ShadowbaneX, on 20 September 2014 - 11:39 AM, said:
It's the 30st century, convergence should automatically be set to whatever you're locked on to...perhaps it should have a default if you're not locked on to something...might make more people actually use it.
It's the 31st century.
However, technology has been frequently acquired, destroyed, recreated, destroyed. Entire campaigns are set out to completely wipe technology from the face of the galaxy.
For far over 150 years, the double heatsink, a commodity that every single mech had 400 years before, was wiped out entirely. All knowledge of how to create it completely lost. The ones that were left had no way of properly repairing them.. Eventually it became entirely extinct.
The NARC had been wiped out since 2792, and only made its return in the years following a database recovery in 3028 and redeveloped.
"Introduced: 2587 (Terran Hegemony)
Extinct: 2795 (Inner Sphere)
Recovered: 3035 (Free Worlds League)"
NARC.
Battlemechs, once capable of very fluid and perfectly human-like movements in the 2600s to the extent of hurling grenades and ripping each other's heads off, were reduced to much more robotic controls and movements after the original and much more powerful neural helmets were discovered to cause people to go insane and significantly shorten lifespans. (These were the original helmets that couldn't even rotate, thusly requiring that the entire mech rotate its head instead so the pilot could see; one example of the ability of a mech of the time is the precision of playing Cat's Cradle, a game involving the twisting and manipulation of string with all of your fingers to make specific shapes.)
At the current time line, the average Inner Sphere Battlemech is over 50 years old, rebuilt time and time again from replacement parts. Brand new battlemechs are kept very close to homeworlds or given to the absolute elite units.
As an example, Capellan front line units in what I've recently read are being fielded covered in rust, riddled with unrepairable damage and are often pushed through battles without repairs in between. The narrating pilot described them as "an unstoppable horde of the dead that just won't stay that way."
The range of an AC/20 isn't because of low propellant in a single shot, but the nasty recoil of a weapon that averages between 15 and 10 shots to get out 20 damage (with extreme variants being between 100 shots [Pontiac 100] and 4 shots [Chemjet Gun]).
The mechs themselves are typically between 3 and 6 stories tall [3 meters or 10 feet is considered the standard for 1 story. A mech is between 8 meters [2.x stories] and 14+ meters tall [5.x+ stories] (considerably smaller than MWO), and their gyros are far from perfect (20 damage in 10 seconds can knock one over with ease; in fact a single PPC knocked my Nova down as I'm writing this; these damn Clan Buster King Crabs are a lot tougher than I thought they would be).
Tabletop simulates the accuracy of mechs in the form of roll penalties. 0 for stationary, 1 for walking, 2 for running, 3 for jumping. Currently because my gyro is damaged I am also suffering additional penalties because my mech's AC causes my mech to be less stable when firing, so if I fire my UAC/5 the recoil is enough to cause my Nova (a Clan mech; far more advanced and 'modern' compared to the IS mechs) to lose balance.
If it says anything, they are using FAXes to send information and while a Battlemech is far more versatile, in the IS a 100 ton tank is superior to an Atlas, up until it gets tracked. Far more accurate than Battlemechs too while the tank is able to move, as the tech there has never suffered the kind of losses that Battlemech technology has. (I've had a single 100 ton tank + a Commando take on an Atlas [100 tons] and 5 Enforcers and win. Though it was tracked in the first shot).
For a good example, run a Locust, Stalker, Highlander, or Shadowhawk in third person. Watch them move. Those weapons have no way to adjust for any of the mech's movements. None at all. They don't even have a way to converge in the way that they do in MWO. (BT mechs don't have convergence in the torso weapons; this is why all ballistic weaponry has a 90 meter minimum range penalty. ACs included. This is because the weapons cannot pivot and therefore cannot adjust or converge. Instead you have to align with just that weapon to try and make a shot.)
Edited by Koniving, 20 September 2014 - 01:09 PM.
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