During the General War, Pirate Cartels and Independents found many an opportunity to cash in on the conflict by renting out their ships to Galactic Empires, for a price.
One such ship was the Drone Bombardment Cruiser, based on the SAL hull. It was meant to augment the firepower of drone using fleets, but it enjoyed use by other non drone using empires on occasion.

Take an ordinary SAL, replace A/C racks with type B, and option mounts are Type B drone racks. It is a DB ship. Each cargo box contains 25 drones.
OAKDISC is standard. It can control drones equal to double its sensor rating.

It was not fitted with a special sensor, so the Empire renting the cruiser had to provide those capabilities. It was therefore considered only mildly useful, and only a handful of them were built.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, May 11, 2014 - 05:30 pm: Edit

Where does an Orion Cartel get a ton of type III-XX drones? Those are normally limited availability; I think that the Orions would be unable to acquire these in the quantity needed for drone bombardment missions.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Sunday, May 11, 2014 - 06:17 pm: Edit

From the hiring Empire.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, May 11, 2014 - 08:54 pm: Edit

Your proposal suggests that they are hired by empires without type III-XX drones. Those empires would not be able to supply such drones in the quantity needed, imo.

In F&E even a friendly allied empire that uses drone bombardment cannot supply an allied empire's drone bombardment units, even if they are adopted (ie the Federation can adopt a Kzinti DF but that DF cannot use DBB).

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DBB does not require a unit that has special sensors when used in fleet battles, only when using it for raiding.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Sunday, May 11, 2014 - 11:17 pm: Edit

Richard: Where does it say anywhere that the Orions would be unable to acquire type III-XX drones?
FD4.5 says that some Orion ships were equipped for long range drone bombardment. They would have to get the drones from somewhere.
My suggestion is that in the absence of a rule saying they can't, then they can acquire and use type III-XX drones for drone bombardment missions.

And if it is true that the hiring Empire can't support the DB unit with drones, they certainly can pay for them (read: reimburse the Orion or pay in advance as part of the lease).

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 10:36 am: Edit

A salvage cruiser with a bunch of C-Racks would be a very powerful direct combatant. If the cartel in question was in a territory that had such drone racks widely available (e.g. Lion's Heart), then you could build this ship using the normal option mount rules (IIRC, I don't have the relevant R-section information).

Other cartels would find it difficult to obtain the necessary racks to build the ship, much less supply it with bombardment drones.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 11:35 am: Edit

Comment: This is already in the game, see (SH236.0) in Module F2.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 11:48 am: Edit

Oh ok. Any chance this ship will make it to a formal R publication or be put on the F&E SIT?
(I don't have F2 handy at the moment, but I'll look it up later tonight...)

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 01:36 pm: Edit

Randy Blair:

No reason for it to. It is just a Salvage Cruiser with type-B drone racks in the option mounts and its cargo bays full of type-IIIXX drones (medium speed in the historical case). A police flagship provided the special sensor for long range targeting. It is not a "special case" like a DBR repurposed as a DBP.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 01:44 pm: Edit

By the way. You do not have to install the ability to control seeking weapons equal to double its sensor rating. Simply installing OAKDISC does that. That is why ships like the Light Raider, Slaver, War Destroyer, and Orion Free traitor have an OAKDISC cost at all. None can have more than three drone racks (or plasma racks) in any case (so they do not need to be able to launch drones or plasma-Ds from more than three racks), but OAKDISC improves their ability to control seeking weapons to equal to double their sensor rating. (This is useful for supporting other units launching seeking weapons, or to also control drones released by a scatter-pack in addition to those launched from the drone racks, or to support the rapid fire of type-C drone racks and, again, a launched scatter-pack.)

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 01:45 pm: Edit

SPP: Well, what I'm proposing is slightly different. The option mounts, yes, are type-B racks, but then so are the rest of them.
Normally the built in racks are A/C depending on whether the ship has the Y175 refit or not.

I would think that putting the B racks in the wings is a permanent change to the ship, or is it not?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Randy Blair:

For drone bombardment, six drone racks and cargo storage for reloads (plus some source of scout channel for targeting) is all that is needed.

Six type-B racks (pre-Y175) would hold 18 type-IIIXX drones, plus 18 reloads, the Y175 refit adding another 18 reloads. A total of 54 drones.

Two type-B drone racks and four type-C drone racks would hold 14 type-IIIXX drones, plus 14 reloads, the Y175 refit adding another 14 reloads. A total of 42 drones.

Prior to Y175 refit the Kzinti DF did the mission with six type-A drone racks (12 type-IIIXX drones) with 12 reloads (another 12 type-IIIXX drones) and only 50 type-IIIXX drones in cargo storage, i.e., just 74 drones (and why they were sometimes grouped in squadrons versus a bombardment cruiser acting alone).

So a Salvage Cruiser with type-B drone racks in its option mounts has 42 type-IIIXX drones, plus 100 type-IIIXX reload drones in cargo storage for 142 bombardment drones. It does not need to replace the type-C drone racks with type-B drone racks, and doing so is counter-productive as the ship is not going to always be a bombardment platform (it is not making money if it is not "rented") but with four type-C drone racks and two type-B drone racks it is still an effective raider in its own right (using its cargo boxes not hauling drones).

So, no, replacing the type-C racks with type-B is not a good idea from the standpoint of a cartel (because you do not want the ship sitting around waiting to be rented and the mission is not one that is useful to the cartel itself), and even less of an idea for an independent (his ship becomes a one-trick pony totally dependent on being rented).

So, it is just an optional weapons configuration for a Salvage Cruiser, not a "special purpose Orion ship" like the PF tenders and carriers are.

While type-C drone racks hold one less type-IIIXX drone each than type-B (plus the lost reload), the loss of 8-12 type-IIIXX (8 before Y175 refit, 12 after Y175 refit) drones from a total of (100 in the cargo boxes, plus the 14 in the racks and the 14 reloads, 28 reloads after the Y175 refit) gives the ship 128 to 142 type-IIIXX drones. This compares to the DF which has 50 type-IIIXX drones in cargo plus 12 type-IIIXX drones in its four type-A drone racks and 12 reloads for 74 type-IIIXX drones. [The Y175 refit increases this to 104 type-IIIXX drones, i.e., 50 in the cargo boxes plus 18 in the drone racks (type-A converted to type-B by the refit) plus two sets of 18 reloads.]

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Ok, that's fair enough.

Looking at SH236, it appears that the Orions either came with their own drones or were supplied them by the Vudar, a non-drone using Empire.
Which is it?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 07:57 pm: Edit

Nobody knows where the Orions get stuff.

Seriously, we're not going to answer the question. A fiction author might (and if we think it makes sense we might print it) but a later fiction author might come up with an entirely different (and acceptably logical) answer.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, May 12, 2014 - 08:42 pm: Edit

Oh, I'm good...it was just a curiosity question anyway. Thanks for all the explanations.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Friday, May 16, 2014 - 06:21 pm: Edit

Vudar had Klingon fighters for a while and drone support for those before they started making their own.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, October 07, 2019 - 04:44 pm: Edit

STEVE PETRICK ANALYSIS: Orion Drone Bombardment Cruiser: I do not think the Orions would do this. The ship would be a one trick pony spending most of its time drawing pay for its crew while waiting to be rented. It is (as I noted) just a standard Salvage Cruiser with drone racks in the option mounts and drones in cargo storage. There is, to me, no SSD to do.

STEVE COLE ANALYSIS: I think this is a mission, not a ship. If the fleet is desperate for drone bombardment ships and is willing to hire a pirate to do that (for several months) then you can do it with the existing SSD.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Not needed, already exists.