6 replies to this topic

[Leded]

ok this is more of a "when did this happen" kind of question. i've been reading alot of the Battletech Novels lately. when i was alot younger i played the Mechwarrior games, and about a year ago i picked up the Battletech tabletop game.

so the novels as far as when they were printed "came first". the AutoCannons in books, very much appear to just be like rapid firing super heavy machine guns or at least cannons that can fire rapidly.
Mechwarrior 2, they seemed close to the same there if my memory serves. then i think i remember in 4 they almost seemed like a burst fire kind of weapon.
now in the tabletop they appear more of "one big shot" on your attack turn and the ammo loads seem to reflect that well.
MWO mirrors how the TT functions in that way. big shot BOOM and reload cooldown, longer for larger ACs
i know alot of the ways the weapons fire seemed to be more based on the TT game, which is fine. probably makes it easier.

i just dont know what creative process was used for this, between the books, games and TT they seem all over the place... and i'm not really sure what i was even asking lol

[theta123]

Some people mentioned before that an AC20 could infact be a smaller calibre weapon firing 3 shots, in turn inflicting "20" damage in total

[Adridos]

Creative consistency of FASA was ****-poor and as such, you get these kind of weird mess ups.

As far a canon is concerned, it was decided to solve in such a way that an AC/20, for example, is a code name for all autocannons dealing 20 damage per single round/reload. Depending on a manufacturer, you can get all kinds of guns from ones that fire a trillion bullets which add up to 20 damage per single reload to massive guns that fire just one shell that does all the damage in itself.

As far as MW:O representation is concerned, it was done as it is for design reasons. ACs are balanced in TT around the notion of massive cost for concentrated damage (which is great when every single weapon you fire is decided by a dice roll and simply stacking weapons together won't give you a damage increase, rather spread it all around the mech) and we've started with TT values for balance. Plus, if they spread damage around, they'd be no different than lasers and finally, they were like this in all MW games, they just had an animation of more bullets to cover it.

[James Montana]

To:OP

In my old profession (Army) I used to use an auto-cannon, and this has always, always bugged me. I guess, the devs took to a design that focused on an auto-loader for the larger cannons... .... It's always disappointed me. Here is a clip of a 25mm auto-cannon the navy still uses

small


and, eh the bofors guys (BAE) put this bad boy out.

[culverin]

I'm a Battletech junky.
If you read the novels and source materials, AutoCannons can have different characteristics.

It really depends on who made it.
Some might have a bigger shell and some have a slightly faster fight rate, or even higher muzzle velocity.
I don't have all the little variances on hand....
So I'm just going to make this next part up.

Defiance Killer Type T ~ Bigger shell, slow reload
Mydron Model B ~ Fires 3 shots in short succession.
SarLon MaxiCanon ~ Longer barrel gives it a bit longer range.


BattleTech weapons are balanced for a boardgame, so for simplicity's sake, it's all grouped into the same tiers.



A realworld example would be like Vancouver's transit.
We have quite a few different types of buses on the road.

Community Shuttle bus (gasoline, bio diesel)
* Your AC/5

Standard gas bus, bio diesel, hybrid, electric trolley.
But those can all be grouped under Full size standard bus.
* Your AC/10

Double articulated bus (newer, older)
* Your AC/20


Many different makes and models.
Different components used to make them, different fuels.
But you can still classify them into major groups.

[Leded]

Yeah i was kinda figuring it was done for simplicity. i would be interesting if not really confusing if there were like 5 different types of AC2s, 5s 10s and 20s. whether someone wants a rapid vulcan cannon of an AC20 or one that shoots a single small car sized shell at the target lol

[reign]

I saw somewhere that they want to eventually put in design quirks on the various guns based on manufacturer, but I am sure this is at minimum a year or 2 out... To much to do before then.