26 replies to this topic

[Project_Mercy]

I won't reiterate what's been said, especially the guy pointing out clan invasion tactics and Turtle Bay, but there's other things to consider.

Right now on earth, we all fight (roughly) on the same plane. In BT, generally assaults come in from space. Again, clans aside, drop ships (and especially) jump ships are difficult to produce, and require protection. So they come with aerospace units to support them (not that drop ships aren't generally pretty nasty on their own). As a result, ideally, you keep aerospace units around to try to defend the planet from invasion. Once aerospace defenses are wiped out, mechs will likely be combat dropped into key locations. Assuming the attacker still has aerospace units, they will give support. Also, in an emergency, the drop ships can lay support. If there were silos for missile launch, they would likely either be taken out by aerospace units on the way down, or by dropping mechs on them. You'd have to have a LOT of installations, spread out, that were totally hidden. Most houses have pretty large intelligence branches, so it's unlikely you'd get away with it.

If you get bored sometime, read the Aerotech rules. There's some inconsistencies between AT1 and Master Rules, but for the most part it all jives.

From just having mobile units which blow things up, there are already long tom artillery units. A bit more annoying than a mobile cruise platform, and range is a lot lower, but they serve roughly the same thing.

MogCarns I think has the right of it, at the end of the day it's just not very fun. In addition though, they're slightly less useful as they might be here on earth.

[Arctic Fox]

First of all, concerning the Ares Conventions. While they do disallow the development and use of chemical and biological weapons, they explicitely did not disallow nuclear weapons, only their use against non-military targets and against any target closer than 75,000 kilometers to a planet. Nuclear weapons are still produced and kept in stock by the Great Houses. Secondly, the Ares Conventions were scrapped by the Star League on the eve of the Reunification War and never officially reinstated. When massed orbital bombardment and nuclear weapons stopped being used after the Second Succession War, it was not because of the Ares Conventions, which by that point were seen more as an ideal of civilized warfare rather than a serious limitation, but because of the desire to limit the rapid loss of technology suffered during the early Succession Wars.

As for cruise missiles, as has been said, the Arrow IV missile represents the successor to light cruise missiles. Heavier artillery missiles became obsolete in the BattleTech universe with the advent of widespread spaceflight and weapons such as capital missiles which, by the 31st century, are all extinct outside of the Clans and ComStar's WarShip fleet. There was an attempt to revive the concept by the AFFS during the 3060s, resulting in weapons such as this, but they have only made a very small appearance in the late 3070s and 3080s and remain largely experimental even then.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 25 June 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

Lt muffins, on 25 June 2012 - 08:51 AM, said:

Arrow IV?

that is the closest you can get to cruise missiles.

On a 'Mech, at least.
A cruise missile launcher is possible for ground vehicles...
If they're willing to decidate some 55-135 tons to the launch installation, and an additional 25-60 tons per missile.
Pretty much prevents their use on anything but combat vehicles, dropships and mobile structures.

[Hikaru]

Guided missiles aren't banned. The actual knowledge of how to make guided missiles had been lost. After the 2nd Succession War, Inner Sphere knowledge had been destroyed back to around 20th Century level technology... In fact/lore, not technically possible.

[Insidious Johnson]

DeathlyEyes, on 25 June 2012 - 09:21 AM, said:

to the clans because of this http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Turtle_Bay. T

The Clans feared an empty webpage?

[Papertarget]

The only weapon that is in the BT universe that is still in use and has been shown as a devastating Indirect Fire weapon, isn't a Cruise Missile, but instead an Artillery Piece called the Long Tom. If you think about it, outside the cost, you are going to fight most battles on planets that are not really worth all that much. If you use a Nuke, or an extremely expensive missile, you are going to be destroying almost anything the planet would be able to offer you.

Outside of a tactical advantage to the location of the planet, there are many other factors. You have traveled light-years to get to the planet. If you use WMD's, you will likely take out the very support structure you would need to resupply your troops, or even feed them. From a purely tactical standpoint, the use of a WMD would be not only incredibly stupid, but even possibly suicidal.

There is also a point that most Mech battles were over needed materials, and would be considered a raid. If it was an attempt to take the world for a House, you would want as little damage to the infrastructure as possible. Especially as there is so much lost tech.

[Colonel Fubar]

So much lost Tech.
Until that Day,
when they figure out where they misplaced it.