(General)

07/07/09 12:13 AM

66.191.9.99

Re: The Skies Aflame: Akira Destroyer

Quote:

A 50' PT boat was a threat to a WWII battleship, if the battleship was close enough to be hit by the PTs four torpedoes.

A threat, yes, but not a lethal one.

Contemporary battleships had not insignificant defenses against torpedos and routinely dodged them. They also had the capability to sink a PT Boat before it could bring its own weapons to bear at well beyond its range.
Interestingly, a Destroyer would have been in about the same boat (so to speak.)

For reference, here is a complete list of every battleship ever destroyed by a PT Boat acting alone:
-----
-----

Destroyers (and torpedo boats) were a meaningful threat to Battleships only when acting in groups.

Quote:

Destroyers where meant to protect Battleships and Aircraft Carriers for attacks from such boats.

Such vessels do not exist in Battletech, which means that the purpose of whatever we call a Destroyer can't be to destroy them.

Quote:

With the weight that the Naval PPC takes up you can have 120 Killer Whale missals. That would be one massive attack even a battleship would take knottiest of.

120 Killer Whale tubes is 18,000 tons, and requires an internal store of 1200 Killer whale missiles which themselves mass 60,000 tons. The total of 78000 tons is not only more than the mass of the Akira's primary battery (42,000 tons) but is 17.3% of the ship's design mass, far more than I had available for weaponry.

Had I discarded every other weapon system, I could have built a short-magazine missile array with similar performance, but it would have had only ten volleys. Ironically, it would have represented LESS of a threat to a Battleship than the Akira does, because the chances of reducing a well-armored warship that quickly with that little firepower are quite small, especially given that there exist significant active defenses against missiles, but not against energy weapons.