178 replies to this topic

[Skadi]

wait this thread is sitll going?
and kageryuu, just look for me and vulpes over sized argument taking up far to many pages about armored core VS transformers.

[Vulpesveritas]

Skadi, on 09 July 2012 - 05:20 PM, said:

wait this thread is sitll going?
and kageryuu, just look for me and vulpes over sized argument taking up far to many pages about armored core VS transformers.

It's partly because of the titan thing, partly because I'm uncertain of what kind of joules people think that the AC:V giga missile would be putting out with it's 400 meter blast radius and 100,000AP of damage at its center (reducing the farther out of course);

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 09 July 2012 - 05:26 PM.

[Zakatak]

Umm, holy ****. I got nearly 5 gigajoules for the standard PPC.

So if 1 damage = 500 megajoules, then an AC/2 is several times more powerful then the largest naval cannons in the US Navy? Either the gunpowder used in these things are out of this world, or the warhead inside the shell is something enormously more powerful then anything we have today. Or this is just plain wrong (most likely).

In the case I am right, BTech has some damn good weaponry.

Edited by Zakatak, 09 July 2012 - 07:08 PM.

[Catamount]

Zakatak, on 09 July 2012 - 03:21 PM, said:

Warhammer suffers a lack of consistency even worse then Stargate does (BC-303 uses railguns and hypermeganukes that are equally effective???). A few figures ARE stated or accurately measureable. For example, the lasers of an Imperium warship are to be measured in "3-digit megajoules" while the Nova Gun is about 25 Yottajoules. One is laughably pathetic, one is terrifyingly ridiculous.

I'll do the math later and come back with my results, but to get an idea of how "effective" Battletech weaponry is, here is a good one: "3 shots of a PPC can vaporize 2 tons of military-grade armor". Standard Armor is composed of various layers of cubic boron-nitride, diamond, titanium honeycombing, and steel as well as unspecified self-sealing polymers. Combine the kJ/mol of all those together for an average, measure the required energy to vaporize 667kg of it, and get the output in joules (and then possibly a damage/joules conversion chart).

I can already tell from that alone that BTech weaponry is pretty damn understated in the games. And the armor is pretty damn good too.

This is the fundamental problem with 40k, and why it should just be barred from any and all VS discussions.

Some franchises have more thought put into the technical side of things than others, but usually the writers know they're dealing with geeks, often of the stereotypically nitpicky type, and so some attention is usually paid to outlining technical details, and maintaining some semblance of consistency, even though writers often have the annoying habit of bending such things to make stories more dramatic. Trek, for instance, might suffer from the horrors of Brannon Braga every so often, writing stories about infinite speed shuttlecraft that make humans "evolve" into lizards because they go too fast (WUT?), but at least there is a writer's manual provided for the shows to say "okay, here's the technical side that we've established, this is how things are meant to be in the show, try to stick to this" (I have copies of both TNG's and Voyager's; they're kind of interesting).

But 40k just makes up whatever on fly with NO seeming attempt to give any level of attention to any form of technical detail. Most of the time, data just isn't ever given (as I said, there aren't even canonical lengths for their ships!), and when it is, it's never referencing any kind of canon, nor do writers apparently ever bother to keep each other in mind, so one day the entire Imperium fleet has the firepower of a single age of sail ship, and the next day a single infantryman can output enough energy to destroy the universe 30 times over.

I suppose that's not really a criticism, as it's their right to not put value on those sorts of things (as opposed to Stargate, which despite a sometimes-inconsistent franchise, is often remarkably detail oriented and phenomenally researched), but it does mean it's not something you can consider in a discussion like this, because 40k doesn't have any canonical figures one can take seriously for anything.



On a slightly different note, low gigajoule-range weapons sound about right for BT. Ilithi and I both agree that five gigajoules really sounds just about like what we'd expect. It's not high-technology ZOMG weaponry like many franchises have, but despite technological regression, BT has not inconsiderable levels of technology in some areas. These are not merely giant robots walking around with mounted L/44s, and while BT has its severe technological deficiencies, it shouldn't be underestimated.

[Zakatak]

Catamount, on 09 July 2012 - 07:34 PM, said:

On a slightly different note, low gigajoule-range weapons sound about right for BT. Ilithi and I both agree that five gigajoules really sounds just about like what we'd expect. It's not high-technology ZOMG weaponry like many franchises have, but despite technological regression, BT has not inconsiderable levels of technology in some areas. These are not merely giant robots walking around with mounted L/44s, and while BT has its severe technological deficiencies, it shouldn't be underestimated.

So, assuming kinetic, missile, and energy weapons are equally effective at damaging BTech armor, the Heavy Gauss Rifle has a 12.5GJ yield. The naval variant is about 400 times heavier in tonnage, so assuming that would be approximately 400 times the power, the HNG has a yield of 5TJ, or slightly over a kiloton. That actually works out perfectly, because in a few occasions, larger battleships in BTech have survived 500 kiloton "Peacemakers" and 50 kiloton "Santa Ana" missiles at point blank, yet are obviously capable of being damaged by non-nuclear weapons. I also believe that BTech ships (in fluff) are capable at engaging at just under 1000km, and the projectile speed for the HGR works with that statistic. So Battlemech weapons are double-digit MJ on the low end, double-digit GJ on the high end. I'm curious as to how chemically propelled shells are so massively powerful though. An AC/2 is like getting hit with a JDAM. Massive improvements in gunpowder and explosive compounds, I suppose.

I think it is unfair to say Battletech is "low tech", it's just confined to hard sci-fi limits (like inertia, lol) and constant warfare prevents high technology from being mass developed. The Davion arena on Solaris 7 is basically an enormous holodeck, and "Fax Machines" are suitcases that can broadcast messages nearly 100 lightyears away.

Edited by Zakatak, 09 July 2012 - 08:32 PM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

To get those kinds of energy yields from 'conventional' HEAP ballistic weapons (according to SARNA, HEAP rounds with shell casings are the predominant standard, though there are sabot kinetic energy penetrators and caseless models), the propellant and explosives would have to be using some crazily advanced chemical reactants, far beyond even the most powerful theoretical compounds known today. 5 GJ for a single PPC shot seems a little high to me, especially since the Gauss rifle is going to be throwing out considerably more energy than that, in a pure kinetic impactor weapon.

The reason this is hard for me to believe is because the 16"/50 Mark 7 Naval Gun fires a 2,800 lb super-heavy shell with a kinetic energy of about 355 megajoules per shout. When firing all 9 batteries in a full broadside (actually, a staggered broadside - they never fire all 9 guns at the same time), that's 3,195 MJ, or 3.195 GJ. That's roughly a quarter of the kinetic energy of a Heavy Gauss Rifle. That is hard for me to believe, not just because it represents a spectacular leap forward in firepower, even over the course of a few hundred years, and not just a leap forward, but also an amazing miniaturization of firepower, it is hard for me to believe because the recoil of a 3.2 gigajoule broadside of an Iowa class battleship actually moves the ship sideways, by a considerable amount. The Iowa class weighs 52,000 tons loaded, on average (with WWII load-out; it goes upwards of 57,000 tons into the 1980s), The heaviest mech to ever field a Heavy Gauss Rifle weighs 100 tons. The Fafnir mounts TWO of the things. If the HGR really is that powerful, then a Fafnir firing two of them simultaneously should be hurled backwards much like this guy:


And any mech getting hit by those, that is not over-penetrated, should be hurled backwards as well (and not just 'knocked over').

[Vulpesveritas]

Ilithi Dragon, on 09 July 2012 - 09:07 PM, said:

To get those kinds of energy yields from 'conventional' HEAP ballistic weapons (according to SARNA, HEAP rounds with shell casings are the predominant standard, though there are sabot kinetic energy penetrators and caseless models), the propellant and explosives would have to be using some crazily advanced chemical reactants, far beyond even the most powerful theoretical compounds known today. 5 GJ for a single PPC shot seems a little high to me, especially since the Gauss rifle is going to be throwing out considerably more energy than that, in a pure kinetic impactor weapon.

The reason this is hard for me to believe is because the 16"/50 Mark 7 Naval Gun fires a 2,800 lb super-heavy shell with a kinetic energy of about 355 megajoules per shout. When firing all 9 batteries in a full broadside (actually, a staggered broadside - they never fire all 9 guns at the same time), that's 3,195 MJ, or 3.195 GJ. That's roughly a quarter of the kinetic energy of a Heavy Gauss Rifle. That is hard for me to believe, not just because it represents a spectacular leap forward in firepower, even over the course of a few hundred years, and not just a leap forward, but also an amazing miniaturization of firepower, it is hard for me to believe because the recoil of a 3.2 gigajoule broadside of an Iowa class battleship actually moves the ship sideways, by a considerable amount. The Iowa class weighs 52,000 tons loaded, on average (with WWII load-out; it goes upwards of 57,000 tons into the 1980s), The heaviest mech to ever field a Heavy Gauss Rifle weighs 100 tons. The Fafnir mounts TWO of the things. If the HGR really is that powerful, then a Fafnir firing two of them simultaneously should be hurled backwards much like this guy:


And any mech getting hit by those, that is not over-penetrated, should be hurled backwards as well (and not just 'knocked over').

Apparently Armored Core isn't the only series with Deus Ex Machina elements regarding the laws of physics possibly?
I mean, apparently the amassed missiles would then have payloads of 500,000 megajoules apiece, or warheads with an equivalent energy of 1/8 a ton of TNT. While that isn't wholly unrealistic, it still shows that HEAP rounds, to be realistic, must contain explosive warheads and could not be purely kinetic penetrators and still work without ripping off a 'mech's arm. At the same time, this would also mean a heavy recoil from a gauss rifle, despite the magnetic acceleration, I don't see how any 'mech could stand after firing one.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 09 July 2012 - 09:17 PM.

[Zakatak]

Yes, something about the Fafnir breaking 700m/s after firing both tubes seems... I dunno man.

[Vulpesveritas]

Zakatak, on 09 July 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

Yes, something about the Fafnir breaking 700m/s after firing both tubes seems... I dunno man.

Still think 3rd gen ACs are that unrealistic compared to a Omnimech?

[Zakatak]

Vulpesveritas, on 09 July 2012 - 09:42 PM, said:

Still think 3rd gen ACs are that unrealistic compared to a Omnimech?

No, I think my estimates are just wrong.

I will NEVER bend my knee to the Japanese! NEVAR!!

[Vulpesveritas]

Railgun in Armored core hitting that bit of the city is what we should see happen from a gauss rifle, but a bit more recoil.
And I don't think that you're estimates are that far off, besides, Armored core 3 has lower damaging weapons than AC 5, but 3rd gen ACs are better armored,fly more, and are slightly faster... and just plain smexier and cooler to look at then those short fat things that they pass off as ACs nowadays.


Heck this guy (My PSX AC1 mech) is cooler looking IMO. (also lol at the graphics, eh?)
\

Speaking of 1st gen ACs, I'm finding them to have really, really, really paper-thin armor compared to 2nd and 3rd gen ACs. Especially 3rd gen.

Even still, an AC V with a giga missile can tot, if yours and my calculations are correct, a 15-25 gigajoule warhead. (and launch it from kilometers away) With an AC V mech carrying armor to survive 1/3rd of that much of a blast, (and by the way AP degrades ablative armor can likely be assumed for an AC) Then it is definitely on the level of most medium - heavy battlemechs in armor capacity versus a medium AC in AC V.

Or so I would think.

Edited by Vulpesveritas, 10 July 2012 - 12:07 AM.

[Black Rock Shooter]

You guys are overthinking this. It's a fictional game using fictional, nonsensical physics. Consider that in Battlespace giant WarShip cannons hardly do more damage than a Dire Wolf alpha strike. Anyone who's participated in the old BT forums remember countless debates over the real-world conversions of BT physics and the unavoidable conclusion that it's total BS. We're talking here about 30th century giant war machines having trouble taking out targets within the MINIMUM striking range of real-world 21st century infantry. Why? Because BT's TT rules came from a system designed for WW2 tank combat that FASA licensed and modified. It's a system designed for convenience in tabletop gaming, not an ultrarealistic combat simulation like COD:MW3.

Same thing with WH40K, which had rules descended from a FANTASY GAME. Heck, I actually admire 40K canon for saying that the only way Ork tech can work to begin with is through strength of faith amplified by innate Orkish magic. When FASA tried to technically justify their nonsensical game physics, they opened a whole can of worms best kept buried in the mud.

[Vulpesveritas]

Black Rock Shooter, on 10 July 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

You guys are overthinking this. It's a fictional game using fictional, nonsensical physics. Consider that in Battlespace giant WarShip cannons hardly do more damage than a Dire Wolf alpha strike. Anyone who's participated in the old BT forums remember countless debates over the real-world conversions of BT physics and the unavoidable conclusion that it's total BS. We're talking here about 30th century giant war machines having trouble taking out targets within the MINIMUM striking range of real-world 21st century infantry. Why? Because BT's TT rules came from a system designed for WW2 tank combat that FASA licensed and modified. It's a system designed for convenience in tabletop gaming, not an ultrarealistic combat simulation like COD:MW3.

Same thing with WH40K, which had rules descended from a FANTASY GAME. Heck, I actually admire 40K canon for saying that the only way Ork tech can work to begin with is through strength of faith amplified by innate Orkish magic. When FASA tried to technically justify their nonsensical game physics, they opened a whole can of worms best kept buried in the mud.

Pffft, clearly it's the other way around.
We really need to figure out which is the most 'broken' physics here. Armored Core 4/4a, W40k, Battletech, or Transformers.

[Lord Perversor]

Vulpesveritas, on 10 July 2012 - 01:28 AM, said:

Pffft, clearly it's the other way around.
We really need to figure out which is the most 'broken' physics here. Armored Core 4/4a, W40k, Battletech, or Transformers.

W40k for sure just look at an imperator Gatling Blaster and explain it!!!
so they carry a weapon that can fire slugs the size of a BT like nothing!!!

And not even get close to the Titans energy Weapons, or the void shields for that matter ( energy shields? why when you can have dimensional shifting shields!!! )

To be fair i think AC and Wh40k stay on a tie, sure AC has the mobility to get advantage on the largest titans, but the void shields should force the AC to remain inmobile to get into melee range = Bad to be a easy target to a titan main weapons.
On the other hand WH40k has the largest firepower even imagined, that just reach absurd limits (the emperor bless our black hole missile spammer, or our plasma weapons that allow us to shoot SUNs the size of a city!!!)

P.S: on mobility ironically BT and WH40k are the more precise ones, as they both sport Neural connections that allow the *pilots* to move the mech/titan as an extension of their own body. Being WH40k the one that as it's simply explained the princeps becomes the titan, and the weapons Gunner, becomes the weapon, being able to even Feel when and where are damaged.

Edited by Lord Perversor, 10 July 2012 - 02:46 AM.

[Catamount]

Black Rock Shooter, on 10 July 2012 - 12:19 AM, said:

It's a system designed for convenience in tabletop gaming, not an ultrarealistic combat simulation like COD:MW3.

Edited by Catamount, 10 July 2012 - 06:57 AM.

[barcode]

The strongest are 40k titans since they wear castles, have shields, can carry support forces, and generally are equipped with what the Battletech universe probably reserves for naval weapons. Even the most ludicrously equipped Gundam is going to eventually fall to its myriad of smaller weapons.

The weakest are VTs. They're pretty fast in a straight line - I'm recalling over 150kph for a medium-sized one - but they're measily equipped (battletech equivalents of AC5s and AC2s as primary weapons, sets of maybe 10 LRMs as backup weapons, with the chunkiest carrying what might be equivalent to a Light Gauss Rifle), not exceptionally well-armored (said AC5s can take down one of them wiith a few seconds of successful hits) and extremely non-manueverable (aside from being able to slidestep - drifting across solid ground in any direction - they're extremely off-balance and will tip if they turn too hard at high speed).

Sorry guys, but Vertical Tanks are the coolest. Battlemechs are reeeally close but you just can't say no to a mech that, for some reason, has a manual transmission. You don't need power to be cool - you just need extreme mechiness.

Edited by barcode, 10 July 2012 - 09:34 AM.

[Ilithi Dragon]

Zakatak, on 09 July 2012 - 09:28 PM, said:

Yes, something about the Fafnir breaking 700m/s after firing both tubes seems... I dunno man.

So I was doing some quick number-crunching based on real-world military equipment, and I don't think your figures are all that far off.


The main gun of the M1 Abrams tank, with the latest version of its saboted DU dart round, had a kinetic energy of about 30 megajoules, and it weighs in at about 60 tons. If the M1 were to fire its main gun in free-fall vacuum, it would be accelerated backwards to about 32 m/s (actually, it wouldn't be that fast, since a lot of the momentum would still be imparted to the dart, but I don't know the appropriate calculations to get an exact figure off-hand, and the full recoil acceleration works well enough for the rough figures we're going for here).

Now, scaling that up to 100 tons, and allowing for more powerful weaponry, you can probably increase that number quite a bit without suffering too much recoil problems. Add in advanced recoil dampening systems, and the mech's own gyrostablization systems, and you can increase that figure even further. Catamount and I were tossing around upper-limit figures for that, and we figured that a maximum limit would be about 200 m/s end velocity from recoil force for a 100-ton mech, which gives us 2 gigajoules of energy. That's not all that far off from your other figures, within about an order of magnitude difference, +/- some change. If we call that 2 gigajoule limit the recoil force a Fafnir would feel firing both of its HGRs simultaneously, that puts it just a little over an order of magnitude under your figure from the PPC vaporization calculations. Now, if we allow for the composites of standard armor to have a lower melting/vaporization point than the average of their material components (it can happen with alloys - the properties of the alloy aren't always the average of the properties of their constituent parts adjusted to percentage of composition, and standard armor is also an all-purpose armor, that sacrifices high resistance to ballistic OR energy weapons for moderate resistance to both, unlike reactive or reflective armors, which go for high resistance to one and low resistance to the other), and allow for some looser interpretation of what is meant by 'vaporization' of 2 tons of armor to be not 100% literal, the PPC calculation figures can still fit easily within the lower figure limits, and give us a more reasonable range for BT weaponry.

[Zakatak]

I redid the numbers (obviously not because I'm a Battlemech fanboi, duh) taking BTech armors' ablative behavior into account, as well as basing the kJ/Mol average on this picture.



I got a slightly more tame 3GJ yield for the ER PPC, which seems closer to correct after comparing it with other sources in the BTech universe. Okay, so a Fafnir could still technically use its HGR's as jumpjets, but something else to consider first. One strong point of BTech technology is making things light. A Leviathan warship is half the mass of a Galaxy-class, despite being quadruple the volume. With modern/Warhammer technology, I bet an Atlas would mass in at 400 tons or so. You may have also noticed how strangely heavy weapons are in comparison in comparison to everything else, however. The RAC/2 and the GAU/8 are basically the exact same thing, firing 30mm explosive and armor piercing shells are very high rates of fire. The GAU/8 is about 300kg, the RAC/2 is about 8 tons. lolwut? This trend continues elsewhere.

One fair assessment is that they are so heavy and bulky because they have very high-grade and thick barrels, as well as advanced recoil systems. The object of this obviously dealing with the gigajoule rated cannons or slugs without wearing down over time (some Orions have been in service for 400 years!). Consider the Thompson SMG and the Kriss Vector. Both fire 45ACP ammunition and are effective out to 100m. The difference is that the Thompson kicks like a mule so hard that it can dislocate untrained shoulders, even at 600RPM (military, not mafia version). The Vector fires at nearly double the fire rate, but it has kickback and recoil that is barely noticeable. Advanced recoil reducing devices can spread the kinetic energy is directions besides backward, and I imagine reducing recoil was an advancement the Inner Sphere made as time went on. For example, gauss rifles with free-floating barrels that absorbed recoil and spread it in a circle.

Your turn Vulpes.

"Zak, go look at the TRO artwork for the gauss rifle. Clearly i-"
"Why don't you shut up and go play your Japanese games?!"
"Fanboi."
"Get out of my thread."

Edited by Zakatak, 10 July 2012 - 04:03 PM.

[Catamount]

Well remember, it's still not fair to count AC4's machines if we're discounting Unicron, because they're no more or less a mech than he is.

Also, going back to a previous comment on Stargate SG-1, Zakatak, it should be noted that there is not an inconsistency in railgun vs nuclear missile power. Those railguns were always an extremely underpowered weapon, and never showed any capability to damage anything more sophisticated than a Ha'tak. The missiles showed a lot more destructive power, as we saw in one episode when they spammed a hive ship, and one successfully landed hit basically did more damage than basically all the railgun fire ever seen in SG:A, combined.

[Vulpesveritas]

Zakatak, on 10 July 2012 - 04:00 PM, said:

Your turn Vulpes.

"Zak, go look at the TRO artwork for the gauss rifle. Clearly i-"
"Why don't you shut up and go play your Japanese games?!"
"Fanboi."
"Get out of my thread."

Sigh.

Catamount, on 10 July 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

Well remember, it's still not fair to count AC4's machines if we're discounting Unicron, because they're no more or less a mech than he is.

So then that gives us 3rd and 5th gen ACs for the top of the food chain on the AC side of things?
3rd gen: Faster, more maneuverable, stronger armor,
5th gen: Smaller, stronger firepower, longer range weapons
comparing the two.