Y200 DD-Mauler
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Y200 DD-Mauler
Since the Mauler was a Coalition weapon, and the Coalition lost, not many ships using it lasted through the General War. With production shifting to X-ships, which were expensive, no empire could spare more than one or two hulls for the role. Arguably there were more jobs for a mauler ship than could be covered by the new X-maulers and survivors.
The advent of X-batteries combined with reduced-size mauler weapons made a SC4 mauler viable at a lower cost than a war cruiser mauler. The wake of the General War provided a large supply of crippled destroyer hulls that could be re-built for the task.
The DD-mauler is intended for "little" jobs like regaining control of rebellious colonies, taking down orion bases and proved interesting components of a RTN hunting wolf pack.
You do NOT send one of these to take down a starbase, let alone anything worse.
Some admirals talked up the concept of a DD-mauler as a regular component of a fleet.
A SC4 mauler is built instead of a new CW/CL mauler because empires are scrambling to build up X-fleets and a SC4 mauler is cheaper and diverts less resources to a specialty role.
The first DD-maulers were standard tech hulls packed with 12 X-batteries each and functioning under the XP limits for X-battery reserve power (1 point per battery per impulse) The ships could discharge full battery energy into the mauler, however. As the concept proved itself, full-X versions were produced or converted.
As with Andro Maulers, each battery is its own bank.
The Romulan Skyhawk mauler begins with a H-module packed with batteries. Other interior systems are deleted to make room for the extra batteries and the mauler itself. The module is not just hard-welded, it is integrated into the hull. Skyhawk-maulers are not modular ships by any definition. The SSD would delete the rectangle defining the module to make that point visually.
The Klingons converted F5W hulls to this role as regular F5s were too small.
The Lyrans applied their experience making Jaguar maulers to making the alleycat mauler.
Destroyer sized maulers have two problems:
1. Lack of battery power (which X-batteries get around nicely)
2. Shock
Small ships which are overgunned tend to suffer worse from shock than larger ones do.
...which really leaves us with shock and coping with it. I'd love to toss a "4" damcon on the ship but that would be cheating.
The ship should be able to get off 2-4 good shots before chancing a breakdown. If it needs more than that, something is wrong with more than the ship.
John,
One thing that bothers me about your initial assumption is that you say "the Coalition lost". I don't really see it that way. It seems to me the GW ended as a stalemate, more that a clear victory for either side. Of course, that's largely orthogonal to the question of whether DD-maulers are a good idea or not. I haven't made up my mind on that yet, but I'm leaning toward "no".
I've had some more time to think about this one since last night and I've figured out why I'm leaning against the idea. It is, to borrow a phrase from Jeff Cooper, "an ingenious solution to a non-existant problem". John's idea is that these will be used for "little" jobs, several of which he names in his initial post. I guess my opinion is that these "little" jobs don't justify a mauler at all. A general purpose warship, or a small squadron of them, should do the job quite handily. That doesn't mean a DD-mauler would never be the most appropriate tool for a job. But I think such cases will be quite rare and that it would only be slightly better than, say, a standard CW. And there would be a lot of situations in which that CW (which probably costs about the same as a DD-mauler with X-tech batteries) would be more useful. It's just a more flexible platform.
Maybe I'm missing something concerning this idea. But until someone points out to me what that something is, this strikes me as a very low priority for Coalition fleets to invest resources in.
Points to consider.
In Y198-200, Nobody is building standard-tech ships, let alone war-production hulls. That's why the proposal is titled DD-mauler, not DW mauler. post-GW, it is completely impractical to *choose* to produce a war-hull for long-term fleet use. So no CW is going to be built instead of a DD-mauler.
I only mention who won/lost the General War to support the idea that Coalition empires would need more maulers than the General War left them with and were going to need them faster than X-maulers were going to be built. So we look for a solution (preferably low-cost) to cover the shortfall during the ramp-up to X-fleets.
Full honesty, I'm kinda trying to have my cake and eat it too. I'm assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that a mostly trashed DW hull that's being extensively rebuilt anyway to put it back in service, and especially being rebuilt into a mauler, there's enough invasive stuff going on to make the hull less of a war-production money-pit to keep around.
We could build or convert CW hulls to CW-mauler hulls but this entails the same problems as making a DW-mailer and costs more to do it because the hull's larger.
The Romulans are a special case here. The SkyHawk is *not* a war-production hull from a maintenance and upkeep point of view. They aren't and never were war-production money pits to maintain, so they could be kept around as combat hulls, converted to X-ships or, in this case maulers, without the impracticality of trying to maintain a war-production hull long-term.
I almost considered this as a romulans only proposal for this reason.
I allways did want to make a Mauler out of an Orion slaver, convert all that cargo to Battery and Bang.
Fun Fun fun .....where did I put my meds, oh heck I dont need them
John T - Don't forget about the Lyran FF based DWs which can be converted to DWXs (and possible DMX maulers [along with the DD based CWs to CMX maulers])...
Stewart,
That's why this is a multi-race proposal.
AFAIK though, a standard-tech alleycat is still considered a DW with the inherent upkeep issues that go with it. As with the D5X, I'm pretty sure the naval architects went back to the drawing board and designed a non-corner-cut hull for the X-version. I'm not sure D5Xs or Lyran DWXs can be converted from standard-tech hulls. Tomulan X-ships *can*.
It's possible that a half-built standard tech hull could be upgraded to non-war status and completed either as a combat ship a mauler or whatever. That is a "Steves" question.
Reid,
Suppose a battery plus infrastructure replaces a full-size 100-point cargo box? Still want a slaver mauler? 
Considering how crappy maulers are, and how X1 ships can just about generate more damage than an equivelant mauler at almost any given range, what would be the point?
Quote:post-GW, it is completely impractical to *choose* to produce a war-hull for long-term fleet use.
Not so. You can build a war-production hull without taking the shortcuts that make it a disposable unit. This was necessary, for example, for X-war cruisers.
In any case, a mauler is a highly specialised unit with a weapon that places a lot of strain on the spaceframe, so IMO it's completely impractical to build a small mauler at all. (Certainly, from an F&E perspective, it's silly because a small X-ship will give you mauling capability equal to a small mauler, and be able to do other jobs besides combat.)
John it was a Joke, Orions cant use maulers.
Not so. You can build a war-production hull without taking the shortcuts that make it a disposable unit. This was necessary, for example, for X-war cruisers.
I think I mentioned that. My point stands. Nobody is going to build a war-production hull near Y200. I'm not sure anybody around is going to build *any* new standard-tech hull for any reason by then. That's why I rely on conversions.
The question then becomes whether you can convert a shot-up war-production hull into a non-war-production version of the same ship?
(Certainly, from an F&E perspective, it's silly because a small X-ship will give you mauling capability equal to a small mauler, and be able to do other jobs besides combat.)
I am blissfully unconcerned about F&E.
Actually, I must agree this probably isn't a winner.
For the Klinks and Lyrans, I just don't see them building these hulls as new construction. Not in Y200 when all the available yard space is going for new X-ships. If they can't usefully convert an existing DW, it ain't happening.
Which means correcting "war production" shortcuts, because they're not going to put a new design to space with war productions corner-cuts.
Just dunno if that's in the cards.
The romulans *can* convert a Skyhawk if they wanted. But why would they want to? If they want more maulers, they just crank out Sparrowhawk F-modules and weld them onto whatever Sparrowhawk that happens to be in for an overhaul this month.
AFAIK there's nothing to stop them from putting an X-battery-packed F-module on a standard sparrowhawk if they wanted that extra kick. I could put that up as a Romulan proposal but it's an "obvious variant" so why bother?
So why do they need this silly DD-mauler again?
It was a fun idea while it lasted, and I guess it's a possible idea for the Klinks and Lyrans. It's a non-starter for the Roms.
I don't think you can put a Mauler on a size four unit. (I imagine the Andro weapon is just another example of their own type of weapon that we just called one of our weapons because it was similar, such as the phaser two).
I don't know of any rule-restriction against it, but that would be the least of the ship's problems.
Before X-batteries, why would you even want to? There wouldn't be enough hull volume for the weapon + batteries to make the concept practical.
The Andros get away with it because their SC4 units can concentrate enough battery power in the hull, plus sucking it straight out of the PA panels.
The original SFB backstory had the Andros stealing mauler tech from the Roms, but it's now an andro mauler-like device that they always had.