58 replies to this topic

[Damocles]

Nightwish, on 25 January 2012 - 09:05 AM, said:

I was wondering when someone would say somthing along those lines?

???????????????????

[BrotherGrim]

I love this thread.

I think what is being forgotten is that the armor in mechwarrior is different and a different technology than what we are looking at in RL. So it does not make a good equivilent. Reactive armor for an example back in the early days of the game was described as a highly advanced form of Kevlar armor.

So those real life vs game would not be accuarate.

The one thing that should be changed is the accuracy of the missles in the game. No matter what version of the game you play, the missles and the technology do not even come close to the accuracy of RL missles. **** in the majority of the games you could have a heavy or even an assault mech loaded as a missle boat and miss a light mech at point blank range. Which in reality would never happen.

Just some random thoughts.

BrotherGrim

[boogle]

Brothergrim,

I think the reason given for the lousy missile tracking is that early in the succession wars there was so much jamming and ECM available that guided missiles became almost useless and the houses started using missiles with little to no guidance. Later as the decline in technology mostly eliminated the threat posed by ECM and jamming it simultaneously eliminated the ability of the houses to construct advanced tracking systems. So I believe this is the (canon) reason for lousy electronics and crappy missiles.

[Brakkyn]

Futuristic weapons envisioned over 25 years ago for a universe set 1,000 years from now.

There's bound to be some issues.

[Leonardo Monteiro]

Actually, (a bit unrelated), but how would an F22 raptor fight another F22 raptor?

I mean, they are "invisible to radar", so they would BOTH be invisible to each other's radar. So they would be down to fight with guns.

Right?
(ok, even if i am wrong, i think this is why missiles suck in BT - i agree with boogle)

[Evinthal]

Leonardo Monteiro, on 25 January 2012 - 09:35 AM, said:

Actually, (a bit unrelated), but how would an F22 raptor fight another F22 raptor?

I mean, they are "invisible to radar", so they would BOTH be invisible to each other's radar. So they would be down to fight with guns.

Right?
(ok, even if i am wrong, i think this is why missiles suck in BT - i agree with boogle)

It isn't that they are "invisible to radar" so much as it is they appear smaller on radar than they really should.

While we are on the subject of real life vs BT silliness. How about those missile launcher reloading systems on 'mechs? Or how about heat sinks in the legs dissapating heat from guns in the arms?

All and all, things were done for game balance and fun, and I am more than willing to accept that.

[PewPew]

I'm probably wrong, but I almost imagined missiles to be stacked in the tube. "Reloading" them was only a matter of priming/arming them.

[Catamount]

Leonardo Monteiro, on 25 January 2012 - 09:35 AM, said:

Actually, (a bit unrelated), but how would an F22 raptor fight another F22 raptor?

I mean, they are "invisible to radar", so they would BOTH be invisible to each other's radar. So they would be down to fight with guns.

Right?
(ok, even if i am wrong, i think this is why missiles suck in BT - i agree with boogle)

They've very hard to detect, but not always invisible, and there are ways around that.

Very advanced radar can track strealth aircraft (IIRC, the Royal Navy reported having little trouble tracking our F-117s with their radar systems in the Gulf War). Multi-static radar setups are theoretically even better, though that doesn't help in a one-on-one plane engagement otherwise taking place in a vacuum.


If you have your planes fly a bit apart, such that radar emissions have an increased likelihood of striking the plane from a less stealthy angle, that's a potentially useful strategy for multiple planes facing each other on both sides.


For the moment, however, with current radar technology, it's entirely possible that two F-22s would never spot each other if they never got close and weren't aware of each others' presence. If they were already engaged, however, and already in reasonable range with some idea of where each was, I suspect they'd have little trouble reasonably tracking each other.

[Nerts]

Evinthal, on 25 January 2012 - 10:04 AM, said:

It isn't that they are "invisible to radar" so much as it is they appear smaller on radar than they really should.

While we are on the subject of real life vs BT silliness. How about those missile launcher reloading systems on 'mechs? Or how about heat sinks in the legs dissapating heat from guns in the arms?

All and all, things were done for game balance and fun, and I am more than willing to accept that.

The heat thing is because it's one big coolant system for the whole mech, hooked up to the reactor, myomer bundles and guns, it keeps all of the mech's insides at about the same temperature and puts an even load on all the heatsinks. Also why shooting too much affects your speed in the TT.

[Alaric Wolf Kerensky]

Nightwish, on 24 January 2012 - 12:31 PM, said:

6. You should see what happens when a uranium armour piercing round hits tank plate

If you want to start a fire rate contest the M16 vulcan (turret) fires 24000 rounds per minute (although not DU)

Ok, you really need to get the idea that we make use of DEPLETED URANIUM for some armor-piercing rounds. U-235 is much different than U-238. Also, any weapon can fire depleted uranium tipped rounds, just most don't because it is expensive, harmful, and in most cases completely unnecessary. For example, using DU tipped rounds in a 9 millimeter pistol would be close to senseless, as it is an anti-personnel weapon and significant body armor is lacking in today's world.

About your comment on an "M16 vulcan (turret) fires 24000 rounds per minute," I have never heard of an M16 Vulcan, and assume you mean the M61 Vulcan. Now we get into the interesting part, as your numbers are clearly falsified. Vulcan rotary cannons are mounted pretty much exclusively on United States and NATO combat aircraft. I have no knowledge of any Vulcans ever being deployed in a "(turret)" style, and highly doubt they would be due to the fact that they weigh over 200 pounds, and that is without the feed system and ammunition. Furthermore, a M61A2 only (lol, because it is actually quite high) has a maximum fire rate of 6,600 rounds per minute, almost 1/4th of the fire rate you claimed. The only weapon I know of capable of a RoF exceeding 24,000rpm is Metal Storm, and that is only for exceedingly brief periods of time.

[Evinthal]

Nerts, on 25 January 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

The heat thing is because it's one big coolant system for the whole mech, hooked up to the reactor, myomer bundles and guns, it keeps all of the mech's insides at about the same temperature and puts an even load on all the heatsinks. Also why shooting too much affects your speed in the TT.

Ah, okay never visualized it that way. It makes a little more sense going at it like that. Thanks!

[UltimatrixmaN]

This is one of the most beat to death topics in Battletech.
All you have to remember, to justify the illusion, is that Battletech is "1980's Romanticized World War II of The Future".

If Mechwarrior = Modern Day, you'd be dead before you even had a chance to see what hit you.
Really conductive to good gameplay if I say so myself. I love being instagibbed by targets I can't see.

Edited by UltimatrixmaN, 25 January 2012 - 07:50 PM.

[Blackfire1]

Insidious Johnson, on 24 January 2012 - 11:00 AM, said:

The A-10 is a plane built around the 30mm cannon. Some parts of Iraq are still uninhabitable from the depleted uranium shells spewed out by its 3k rounds per minute rate. Further, the recoil from the gun is EQUAL to the plane's thrust. If shooting was sustained long enough, it would just fall from the sky. There is your RAC, only it shoots faster.

One of the many reasons it generally only fires at higher altitude or in a straight dive.

[Wraith 1]

Sorry, somebody lost the laws of physics during the 2nd succession war.

[Nebfer]

Nightwish, on 24 January 2012 - 10:55 AM, said:

Has anyone noticed that weapons in real life are much better than the weapons in real life? for example...
1. IRL - A 50 cal machinegun weighs <0.25 tons and can rip apart a concrete crash barrier.
IG - A Heavy Machinegun weighs 3 tons and takes a while just to destroy a car.

A B-tech MG is not inherently only a 12.7mm weapon, their are in fact 20mm and even 30mm weapons in the fluff that are classed as Machineguns, their are also rotary versions as well (see the Scorpien tank). also how long did it take to "rip" apart a crash barrier? also concrete is not all that duriable to heavy weapons.

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2. IG - A HGauss can punch through a 28 points of armour
IRL - A equivelent sized railgun can demolish a foot thick steel plate
IRL - An equivelent weight railgun can hit like a cruise missile from several thousand miles

It's 25 points and thats over 1.5 tons of B-tech grade armor. It's also fluffed as a hypersonic projectile that mass's 250 kilograms! (See the novel End game for that). That results in the kinetic energy equal to a 16 inch battleships shell (at point blank - ~380MJ)!
Also their are no currently operational rail guns, and IIRC the most powerful was not even 50 megajoules.

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3. IG - A LLAS can destroy a car from 600meters
IRL - A real life laser of the same weight can chop a ******* building in half from 17000 feet

Never heard of the ABL being used to cut down buildings, and what kind of buildings? plasterboard? mud brick? cinder block? Re-bar?
In any case AFAIK the ABL was about 1 megawatt in output and it took a few seconds to destroy a ballistic Missile (resulting in only a few hundred kilojoules of energy being used IIRC). A B-tech laser fires for less than a second had has a out put of dozens if not hundreds of megajoules of energy. They also have been mentioned in the fluff to melt hundreds of kilograms of Steel, Diamond, Titanium & Boron nitride in moments, melting 30kg each of just Iron and BN results in some 200 megajoules of energy. In the words of a guy who has studied this a bit more than you (i.e. Cray - B-tech writer and materials engineer in the real world) real world lasers compared to B-techs are wet firecrackers. Further more the ABL was a chemical laser taking up an entire 747 (lit massive, the laser element was six SUVs sized and at lest 18 tons, and said to power a typical use house for an hour in a single 5 second shot), A B-tech laser is under 10 tons (to .25 tons) and is solid state!

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4. IG - An Arrow artillery missile can demolish a few buildings from several miles
IRL - An equivelent sized/ranged missile can carry a tactical nuclear warhead

true Arrow IVs are not all that powerfull, but your compairing an apple to an orange., if you want to talk big booms, B-tech in the fluff has mentioned Fusion powered hand grenades that can level city blocks (House laio source book page 8, also mentioned in much newer Hot spots Terra book)
Then theirs a novel that mentions 250kg of explosives creating a 5.2 earth quake (a 1kt nuke creats that)...

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5. IG - A plasma cannon does imense damage and heats up the target.
IRL - A plasma cannon burns through steel, Melts its target AND hits it like a ppc does in MW

IIRC Plasma weapon currently in the real world (at lest the ones we would take as plasma weapons) generally make pore weapons

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6. IG - LBX either fires a solid tank shell like slug or like lots of heavy shotgun slugs.
IRL - Chey Tac 50 cal fires an exploding round that can level a tank (can be carried by a person)

Why are you comparing apples to oranges, your comparing an automatic large caliber vehicle weapon to a large caliber hand held infantry weapon? And B-tech uses HEAP rounds, which use explosives by the way (AFAIK closest real world round is the Rufos), also the LBX cluster seems to be a proximity detonated round as the rounds are not effected by distance much like the modern AHEAD rounds.
Not to mention B-tech infantry can use explosive rifle ammo as well (see the RPG for that). Never mind that they also use "rail guns" and lasers.

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I know alot of people will say that in the battletech universe they have much better armour, like ferro-fiberous and reflective ect... But 'ferro-fiberous' just means (Fibre made of Iron) so basicly its wrapping your mech in suspension bridge cable. Also this already exists on some modern day tanks, and they still get blown to ****.
To be fare the modern day lasers is a bit larger than the battletech version. and as far as I know no IRL weapon can fire several hundred unarnium rounds a minute.(RAC)

Fero is not exactly Iron wrapping. B-tech armor is comprised of a steel layer backed by Boron nitride reinforced by a diamond weave, with Titanium playing structural support. Fero adds Diamond weave to the steel layer. And no it's not disolved into the steel, It's inbeded in the steel! Yeah figure out how to get "carbon" not to dissolve in Iron...
Here's a few back at you.
B-tech genetic engineering is good enough they made the horse which typicaly heats oats and hay, into one that only eats meat (Clan Hell's Horses mascot)!
B-tech fusion engines are absurdly efficient, capable of moving 2.5 million tons at 1G with only ~40 tons of regular hydrogen per day.
B-tech in 3025 had computers that required ~100 petabytes of storage capacity (literly mentioned over 100 billion books as a capacity), in the 3070s they had computers that had 100 Yottabytes of storage.
A single ton of petrochemicals can net a Fighter jet (conventional fighter with an ICE) an endurance of 320 minutes and a range of over 11,000km, never mind the ability for said fighter to accelerate at over 100 meters per second (best real world can do is about 15 meters per second). Also don’t mind that any Aerospace craft is a SSTO craft and once in orbit can easily reach the moon or further on only a few tons of hydrogen. Case point an Aerospace fighter can with it's 5 tons of fuel take off from the earth reach the moon and return back to the earth in under a day, and not need refueling.
B-tech prosthetic are good enough to effectively replace the real thing, so good in fact that one can have one no one would be the wiser, they also have viable implants for Ears, Eyes, Hearts, Lungs, Liver & Kidneys and possibly more. Not to mention they can also add one ore more extras to these "limbs", like Lasers or pistols or even micro radars (and make them not noticeable until it's to late)... In real life some of these are viable but not for long term use, and most are only prototypes at best.
B-tech has viable battlefield lasers for Infantry, vehicles and aircraft. As well as rail guns (well electromagnetic really). Not to mention Particle cannons and plasma based weapons. B-tech armor can stop cold a 250 kilogram slug traveling at hypersonic speeds (an M1 Abrams would be scrap metal with these kinds of energy).
Battletech has optical stealth armors as well for Infantry and battlemechs, as well as the more typical IR and EM stealth armors.
Lastly the average life expectancy in the IS is about 90 years, for many worlds though it's over 100, with worlds like Terra it's 150, even more impressive is that one can start a family at 90 years of age (the woman would be 90 by the way... -in real life it's a bit hard for a woman to have kids over the age of 50... and I do not mean adoption).

Edited by Nebfer, 26 January 2012 - 12:37 AM.

[Nebfer]

Dev909, on 24 January 2012 - 06:17 PM, said:

It's a game! What about dropships, jumpships and warships. They are a bit better than our space station, antiquated space shuttles and such...
Also there are no real ocean going vessels like aircraft carriers, cruisers etc. The 100 ton sub is a joke. Imagine a huge sub carrying nothing but arrow IV's sneaking up and working in conjunction with tag equipped mechs. you could really change the game but its just game play it the way that makes it fun!

B-tech dose have blue water combat ships like this and this and this...

Edited by Nebfer, 26 January 2012 - 12:46 AM.

[Arctic Fox]

Nebfer, on 26 January 2012 - 12:46 AM, said:

B-tech dose have blue water combat ships like this and this and this...

Not to mention this, which is exactly what he is talking about.

[TheRulesLawyer]

boogle, on 25 January 2012 - 08:36 AM, said:

In battlestar galactica they had faster than light travel and sentient robots while possessing (what we would consider to be) barbaric and ineffective medicine and used manually aimed ballistic weaponry.

This one at least was because the Cylons could potentially take over computerized systems.

[Solis Obscuri]

I'm amazed this thread is still open...