A new j3 design.
The MOBILE BOMBER BASE...

See, I was thinking, that while bombers couldn't be transported by ships, during the period between the general usage of fighters as attrition units and the development of PF's, just about everyone would be trying to figure out someway they could bring bombers into battle.
Now, while we won't go into the original, but ultimately tragic Kzinti Velcro System (KVS), here's a system that at first blush might look reasonable.

Take a ship, make it capable of gravity landings. The ship includes in broken down form, all that is needed for a bomber base. Land it on a planet or asteroid, extend your systems (imagine an exploding hat rack), flatten out some landing zones, and voila! a new bomber base.
The advantages were to be that it was self deploying and fast enough to keep up with the fleet, in a matter of hours permitting them to launch bomber strikes.

Sadly, the problems were legion. First of all, by the time everything that was needed was accounted for, it was a frigate mobile base that cost close to what a CW cost.
Secondly, like many valuble low firepower units, it got destroyed (in simulations) a lot-- and if you put it far enough behind the fleet to avoid that, then there was no reason for the added cost when a CWT could pack along a small base and land it.
but the biggest problem was logistics. Even broken down, the bombers were simply to big to fit into the ships cargo bays-- requiring another ship to follow it around. This led to a condition where if either ship was delayed or destroyed, the other became useless, draining resources and generally acting as a drag on the offensive that the mobile bomber base was supposed to help in the first place. After a vast amount of cash had been spent, the Federation gave up, and finally invested their money in extra support and training to allow the Federation Construction Battallions (Sea Bee's), to establish bomber bases, even in the face of the enemy, and train bombers to handle "hot refuel" missions, where the bombers would be sent into a system, depending on the CB's to have pads ready to recieve them. Risky-- but ultimately safer then relying on a technological fix to a logistical and strategic problem-- something the Bomber pilots and CB's had been saying, at a high volume, all along.

What do you think? I figure the thing could either A. Be conjectural, or B. a single prototype that becomes something of a white elephant-- perhaps its used in the Federation for OPFOR training?

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 08:47 pm: Edit

Honestly? I think it sounds like a really complicated attempt at getting around the rule that bombers can only be used on bases.

Try it with SSJ#2, and you might have better luck.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 08:50 pm: Edit

Oh, well, the thing is, bombers can still only be used on bases-- the thing can service or dock bombers, except when it's in the "exploded hat rack" configuration, on the ground.
But truthfully-- there would be attemts to get around the docking problem, probably like they kept trying to build a aircraft carrying blimp-- when that failed to pan out, you'd next move to figuring ways to keep the bomber bases up with your striking fleets.

By Marc Baluda (Discomaster) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 08:52 pm: Edit

Isn't this just a small/medium ground base that could be transported by an LTT?

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 08:58 pm: Edit

Marc-- Nah, the idea is that the entire ship is the base. It was sold on the idea that it could, literally in a few hours, pack up and leave. The problem was that in practice it was never so simple.
So, what you got-- and the reason for it's being cancelled, was an extremely expensive base that couldn't function when it was flying, and couldn't fly when it was functioning, and couldn't do much else-- and was useless without somebody else huffing along after it carrying bombers and equipment.

BTW, I'm something of a fan of "flawed ships." Every race needs a few ideas that looked great on paper, but just didn't pan out.

By Mark Kuyper (Mark_K) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 09:06 pm: Edit

Charles Gray,

As a question, now is this faster than using a Tug or LTT to drop a fighter base on a planet? In theory having a single ship that could land (say a converted WarHawk or WarEagle) that carries the bombers with it could be faster, but using a tug is still plenty fast for most strategic purposes.

By Marc Baluda (Discomaster) on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - 09:10 pm: Edit

Charles:

A ground base takes 32 impulses to deploy (although the positional stabilizers can't be activated during a scenario). While the bombers take longer to assemble, that's true anyway even if they are on a ship in crates. If you deploy the base with the bombers flying in to do a hot landing, voila. Fast deployment/turnaround.

By Jim Cummins (Jimcummins) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 09:20 am: Edit

Why not use a modified mobile base with an extendable field, covered by a retractable dome. This would allow the bombers to be serviced under atmosphere. While retracting the dome allows the bombs to lift off. The field and dome are to simulate a surface landing field.

It would be deployed around planets of value that are not good for ground bases. Such as gas giants, or Venusians Sulfuric acid atmospheres. They could be also deployed in space to allow forward deployments of Bombers.

While in transit the bomber are in a box and the landing field is stowed. When the base is deployed, and the landing field extended the bombers are unboxed. This removes the need to developed a new unit; just modify an existing mobile base.

By Ryan Peck (Trex) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 10:37 am: Edit

Why build a specific ship for the base? A pod would work quite well, be cheaper, and easier to deploy.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 11:31 am: Edit

Ok, a few things....

do it as a pod, not a ship. Simpler and cheaper as Ryan noted.

why disassemble the bombers? Fly them in from a base one F&E hex away.

Your problem is the landing fields, which are huge and require some kind of cover (domes, whatever).

To do this, you have to...

1. Find an asteroid or planet.
2. Have engineers land and create a "big flat spot (tm)".
3. Lower the base/pod/ship to the planet.
4. Assemble the systems (probably not possible during a scenario).
5. Have the bombers fly over from the next planet.

Basically, all of that happens between scenarios. So the scenario possibilities are:

A: The enemy just set up a bomber base, let's go attack it right away!

B: Using the addition S8 rules in J2, we agree that for our patrol scenario we're about to play that we each get xxx BPVs and that one/both of us can have bombers.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 12:29 pm: Edit

The ASM is going to be playtested. Whether it ends up in J3 or in SSJ2 is yet to be determined. Only playtesting can determine if this thing is too dangerous for the game, an interesting special weapon, or something that should be part of the main game.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 03:48 pm: Edit

What part of "the ASM is going to be playtested" was confusing?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 05:09 pm: Edit

Keven."And, there is no cost to increase speed on drones if you stick with ASM and RALADS for drone armed fighters."

Totaly not true. The first guestimate of the BPV cost of the ASM by SVC was based on the cost of a Fast type one drone. So there is a BPV cost of +1 over a type one drone on fighters.

And Keven, there is many who would like to show you that it can be a problem getting a group of fighters into 3 hexs from a fleet of ships, though you only have to get within 5 to use the ASM (and it has a better hit probability at that range too.) But believe me, though the ASM is indeed a dangerous weapon, you would be hard pressed to get your fighters in even that far (5) if ASMs are expected (and if they're in the game they're expected).

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 05:22 pm: Edit

Well, the cost we discussed for ASMs included the speed increase.

By Kevin M. McCollum (Sfbl5r) on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 05:29 pm: Edit

You don't agree that fighters will be much more effective than they are now?