Monitor
Sarna News
| 191px | |
| Monitor Naval Vessel | |
| Production information | |
| Manufacturer | Nav Hull |
| Mission | River Patrol |
| Type | Naval Vessel |
| Technical specifications | |
| Mass | 75 tons |
| Armor | NavPlate |
| Engine | 195 Nisson Naval Diesel (ICE) |
| Speed | km/h |
| Crew | N/A probably 6 |
| Armament |
|
| BV (1.0) | 560 |
| BV (2.0) | 560 |
Contents
Description
Though water is a much sought and scarce resource in the Battletech Universe, many of the heavily populated or industrialized worlds tend to be locally on water-rich planets. Large population centers spring up on river deltas and coasts where the need of naval patrolling is essential to safeguard the security of such an important strategic targets. For the most part, these craft are little more than field conversions of commercial boats but some specially designed patrol craft have also entered service, and the Monitor produced by Nav Hull is an example of such a surface naval vessel.
The Monitor is a formidable craft. Drawing only a half meter of water, it can freely ravel through rivers without fear of an ambush, eight tons of armor protects it against any type of weapon, whether wielded by guerrilla infantry, vehicles or battlemech forces, this makes the vessel particularly useful in the anti-battlemech role to defend strategic positions, river banks and even coasts. The slow speed of the Monitor is a drawback in open water such as open sea or big lakes but it serves perfectly on the closed confines of rivers and swamps where terrain dircards any of the benefits of long range weapons and allows the monitor to fuly use it tremendous firepower.
Armament
Although short ranged, the Monitor is powerfuly armed, mostly desinged to fight in the confines of rivers and shallow lakes instead of open seas, it has two 185 mm AC/20 cannons as main armament, which are able to sink another vessel or cripple all but the heaviest mech in one salvo. For close-in defense, in the confines of a narrow river, the vessel carries three sets of SRM 2. The complement of 10 jump troops help boarding actions agains pirate craft, hold ground positions and even take on battlemech when propperly trained in anti-battlemech operations.
Variants
- No official variants of the monitor exist, although its logical to think that there may be local variants on every world fielding this design. A good example fits 6 Machine guns instead of the SRM launchers for anti-guerrilla operations, when used in rapid fire mode level 3 battletech these can be devasting.