The other question...is Catachan the world of Godzilla? I joke...but is there another predator we haven't seen?
Battletech Welcome to the Jungle
- Thread starter Speaker4thesilent
- Start date
The Unicorn
Well-known member
Trees unlike mechs are rooted in place and bushes and grasses bend.
No, their plan would be to ignore the planet and go look for valuable targets.
The clans consider SLDF technology to be second tier, and the mechs on Catchan they could be expected to find if they went looking would be inferior to SLDF mechs. Unless they find out about the restored factories there's nothing on Catchan they'd consider worth the effort and the need to decontaminate everything ensures none of them would even bother to go looking.
PsihoKekec
Swashbuckling Accountant
I reckon that the flora and fauna we have seen so far is but a 0,001% of Catachan biodiversity, as Weber's Warriors only explored the immediate surrounding of the city and some of the mines, which is small fraction of a percent of the planetary surface. Who knows what else lurks within expanses of the Terra Incognita, especially the lowlands.
Hesperus, which is similar to Catachan, is still largely unexplored and no one knows what kind of monstrosities lurk within it's jungles.
Which is why I wrote uproot them, as even if soil is rich with metal, it's still soil so the blast wave can uproot the trees (especially since trees are heavier than normal). Not to mention that trees themselves, despite the armored bark are still wooden, so they can snap just as regular ones. The diameter of destruction for thermobaric bomb will be narrower than in the regular forest but that only means you need a few more for the desired effect.
Bushes and grasses bend to certain extent, exert enough force and they stay down for good, though it is inconsequential as you only need to knock down trees to entice dropships into landing there.
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The Unicorn
Well-known member
A blast wave could, the one from a thermobaric bomb won't. Thermobaric weapons generally don't destroy buildings which means the over pressure they produce is going to generally be below 10psi which is not going to uproot anything whose root structure can hold the sort of heavy trees we're talking about.
That's assuming the winds cooperate and the thermobaric bombs detonate properly (admitadly less of an issue with modern weapons than earlier versions, but still a potential issue).
EDIT:Also note a tree or structure in the middle of a thermobaric explosion would be exposed to pressure equally from all sides further reducing the damage it suffers relative to what a conventional explosion would do.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
I suspect the smarter ones would be happy to loot the place to ease their logistics, but even the smart Crusaders just don’t grok how much in the way of garrisons they’re going to need. Second line forces are exactly what you want for that.
Crazyone47
Active member
Say I wonder if we will start to see Drac competence... Call me a pessimist but The snakes have never struck me as calm enough to not launch major reprisals given what Webers done to them.
Speaker4thesilent
Crazed Deplorable
Dracs finding Catachan is only a matter of time at this point. The Norns are good, but they aren't perfect and there are now far too many people regularly interacting with Catachan for the beans to not get spilled.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
of course hitting a place with warship weapons and lots of turrets is no mean feat even discounting the other defenses
WolfknightX10
Member
The drags always striked me as the first successor state to resort to throwing bodies at a problem to solved it. So I can see them throwing several Vega legions (or equivalent force) to establish a foothold on Catachan. Of course that probably won’t happen till they feel they have a good sense of the planet’s defenses. Then again they might decide that the dragon can afford the cost in blood to gain control over a system that can produce lostech at a level they can maintain and perhaps replicate elsewhere.
Crazyone47
Active member
Hmmm.....
Really wondering how it will go. Catachan is a tough nut to crack but the Draconis Combine.... Militaristic societies are good at fighting with things only going wrong when things go wrong. They dont last for centuries without real competence.
This seems like a prime target for Chain Gangs. Those walking war crimes
The combine could take carachan. Granted pulling together the forces to do so would be noticeable and their losses i suspect stupidly high. Any of the great houses have the numbers to take any one world they want problem is cost. For it to be worth the effort the dragon has to take carachan with the factories intact not easy. Has to land enough troops to do the job, technically doable. Fight through the defenses natural and otherwise. Do so quickly enough for Katrina not to reinforce and hold the planet. Oh and not take such high losses that the fed suns or Commonwealth don't smash them in a few dozen places. Well and if losses are as bad as I suspect they would be not take so much damage you spend the next decade rebuilding even if you do take the factories mostly intact.
Doomsought
Well-known member
Until the modernization at other locations is done, the Dragons might consider it to be worth the cost to deny the Lyrans their lostech production facilites. However with the data-core being distributed already, that will only delay the inevitable. They only sort of attack that would not be excessively costly would be a nuclear strike, and that invites retaliation.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
It might be viable to actually blockade Catachan. It's not a place capable of reasonably growing its own food. Given the horrific cost of a direct invasion, claiming the worlds around it and preventing shipments in and out to starve it into submission might be cheaper than a direct invasion. Of course, that presumes they can keep the Lyrans from punching through any space blockade.
Not a bad presumption given what Lyrans think is a good fighter...
Not a bad presumption given what Lyrans think is a good fighter...
Happily for the Lyran fighter corps, that attitude is changing.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
the chippewa is fixable. Rather easily to boot. See the W-10 or something similar. The Lucifer likewise is salvagable assuming you can fix the ejection issues(which honestly ought to be doable) and make it closer to a Shilone in terms of purpose and speed. Hell it explicitly has good in atmosphere characteristics in terms of performance. The big problem is a lack of light dogfigher in production and sufficient dogfighter production in general. And of course the godamm Seydlitz and to a less extend the Saber aren't that fixable due to their limited weights.
The Unicorn
Well-known member
I don't think the clans had any shortage of second line equipment, they were short of people. Also while I agree they'd want to loot Catchan "eventually" between them believing the gear there to be a limited quantity of third rate gear, the presumed need to decontaminate everything before using it and of course the lack of any "glory" in looting an empty planet, I think until the Clans find out more about Catchan from Inner Sphere sources it would be at the absolute bottom of their list of possible targets.
What do you base that on?
Also, I don't believe the Inner Sphere has, at this point the ability to blockade a planet for any length of time without some base to allow refueling and crew rest.
Claiming those worlds around Catchan, assuming it's possible would not prevent Catchan from continuing to trade with the rest of the LC. While legitimate civilian Jumpships generally don't jump into uninhabited systems there's nothing preventing them from doing that.
Additionally, the dracs would need to hold several worlds, while the Lyrans could concentrate their counter attack on a single world at a time. That means assuming parity of forces the LC would have a 3:1 or more advantage in numbers in every battle. Even the most arrogant of Dracs would not assume they can beat those numbers consistently.
They were short of second line equipment in the Inner Sphere, and most of the time mechs take more serious damage than pilots. Most pilot injuries heal on their own without spare parts in a fraction of the time it takes to ship parts. It's over 160 jumps from the Pentagon Cluster to Star's End. They can also recruit Quislings like Phelan Kell who rarely have even second line mechs.
The Unicorn
Well-known member
Consumables or actual mechs? And note they'd consider the mechs found on Catchan third rate equipment.
More importantly, I don't recall the clans in canon breaking open any SLDF caches they should have had records of, not even when they were getting desperate for supplies.
We've only seen the alpine forests. The hold fast is pretty high up in the mountains and doesn't get visited by the scary shit down below, at least yet.
Best part is there's no room for an invasion force to land on HIS mountain, so they gotta trudge up from the lowlands with all the scary kaiju.