Sure, I know it can't happen realistically within the vast, vast majority of the existing games, but Rigger 3 gives us the possibility, and we can dream, can't we?

So let's say, just for fun (or for one of those nightmares GMs like to throw against PCs from time to time), that we were to design an aircraft carrier and a bit of an associated, assorted flotilla for some additional fleet defense. Its purpose is to act as a mobile base in international waters - for all practical intents and purposes its own country - for some shadow group (take your pick). Perhaps the actual SR team is one of several of this organisation's strike or espionage forces, or perhaps the actual SR team might have one or several runs linked around determining first the existence, and then the nature and extent of this fleet and the organisation which has evolved it.

Within the actual components of such a fleet, what would be needed? How to kink it? (If it could be purchased - yeah, right!) how much would it cost?

hmm, a mercenary armada. cute.
most likely we will not be seeing nimitz class carriers but maybe something like what the us marines field with next gen vtol aircrafts and so on. in fact the JSF eliminates the need for nimitz carriers in a way as they ( the JSF that is) are able to go supersonic and take of verticaly.

your fleet is most likely buildt up like a carrier taskforce is today, 1 (or maybe 2 if you go with the smaller type) carriers coverd by cruisers and destroyers that act like a surface and submarine screen. then there is the number of cargo ships and similar to handle the more mundane stuff like fuel and other supplys. maybe a special ship or 2 designed as floating hospitals. and a fleet of its own of helicopters and small boats to act as personel and small cargo transports.

Oh the price tag!

9,000,000,000 with a SI and availability of "no"

A custom aircraft carrier won't be much better.
A light aircraft carrier is 500,000 DP with a markup of 5. 250,000,000 before engine, armor, etc. That's just the cost for the hull, filght deck, and some housing. No other contents. No navigation gear.
The only advantage is that the vehicle modification prices will be much cheaper than buying options into the design.

I'm getting the idea that you probably aren't considering owning a supercarrier-type ship? The problem with any large fleet consisting of such huge ships is that all major powers would always be aware of its location. And there's no way in hell any "shadow organization" could afford a fleet that could put up any sort of fight against the larger megacorp Navies, let alone national Navies.

Thus it would be a very, very bad idea for these ships to be known to be the headquarters for organized crime, terrorism, or anything similar. Even if they were just suspected of maybe being linked to something fishy, and they most certainly will be, they could be constantly monitored by commercial/corp owned and national assets through radars and satellites.

It would have to be a very small fleet, operating mostly with small, stealthy ships, and preferably hiding near some deserted island group. It would need support from a few supply ships, and these could be tracked to the location, but that's better than being under constant surveillance. And you really don't need large ships, when you can just use VSTOL aircraft, T-Birds, helos and the like. Both with SR rules and IRL, these can operate from ships far smaller than what's commonly known as a "carrier", light or otherwise, as far as there is constant supply from other ships as I mentioned.

How crazy are you talking here? Are we postulating a full sized AKIHITO-class supercarrier? Or something along the lines of a WWII fleet escort carrier? LHA? LHD?

If you wanted to go bare-bones with it, all you really need is the carrier and a support vessel. All security forces can be deployed from the carrier itself: long range surveillance drones (Global Hawk, Dark Star), inner and outerzone USW/SUW drones (Predator, Fire Hawk, UCAV), wireguided USW drones, as well as manned and unmanned strike and transport aircraft. The support vessel is there for stores and fuel since I doubt you'd want to pull your carrier in to whatever port is nearest.

If we're going to suspend all sense of disbelief, though, you could have the carrier surrounded by two or three corvette or frigate sized combatants, responsible for mid to outer zone USW/SUW surveillance and defense. Each of these vessels could be equipped with their own fleets of surveillance and combat drones. Additionally you could have a small force of minisubmarines dedicated to the defense of the CVBG. Add in two or three support vessels making the rounds to supply food and fuel to everyone and there you have it.

If you wanted to get really crazy, though, why not just have a fleet of half a dozen Kvaerner-Maersk TRITON-class submarines? Each of which is roughly the size of a TYPHOON-class SSBN. Convert their cargo holds to hangars and have vectored thrust, tilt-wing, and rotorcraft inside. Mount recessed turrets for vertically launched ASCMs, cruise missiles, and SAMs, as well as torpedo tubes for ADCAP, wake-homing, and supercavitating torpedos.

hmm, a submersible carrier, nice idea

If you really want a fleet that provides a believable defense, enough to make megacorps and large nations mind their own business, we're talking at least 20-30 billion , which accounts for a medium-sized carrier, a significant number of aircraft and drones, a few destroyers and frigates, and some smaller ships.

Just an Akihito with a full complement of aircraft and ammunition is in the 10-15 billion range, depending on how many missiles and drones you want. Then you need to have a crew, around 6000 men, which isn't going to be cheap either.

And remember, the monthly upkeep is equal to 1% of the original full cost. That's 100-150 million per month for just the Akihito.

Crazy as we want to get - and have it NPC-feasible

this sounds like the sort of thing that the MET might run (is that the name - the mercenary group in europe)

or maybe a dragon might keep something like this operating if it was useful...

remember, it would only get shut down if the long term cost of its actions warranted the cost of taking it out. anyone who had the money to set this up has the clout to keep it out of the way of megas. besides where is the profit for destroying it? unless it was targetting only you, it could be useful deniable asset.

heck for cannon disbeleif, there are pirated sattelites, and they are almost as big an investment.

-Mike R.

Yeah, I'd go with submarine launched aircraft carriers. You won't have to deal with hiding everything, plus the technology is actually pretty old (the Japanese in WWII had submarines specially equiped to sustain and launch a handful of fighters, plus they had one man kamikaze submarines.)

I'm surprised nobody's made a Snow Crash reference yet. Well, here it is:

omg make sure we take REASON into account when designing this thing el oh el.

I believe Shadows of North America mentions that the CAS has developed/fieldtesting a submersible carrier type craft, able to launch a handful of man/unmanned aircraft. That'd be a nice base of operations, probably a bit harder to track a sub.

Why settle for less? Go for the gold! Try and cajole for that Akihito and a full fighter wing, too!

A submersible carrier is probably the way to go. The Soviet Typhoon SSBN ran around 35,000 tones, that about the same displacement as the French, Indian, British, and Argentinian.

Argentina:
Veinticinco De Mayo ~20K tons (scrapped)

Britain

Ark Royal ~20K tons

India
Vikrant ~20K tons
Viraat ~28K tons

France
Clemenceau ~ 32K tons (retired)
...

You should be able to built a sub to both launch and recover planes, though doing so in any sort of rough seas or bad weather...

One of the things that people don't seem to notice about VTOL is that is greatly reduces your payload, the Harriers taking off vertically can hardly carry anything.

Building this monster would be something very few shipyards in the world would be capable of, so everyone in the world would know about it. Also you are not likely to be able to get an at sea time of more that maybe 180 days (maybe 270 if you are desperate), so you'll need a port to put into as well.

Of course, if you start with a Bond villan underwater city, that should give you the port and the sub yards both. But where did the city come from?

Not even a need for max-range if they have Exocets or other ELR ASM's.

Course, this is also contingent on the other guys not having Phalanx guns.

Anything the sub would have to worry about would not have Phalanx guns. They might have ANDREWS or some similar systems. I'm not even sure yet if conventional projectile weapons offer any defense against missiles whatsoever in canon SR.

But, like discussed elsewhere, such systems aren't 100% proof, and missile volleys from maximum range would still be the aircrafts best hope. They sure as hell wouldn't wander near the ships, to be targeted by the ships' point defense weapons themselves.

And you'll probably want some rather more modern missiles than Exocets. The AM.39 is 89 years old in 2063. The SS-N-49 Sirocco is the closest equivalent. Regardless, it would be in the organizations best interest to keep any combat as far away from the sub/carrier as possible, and thus the aircraft would still be operating at max range. Just the aircrafts max range + the missiles' max range.

[Edit]And again, your points are quite valid for realistic and Real World discussion, but less so when you look at the actual rules, and the craziness we're contemplating here.[/Edit]

I cast invisibility on the missile.

...And summon a spirit to Conceal it and cover it in Ruthenium?

Mostly it's a maintenance issue. Ships are at sea have it a bit better because they can repair some of the stuff themselves, but a sub usually can't.

A typical SSBN patrol pattern will be something like 90 days on patrol follow by 30 days of maintenance and crew replacement. With a year long overhaul every ~7 years (depends on models, etc).


The 180-270 day limit for all three: crew, supplies, maintenance. Its much more economical (and much better for personnel retention) to use shorter patrols.

As long as we're being nuts, why don't we give our mythical submersible runners a private island to dock at too? I hear Guam has nice revolution weather in the summer, and they already have a naval base too. It's not like the UCAS is going to miss it much, having lost roughly 35% of their territory in the past 50 years anyway.

You're right, Austere, but when I think ASM I think Exocet. Dunno why. There'll probably beway more wiz-bang stuff by 206x.

And what sub? They should grab for the Akihito! It'll be great!

Why the Exocets get such press, I'll never know. There's nothing too speacil about them, other than the fact that the @#%&^ French sold them to just about everyone.

I think you just answered your own question, Bob.

Mass propogation leads to familiarity, or something.

One quick question, if Naval Battles in SR take place using missiles at ungodly distances, what's the ANDREWS for? An LOS-only energy bombardment is completely useless if your ship will be so much scrap from a missile barrage 500 miles outside it's max range.

It's for those missiles. And whatever non-standard combatants happen in your sites.

now i don't have a direct reference for this BUT nasa tested out a remote control rocket, with a new engine deign and they clocked it as going over mock 7 i think,
... it landed in the pacific somewhere.
any way, a pure line of sight laser system will not have a hell of a lot of time to do anything. the missile, if it works will be traveling at more than 2,380 meters a second.

What Kanada Ten said. Also, canon ASM ranges top out at 350km for the Sirocco, so you'd be looking at max 345km more than the range of ANDREWS.

Stay tuned in the near future for news on relative effectiveness of different missile defense systems in the Ship Design With Rigger3 thread.

RADAR will start tracking those missiles on launch, or well enough before hand, to target an active ANDREWS for a hit when they arrive. Speed of Light - or energy barrage in this case - is just a little faster than Mach 7

Assuming you can sustain that 2,380 meters per second velocity all through the flight envelope, that's at least 42 seconds or 14 CT to 100 kilometers. Considering how time works in SR combat, that's a hell of a lot of time.

Basically, the Andrews is a 'final' self defense weapon. The area defenses (missiles) of your battle group engage the incomming missiles out to their max range. If any missiles get through, they the Andrews on each ship is the last defense against the missle. Note that the missile islikely to detonate when hit, so there may be some damage to the ship, even if the missle dosen't actually hit.

In general, ships will have 3 layers of defense.

The area defense system (not all ships can afford this) is a system of missiles with a 20+ mile range that can engage missiles and (high to low flying) aircraft.

The self defense (for ships w/o area defense missiles) system will have missiles with a >10 mile reange that can engage (med-low flying) aircraft and missiles.

The 'last ditch' or point defense system has a range ox >3 miles and consists of the ships AA guns (whatever they might be).

Note that this just covers the missiles themselves and not the sensors and computers you need to do something useful with them.

There are some nifty issues dealing with missile defense like:

physical: radar horizon, missle speed, missile RCS, missile flight altitide, ....

computing: target prioritization, reaction speed, processing speed, ...

If you want to open up a different thread, I can try to go into a bit more depth.

Besides a second-hand Carrier, perhaps you should include the Freedom Ship for housing your personnel.

BTW, reading through the naval combat rules in R3, those missile protections are really going to be needed. Absolutely fucking nothing can withstand a hit from either of the two serious canon ASMs. Those missiles will be rolling dice in the 20-25 range, against very low TNs with the big ships, and doing 8S - 12D even through the Bulwark rating 12 of the Akihito-class supercarriers. They will without failure blow a ship of any size into smithereens if they ever happen to hit.

Either you make sure they don't hit by using insane amounts of ECM, ED and magical protections in conjunction with an inherently high Signature, or shoot the missile down. Even if the missile goes off at ~20 meters, the ship won't be harmed (thanks to the pitiful Blast radii). Any closer than that, though, and the ship is a goner. A state of "damaged but operable" will never occur with missile combat.

[Edit]I'd do more calculations on that, using the Extended Range Missiles rules... But I just spent 5 minutes probing something in my mouth with my tongue, only to realize it was, indeed, a tooth.[/Edit]

[Edit #2]Underestimated the # of dice by a lot at first. Forgot all about things like the IVIS System, etc. We could easily be looking at over 30 dice, and with the Extended Range Missiles And Torpedos rules that almost always goes against a TN of 2, because it's a question of ramming the ship with the missile instead of using Sensor Enhanced Gunnery to shoot it. Most electronic countermeasures won't be that useful, unless they are foolproof enough not to allow any Sensors to keep track of the location of the ship for the missiles flight time.

Note: Those 30+ dice are also used for dodging with the fricken thing. Sheesh.[/Edit]

The goodness continues. Assuming you use the optional Footprint rules from R3, a surface ship cannot possible be an active combatant and keep a reasonable Signature. Sensors-6 on a frigate-sized ship (Hull 4) start at Flux 30. And then you've got the Remote Control Decks, which probably have 20+ Flux, as well as probable ECMs, plus what ever communication gear the ships has. That's about -6 to -8 Signature right there.

Lowering that kind of Footprint with Electronic Warfare would require some 1337 5k1lz. Assuming Footprint-6, the TN on the EW test is 10. Every success only reduces the total Flux for Footprint calculations by 1, 10 successes per 1 point of Signature. Even in naval combat, the EW specialists are unlikely to ever have more dice than ~15 (EW specialization of 12, Encephalon-2 and Cerebral Booster-2) for this test, which will usually not matter even for a single point of Signature. If several such experts keep throwing those dice, they might shave off 1 or 2 Signature points before the TN reaches the skies (+2 TN per retry).

Once I finish with the Advanced Rules (only a few pages left), I'll move my rants back to the other thread.

anti ship missiles are low flying torpedos basicly. they are designed to impact the target very close to the waterline. and in so doing will if it does not rip the target apart atleast leave it with a very bad hole that water going going to enter at any moment. oh and D damage on any target does not equal blown to very small parts. its just crippled to the point of no longer working. and blowing a big hole midship sounds to me like a very nice D damage, even if the guns/missiles are working you just lost command/control, maybe the radar targeting feed, and definetly a lot of crew.

as for the blast radius of explosives in SR, its been up before but ill just state that in SR its shrapnel that gives antipersonel explosives the big blast radius. anything else is just a shockwave, and a shockwave traveling 20 meters and hitting the side of a armored hull should not leave that big a mark (yes im aware of the funny part where you place a amout of explosive next to a window and it will hold).

A ship, any ship, that goes to Deadly damage on its condition monitor has about a 30-35% chance of sinking by the end of the Combat Turn. All of it's systems go offline immediately, I think. It's crippled, and it will sink in 3 seconds to 15 minutes, depending on luck alone.

There's a suggestion in R3 that at least one ship might have its own free hearth spirit. You know, if the fleet were to be "owned" by a free (great form) nature spirit, it might have some incentive to use its Conceal power on that fleet.

Could it? Might this be viable?

I can't believe no-one's mentioned Operation Big Gun yet. If I'm getting the name right; that was Ares' supposed Thor shot or possibly nuclear strike against a Japanacorp naval force heading for Hawai'i, right? Or was it somehow connected with Operation Reciprocity? All the old history kinda blurs together.

Anyway, canon hypothesizes that several megas, specifically Ares, have an orbital strike capability - probably similar to the 60's or 70's project known as Thor, that's just showed up again in the Air Force Transformation Flight Plan under the name "Hypervelocity Kinetic Rod Bundles." Basically it amounts to throwing heavy things at stuff you hate, from orbit. And it would rule against a naval task force, hence the supposition that Big Gun was a Thor shot.

If your little pirate carrier fleet is a problem, the megas don't need the great expense of sending an air wing or a fleet of their own. They just need to drop some rocks on it. When you've got orbital or lunar mining and manufacturing, the cost of Thor shots drops to pretty much zero. The only reason it's not cost-effective now is that you have to pay to loft them, and cost/pound out of the gravity well is amazing. Build them in orbit, though, and you've got the world's cheapest strategic weapon.

So yeah. I say, cool as the idea is, it ain't gonna happen if you're planning on using your fleet to piss *anyone* off.

Operation: Big Gun was never elaborated, but it was presumed to be either a Thor strike or a nuclear attack. Either way, it was a contingency plan existing during the Veracruz Settlement which followed Operation: Reciprocity.

The Thor strike in Hawai'i occurred in 2017 or so, and it wasn't a Japanacorp ship--It was the USS Enterprise. As the Enterprise battle group headed to Hawaii from San Diego to quell the native uprising on the islands, someone (presumably Ares) 'vaporized several million gallons of sea water off the bow of the Enterprise," and as a result the Enterprise promply turned back to San Diego (which was also supposed to be helpful in consideration of the fact that the Indian/Ghost Dance/what-the fuck-ever War was going on and the GGD had just or would happen shortly.

However, I can see a CVN (or LHD or something like it) as a base for a shadowrunning operation (well, quasi-merc, but that seemed to be the milieu of the publsihed adventures sneding SRs overseas), or a merc campaign, or a SpecWar campaign if you are the one group that plays them using the suggestions from SRComp/Missions/etc.

Enterprise the next Generation...

I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but one of my software eng. teachers told me that the UK lost ships in the Faklands war due to the friend-or-foe detection system not marking incoming, UK made missles, as foes. After the first one went down, they scrambled to update their systems, and it became common practice to put "secret" kill switches in weapons you sold to other governements.

Malvinas / Falkland War

Exocet (they're French, by the way).