Important: Last Chance To Fix Your Naval Forces

[Dave Baughman]

Since the new naval equipment tables were introduced, some factions have circumvented the rules by not correctly configuring their patrol dropship tables or ignored them entirely by using naval units that do not pass validation. I am not going to point fingers; I am sure you all know who you are.

Effective turn 4, the GMs will correct any incorrectly-completed dropship tables they encounter. Those corrections will not be subject to appeal. The GM team will also delete any line-items from the naval tab that fail to pass validation. The GM team will accept appeals on those deletions only if the validation problem was beyond the control of the player (i.e. it was a problem with the formulas on the sheet).

However, before we take this heavy-handed step, we want to give one final chance for everyone to come into compliance on their own. If you have an invalid unit or a bad dropship table, you may correct it on your turn 4 orders. Please document these changes in your cover email. If you end up taking an overall FP loss from these corrections, you may add new units of the appropriate movement class to balance the FP amount.

Regarding the dropship tables: for reference, the rule is that no heavy carriers (defined as dropships with a fighter capacity greater than 12) may occupy the 6, 7, or 8 rows of any dropship table.

Regarding validation: validation fails when a unit carries too many dropships, too many fighters, or too many small craft. The capacities are listed in the validation subsection of the naval tab. If you exceed these capacities (which will recalculate automatically based on your dropship load) your ship will fail validation.

If you need GM assistance making your forces legal, please contact DK and I at your earliest convenience.

[Holt]

Biggest problem i found was with the clans, the ones that do not have access to new dropships only get 3 types, Titans, Miraborgs and Carriers. I edited my tables and now i have 5 out of 12 slots with carrier dropships.....

[Dave Baughman]

Well, its not like the Carrier is a terrible design - its assault dropship-like BV goes a long way to help unit FP.

[Cannonshop]

ARE there any 12 fighter dropships?  The "Carrier" Carries 10 Clan fighters, but the Okinawa, Titan,  all carry 18, while the Clan Titan carries 30.  There have been references to a Union CV, but nobody's got published stats for it (that one would carry 12), so I'm kind of wondering if you're low-balling "Mid-Size" below the most commonly available carriers in the game-universe (okay, the Leopard CV's THE most common carrier, but if that's the issue, just limit everyone to Leopard variants in the 6,7,8 columns across the board.)

The curve for Inner Sphere design appears to be 6 (the Leopard CV, old-model and updated Overlord, etc.) followed directly to 18 for the Inner Sphere (Titan, Okinawa, etc.) with the "Heavy" class really belonging to the (Should be rarer than it is) Vengeance at 40.

While the curve for the Clans is 10, followed by 30. (Carrier, followed immediately by Miraborg, Clan Titan.)  There aren't a lot of "Mid-size" range designs to look at/find.

What I'm getting at, is that if you're NOT a Clanner, you're going to be stuck with the Leopard CV in the 6,7,8 columns, or with Overlords if you don't want Leos.

I would submit that anything else that might exist, is probably very narrowly faction-specific, probably FWL....

[Fatebringer]

We Raven's stand by our work

I have verified the New Dominion is in compliance.

I didn't check the Blood Spirits sheet when I got it, there is one slot where the Miraborg is in slot 6, but it hasn't violated anything yet, the only ships to benefit from the Miraborg are Potemkins that would have benefited from it if it were in slot 5 as well. I'll still change it around for the new sheet and advise if that changes anything.

[Cannonshop]

But is there a "Common" carrier that carries 12 fighters or not?  (by "Common" I mean either non-faction specific/pre-Exodus or not-free-worlds-league-exclusive).

I know that the CapCon's going to have to get a ret-con on theirs-someone (not me) listed 12 fighter Titans in the 6 and 8 positions.  Minus a 12 fighter dropper, that's going to be a problem.  For the TC, during the rebuild of their sheet, I eliminated about six positions marked "Vengeance" from the tables, replaced 'em with 18 fighter Titans (Canon model, pre-exodus design), but there's probably going to need to be some GM help forthcoming for Raginar, since I don't remember WHERE I put them on his tables before I handed it over, only that it was GM approved at the time.

[Cannonshop]

Oh, and UIW's in compliance. 

[Dave Baughman]

Just FYI, the reason why we restrict heavy (and 'mid-size') carriers from the 6-8 range is to prevent "packing" of low-capacity ships with high-capacity dropships. Most of the high-cap dropships are described as pretty rare in the fluff, and by systematically limiting them to ships with a DS capacity of at least 5, the system maintains that balance.

So... if your 6-8 are all Carriers or Leopard CVs or Overlords, that's OK - the rules are functioning as intended.

[Cannonshop]

Cappellans are now in compliance.

[Fatebringer]

As suspected, I made the change for the Blood Spirit's turn 4 orders and there was absolutely no change in FP by moving the Miraborg from line 6 to line 5.

[Parmenion]

Just FYI, the reason why we restrict heavy (and 'mid-size') carriers from the 6-8 range is to prevent "packing" of low-capacity ships with high-capacity dropships. Most of the high-cap dropships are described as pretty rare in the fluff, and by systematically limiting them to ships with a DS capacity of at least 5, the system maintains that balance.

So... if your 6-8 are all Carriers or Leopard CVs or Overlords, that's OK - the rules are functioning as intended.

Just as an aside... why are we referring to fluff in regards this?

After all, as some are often saying, we diverted twenty years ago from canon, and if faction XYZ decided to build 4x upgraded Vengeance fighter carriers per year, then that is 100 of this dropship type. 

[Fatebringer]

Although I could, I'm not going to stuff the line with Carrier Drophips, even though we're the ones that make it. I only have 1 of those in 6-8 per chart.

[Daemonknight]

carriers are actually what the Clans are assumed to use as their most common patrol dropship...

[Fatebringer]

Until the stupid Vipers came to lum and trashed our yards At least in cannon. I'd like to see Chaos bring these pitiful version of Vipers to Lum <<Cracks Knuckles>> Ooooh yeaaaah.

[Dave Baughman]

To answer the question about the value of fluff in a game that diverged from canon almost 30 years ago in its backstory, you are correct in the sense that a canon reference alone is not a strong argument for or against something rules-wise. While the fluff was certainly a supporting factor, there really two factors that caused this requirement to be put in the rules (worth noting - before the 20 year jump). In order of importance they are:

1) Game balance: Jamming every dropship collar available with heavy carriers was a major part of why warship FP was so out of control prior to the naval rules refresh. Ships like the Fox could increase their FP by a factor of ten by abusing heavy carriers; this is something that can be and was justified from a "realism" point of view that took the OOC game mechanics as an accurate representation of economic functions for quite a long time in the game, especially during the period after the end of structured naval groups but before the introduction of the naval equipment tables.

Part of the reason for introducing the naval equipment tables was to reign in the wonton abuse of naval FP by min-maxing ship loadouts, and placing heavy carriers at the center of the table, where they appear early and in large numbers, circumvents the way the tables are designed to function. The 7 slot especially, but also the 6 and 8, repeat a number of times on the table and also are the first designs to appear, which means putting a heavy carrier there has the potential to turn every Scout into a York in terms of capacity.

This is undesireable for a couple of reasons; the first being that it prevents the balancing effect of the tables from working right and the second because it rewards players for exploiting a quote-unquote rules loophole. Except, of course, it isn't a rules loophole because its prohibited.


2) The BattleTech Aesthetic: BattleTech has a certain 'feel' to its presentation, including many seemingly illogical inefficiencies, in order to provide a distinct gameplay experience. One of those inefficiencies is the continued existence (and indeed prevalence, prior to the general naval culling of recent years in canon) of "big gun navies" when the rules would fully support a world war II-like "rise of the carrier." Without rules constraints, this is exactly what happened during turns 20-35 or so, where the TH and other carrier-based powers obtained total naval superiority over their battleship-based competitors.

Restricting heavy carriers to ships with a large number of collars limits the proliferation of carrier warfare and preserves the role of battleships, especially high-FP ships that are more resistant to direct damage than corvettes and destroyers.




I hope that information gives a little more insight as to why the 6-8 rule exists.