren't the only changes: firepower's gone up, too. First, the capital guns were improved, with the nose now carrying twin medium NPPCs and twin NL35s. The fore-quarter NACs have been upgraded to NAC/20s, while the broadsides now mount a single heavy NPPC, replacing the light NPPC of the Block I. Only the aft-sides and aft arcs remain exactly the same. This improved capital weapons array has been paired with an increased number of heat sinks, with 1700 single heat sinks now cooling the Samarkand Block II off. Now the Samarkand can fire everything but her aft chaser at the same time, needing to only drop one other arc to fire that at someone off her stern, so, not only does she have better firepower, she can use it, too: the Block II, using her capital guns, can manage 45 points off her bow (combining nose and fore-quarter), or 42 points from a three-arc broadside, while targets off her stern are still facing a combined 16-point strike, while retaining the same anti-fighter and point-defense arrays of the Block I. And the ship still has more than 36 kilotons of cargo available.
Most important to consider, though, is who fielded the Samarkand Block II, because TR3075 makes the first mentions of Samarkands in Star League service after mentioning how Coordinator Urizen II authorized the Block II in 2668. Now, given that we know the Star League was conducting its own military buildup at roughly the same time, building new classes of all types, we begin to see why the Star League Defense Force never bothered replacing the Vincent, despite how much it was showing its age: why bother, when you could just by the superior Samarkand Block II?
The last question to consider is the final fate of the Samarkands. We know the Star League and Draconis Combine used them in "multitudes": Tech Readout 3075 tells us as much. We know that "many" of those "multitudes" served the Star League Defense Force as escort vessels, and that "most" of those were destroyed serving that role during Operation Liberation. What's not known, and TR3075 says as much, is whether or not any are in the hands of the Clans.
What's curious is that "few" remained in the Combine, defending recharge stations, and worlds that hosted vital resources and factories, where "most" were destroyed during the First and Second Succession Wars. Only one Samarkand survived to the 31st Century: the Togura, which "barely serves as a museum piece orbiting New Samarkand".
So, what's this all mean? Were Samarkand Block IIs almost exclusively Star League vessels, with only a handful of the Block IIs serving in Draconis Combine fleets? Is the Togura which, from the sound of it, is damn near a derelict, an older Block I that, thanks to its age and retirement, managed to survive the WarShip purges of the Succession Wars? Lastly, why, when they had an example Samarkand lying around they could examine, did the Draconis Combine decide to try to design an all-new class of carrier, the Kaga class, instead of simply putting the Samarkand class back into production during the 3050s?
All good questions. Frankly, we just don't have enough information to definitively answer any of them. We can, how ever, try to deduce possible answers to them. My theory is that, yes, most of the Block IIs produced went to the Star League. The Member States were limited by law in the number of hulls they could field, which meant that the Draconis Combine just couldn't field the number of Samarkand Block IIs that it would have liked to have been able to. Undoubtedly, older Block I vessels had to be retired to pave the way for the Block IIs in the Draconis Combine Admiralty's fleet, which would imply, to me, that the only known survivor, the Togura, is one of these vessels.
The number of York class destroyers in the Clans tells me that there probably weren't very many Samarkands in the Exodus fleet: you wouldn't have needed to expand the Riga class destroyer's flight decks to cram in 50 fighters if you have a number of vessels that already carried 72 fighters ready to go back into service. Perhaps the Clans didn't have to tooling to put the Samarkand into production. Perhaps Kerensky wanted ships with bigger cargo holds and fewer fighter pilots to feed on Exodus. Perhaps treaties between the Star League and Draconis Combine required the former to turn over the surviving Block IIs to the latter after Liberation.
As for the Kaga class, the Draconis Combine of the 3050s was definitely an ambitious one, and I suspect that, just like they might've bit off more than they could chew early on with the Yamato class battleships, the Kaga class might have been a larger ship than the Samarkand, with more fighters and, as a result, more difficult for Combine industries trying to relearn the lessons of the past to successfully design and build. Imagine, if you will, trying to build a frigate or cruiser-sized hull with, say, twice the fighter loadout of the Samarkands. Maybe that was just too much for the post-Succession War Draconis Combine to successfully pull off.
But enough rampant speculation about the universe. You want to know how to use one of these in a fight, don't you? The answer is pretty straightforward: use them like a corvette with heavy fighter cover.
You've really got two choices when deploying the Samarkand: keep the carrier at a distance and let your fighters do the work, or use your carrier's guns and thrust to fight like the corvette that, in the end, it still is, while using your fighters to supplement its capabilities. Which strategy will be most successful depends upon what kind of opposition you're facing: remember, even the tougher Block II can still be taken down by sufficiently forceful capital gunfire: I strongly suspect that's what finally took the Samarkands down in the Succession Wars, when Davion Block II commanders, willing to suffer the slings and arrows of the Samarkand's fighter wings, would use their amped-up nose and fore-quarter batteries to punch through the Block II's armor: whether the Davion then fell in battle or not was almost besides the point and, by the time the Succession Wars rolled around, a Davion Block II could carry two fully-loaded Vengeances into combat with it, thus neutralizing the Samarkand's fighter advantage. If the DCA had stuck to Achilles or similar assault DropShips on their Samarkands, rather than adding Vengeances and more fighters, they'd find themselves rapidly neutralized. In fact, for the time period, that's really the optimal answer for the Samarkand player against a Davion II: Bring More Fighters.
On the Lyran front, the Mako was, I suspect, designed to "get around" the slower Samarkands: the Mako's 6/9 thrust would allow it to outflank the larger carrier, while matching the thrust of the Combine's medium and heavy fighters. The Mako's gun bays, meanwhile, were rather large, allowing it to score heavy hits on the Samarkand. Playing this fight out, I imagine, would make for an interesting maneuvering battle, while, again, the Samarkand has to rely on its fighters pretty heavily.
In conclusion, for her era, the Samarkand was a hell of a ship, equal or superior to the corvettes of her day and, in the end, made obsolete not by another WarShip, but by a DropShip that could turn any WarShip with docking collars into a fighter carrier. This doesn't make the Samarkand class useless, since they can carry Vengeances, too, but it does take some of the shine off the Samarkand, and shifts things from the time where she was, in essence, a corvette that could fight well above her weight class thanks to having a significant numerical superiority in aerospace fighters, to a time where she's a corvette with a bit of an edge over her competitors, thanks to having a head start on fighter numerical superiority. In an era when everyone else might be the shiny new Pegasus, the Samarkands can still function as the tried-and-true Galactica.
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