290 replies to this topic

[Kasiagora]

Guys. Relax. It's simple conversion. See, everyone agrees and is accepting of the simple fact that one C-Bill is worth 100 of whatever your local currency is now due to space-future inflation. Therefore 1 C-Bill is equal to one hundred dollars American, one hundred dollars Australian, one hundred pounds sterling, one hundred Francs, one hundred rubles, etc. Except for pesos and yen. It's worth a few quadrillion of those. This is undisputed fact because the C came from Rome, which is still largely influencing the Battletech universe as evidenced by the Centurion, Solaris 7, and the pleasure domes that are required on every jump ship to aid in warding off the space madness that can happen in the course of long duration interstellar travel. If you require a citation for the evidence of space madness, please cross reference Ren and Stimpy.

Now that that's out of the way! 1 ton in Battletech is equal to 100 tons/tonnes/long/short/sometimes-floating-on-water-tons which our current, simple minds can fathom. Nowadays we know that the Atlas actually weighs 10,000 tons, but in the 80s people couldn't imagine that amount of weight so they made the same conversion of weight as they had used for money. They left the C off as a typo at first, but rather than correct it in that one instance, they went through and deleted the C from all subsequent tonnages. It was bad editing. Now, the reason why 10,000 mechs can exist on such relatively small feet without sinking in enough to seriously hamper movement or cause sliding on any sort of incline is because in the Fasa offices there was a game called Shadowrun. And elves and dwarves technomanced it to work that way and then they street smaurai'd out of there before people could spot them. Actually, a few people did spot them, but they got Katana'd and Uzi'd to death. The only mech that did not get techno-magicked is the 3,000 ton Urbanmech. That's why it's so slow.

[Kiriko]

Kasiagora, on 14 June 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

See, everyone agrees and is accepting of the simple fact that one C-Bill is worth 100 of whatever your local currency is now due to space-future inflation. Therefore 1 C-Bill is equal to one hundred dollars American,

I refuse to relax.
Also, because I found this out during another argument I had over on the MWLL forums:

MW2 1641, pg144 Comstar Bills (C-Bills):
"A C-Bill has approximately the same purchasing power as five U.S. dollars from the year 1991."

So 1C-Bill is the same as ~$8.50 in 2012.

[GHQCommander]

Boymonkey, on 13 June 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

Now I can't find any info on how tall an Atlas is but looking at the videos etc I reckon they are pretty big so it got me thinking that an atlas should weigh more than 100 tons, I mean if you look at tanks for example a Tiger that weighs 56 tons and would look small next to a Atlas so surely they should weigh much much more.
Sorry for the boring topic it's just grating on my mind Oh and typing this passes a few min's to get me closer to playing

I agree. Even with holo and special metals. They would be about 150 tons.

I remember from my short spell in the army being told that challenger tanks weigh about 60 tons. Is a challenger 2 tank not about the size of a mech leg?

OK this is strange. I was replying to a thread about Mech weight, then after posting, I see the post above my own is going on about c-bills plus conversion to real currency

[Nik Van Rhijn]

One of the most interesting threads for a while - shows how boring the forums have got. Did the same maths nearly 40 years ago and decided, like much else in the BT univers it was simply Battletechnology. Which bears a passing resemblance only to RL technology.
It's a case of accept and enjoy until enough time passes for us to pilot our unfeasible robots in the new game

[Pun Pundit]

So here's a thought for those of you who argue that a 'mech will fill with water to be able to submerge despite its low density:
When you strip the armor off a 'mech section, submerging that section disables the 'mech. This implies that the armor is keeping the water away from the internal structure of the 'mech.

A lot of handwaving and not paying attention to the man behind the curtain is neccessary to make Battlemechs work. Applying physics to Battletech is like applying economics to World of Warcraft - it doesn't really work and nobody is happy with the resulting discussion. (How can the arable land supply enough food to feed the population? It can't. What about mage biscuits, they are free and infinite? Then why are there farms? etc.)

[Mechteric]

i think the 20 to 100 scale is mostly there to make the game easier to play. However if you can imagine that perhaps armor and internal components are much lighter yet just as durable 1000 years in the future, it wouldn't take much to see how it compares to modern day tank weights.

[Rot Wulf]

Kasiagora, on 14 June 2012 - 12:36 AM, said:

Guys. Relax. It's simple conversion. See, everyone agrees and is accepting of the simple fact that one C-Bill is worth 100 of whatever your local currency is now due to space-future inflation. Therefore 1 C-Bill is equal to one hundred dollars American, one hundred dollars Australian, one hundred pounds sterling, one hundred Francs, one hundred rubles, etc. Except for pesos and yen. It's worth a few quadrillion of those. This is undisputed fact because the C came from Rome, which is still largely influencing the Battletech universe as evidenced by the Centurion, Solaris 7, and the pleasure domes that are required on every jump ship to aid in warding off the space madness that can happen in the course of long duration interstellar travel. If you require a citation for the evidence of space madness, please cross reference Ren and Stimpy.

Now that that's out of the way! 1 ton in Battletech is equal to 100 tons/tonnes/long/short/sometimes-floating-on-water-tons which our current, simple minds can fathom. Nowadays we know that the Atlas actually weighs 10,000 tons, but in the 80s people couldn't imagine that amount of weight so they made the same conversion of weight as they had used for money. They left the C off as a typo at first, but rather than correct it in that one instance, they went through and deleted the C from all subsequent tonnages. It was bad editing. Now, the reason why 10,000 mechs can exist on such relatively small feet without sinking in enough to seriously hamper movement or cause sliding on any sort of incline is because in the Fasa offices there was a game called Shadowrun. And elves and dwarves technomanced it to work that way and then they street smaurai'd out of there before people could spot them. Actually, a few people did spot them, but they got Katana'd and Uzi'd to death. The only mech that did not get techno-magicked is the 3,000 ton Urbanmech. That's why it's so slow.

The C in C-bills is Comstar. There are other house currencies in the TT/RP games. C-Bills were a universal currency as Comstar was everywhere and Comstar offices would change the C-bills into Other currencies which made it the ideal currency. The C had nothing to do with 100.

Edited by Rot Wulf, 14 June 2012 - 07:38 AM.

[Kosomok]

Battlemechs, as presented, would be fairly ineffective war machines--too many design issues and the actual technologies involved WRT weaponry and defense (armor, ECM, sensors) are basically behind contemporary systems--all of that is irrelevent to the game(s) because we are talking about using cool giant robots to blow stuff up... actually they do not even qualify as robots because they are not autonomous, they need a pilot. They are essentially vehicles or (generously) exoskeletons or suits.

I like the idea of the tonnage class of the mech representing load capacity rather than vehicle mass. It makes the most logical sense, despite what the tech manuals or tech readouts say.

In order to build a mech, you would basically have to disregard most of the info provided in the tech manuals/readouts. As is the case with most sci-fi productions, the people who put this stuff together have limited understandings of material science or physics or of how military systems actually work. I enjoy John Ringo's Posleen war stories,for example, but his tech solutions and the tactics evolving from them make little or no sense. They do make for good stories though... and this stuff comes from a guy who is ex-military, who chould know a little bit about the technology and tactics.

A "true" mech would probably look very little like what we see in BT or MW and the weapon loadouts would likely be much different.... the tactics certainly would be. Far too many shot traps and perpendicular surfaces in most mech designs and exposed cockpits are a definite no-no... technologies exist that would limit pilot exposure and provide superior sensing ability... even something as simple as the periscope, which is used on most existing AFV designs.

I think that the myomer technolgy was a great idea for positing propulsion with reduced power consumption and weigh--a system similar to the purported technology would be necessary to make the mech concept work--all you need are the "muscles", an energy system for them, and a control system. The actual design of the system would be relatively simple as it could be based upon existing biological models... they system could even be fully biological, meaning that the muscles could be capable of growth and strengthening over time and of a degree of self-repair.

Most of the in-game weapon ranges are badly considered. Contemporary systems far outrange them and possess more destructive capability.

In the end, however, its a cool concept and a cool game, screw the science.

[Solis Obscuri]

Kartr, on 13 June 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

Heh see its all nonsense designed to make a better game! That's my whole point!! None of it (even the masses) was designed to be plausible or make sense except in the broadest of possible ways and only if you don't think about it. Its all just a little bit of handwavium designed to make things that help the game feel right.

And more to the point, it's designed to make the game fairly simple to learn and play. I could pretty easily revamp the ruleset to factor in accuracy and damage fall-offs due to simplified ballistics models and atmospheric effects on beam diffusion, variable critical spacing based on 'mech size and basic layout, different allocation schemes for armor (calculated strength based on simplified densities and surface area), propulsion based on myomer distributions as well as fusion engines, differing power allocations (you really think you can run while firing all those PPCs?), exponential heating/cooling curve charts, etc, etc. but I'd have to pack a few slide rules and a lot of percentile dice into the starter kit, and it wouldn't necessarily be a more enjoyable game. I do appreciate the "fluff" efforts to invent technological evolutions that support the basic game mechanics, though, they're pretty fun and well thought-out.

[Kasiagora]

Thanks guys. I actually learned something here today.

[Sierra19]

Ok, I'll have to throw my usual response in here from my TT days: Don't go and try to destroy my sci-fi fantasy world with things like facts! The people who originally designed the game weren't engineers and physics majors, they were a bunch of guys who said "let's make a game where we can battle each other in big, giant, stompy robots!"

[Kodiak Jorgensson]

Boymonkey, on 13 June 2012 - 02:37 PM, said:

Now I can't find any info on how tall an Atlas is but looking at the videos etc I reckon they are pretty big so it got me thinking that an atlas should weigh more than 100 tons, I mean if you look at tanks for example a Tiger that weighs 56 tons and would look small next to a Atlas so surely they should weigh much much more.
Sorry for the boring topic it's just grating on my mind Oh and typing this passes a few min's to get me closer to playing

not 100% but going off what the measurements i have seen from omni mech pics and the MW3 tech manual the atlas would be arround 17 meters tall

[Banshee Bullet]

Frostiken, on 13 June 2012 - 02:42 PM, said:

What I don't understand is how mechs function on worlds with more than 1g. Is there anything in the lore that ever describes a high-gravity world that basically causes heavier mechs to crumple under their own weight?

Also, jumpjets. Jumpjets put mechs under a lot of acceleration - I honestly can't picture a heavyweight mech activating the jumpjets and dealing with the high G-forces from acceleration and landing without breaking things.

Under a mere 2g, which you'd experience after simply falling 20 meters, your Archer weighs 140 tons o_O

Naturally there'd be some wiggle-room in the 'maximum weight' of a frame just to prevent this, but realistically why are mechs limited to x tons of weapons then? Even aircraft can overload themselves but it means they can't pull as many Gs, so wouldn't a mech on a high-gravity world have to go out missing a lot of weapons, and shouldn't they be able to overload the frame on a low-gravity world?

The mind boggles.

I wanted to know this too, after all, mechs fight on many different worlds. Here's what I was told in a nutshell: The tonnages in bt are not literal masses but more like a class system to categorize the mechs

If it was literal then on a 4g planet most of these mechs would just sink into the ground, if not buckle under their own weight.

Edited by Banshee Bullet, 14 June 2012 - 03:09 PM.

[Frostiken]

LordDeathStrike, on 13 June 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

people dont settle high G worlds, why? because you cant live on them. think about it, you can settle lower G areas like mars or the moon, but after a few years you couldnt go back to even a 1G world because the strain would be too much for your body.

on the surface of a 5G world a 200 pound man would weigh 1000 pounds and would be completely unable to move, and his organs would be under incredible strain. hence no mech pilot would be there either. mechs fight between 0G and 2G at most gravity would be a sain and solid theory. and yes at full 2 G an atlas would struggle to move, missiles and guns ranges would be cut in half, the pilot wouldnt be comfortable, but theres likely not much to fight over on a world where it would be hard to just live on the surface of let alone work and play.

At the same time, why in all these Mech games are we always fighting over tiny collections of farms and the peasants who work there? An extremely dense planet might be too extreme an environment for long-term life, but I don't think healthy humans would find a 2G world completely unlivable, but that doesn't mean there can't be mining operations and the like. What if we only go as far as 1.5G? 1.5G would be perfectly livable for all but the infirm and overweight.

[Tterrag]

I'm not sure exactly but if I'm not mistaken the material that mechs are made of is a type of plastic steel fiber blend so I'm not sure how much the material itself weighs but I imagine it would be designed to be structural sound and light weight especially since your average light mech is larger than a tank but weighs less correct me if I'm wrong tho

[Banshee Bullet]

actually habitable planets in the 1-5g range are probably not at all uncommon. They would be tough for humans to live casually on, but that in no way means they would be devoid of life and certainly not natural resources. The best candidate for a habitable exoplanet is actually a little over 3g if memory serves.

[MadDokGrotsnik]

I've always known the tonnage system for expressing the total weight is a load of bunk. 100 tons for a Atlas total I call BS. I have always been of the opinion that it is the total weight that superstructure (skeleton and myomer muscles) can handle without breaking itself.

[Solis Obscuri]

Kiriko, on 14 June 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

MW2 1641, pg144 Comstar Bills (C-Bills):
"A C-Bill has approximately the same purchasing power as five U.S. dollars from the year 1991."

So 1C-Bill is the same as ~$8.50 in 2012.

****, that's depressing...

[firefox117]

tenderloving, on 13 June 2012 - 04:31 PM, said:

You guys keep comparing these things to tanks in weight, which is just wrong. They are constructed more like aircraft. They are also being made in the 31st century. Think about the strength-to-weight ratio of metals today versus the metals used in the 19th century. Expand that for a couple thousand years.

EDMW CSN, on 13 June 2012 - 07:38 PM, said:

The Atlas internal structure only weighs 10 tons.
With that mere 10 tons, it can carry a 19 ton reactor, 19 tons of armor, 10 extra heatsinks (10 tons) and 36 tons of weapons.

The remaining 6 goes to gyro, cockpit, life support and sensors.
That is some mighty fine engineering there.

Now, I like these aircraft quotes. I'm a fan of MW, but never got into the technical aspects of it. But I figure it this way, since I know aircraft. If you are basing the design of a mech to aircraft, then ther is something really wrong with your numbers. A aircraft has 3 weights to it:

1: empty weight or what it weighs with nothing loaded. I.E. fuel, weapons, pilot. But this is what it weighs with equipment.

2: loaded weight. What it weighs with fuel and usually a standard fighting configuration.

3: maximum takeoff weight. Basically how much can you add to the plane and still fly.

So, an atlas empty weight would be, according to EDMW would be 64 tons with base weight, armor, equipment and engine. Since there is no fuel to add, it's loaded weight would be 100 tons (weapons only).

Now, to compare. An F-18 super hornet weighs 14.5 tons empty. Loaded it weighs 21.3 tons and it's maximum weight is 30 tons. That basically means there is a 9 ton weight difference between loaded and maximum weight, and doubled that of empty weight.

Now, look at it like this. Loaded weight is 21 tons with fuel, .3 tons of weapons (gives you 21.3 tons) From loaded to maximum, you're adding an additional 8.7 tons of weapons.

So, what does that mean if we compare a mech to a jet. Well, the maximum weight an Atlas should be is 128 tons (64+64, to be simple just double empty weight). From loaded weight to a maximum weight, that means I should be able to carry an addition 28 tons of weapons. So in theory, based off of the aircraft reference, I should be able to carry a lot more then I already am, and still be able to function, which would be nice. Just figured I'd throw that one in.

[GrizzlyViking]

After considerable thought on the issue, I think the answer is that an Atlas is usually over 100 tons after holidays that include large holiday meals with family and friends. However, after working out at the gym and jogging regularly the Atlas can get back to it's ideal BMI at 100 tons.

Edited by GrizzlyViking, 14 June 2012 - 07:02 PM.