haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- How does space combat work in BT? I don't mean combat in terms of battlemechs, but like, ship to ship combat, particularly in the 3049 pre-clan era. I'm wondering how they would perform a mass planetary landing, would they travel in a big fleet of armed dropships? Would the planet have orbital defenses? If jumpships can only jump to certain points, are unarmed and give off massive "I'M RIGHT HERE" k-f signals when they jump in, how would an ambush in space work? For the story I'm working on, there needs to be a reason for the dropship to be shot down, for now I've thought up as an ambush as the most logical scenario but I can't really think of how it would work when space travel is so restricting in BT.
Space combat in the BattleTech universe is broadly similar to what you would see in the Babylon 5 or rebooted Battlestar Galactica settings, albeit with differences in the way interstellar travel works and with no magic artificial gravity. BattleTech WarShips are roughly equivalent to a Battlestar or Earth Alliance
warship, but they are extinct in the Inner Sphere in 3049. The remaining combatants can be divided into
JumpShips,
DropShips, Small Craft and Aerospace Fighters.
JumpShips are massive, kilometer long vessels used to travel from one star system to another. They can jump up to 30 light years at a time, but take days to weeks to recharge their engines using a light collecting jump sail. Once the jump is plotted, there is a "wind up" time of roughly 10-20 minutes, and the jump itself takes roughly 15 seconds. Sarna lists the recharge times for the standard jump points for the various star systems on the Inner Sphere map. The KF hyperdrive only functions at very low gravity thresholds, and the standard jump points above and below the star's poles are the closest stable locations. The biggest the star, the farther away the jump points are but the faster the drive will recharge. Using non-standard jump points (called pirate points) can get you in much closer, but these vary from system to system and for a variety of reasons are not considered safe. Because they are not in an orbit, JumpShips mount station keeping thrusters to hold themselves in position, with the jump sail deployed aft between the ship and the local star. JumpShips cannot maneuver in-system at any significant speed. Most JumpShips mount circular gravity decks that provide rec and exercise areas for their crews. The crews of attached DropShips also use these facilities, and they are essential to maintaining health on long space voyages. Since these decks use rotation to simulate gravity, the "pull" at a person's head is going to be weaker than at the person's feet. This can cause disorientation to people unused to it. Objects thrown or people jumping are going to follow a screwball trajectory.
DropShips are fusion powered interplanetary spacecraft that move between planets and jump points. They can attach themselves to JumpShips, but otherwise cannot travel between stars on their own. They have what is called a "heat expansion drive" that allows them to cruise between planets with relatively little fuel. They turn this system off during combat, trading fuel efficiency for power. DropShips never mount gravity decks, and are in zero gravity while attached to a JumpShip. When traveling in-system, DropShips typically run their engines continuously, normally at 1 g acceleration, so that the crew has Earth normal gravity, with "down" being towards the engines.
There are two basic types of DropShips-- Aerodyne and Spheroid. Aerodyne DropShips have lifting surfaces and can fly through an atmosphere like very large aircraft. They typically require runways to land and cannot be built as large as Spheroids can. Aerodyne DropShips have two sets of thruster nozzles-- one aft, and one on their bellies. The belly mounted thrusters are used in space so that "down" is towards the bottom of the ship, and also help to ground the ship on planets with no atmosphere. Spheroids are roughly spherical in shape and take off and land like conventional rockets would. They can be larger than Aerodynes, but are very limited in maneuverability while in atmosphere. Most spheroid DropShips have enough thrust to hover while in atmosphere-- BattleTech DropShips have enough power and endurance to utterly embarrass any current or theoretical spacecraft in the modern world.
Small Craft are the shuttle craft of the BattleTech universe. The rules treat them as tiny DropShips, and they carry the heat expansion system that allows them to travel interplanetary differences. Some designs don't carry enough fuel to do so, but most do. They can be Aerodyne or Spheroid, and while some can use docking collars on JumpShips, most dock in internal Small Craft bays.
Aerospace Fighters form the bulk of space borne combatants. More sophisticated than Colonial Vipers and less advanced than the Earth Alliance Starfury, BattleTech ASFs do
not mount heat expansion drives and are incapable of crossing interplanetary distances on their own. Most designs are equally at home in space or in atmosphere, and like DropShips BattleTech Aerospace Fighters have a high enough power-to-weight ratio to run circles around any modern air or space craft. They can take off from a planetary airfield, climb into orbit, engage in combat and return to base with no trouble. They can technically break orbit, but they do not have enough endurance to get anywhere. ASF thrust points are
not analogous to BattleMech movement points. . .each thrust point is equal to 0.5 g's of acceleration. It is possible for an aerospace fighter to spend enough thrust points in atmosphere to damage its own armor through frictional heating. Aerospace Fighters may carry external ordinance such as bombs, gun pods and fuel tanks. DropShips normally carry ASFs in internal fighter bays-- they may launch and recover them in space, and launch (but not recover) them while in atmosphere. Fighters
cannot launch while a DropShip is on the ground-- if you want to get a fighter in or out of a grounded DropShip, you need a crane.
It is worth noting that BattleTech Aerospace Fighters tend to be rarer than their BattleMech counterparts. Though of comparable cost, they are far more difficult to salvage. Cripple a BattleMech, and it falls over. Cripple an Aerofighter in atmosphere, and it usually crashes itself into a million pieces.
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Planetary invasions would typically be accomplished with a large fleet of DropShips, yes. The Overlord class can carry a battalion of 'Mechs all by itself.
Orbital defenses in 3049 would be limited to Aerofighters and DropShips. There is some precedent for establishing naval bases on planetary moons so those forces don't have to burn fuel lifting out of a large planetary gravity well. Depending on the situation, it is not unusual for defending forces to choose not to contest incoming DropShips in space. Just like aircraft at high altitude, DropShips inbound from a jump point enjoy an energy advantage over planetary defenders. Since the jump points are roughly perpendicular to the planetary disc and most planets rotate close the elliptic plane (the planetary poles point generally towards the jump points), the assault orbits of incoming ships tend to be polar orbits. This in turn means the target planet rotates underneath the orbital vector, and small changes in speed allow for wide variation in the ultimate landing point, making it easy to confuse a defender on the target point of the attacking force. You might even see an attacking DropShip deliberately shallow its approach vector at the last moment, skip off the atmosphere and then come down on the other side of the planet. So even though the defenders can watch the attackers coming for days or even weeks, the attackers still have options for deception.
A true ambush is space is exceedingly rare. Not only do JumpShips give off a detectable emergence shockwave, but DropShips emit so much heat and light that they are usually detectable from planetary orbit as they travel in-system. Even worse, often times defenders can make good guesses as to what the DropShip is carrying based on its design specs and its observed acceleration. What would normally happen is that the "ambushed" ship would see the attack coming from a long way off, but because of the orbits involved wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it.
DropShips
do get shot down though. Just like 'Mechs, a lucky hit can bring down an otherwise healthy ship, and during a large invasion there might very well be a "they can't get all of us" mentality among the incoming DropShips.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- There is no artificial gravity in dropships right? I know the larger ones have a centerfuge to have a grav deck, but what do the smaller (like Union class) dropships do? Does the crew just float around? I need to know so I can design the interior with 0 grav in mind or not.
There is no gravity aboard a DropShip when the ship is either holding a planetary orbit (applying thrust would change the orbit) or when the ship is attached to a JumpShip. When the DropShip is traveling between planets or jump points, there is gravity due to continual acceleration, except for the brief midway point where the ship flips end over end to fire its engines to slow down. DropShips cannot mount gravity decks.
It is worth noting that there are no "inertial dampeners" in the BattleTech universe. During combat, the crew must be strapped in to avoid being thrown into walls as the ship maneuvers.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- Has there ever been an instance of helmet cams in BT lore? Pre-3049 I mean, I plan on using them in my story regardless but I'm wondering if at least it's something that's possible so it's not completely something I just added in myself. The problem is certain mechs have very very bad viewports, something that would be impossible to see out of effectively enough to pilot and hit anything at all (might explain all the miss rolls when I tried mektek hueheh), so in order to preserve some of the designs, the only real way around it is to handwave it away as the pilots neurohelm displaying an external camera view so he can have a nice big field of view.
Yes. Actually, some old neurohelmets rely on internal HUDs because their bulk makes it difficult for the MechWarrior to turn her head. The novels often use compressed visual displays that show 360 degrees of visual data on a ~180 degree "screen", letting the MechWarrior see in all directions at once.
Some BattleMechs don't even have viewports-- in others the "windows" are largely vestigial. Driving a 'Mech by external sensors and cameras is very common.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- What exactly is the relationship between Kuritans and Mercs? I know that they kind of look down on them and tend to rip them off, but to what degree?
The Draconis Combine hates mercenaries pre-Clan invasion, and the roots of that go back to their culture. The Combine is an analog for medieval Japan, and in that society the Coordinator is essentially the center of everything. The role of a warrior is to enact the Coordinator's wishes, nothing more and nothing less. The idea of independent warriors who do not recognize the absolute authority of the Coordinator is anathema to the society. It is very much, "Either you recognize the authority of the Coordinator over everything and everyone, or you are an enemy". There is no middle ground. Mercenaries in the service of the Combine are expected to behave as though their lives and 'Mechs are the property of the Coordinator. In this period on the timeline, the idea that the Coordinator's authority could be curtailed by something as silly as a contract is unthinkable.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- How would a briefing be conducted in a dropship? This is kind of an odd question, but in my story board in the opening scenes, they conduct a briefing with a holographic projection from a table, but then I remembered reading that most places in BT still used faxes of all things, I might keep it like that anyway since I plan to "modernize" the tech a little bit, but I'm wondering what your input is?
Okay, first, the "faxes" thing is a special case. The Federated Suns used "fax machines" to circumvent a Comstar interdiction on their interstellar communications during the 4th Succession War. These machines were capable of broadcasting across interstellar distances without the need of a hyperpulse generator-- the fact that they worked by feeding paper into a scanner really isn't the important point.
I think there is a distinction between holographic projection and holographic screens. Holographic screens (called
Tri-vid players) are very common. Holographic projectors are more rare. I could see a table mounted holoprojector without too much difficulty, but what the Clans use are holotanks you can walk around in and interact with.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
-Optional: Has there ever been any mention of water worlds in BT lore? From what I've seen they kind of convieniently leave them out. This has 0 impact on the story, it's just a little bit of background fluff, but the merc corp in my story was originally based on a water world, specializing in coastal raids and assaults (with vehicles, not battlemechs), and I got to thinking, how would an army even attack or invade a water world pre-3049? Most of the water equipment for mechs wasn't "invented" yet, and since it's a water world, walking on the ocean floor all the time wouldn't be ideal. Would they just leave the mechs behind and land purely as a mechanized force?
There are worlds that are largely covered by water. Though blue water navies are rare, brown water (coastal) navies are quite common, with traditional displacement hull vessels, hydrofoils and even submarines all being in use.
I think invading a water world would be a matter of capturing the space ports and critical infrastructure points. If there were large scale submerged bases, you could just cut them off and wait for the defenders to starve.
Energy weapons work underwater, though at drastically reduced range. There are specialized torpedos that function just like long and short range missiles, but standard missile launchers cannot fire them. If an attacking force knew it was going to have to fight a substantial force underwater, it could transport submarines to the planet. I can't remember it ever coming up, but I see no reason why a spheroid DropShip couldn't land in shallow water.
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
- Optional: And I guess I should add, there ARE primarily vehicle and infantry based merc corps right? That's kind of the whole background to the merc corp in my story, they're a small, start up corp who for the most part, operated as a vehicle/infantry based corp until they were making enough money to be able to afford to have a few light mechs, to assist in raids and eventually branch out into something more.
Yes, absolutely.
http://www.sarna.net...talwart_Support
haruko, on 04 December 2013 - 10:28 AM, said:
Optional: How the hell does an MFB sneak around? In MW2 you're sneaking around a clan occupied planet and I'm wondering how an MFB, let alone any mechs, would sneak around an occupied world without being spotted miles away? Do they just pretend for the sake of the story that no one saw them?
There's a simple answer to this. . .MFBs don't exist. It takes roughly 15 minutes to replace 1 point of BattleMech armor. So, figure 6 hours to replace all of the center torso armor on a SCP-1N
Scorpion. That's no fun in a real-time video game, so the MechWarrior developers hand waved a magic repair vehicle. But it doesn't exist in the setting.
As for 'Mechs sneaking around for the sake of the story, yeah, pretty much. On a backwater world with no satellites, I can see it. Planets are big places. There may not be anyone around for miles to see you. But, yes, there's some hand waving going on there.
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