20517 replies to this topic

[Ovion]

Oh I know.
But Battletech isn't really set in 'real physics', it's from a time before that, and the aesthetic and physics of the universe are set, as wierd as some of them are.

One of those is barrels on the lasers.

[BarHaid]

Ovion, on 07 January 2015 - 03:10 PM, said:

Oh I know.
But Battletech isn't really set in 'real physics', it's from a time before that, and the aesthetic and physics of the universe are set, as wierd as some of them are.

One of those is barrels on the lasers.

That's right! Focusing coils people, focusing coils.

[Brody319]

Lasers are one of the few things that can become infinitely powerful. You can just keep adding energy and it will keep becoming more powerful. So technically if the mechs wanted some devastating firepower, they could just have an additional fusion engine just adding energy to some lasers charging up, via reflection and other methods to keep them contained, then just release them and you could technically and theoretically vaporize a planet.

[Cimarb]

Ovion, on 07 January 2015 - 06:33 AM, said:

On that note...
We should really have different models for lasers, it does bother me slightly.

This would be as simple as adding a barrel, like in the older models.
A larger, longer barrel for Large Lasers (say, 50% the size of a PPC in width and slightly shorter?), scaling down to half the length and width for the Small Laser.
All ER variants should be roughly 10% longer than the non-ER version (same for PPCs).
Pulse versions should be maybe half the length of the non-pulse versions, but otherwise the same dimensions.
Each lasers lense should also match the colour of the beam.

This cannot be difficult at all.
I could go and make a set of 13, suitably detailed, ready to go scaled cylinders with different coloured lenses and a square base inside of an hour.

From there, how long would it really take them to update the assets in game?

Really at the end of the day, they should only really need 1-2 models of each weapon, and have a standardised size across everything, only needing to model unique mounting plates for a chasis for the difference between small / large weapons.

I would love it all of the weapons were standarized, based upon weight/crit. So the PPC, at 7 tons, is roughly 7 times as large as a ML.

Strum Wealh, on 07 January 2015 - 01:56 PM, said:

LaWS (Laser Weapon System)

Those look cool, if a little "telescopey"

[Bishop Steiner]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

I would love it all of the weapons were standarized, based upon weight/crit. So the PPC, at 7 tons, is roughly 7 times as large as a ML.


Those look cool, if a little "telescopey"

optics is optics. power supply and capacitors being a different story, of course.

[Cimarb]

Bishop Steiner, on 07 January 2015 - 05:49 PM, said:

optics is optics. power supply and capacitors being a different story, of course.

Right. The "reality" issue has already been addressed. Whether you have larger optics/tubes, or just larger power supplies/capacitors, means little, as long as they are larger to represent the higher tonnage and critical space they are supposed to take up.

[Strum Wealh]

Cimarb, on 07 January 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

I would love it all of the weapons were standarized, based upon weight/crit. So the PPC, at 7 tons, is roughly 7 times as large as a ML.

A PPC is 7 tons & 3 criticals.
A MLas is 1 ton & 1 critical.

The PPC should have roughly thrice the overall volume of the MLas, though it weighs seven times as much (which makes the PPC 2.33 times as dense as the MLas).
Likewise, an AC/20 (14 tons & 10 criticals) should have roughly ten times the overall volume of the AC/2 (6 tons & 1 critical), while weighing only a bit more than twice as much (which makes the AC/20 much less dense than the AC/2).

Also, recall that volumetric changes occur far more rapidly than dimensional (length/width/height) changes, as a function of the Square-Cube Law - specifically, a linear change in scale results in a cubic change in volume.
As such, a PPC would have thrice the volume of a MLas, but (assuming their generally the same shape) would only be 1.44 times as long/wide/tall (that is, "only" 44% longer AND 44% wider AND 44% taller).
Likewise, a LLas (5 tons & 2 criticals) would only be 1.26 times as long/wide/tall as a MLas (that is, "only" 26% longer AND 26% wider AND 26% taller).

Also, the AC/20 would only be 2.15 times longer/wider/taller than the AC/2 if they were the same shape & proportions (though, it stands to reason that the AC/2 would be longer but narrower (width-wise AND height-wise)), while the AC/2 would have roughly the same overall volume as the MLas (since both have an overall volume of 1 critical space) but with different length/width/height proportions.

Cimarb, on 07 January 2015 - 05:47 PM, said:

Those look cool, if a little "telescopey"

However, that is the reality of laser weaponry.

Conventional firearms & artillery can gain some advantages (and disadvantages) from having relatively long barrels (see here and here), but lasers are not subject to any of the same considerations that make barrel length beneficial (most of which are related to how the propellant charge burns & the expansion of the propellant gases, and how those translate into effective range & accuracy-at-range) AND would still suffer the negative aspects (increased mass, increased difficulty to traverse & elevate, increased production expense, and others) if a long barrel were attached.

There are no positive points for adding long barrels to laser weapons, so real-world militaries - and, more to the point, PGI - make laser weapons without the superfluous barrels.

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BarHaid, on 07 January 2015 - 04:22 PM, said:

That's right! Focusing coils people, focusing coils.

Focusing coil: "A coil used to focus an electron beam by the generation of a magnetic field parallel to the beam."

Also:
"Unfortunately, the path light takes is not affected by the presence of a magnetic field. Light itself is composed of an oscillating electric and magnetic field, and one very important property of electric and magnetic fields is what we call 'linearity'. That is, if you have two sources of electric and/or magnetic fields, you can predict what the combined field is just by adding the two source fields together. The two fields don’t change each other at all. So if you add the field of a light ray to any other field we can imagine, the light ray will continue as before and the extra field will just stay the same, adding to it in places where the extra field is strong, but having no effect beyond the reach of the extra field. So there is no way that a magnetic field can bend light."
(source)

Focusing coils are used in particle beam generators (such as the electron guns in a CRT monitor (see also, here)... or a BattleMech's PPCs), and have naught to do with laser weaponry.

Edited by Strum Wealh, 08 January 2015 - 05:05 AM.

[Bleary]

Not all of the lasers depicted in BT art had barrels. Some were just apertures.

And BT art is notoriously arbitrary when it comes to depicting weapons on different chassis; this started at the very beginning (when FASA took existing mecha from various anime and assigned stats to them) and continued for quite a while. Duane Loose in particular just loved drawing blunt body panels and kind of fudging where torso weapons were supposed to be. It wasn't until TRO 3058 that 'Mech art consistently represented all of the weapons they were statted with.

Edited by Bleary, 08 January 2015 - 02:19 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Bleary, on 08 January 2015 - 02:17 AM, said:

Not all of the lasers depicted in BT art had barrels. Some were just apertures.

And BT art is notoriously arbitrary when it comes to depicting weapons on different chassis; this started at the very beginning (when FASA took existing mecha from various anime and assigned stats to them) and continued for quite a while. Duane Loose in particular just loved drawing blunt body panels and kind of fudging where torso weapons were supposed to be. It wasn't until TRO 3058 that 'Mech art consistently represented all of the weapons they were statted with.

like the RT mounted AC5 in this Hermes II.......?

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 08 January 2015 - 06:22 AM.

[BarHaid]

I'ma just leave this Sarna snippet here.

"The Thunderbolt A5M Large Laser, mounted in the left torso and used to engage enemies at intermediate ranges, was also a unique challenge for Defiance. Whereas a typical barrel-type large laser wouldn't fit in the compact space, the company used their rare knowledge of fiber optics to design a smaller though no less effective weapon."

BattleTech "science" at its finest.

[Bishop Steiner]

BarHaid, on 08 January 2015 - 12:19 PM, said:

I'ma just leave this Sarna snippet here.

"The Thunderbolt A5M Large Laser, mounted in the left torso and used to engage enemies at intermediate ranges, was also a unique challenge for Defiance. Whereas a typical barrel-type large laser wouldn't fit in the compact space, the company used their rare knowledge of fiber optics to design a smaller though no less effective weapon."

BattleTech "science" at its finest.

Eh, yeah. In their defense? Game designers, no tech engineers, in the 80s. Most anime "science" is even more .....interesting, especially from that era.

One thing I love is how people hold game designers and authors and such, form 30 years ago to a knowledge standard, when it's not like there was easy info and fact checking back them. No Google, no Yahoo, no Bing. You wanted to check stuff, you looked it up at the library and prayed the authors were right (and lemme tell you, a lot of the "authoritative books" of the era were just plain badly researched and fact checked), or paid through the nose for resources like Janes.

[BarHaid]

Bishop Steiner, on 08 January 2015 - 12:31 PM, said:

Eh, yeah. In their defense? Game designers, no tech engineers, in the 80s. Most anime "science" is even more .....interesting, especially from that era.

One thing I love is how people hold game designers and authors and such, form 30 years ago to a knowledge standard, when it's not like there was easy info and fact checking back them. No Google, no Yahoo, no Bing. You wanted to check stuff, you looked it up at the library and prayed the authors were right (and lemme tell you, a lot of the "authoritative books" of the era were just plain badly researched and fact checked), or paid through the nose for resources like Janes.

Well, that is how we got the Stackpole Effect, right?

[Odanan]

Not on topic, but just one of my humble game design contributions:

Odanan, on 08 January 2015 - 04:56 PM, said:

OK, this is not the completely reviewed version (almost finished), but a spin-off:

MWO Unofficial Trumps

https://drive.google...iew?usp=sharing

Play Top Trumps with the MWO mechs!

PS: the mech cards are the same used by the upcoming MWO Chess MWO Unofficial Card Game and MWO Unofficial Board Game, so you only have to print them once.

(and this is specially humble, because I didn't even invent the rules)

[Cimarb]

BarHaid, on 08 January 2015 - 12:19 PM, said:

I'ma just leave this Sarna snippet here.

"The Thunderbolt A5M Large Laser, mounted in the left torso and used to engage enemies at intermediate ranges, was also a unique challenge for Defiance. Whereas a typical barrel-type large laser wouldn't fit in the compact space, the company used their rare knowledge of fiber optics to design a smaller though no less effective weapon."

BattleTech "science" at its finest.

At that time, "fiber optics" was a fancy catch word that few people even had a clue what it meant. Like Bish said, we take knowledge for granted nowadays...

Edited by Cimarb, 08 January 2015 - 05:09 PM.

[MonkeyDCecil]

Stop bring science into my Science Fiction.

[-Skyrider-]

so #urby2015 right?

[Odanan]

Skyrider1746, on 13 January 2015 - 05:46 PM, said:

so #urby2015 right?

Oh yeah!

[MonkeyDCecil]

+1 bump and the Urbie sucks

[Nathan Foxbane]

Odanan, on 13 January 2015 - 05:54 PM, said:

Oh yeah!

Quick, someone make an image of an Urbie busting though a wall like the cool-aid man!

[MeiSooHaityu]

MonkeyDCecil, on 15 January 2015 - 02:12 PM, said:

+1 bump and the Urbie ***** rocks!

I think you mistyped, so I fixed it for you. Your welcome

Edited by MeiSooHaityu, 15 January 2015 - 03:36 PM.