Monsoon (Taurian Variant) Type: Battleship In class: 6 at its height Originally Commissioned: 2376-2378 Transferred: 2410 Refitted: 2571 Mass: 900,000 Sail Integrity: 5 Thrust: 2/3 Fuel: 3000 tons Structural Integrity: 80 Armor: 1440 tons of standard armor (96+8 each facing) Docking Collars: 4 Fighters: 18 Small Craft: 10 Crew: 800 Lifeboats: 30 Escape Pods: 30 Grav Decks: 3 90 meter Cargo: 147,815 Bay 1: Small Craft (10) 2 doors Bay 2: Cargo (147,815) 5 doors Bay 3: Fighters (18) 4 doors Other equipment none Weapons: Heatsinks: 4580 (enough) Fore Left/Fore Right 6 Naval Autocannon 30s 2 White Shark Launchers Left Broadside/Right Broadside 6 Naval Autocannon 30s 12 Naval Laser 45s 2 White Shark Launchers Aft Left/Aft Right 12 Naval Laser 45s 2 White Shark Launchers Ammo: 120 White Shark 2000 tons of NAC ammo Designer's notes: Revised in order to take into account the changes in my original Monsoon. Also added an entry for NAC ammunition. Since I'm too lazy to go back and figure out how much my original design carried, I just added an extra two thousand tons of ammo and called it good. This means that there is some amount of waste tonnage in the design, but I ain't gonna shed any tears over it. Just think of the leftover as the captain's personal zero-g rec center or something. Overview: If there is one single unifying doctrine of Inner Sphere diplomacy it is "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and there are few better examples of this than the Taurian battleship fleet. In the year 2410, both the Terran Hegemony and Taurian Concordat were locked in a brutal fight with the Capellan Confederation. The Confederation had mounted a wildly successful surprise attack against Terra Firma in 2409, placing numerous interior Hegemony worlds in grave risk to the Capellan menace. At the same time, Liao had also struck at what they regarded as the weak Taurian Concordat, mounting a murderous campaign which at times bordered on genocide. Though the overmatched Taurians made the Capellans pay a heavy price for every meter of Taurian soil, it seemed as though there was nothing to be done to slow the Liao juggernaught. Then help came from an unexpected source when the Terran Hegemony offered to transfer six Monsoon class battleships, along with a large number of Lola class destroyers, to Taurian control. Though wary of the Hegemony's generosity, the Taurians had little choice but to accept. The appearance of these new warships threw the Capellan invasion forces into chaos as their supporting warship fleets suddenly found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. Though they sent in reinforcements, the damage had been done. The Taurians gained the initiative and never let it go. Furthermore, the need to transfer ships to the Taurian front weakened the Capellans elsewhere. Soon after, the Terran Hegemony mounted an assault on Terra Firma, driving the Capellans out of the system. After that disaster, the Liaos sought a cease fire with both states. [Editor's note: To this day some Taurian historians maintain that the Ares Conventions, which were signed at about this time, were less a noble idea by Aleisha Liao than they were a desperate effort to at least slow down a war that had begun to turn against the Confederation on all sides. Certainly the chancellor had been more than willing to conduct a literally murderous war against each of her neighbors during the first decade of the age of war, and it wasn't until Tintavel, a Capellan world, was razed by orbital bombardment that she called for the civilizing of warfare. Of course, the only one who would truly know Aleisha Liao's motives is Aleisha Liao, and she isn't around anymore to answer these questions.] After peace between the Concordat and Confederation settled in, The Concordat negotiated for the purchase of the surviving Monsoons and Lolas, reaching a very reasonable agreement with the Terran Hegemony. However, the sheer size of the battleships made them difficult for the Taurians to maintain, and as a consequence they were placed into reserve status, only rarely deployed as active combat vessels (though the very existance of a Taurian battleship fleet served as a deterent to their neighbors, justifying the moneys spent to purchase them). Despite these precautions, a lack of available maintenance facilities led to a steady decline in the condition of the warships, and by the mid 26th century it was apparent that unless major work was done, they could not in any stretch of the imagination be considered combat capable. A two year long debate soon ensued, with many of the Protector's advisors advocating the scrapping of all five remaining ships, declaring them unecessary given the last hundred years of peace, while just as many pointed to the growing possibility of an alliance among the Inner Sphere powers and the threat that this represented. In the end, something of a compromise was reached. Three of the battleships were slated for upgrading, while the most decrepit vessel, the Venus, was scrapped and a second vessel, the Jupiter, was stripped of all useful components and turned into a cargo hulk, storing massive amounts of bulk cargo. The three remaining Monsoons would be ready just in time for the Reunification war. All three battleships took part in Case Amber, leading the way against the Davion fleet, and were in the thick of the fighting from then on. The Samantha Calderon and Taurus were destroyed during the battle of Robsart, while the third vessel, the Admiral Peyton, escaped from that battle (though she was badly damaged) and made her way back to the Hyades cluster, where she was reported destroyed towards the end of the war. [Editors note: There was something of a legend floating around for years after the war that the Admiral Peyton had in fact survived and escaped. Though generally considered by most to be nothing more than a fantasy, (there were well over seven hundred witnesses to the battleship's destruction) recent evidence seems to indicate that it might actually be true. Documents recently uncovered have suggested that the Taurians might have performed a cunning ruse by disguising the old hulk Jupiter as the Admiral Peyton, giving the other ship a chance to escape. Though the SLDF maintained that they had destroyed the Admiral Peyton, it is true that the Jupiter vanished from orbit over Taurus shortly before the apparent destruction of the Admiral Peyton and nobody ever really bothered to account for its disapearance. Of course, if this is true, it raises the question of just where the Admiral Peyton went and what ultimately happened to it.]