CocoaJin, on 30 March 2015 - 02:19 PM, said:
I don't subscribe to the idea that tonnage should equate to a linear increase in size. Tonnage, or more accurately tonnage limits, for mechs is a description of carriage capacity, payload, not mech volume or empty operation weight.
A mech is basically a walking weapons scaffold, and it's tonnage rating is based on its capacity to attach and support the weight of systems, weapons and armor plates. This scaffolding(we call it structure) can be designed to handle more tonnage than another chassis without necessarily requiring a linear increase in the mech's size. By the time you run the various common components of general mech systems and then hang the armor plated on, you'd fine that an Assault mech can easily be of the same approximate size of a heavy, while having the ability to carry more weight.
Extra tonnage capacity can be achieved by strengthening the structure through the use of denser construction material, less weight saving techniques, etc...none of which necessarily requires a significant increase in size or volume/foot-print to achieve the desired results.
Case in point, I fly one plane that is 12,500lbs certified max weight(it can actually go up to 14,000lbs under certain operations)@43ft x 54ft, I fly another aircraft that has a 18,000lbs max operating weight@49ft x 40ft...that's almost 30% more carriage, for little to no significant difference in aircraft sizes...the nearly 30% heavier aircraft is actually the smaller aircraft! but with stronger structure for higher operating weights.
Bishop Steiner, on 30 March 2015 - 02:22 PM, said:
except mechs don't carry external payload.
Also, note, a 120mm rhinemental strapped onto a M1A1 abrams, or one strapped onto a Navy Seal Dune Buggy-....the one on the Dune Buggy doesn't magically shrink because it's on a smaller chassis.
And the weapons are what this post is talking about, not mech scale. There are other posts for that, so please stop trying to filibust this one.
To be fair, one of the main points that comes up with weapon scaling is its relationship to 'Mech scaling.
That is, the weapons could be well scaled relative to each other, but still be under-or over-scaled relative to the 'Mechs.
There's also the additional issue of which criteria should be used for weapon scaling, and where the baseline(s) should be.
We know from BT canon how large many of the weapons should be - we know the general ranges of calibers for the ballistic weapons, we know how big the missiles are (and, in terms of mass per missile, they're closer to - almost perfect matches for, really - Vietnam-era shoulder-launched MANPADS than to something that would hang from a fighter's wings), and we have a general size for the laser emitters (in the range of seven centimeters (70mm), according to both
Wolf Pack ("...I sent one of his killers a beam from the seven-centimeter laser in the
Loki's right arm...") and
Close Quarters ("...the contempt shining through his opaque faceplate like the beam of a seven-centimeter laser...")).
Let's consider the AC/20, one of the biggest big guns of BattleTech.
We already know how big a
203mm, 14-metric-ton cannon is:
Likewise, we already know how big a
8.3 kg missile (e.g. a LRM analogue) is:
Of course, part of the issue (such as it is) is that using known/realistic weapon scaling, even if one also assumes the use of incredibly-thick (e.g. 150 millimeters thickness) protective cowlings, doesn't support the "oversized 'battleship gun barrels' aesthetic" that some people seem to like (see, the recent threads regarding the dynamic geometry of the
JagerMech and the
Cataphract).
On top of that, there are the (rather small) differences implied by the crit requirements of the weapons.
For example, for a Large Laser (2 crits) to have twice the overall volume ("be twice the size") of a Medium Laser (1 crit), the Large Laser's dimensions would be only 26% greater than those of the Medium Laser (e.g. the Large Laser would be only 26% longer, 26% wider, etc than the Medium Laser).
And the PPC (7 tons & 3 crits → 2.33 tons per crit) is substantially "more dense" than the Medium Laser (1.0 tons per crit), but slightly less dense than the Large Laser (2.50 tons per crit) and substantially less dense than the Large Pulse Laser (7 tons & 2 crits → 3.50 tons per crit) while having 50% more overall volume (which, if built in the same shape as the lasers, represents a length/width/etc increase of only ~15% over the Large Laser & ~44% over the Medium Laser).
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