[Cannonshop]

My assumption is that Capital Missiles can't really build up sufficient speed at low altitude/horizontally, because of the physics involved (gravity, air resistance et cetera)
They're canonically based on ICBMs and those don't exactly do a lot of low-altitude flying; so there's at least some amount of sense that a KKV missile just doesn't have the fuel to claw its way out of the gravity well and then come back down under power the way one fired from orbit would.
(This of course doesn't excuse NACs, NLs, NPPCs, or NGauss from also not being able to shoot at ground units or indeed airborne aerospace units when put in a ground emplacement, as those would all require a turret, and any sensible designer is going to give said turret as much traverse and deflection as physically possible just on account of geometry/"the sky is big", but that's a different issue.)

(Or SubCapital weapons also having that issue, despite the fact that SubCapital Missiles are explicitly not KKVs like regular Capital Missiles but instead are giant LRMs and of course all the other ones have the same "this would be in a turret with as much traverse and deflection as possible" issue)

um, actually? they can.  the problem isn't doing damage, it's hitting what you're shooting at.  it's ALWAYS hitting what you're shooting at, it's why outside atmo, ballistics and energy weapons have ranges that aren't infinite-until-stopped.

as Daryk points out:

Check out the press on hypersonic weapons before dismissing KKVs in atmosphere.

if you can aim it, and fire it, and it's going fast, it will hit...but there's that issue; aiming it.  predictive software, sensor return range, and so on is why we don't still use cannons for HIMAD.  The shells are hella faster than a missile, but...

in the case of hypersonic weapons with KKV's there's a problem of reaction delay and predictive aiming to consider, especially in a setting like Battletech where guided weapons are hampered, massive, and complicated, even to a degree not reflected by 21st or even 20th century systems that have more range for equivalent kinetic power. it's because the systems face interference, jamming, sabotage...fill in the blank. 

[Vehrec]

The problem is that a inertial guidance system can't be jammed, interfered with, sabotaged or messed with in flight, and a dropship is a mostly static target once grounded.  And tech level B is sufficient to create an inertial guidance system that can hit a dropship sized target from the far side of the world.  Now, you need to dial-in that exact fix, but that's a factor of having good maps and good scouts who can reference those maps, and get the data back to someone in a targeting bunker.

I've also gotta doubt the whole 'shells are faster' thing-maybe over a short distance, but once you get past 5 kilometers, a missile with fuel left is only gonna pick up speed, while drag is pulling you back and back-and few tank cannons approach 2000m/s.  1000-1400 m/s is much more common among real-life AAA, and lots of missiles fly at about mach 2-3 because that's a good speed that doesn't need exotic materials or chemistry to reach.  But if you're willing to spend, and have a need, you can make the missile fly as fast as you damn well need to. NIKE-Hercules was doing almost mach 5 in the 60s.

Anyways, we've seen in the last 5 years a lot of conventional SRBM/IRBMs, so there's no good reason you can't imagine having a capital missile fly up, tip over, and plunge down like a bat out of re-entry hell to slam into it's target, other than the fact that you need to pre-sight the missile at least 10 minutes before it is gonna land.  Or you could just have it fly as a nap-of-the-earth supersonic and accept the fact that its range is gonna be capped by the point at which the engine melts from the front due to plasma heating.  Someone passed me a white paper on man-portable anti-orbital missiles a year ago, there are far stranger ideas out there.

[Daryk]

I'm not sure TL B targeting was quite that good.  The V-1 and V-2 rockets were lucky to hit the cities they were aimed at.

[Vehrec]

And the Advanced Inertial Reference Sphere had a CEP of about 1-3 hexes to actually achieve it's counterforce mission.  Tech level B isn't just the 'WW2 Tech level', it's the entire 20th century up until early fusion power is unlocked.

[Daryk]

True, but I'd characterize precision weapons as early TL C.  Precision has become common in the 21st century.

[Rlandrigan]

thank you for posting this, as you hit on the reason why my unit centralized around their Mule II's for most of everything. Like the military now uses C130 for small cargo, it's better to have 1 asset do lots of stuff rather than have something not big enough to do almost anything.

[CloaknDagger]

thank you for posting this, as you hit on the reason why my unit centralized around their Mule II's for most of everything. Like the military now uses C130 for small cargo, it's better to have 1 asset do lots of stuff rather than have something not big enough to do almost anything.

I suppose that raises the question of what the maximum minimum size would be.

[Vehrec]

thank you for posting this, as you hit on the reason why my unit centralized around their Mule II's for most of everything. Like the military now uses C130 for small cargo, it's better to have 1 asset do lots of stuff rather than have something not big enough to do almost anything.

Yes, it's well know than all militaries use nothing smaller than the C130 for air transport.  The Black Hawk and Mil-17?  Those don't exist.

[deathzealotzero]

Huh. @Mechanis, I remember you replying to my own attempt at rationalizing the Leopard Class on my own Aurigan Reach Aerospace Thread. You said I was still going a bit smaller then it really should have been. As my version of the whole thing had the Leopard around 2,200 Tons instead of your much larger version at almost ten thousand tons. And now reading the posts on this thread along with your reasoning, including looking over the math you have done, I may have change my own version to reflect everything. For it does make sense. That said! I have done a Leopard-II Class design which basically expands on the original idea of the Leopard Class to better operate in the Succession War Era. So I ask how you would build a true Leopord-II Class? Basically expanding on the original design of the dropship? As your version of the Leopard does kind of make my own Leopard-II kind of redundant.

[Kallor]

For myself, I am aware that this is Battletech and there is a need for suspension of disbelief for the game to work. I like the idea of having more armor on dropships to make them a little tougher for game play. As for the increase in fuel to logical levels, I belive that they opened the door by making us track fuel points, so if they are going to do it, they should do it right.

Having said that I also think the cargo holds of the two dropships is excessive, when I design ships I usually out 60tons of cargo per BM, and ASF, this is ammo and spare parts. For the Clans I use 80 to represent that they have Omnis sp need access to multiple weapons per unit. IS armor gets 40 and the clans get the same except Hell's horse that get 50 for their omnis. IS get 2 tons per squad of BA, Clans get 3 tons per point. And infantry of both sides get 1 tons of cargo per platoon.

This works pretty good for getting one repair/re-arm per mission before the dropship needs to resupply at a mule or other cargo hauler. I also dont really buff the weapons, though I do streamline them or use different classes if weapons depending in the faction that makes them. So some may use pulse as opposed to ER laser.

And to just throw a rock in the pond, I think that small craft should be be between 200 to 5000 tons. Since with the aforementioned fuel requirements craft this small cant carry the fuel necessary to burn from planet to jumpship at 1g. It could really open up small craft to a whole level. But I like change.

*Please excuse any Grammer or spelling mistakes, Im doing this on my phone and auto correct is a pain.*

I really like your suggestions here. The weights of cargo work really well, I used your numbers as a starting point and use 15tons for protomechs.

As for increasing the size of small craft, I think there is great opportunity here. Say small craft are 200 to 900, and have a new class of mediums be 1000 to 5000. Both of these being carried inside a bay.

I see the numbers and 3000 tons is a lot of fuel but it is what the numbers say. It just makes even the smallest dropship start at 10k. All the more reason to make small craft larger.

[DevianID]

This isnt a great place for it, BUT 200t is too small to represent all small craft, while 200t dropships are too small/expensive to represent dropships.  Dropships IMHO should start at 500t, as that is the size where ships can be hit by capitals without penalty, and there should be a 'superheavy small craft' that weighs 201-500 tons, that would use a larger, much more expensive construction while being cheaper and easier to transport than full dropships.  So that way, 200t small craft still exist as the 'cheap, economical workhorse', but the 500 ton small craft would exist as the more expensive but still cheaper than a dropship intermediate step, still small enough to avoid capital weapon fire but too large to be easy to transport efficiently with those 200t small craft bays.

[boilerman]

I actually generally allocate roughly 150-250 tons per unit, depending on various factors (example, if I'm expecting ICE vees, that means more mass because you have to bring petrol along to run the damn things, ASF get extra space for external ordinance, and so on) but;Yes. And you have to have the room to CARRY all those parts. that supply allocation isn't just ammunition, it's also armor. Spare weapons. Structural members. Sensor and comms gear. Life support equipment. Cockpit systems. Spare shielding for the fusion engine. All that shit adds up FAST!
Let's use a stock Shadow Hawk as an example.
A Shadow Hawk is going to want:
At least three full armor loads, that's 28.5 tons right there
At least two spares for everything, so
2 tons of spare ML
2 tons of spare SRM 2
4 tons of spare LRM 5
16! tons of AC/5
12 tons of jump jets
That's another 36 tons right there
You probably want at least one full replacement structure, so 5.5 tons for that,
(We're already up to seventy tons! and haven't even gotten to MUNITIONS yet!)
You're going to want a minimum of three ammunition replacements, but typically more like five, because A) alt munitions exist and B) combat just devours ammo, so call that about fifteen tons between all three.

You're going to want replacement Heat Sinks, call that say another 18 tons (1.5× standard load)
You're going to need spare actuators, so call that probably another ten tons, double that for spare myomer, six tons for spare reactor shielding, call it ten tons for "various Cockpit Systems" (Life Support, sensors, computers, et cetera), replacement coolant call that another 11 tons (because liquid cargo needs extra stuff)...

Oops, we're now at 160 tons of supplies. For one medium mech. And haven't even covered everything yet.

When you, y'know, actually start having to have all the stuff you need in order to do repairs and replenishment? You very, very quickly understand that even two hundred tons of supplies per unit is light. and that you can very easily burn through that in a day or three, depending on circumstances.

And keep in mind, that load is a strategic depth of "basically nothing", assume you're bringing something on the order of three to five times that in a Mule for any serious long term engagement (IE, not a "land, break/steal thing, leave" type raid), or anything that might turn into a serious long term engagement.
I will reiterate that nothing burns through supplies like combat. If you're fighting for multiple weeks, as frequently occurs in canon, you can expect to burn THOUSANDS OF TONS of supplies. multiple.
And that ain't even covering anything else you might want to bring as cargo, like, say, engineering vehicles, Marsden Mats so your birds can operate without having to have the DropShip take off every time you want to launch them, and so on.

That is a very lavishly supported Shadow Hawk. I agree with your thinking, I have versions of the canon designs to suite my sensibilities, just not on the same scale. Most mine are about twice to 2.5 time the size of the canon designs.

No doubt combat burns through supplies fast, but I think you would need to have a fully equipped repair facility to go through 100 to 150 tons of repair parts and replacement armor in a matter of a few weeks for a single 'Mech.
Good work.