67 replies to this topic

[Paladin1]

infinite xaer0, on 02 June 2012 - 08:42 AM, said:

well, battlemech armor is by all means lighter than modern composite armor, but I don't think there's any indication that it's that much more resilient. and besides, composite armor is only really effective at stopping shaped charge warheads, it doesn't do jack **** against APFSDS KE penetrator rounds. Modern MBT not only sport a shell of composite armor, but also plates of "heavy armor", which are made of dense composite materials specifically designed to stop KE penetrators. last time I checked, I don't think mechs have any "heavy armor", meaning they would be extremely vulnerable to KE rounds.

Oddly enough, there is an indication of how much more resilient BTU armor is than standard armor. The modern 120mm cannon is most closely modeled in the BTU by the Medium Rifle (Cannon), which does 3 points of damage to normal armor per strike. The Autocannon/10, by comparison, is most often listed as being between 80mm and 120mm in caliber, does 10 points of damage per strike. I'd say that puts a little more light on how heavily armored the designs in the BTU are compared to modern weapon systems.

[TheMadTypist]

I don't know how earth would fare against Mechwarrior invaders. We'd probably win eventually, but the initial battles would cost us while we learned what could properly kill a 'mech.

On the original topic- if I remember correctly from Mechwarrior 2, the little lore wall-o-text-blurbs they give before and after the last mission detail the final battle between the Jade Falcon and Wolf clans as being decided by aerospace fighters. Namely, mercenary Kell Hound fighters tied up the Falcon's air cover, while the wolf fighters strafed the everliving hell out of the Falcon's ground forces. When the last Falcon aircraft fell and the Wolf 'mechs advanced, all they found were piles of burning wreckage with the surviving falcon mechwarriors huddled around the flames for warmth.

So aircraft definitely remain a threat to battlemechs in the lore, even if not the games themselves.

Edited by TheMadTypist, 02 June 2012 - 09:01 AM.

[Paladin1]

Madcat75, on 02 June 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

With regards to if modern day Earth could withstand a Mech assault, people seem to forget we have an abundance of Nuclear weapons, I don't mean the city busting ICBM's I am talking about the Tactical Nukes, they would be powerfull enough to wipe out a lance or 2 but not cause a Nuclear winter, also if we used a Neutron Bomb that could kill the Mech pilots and leave the Mechs in operational condition.

I haven't forgotten about those, I just didn't mention them. If you want to include WMDs, remember those Warships that are out there in the BTU? I'll see your TacNukes and raise you an Ortillery barrage.

TheMadTypist, on 02 June 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

I don't know how earth would fare against Mechwarrior invaders. We'd probably win eventually, but the initial battles would cost us while we learned what could properly kill a 'mech.

On the original topic- if I remember correctly from Mechwarrior 2, the little lore wall-o-text-blurbs they give before and after the last mission detail the final battle between the Jade Falcon and Wolf clans as being decided by aerospace fighters. Namely, mercenary Kell Hound fighters tied up the Falcon's air cover, while the wolf fighters strafed the everliving hell out of the Falcon's ground forces. When the last Falcon aircraft fell and the Wolf 'mechs advanced, all they found were piles of burning wreckage with the surviving falcon mechwarriors huddled around the flames for warmth.

So aircraft definitely remain a threat to battlemechs in the lore, even if not the games themselves.

Your memory serves you correctly, that's exactly what happened at the end of the Falcon / Wolf war.

[Suicidal Idiot]

We really start to bump up against some real world physics when discussing aerospace vs mechs. Modern tanks vs planes is a direct analog to the discussion. An M1A2 Abrams tank is a 69 ton mech. An A-10 is 14.5 tons empty and 20.5 tons fully loaded. Howitzers and the like require cargo planes to haul them around. See the AC-130 Spectre. It's a good old C-130 cargo plane toting guns. Great until the anti-air stuff shows up. Then, it's toast.

The A-10 was designed to be a tank (mech) killer, which it does extremely well. The problem is armor. For an airplane, it is ludicrously armored. Compared to a tank, it's almost naked. It's just takes too much power to get armor to fly. If it weren't, the M1A2 tank would come with wings and a pilot. The A-10's are so effective against tanks because tanks aren't designed to fight them.

The idea that aerospace fighters would survive impacts from laser shots capable of destroying mechs is insane. Physics says that airplanes and spaceships have to be are more fragile than tanks. And with lasers, you have speed of light weaponry. You can't dodge a laser beam. Anything in your sights when you pull the trigger is hit.

The aero stuff in battletech was dreamed up to survive a hit or two against mechs, otherwise it would be no fun to play. In real world terms, however, the single hit survivability means that they have to be unrealistically tough.

Unfortunately, the designers of BattleTech really didn't understand physics that well. A glaring example is the Gauss Rifle. Standard slugs are 250 lbs each. Heavy slugs are 800 lbs each. "The heavy projectile fired by the rifle experiences a significant loss of velocity, so it is weaker at greater distances." Heavy projectiles are actually more stable and go farther, since air resistance is all that's slowing them down.

But hey, it's a game, and the entire idea is to get away from reality for a bit.

[CaveMan]

Orzorn, on 02 June 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

Remember, that is 60 guaranteed damage, from ONE aerospace fighter

That word, "guaranteed". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Unless they've substantially altered the rules, it's actually quite difficult to get all your bombs to land on target. The odds are much closer to half.

[JazzySteel]

Madcat75, on 02 June 2012 - 08:48 AM, said:

With regards to if modern day Earth could withstand a Mech assault, people seem to forget we have an abundance of Nuclear weapons, I don't mean the city busting ICBM's I am talking about the Tactical Nukes, they would be powerfull enough to wipe out a lance or 2 but not cause a Nuclear winter, also if we used a Neutron Bomb that could kill the Mech pilots and leave the Mechs in operational condition.

Think of what we could build if we salvaged the Technology in a single lance of mechs....

[CaveMan]

Suicidal *****, on 02 June 2012 - 09:16 AM, said:

The idea that aerospace fighters would survive impacts from laser shots capable of destroying mechs is insane. Physics says that airplanes and spaceships have to be are more fragile than tanks. And with lasers, you have speed of light weaponry. You can't dodge a laser beam. Anything in your sights when you pull the trigger is hit.

For conventional fighters, this is more or less true. Aerospace fighters though are basically blocks of armor strapped to huge rockets, that's shaped enough like an airplane that it can change direction. Even a relatively slow aerospace fighter can have 3G of acceleration. That's 150 tons of thrust for a 50T fighter. They're more than capable of mounting the armor.

[Paladin1]

CaveMan, on 02 June 2012 - 09:26 AM, said:

That word, "guaranteed". I don't think it means what you think it means.

Unless they've substantially altered the rules, it's actually quite difficult to get all your bombs to land on target. The odds are much closer to half.

Depends on how you deliver them, but dive bombing is usually fairly accurate. It's not a guarantee, but it's not nearly as hard to hit in a DB attack as it is in a level bombing run or a Nape-of-the-Earth run.

[Scrape]

I think that in the lore mechs are the centerpiece of battle because of mentality. Think of our own history. Our air forces in the US were not considered to be an offensive weapon until 1991 and desert storm. Desert storm was significant in showing how and air led battle was devastating. There were many commanders who thought of this during WWII, but it was not accepted enough to become doctrine. Until then our air forces were considered support units, designed to augment ground forces. Ground forces armored infantry was the center piece of war because at the end of the day, no matter how many bombs you have on an aircraft station, aircraft can not capture anything. Nor can they hold or conquer a location. Boots on the ground was the de facto victory line. I'm not stating fact, but describing the mentality.

Going back to Desert Storm. For the first time in world history an air force can be credited with winning a war. No one had ever used aircraft as the centerpiece of war with the army as support! The effect was devastating and hit so hard and swift that people didn't understand the Iraq used to have a real military. A sizable force, but they were dealt with like children using a strategic and tactical doctrine no one ever used before.

The lore always appeared to me as what if the army hardliners never lost their mentality or influence over the battlefield? Fighters and bombers advanced, but as support units to the mighty mechanized army. Tanks evolve into mechs. The M1Abrams is a beast of a tank, but we aren't putting a lot of money into building something new. R&D is there but not a push like there is in aircraft weapon systems and air frames. The F-15 has never lost a dogfight, we could simply build new ones, but we build the F-22. Further still we look to the F-35. Weapon systems/delivery and bombs have advanced very fast in the last 20 years.

The tank...not so much.

What happens when our mentality of dominating the air is flipped to dominating the ground? Enter the Battlemech.

And the lovely argument of weather an invading force of mechs would win? I don't think so. Our air dominance would lead us to victory. Mech armor may be thick, but our weapons can penetrate it. ASF units vs the worlds airforces? Tough battle, but we would win. We've worked out air combat in ways they haven't thought of yet.

[CaveMan]

Scrape, on 02 June 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

And the lovely argument of weather an invading force of mechs would win? I don't think so. Our air dominance would lead us to victory. Mech armor may be thick, but our weapons can penetrate it. ASF units vs the worlds airforces? Tough battle, but we would win. We've worked out air combat in ways they haven't thought of yet.

One WarShip vs Earth. They win. Round two, they win. Round three, they win... What are you going to do, launch ICBMs at them? Tough luck, even the largest WarShips can maneuver at 1.5G or more and keep that up for weeks. So once you've detonated all your nukes in upper atmosphere and missed, wiping out your own electrical grid with EMPs, they just Turtle Bay every major city on the planet until you surrender.

[Paladin1]

Scrape, on 02 June 2012 - 09:40 AM, said:

I think that in the lore mechs are the centerpiece of battle because of mentality. Think of our own history. Our air forces in the US were not considered to be an offensive weapon until 1991 and desert storm.

The rest of your post just lost all credibility, and SAC would like to have a word with you. The US Military has realized that air power was an offensive weapon all the way back to before World War II and treated it that way.

[Scrape]

Paladin1, on 02 June 2012 - 09:48 AM, said:

The rest of your post just lost all credibility, and SAC would like to have a word with you. The US Military has realized that air power was an offensive weapon all the way back to before World War II and treated it that way.

Yes I understand what SAC was, but what it was not is a tactical employment of combined forces with the airforce in the front. I am talking of the entire battlefield, not one aspect. You could argue that carpet bombing factories in WWII was using B-17s as offensive weapons, but you'd be missing the big picture of my argument.

CaveMan, on 02 June 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

One WarShip vs Earth. They win. Round two, they win. Round three, they win... What are you going to do, launch ICBMs at them? Tough luck, even the largest WarShips can maneuver at 1.5G or more and keep that up for weeks. So once you've detonated all your nukes in upper atmosphere and missed, wiping out your own electrical grid with EMPs, they just Turtle Bay every major city on the planet until you surrender.

1.5G isn't really that quick when compared to a missile. ICBMs are not the only missile that can target objects in outer space, and missing with a nuke in space is damn hard to do.

Edited by Scrape, 02 June 2012 - 10:12 AM.

[Suicidal Idiot]

Scrape, on 02 June 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

Yes I understand what SAC was, but what it was not is a tactical employment of combined forces with the airforce in the front. I am talking of the entire battlefield, not one aspect. You could argue that carpet bombing factories in WWII was using B-17s as offensive weapons, but you'd be missing the big picture of my argument.

Germany lost WW2 because "When [he who must not be named] built Fortress Europe, he forgot to put a roof on it." Air Marshal Goering said he knew it was all over when he saw P-51's over Berlin.

You are accurate about capturing and holding, but military doctrine since WWII has been about air power.

Pearl Harbor was the slap in the face of air power detractors. What you never hear, though, is that the US brass all realized instantly that, had they instead bombed Schofield Barracks, the POL (Petroleum, Oil, Lubricants) facility, the War of the Pacific would have ended right there for the U.S. WW2 was all about air power. That's why the Navy has more planes than the Air Force.

Air power ended Japan with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Which was lucky for them, or they'd have lost at least a few million defending the islands.

Not much in Korea, because that, and Viet Nam were all about the "Holding" part, which planes don't do. The entire cold war, however, was about air power.

Air power nowadays is so destructive that governments are afraid to use it, because it will get nasty in a hurry.

As Iran is about to learn.

Scrape, on 02 June 2012 - 10:07 AM, said:

1.5G isn't really that quick when compared to a missile. ICBMs are not the only missile that can target objects in outer space, and missing with a nuke in space is damn hard to do.

And ICBM's can't target objects in space. They don't go that high. They have static ground targets programmed in, and those targets don't move. At all. The guidance systems aren't currently designed to hit space targets. And anything in orbit is moving. The ISS is moving a bit over 7.5 km/sec. That means, if your static targeted launch of an ICBM is off by just one second, your LEO target is almost 5 miles away from where you thought it was.

The "B" in ICBM stands for Ballistic. The missile burns up all it's fuel as fast as it can, then coasts, or goes ballistic, for the rest of the trip. No fuel = no manouvering. When the dropship sees the missile rising, all it has to do is vector in any direction, and it will be a long way away by the time the warhead arrives.

And nukes in space don't do anywhere near as much in space as they do on earth, because all you have is the light and EM radiation from the flash. No shockwaves in space, because there's no mass to push. No atmosphere for the overpressure wave to propagate through. No hellaciously hot blast of firey air, flaming and molten debris, and no atmosphere to create the firestorm. And dropships are already armored against armor penetrating lasers, so bright flashes of light aren't that bothersome.

Meanwhile...
The dropships could level cities, just by picking up rocks from the moon and dropping them. Robert Heinlein, in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" calculated the effects of 200 ton rocks dropping from lunar orbit. Basically, they would act like slightly smaller than Hiroshima atomics, and would be unstoppable. In fact, the most destructive use of an Atlas would just be to drop it from orbit. Although rocks would work just as well.

And the above are just using orbital velocities. Jump ships are static with respect to planets. If you were to leave rocks just sitting in front of the earth's orbit, impact velocity goes from 11.2 km/sec to 29 km/sec.
Another extremely good book talking about orbital bombardment is "Live Free or Die" by John Ringo.

[Ratzap]

In TT we used to play combined forced matches, ie find 2 units with enough players of each type of craft then start play with aerotech (I flew a Thunderbird TR-14). That decided who had air superiority and if the winning side had anything left flight worthy they were allowed a couple of passes over the map once the mechs deployed.
On the map deployment the mechs went in, each side set up any arties they had along, hovers and choppers deployed finally followed by infantry. Great fun all round

I still remember chasing one Davion chapters ac/20 modified centurion ("we rolled it far and square", hmmm sure and it happened to belong to the chapter leader) around the map with Long Tom shells. A chapter mate was playing a hover that was about dead so we moved it into running distance of the centurion knowing he wouldn't resist giving it a kick. Then in true Liao style I dropped a Long Tom round on top of the hover, sure enough the cent pilot had taken the bait - pop went his ammo amidst much wailing and gnashing of teeth

Back on topic, I hope we get more than just mechs over the long term as it makes the whole thing more fun.

[tynaiden]

Just to shore up the orbital bombardment overpowering our modern defenses:
http://en.wikipedia....tic_bombardment
Yes wiki is not a end-all but the info here is more or less accurate and good for a TL;DR kind of synopsis.

OT:
Mixed forces were usually a staple for TT games. It is the Mechwarrior branch of games that distilled the deepest core of Battletech so those valiant knights in shining armor could get their battle field heroics they wanted. Not that such a thing is bad, it just does not represent the whole of the Battletech universe in which even Aerospace and conventional ground vehicles are just as effective or more so for their roles.

As much as I would love a deeper universe of mixed forces ^Planetside2, we are almost all here for at least the stompy blasty 'mech-ness.

[wanderer]

Voodoo Circus, on 02 June 2012 - 12:51 AM, said:

I understand mechs have a all-terrain,fast deploiment, all purpouse and the ability to hold territory as infantary would compared to the type of warfare we know. But out of curiosity i would like to ask you guys familiar with the battletech lore why wouldnt such slow moving targets suffer greatly from any type of airboune menace such as fast-movers as they would put good effect on a mech target before they could even see the direction the attack was coming or even target the attacker.

does mechs have any way to garantee air superiority on their own or are they deployed only after air superiority is defined and used for territory conquest only?

In the Battletech universe, aerospace fighters do exist- but are vulnerable in the atmospheric interface, and indeed some 'Mechs are built for AA work. Hitting a control surface at supersonic speeds tends to make the flying bricks many aerospace fighters are turn into lithobraking lawn darts. That being said, air support is VERY effective- even conventional fighters can pull off a bombing run for serious damage, making most 'Mechs keep an eye on the sky, ready to swat air assets before they can deliver a lethal blow. VTOLs are also fairly common, but just can't protect themselves well- especially their rotors - which means they do have a sting, but one or two good hits will be a kill, even with something like an AC/2 (and specialty "flak" weapons like the LB-10X are deadly to almost anything that flies, as the cloud of submunitions is very, very good at tearing into flying units to hideous effect.)

[wanderer]

CaveMan, on 02 June 2012 - 05:51 AM, said:

Mainly because bombs are horrendously, comically nerfed in BattleTech.

A ton of SRM ammunition? 200 damage if it explodes. Autocannon ammo? 100 points in a ton. Machine gun ammo is 400! But a one-ton high-explosive bomb? Just 10 damage. You're literally better off dropping crates of SRM ammunition on your enemies as a fighter pilot.

Laser-guided bombs should make Mechwarriors crap their pants when fighters come on the scene. Instead they just kind of tickle.

Of course, if you can put that one ton of explosives inside the 'Mech and detonate it, I would posit that you'd deal a great deal more damage than the same one ton of explosives detonated where it isn't contained inside a unit. (Although I've always thought MG ammo doing that much is rather silly and only for the sake of simplicity.)

[wanderer]

Orzorn, on 02 June 2012 - 08:21 AM, said:

Noooooooot quite.

Here's why:
High Explosive Bombs do indeed do 10 points of damage. They also weigh 1 ton and take up one bomb slot.

Aircraft are given External Store Hardpoints, one for every 5 tons the aircraft weighs. That means that a heavy aerospace can gain as many as 20 free ordnance hardpoints...for free. Yes, there is a limiting rule thanks to reduction of safe thrust, but you can do some very, very mean things with even 6 or so HE bombs. Remember, that is 60 guaranteed damage, from ONE aerospace fighter. Get a swarm of these and its just downright malicious. So malicious in fact, that I've heard from many TT players that its considered a move only to be done in very poor sportsmanship, or when you just absolutely hate the other player and want them to suffer.

Generally, it's rude only if your opponent is stupid enough not to take his own aerospace assets and an appropriately sized map. Frequently, I consider it an object lesson in learning to play with more than your favorite giant robots.

Battletech is designed that no one unit is unstoppable. Aerospace is effective, but tends to be very finite and unsalvagable in atmosphere, meaning replacement costs tend to be a real pain- and although it's great for swatting high-value targets like 'Mechs, it's not nearly as nice when you're having to bomb some tanks instead and that Vedette guns you down with a lucky AC/5 burst to the wing. Plus, there's the whole problem with losing pilots left and right to suicidal bombing runs. In tactical terms, it's great being able to kamikaze 'Mechs. In strategic terms, it can be tragic- because expending your air cover on attack runs also means you have none left when the enemy brings in their own.

That is, fighters are freaking effective, but they're too valuable to squander in any logical sense. I used to run a Mechwarrior RPG campaign (not the videogame, Battletech has an RPG version of the rules). The PC's sicced their two aerospace fighters on the biggest bad guys, ending up in a mutual kill between a light fighter and a heavy 'Mech each time. Hey, that's what it's all about, right?

They then tried to escape with their loot when a larger force came in, and found that without fighters to keep the bad guys off, they didn't make it halfway to the jump point before the enemy's quartet of medium aerospace fighters had damaged their Dropship engines badly enough for the enemy Dropship to catch up with and finish the job. They didn't even kill one of the enemy fighters, though they swatted two hard enough to force them to return to their bays...but that wasn't enough.

Cue an embarassing capture, repatriation, and twice the trouble getting new fighter cover when people heard what they ordered the last bunch to do...which is why their unit's best-paid members became the fighter jocks and the PC's NEVER chucked them at ground assets again.

[wanderer]

Paladin1, on 02 June 2012 - 08:59 AM, said:

Oddly enough, there is an indication of how much more resilient BTU armor is than standard armor. The modern 120mm cannon is most closely modeled in the BTU by the Medium Rifle (Cannon), which does 3 points of damage to normal armor per strike. The Autocannon/10, by comparison, is most often listed as being between 80mm and 120mm in caliber, does 10 points of damage per strike. I'd say that puts a little more light on how heavily armored the designs in the BTU are compared to modern weapon systems.

Battletech armor is effectively made of Handwavium by 21st-century science- it was considered one of the greatest defensive advancements of the time when built- incredibly light, yet capable of defeating conventional firepower almost effortlessly. 20th-century armor is what Battletech considers maxing at "BAR 7"- that is, a weapon capable of dealing 8 or more damage in a single shot will auto-critical the location's internals.

(The large laser was considered a near-perfect main gun as a result until the first primitive-but-still-effective versions of Battlemech (and now vehicles and even power armor) armor came to be.)

[mawg]

Air assetts were at high risk with many fixed base and space based sensors and weapons platforms. As any incursion into enemy airspace was quickly met and defeated by fixed AA missles, beam, and kinetic weapons both ground mounted and mech mounted. Neuromancer mechs with their array of sensor systems aboard and those field deployed, enhanced battlefield links and integration dealt with most air assetts swiftly. Overall the high flyers were easy pickings even with stealth and EM shielding as sensor platforms utilizing passive EM field distoration tracking systems were employed. This technology utilizing the disturbance of EM emmissions from both natural and artificial sources allowed passive tracking to be refined such that the Neuro's were a complete net through which aero assetts could not fly undetected. EM field disturbance, audio, airseismic all made the aero attacks risky business. Speed was he only real difficulty to overcome..