290 replies to this topic

[Xaxius Colnier]

why are we arguing about the weight of an atlas when we should be arguing about the weight of ammo i mean seriously how is 200 rounds 1 ton of ammo for an mg i mean even with it being 20mm ammo which is technicaly a cannon by todays standards 200 rounds is only about 125 pounds

Edited by Xaxius Colnier, 27 June 2012 - 04:00 AM.

[Antagonist]

Eh, at some point additional weight will just encumber your vehicle. It ceases to be a problem of just how powerful an engine you put in, but how much weight the ground and roads it's supposed to travel on can take.

I've personally been involved in one TPz Fuchs (you might know it as the M93 Fox, the US military's derivative) getting stuck twice in one day in grassland. It weighs less than 17 tons, the second time we had to wait for a day to get the winch - the hull had sucked itself stuck due to contact with the ground.

[Phasics]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 03:58 AM, said:

why are we arguing about the weight of an atlas when we should be arguing about the weight of ammo i mean seriously how is 200 rounds 1 ton of ammo for an mg i mean even with it being 20mm ammo which is technicaly a cannon by todays standards 200 rounds is only about 125 pounds

If they can damage a mech they'd either need to be bigger than 20mm, or they'd be ultra high velocity and would weigh more from having a larger explosive.

[RedDragon]

It's 200 shots, not rounds. Each shot can consist of any amount of individual bullets.
Look at it this way: In BT a round takes 10 seconds. A MG wouldn't be a MG if it fired only once in 10 seconds, would it? If you fire continuously, all the bullets fired within 10 seconds amount to 1 shot of those 200, and in 10 seconds you can fire A LOT of bullets, even at today's standards.

[Romulus Stahl]

RedDragon, on 27 June 2012 - 04:04 AM, said:

It's 200 shots, not rounds. Each shot can consist of any amount of individual bullets.
Look at it this way: In BT a round takes 10 seconds. A MG wouldn't be a MG if it fired only once in 10 seconds, would it? If you fire continuously, all the bullets fired within 10 seconds amount to 1 shot of those 200, and in 10 seconds you can fire A LOT of bullets, even at today's standards.

In present day English
Round = one unit of ammunition (projectile,shell,charge,primer), auf Deutsch Patrone

Edited by Romulus Stahl, 27 June 2012 - 04:23 AM.

[Xaxius Colnier]

Phasics, on 27 June 2012 - 04:03 AM, said:

If they can damage a mech they'd either need to be bigger than 20mm, or they'd be ultra high velocity and would weigh more from having a larger explosive.

no they are 20mm according to sarna and i dont know if you were aware of what an A-10's Vulcan gun can do but it fires 20mm depleted uranium high explosive armor piercing rounds, and it can peel open a tank like it was a tin can.

RedDragon, on 27 June 2012 - 04:04 AM, said:

It's 200 shots, not rounds. Each shot can consist of any amount of individual bullets.
Look at it this way: In BT a round takes 10 seconds. A MG wouldn't be a MG if it fired only once in 10 seconds, would it? If you fire continuously, all the bullets fired within 10 seconds amount to 1 shot of those 200, and in 10 seconds you can fire A LOT of bullets, even at today's standards.

ok so then by your statement the machine gun in BT can fire continuously for 33.3 min off 1 ton of ammo so i can take only 1 ton of ammo and fire 15 machine guns for approxamately 2 min of continuous fire yet i dont see that happening in game...

Edited by Xaxius Colnier, 27 June 2012 - 04:31 AM.

[RedDragon]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 04:22 AM, said:

ok so then by your statement the machine gun in bt can fire continuously for 33.3 min off 1 ton of ammo so i can take only 1 ton of ammo and fire 15 machine guns for approxamately 2 min of continuous fire yet i dont see that happening in game...

Going strictly by TT-standards, yes, that would be the case. But I guess the designers had longer intervals of cool-down in mind, meaning that 1 shot (of 200) is one burst of fire in 10 seconds (or 2 smaller bursts, whatever). I think we can safely assume that at least 10 to 100 individual rounds would be fired in such a burst.

Btw. the MG ammo is a bad example for anything game related. the rules for its ammo have been broken from the start. In tabletop, most people even dropped the ammo when the game started, because there is no way you could spend that 200 shots in a single game and if the enemy hit your ammo, it would deal a ridiculous amount of damage to your mech (400 points of damage for a fully loaded MG ammo bin, enough to kill every mech instantly).
That's why there are rules (i.e. rapid-fire mode) to increase the effectiveness and ammo-consumption of the MG (rolling 1D6 to determine heat and damage, while the MG consumes 3x that value on ammunition).

[Xaxius Colnier]

RedDragon, on 27 June 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

Going strictly by TT-standards, yes, that would be the case. But I guess the designers had longer intervals of cool-down in mind, meaning that 1 shot (of 200) is one burst of fire in 10 seconds (or 2 smaller bursts, whatever). I think we can safely assume that at least 10 to 100 individual rounds would be fired in such a burst.

Btw. the MG ammo is a bad example for anything game related. the rules for its ammo have been broken from the start. In tabletop, most people even dropped the ammo when the game started, because there is no way you could spend that 200 shots in a single game and if the enemy hit your ammo, it would deal a ridiculous amount of damage to your mech (400 points of damage for a fully loaded MG ammo bin, enough to kill every mech instantly).
That's why there are rules (i.e. rapid-fire mode) to increase the effectiveness and ammo-consumption of the MG (rolling 1D6 to determine heat and damage, while the MG consumes 3x that value on ammunition).

im just saying that the game obviously dosent follow table top rules for its mg ammo consumption
and im pretty sure they arent gonna make it one shot every ten second

Edited by Xaxius Colnier, 27 June 2012 - 04:51 AM.

[Phasics]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 04:22 AM, said:

no they are 20mm according to sarna and i dont know if you were aware of what an A-10's Vulcan gun can do but it fires 20mm depleted uranium high explosive armor piercing rounds, and it can peel open a tank like it was a tin can.

cept your shooting a mech, not a tank how far does a uranium depleted shell penetrate endosteel, oh right there no sch thing as endo steel

Maybe the MG rounds are Neutron enriched and thus very heavy

see how trying to fit real world physics in a fiction with loose physics doesn't work

[Xaxius Colnier]

Phasics, on 27 June 2012 - 04:50 AM, said:

cept your shooting a mech, not a tank how far does a uranium depleted shell penetrate endosteel, oh right there no sch thing as endo steel

Maybe the MG rounds are Neutron enriched and thus very heavy

see how trying to fit real world physics in a fiction with loose physics doesn't work

EXACTLY!!! Which is why all the people trying to argue over mech weights is silly because NONE of the math makes sence they should stop trying to force it to.

Edited by Xaxius Colnier, 27 June 2012 - 04:58 AM.

[RedDragon]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 04:45 AM, said:

im just saying that the game obviously dosent follow table top rules for its mg ammo consumption
and im pretty sure they arent gonna make it one shot every ten second

Yes, but what I have seen of the ingame MG, it has 4000 rounds of ammo

Going by your "todays standards 200 rounds is only about 125 pounds", that would weight a bit over 1 ton, so what's the problem?

[Melcyna]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 04:22 AM, said:

no they are 20mm according to sarna and i dont know if you were aware of what an A-10's Vulcan gun can do but it fires 20mm depleted uranium high explosive armor piercing rounds, and it can peel open a tank like it was a tin can.

ok so then by your statement the machine gun in BT can fire continuously for 33.3 min off 1 ton of ammo so i can take only 1 ton of ammo and fire 15 machine guns for approxamately 2 min of continuous fire yet i dont see that happening in game...

Correction, A-10 does not carry Vulcan, it carry GAU-8 Avenger, that's the gatling gun that form the main armament of A-10 which is a 30mm gatling cannon not 20mm.

Vulcan is the name given to M61 20mm gatling cannon, but most ppl tend to get confused with them and apply the name vulcan to anything with gatling based operation at times.

In actuality however, neither 30mm shell or 20mm shell is capable of penetrating modern tank frontal armor, it is however sufficient to penetrate the roof armor of known MBT which are much thinner.

This however does not make much sense in the context with Battlemech because you are going to be firing it at his frontal armor... if you try to apply IRL logic to it, then the MG shells should be pinging off it's frontal armor, just like what would happen if you fired small caliber cannon shells, (and yes even 30mm depleted uranium shells are considered small scale as far as cannon caliber goes), against a tank's frontal armor (hence why IFV which are armed with autocannons ranging from 25-40mm can't scratch a tank's frontal armor and usually carry an anti tank missile launcher to handle that task).

It should be able to damage the weaker armored section of the battlemech, but by all account the MG should do jack all nothing besides scratching the paint work when fired at the main torso's frontal armor which should be the thickest and most armored section of a battlemech.

[Xaxius Colnier]

RedDragon, on 27 June 2012 - 04:58 AM, said:

Yes, but what I have seen of the ingame MG, it has 4000 rounds of ammo

Going by your "todays standards 200 rounds is only about 125 pounds", that would weight a bit over 1 ton, so what's the problem?

when did they show off the mg? and you know that that is only 1 ton of ammo i mean even if its 2 tons im happy i always hated getting gyped on ammo in the Mechwarrior games

oh and remember its the metric ton so its probably almost dead on. yay!

[Toldor]

Phasics, on 27 June 2012 - 03:20 AM, said:

In the Battletech Universe 1 Ton = 10'000kg so the Atlas in our measurements is actually a 1000ton mech

Where did you found that information? I cant remember to read this in the sourcebooks.

[Xaxius Colnier]

Melcyna, on 27 June 2012 - 05:10 AM, said:

Correction, A-10 does not carry Vulcan, it carry GAU-8 Avenger, that's the gatling gun that form the main armament of A-10 which is a 30mm gatling cannon not 20mm.

Vulcan is the name given to M61 20mm gatling cannon, but most ppl tend to get confused with them and apply the name vulcan to anything with gatling based operation at times.

In actuality however, neither 30mm shell or 20mm shell is capable of penetrating modern tank frontal armor, it is however sufficient to penetrate the roof armor of known MBT which are much thinner.

This however does not make much sense in the context with Battlemech because you are going to be firing it at his frontal armor... if you try to apply IRL logic to it, then the MG shells should be pinging off it's frontal armor, just like what would happen if you fired small caliber cannon shells, (and yes even 30mm depleted uranium shells are considered small scale as far as cannon caliber goes), against a tank's frontal armor (hence why IFV which are armed with autocannons ranging from 25-40mm can't scratch a tank's frontal armor and usually carry an anti tank missile launcher to handle that task).

It should be able to damage the weaker armored section of the battlemech, but by all account the MG should do jack all nothing besides scratching the paint work when fired at the main torso's frontal armor which should be the thickest and most armored section of a battlemech.

you are correct sir however i was confused because i recently watched a special on the F-22 raptor which does use a vulcan gun and for some reason the name stuck in my head thank you for fixing that

[RedDragon]

Xaxius Colnier, on 27 June 2012 - 05:11 AM, said:

when did they show off the mg? and you know that that is only 1 ton of ammo i mean even if its 2 tons im happy i always hated getting gyped on ammo in the Mechwarrior games

oh and remember its the metric ton so its probably almost dead on. yay!

I guess that's Pauls "Forumuserkiller"-variant of the Hunchback. It is shown in the short gameplay-video without music. Maybe Paul added more than 1 ton of ammo. I guess 2000 rounds/ton sounds more realistic.

[Phasics]

Toldor, on 27 June 2012 - 05:12 AM, said:

Where did you found that information? I cant remember to read this in the sourcebooks.

I pulled it out of thin air, like pretty much every argument in this thread

doesn't make any less sense than other things I've read

[Purlana]

Next thing you know we are going to complain that a Particle Projection Cannon found on one of these Mechs couldn't exist IRL.

....

Edited by Purlana, 27 June 2012 - 05:33 AM.

[Exploding Boy]

I posted this over in the meme thread...

[Dogbreed]

Couple of thoughts
1. What is a Ton in the Bt universe? is it 2000 pounds or 2240 pounds
weight, equivalent to 2000 pounds (0.907 metric ton) avoirdupois (short ton) in the U.S. and 2240 pounds (1.016 metric tons) avoirdupois (long ton) in Great Britian" - or some other equivelant
2. A 100 ton mech has a 10 ton internal structure (harden framework) with 10 heat sinks default, but if we add additional heat sink they weight 1 ton each, so a base structure for a 100 ton mech is 20 tons not include all the possible cabling, control runs, etc...
3. All weights are round to the nearest ton or .5 ton in some cases
4. A mech weights a fixed amount 100 ton, not 99 or 101, or any number not evenly divided by 5
5. It is a number used to classify and compare mechs

the ammo weight issue
1. 1 ton of mg ammo would not be just the bullets/shells is would have to include the loading mechanism and controls, and again it is rounded and it is just to simplified the mechanics of the game

for those that want a reason why mech could have been build verses what we have for AFV's like tanks, think exploring space and what type of vehicle would work best in unknown enivroment with the greatest mobility. Sure you can use self contained battle armor with transport, but then the armor has limited life support and endurance, a vehicle like a mech can carry a larger engine for endurance more lfe support, arms for manipilations. Just food for thought

these are just some passible conjectures on my part, i am sure there are others and no away invalidates other

ps: all spelling mistakes are my own

Edited by Dogbreed, 27 June 2012 - 05:39 AM.