44 replies to this topic

[Bellum Dominum]

cSand, on 15 December 2015 - 01:09 PM, said:

On this note, I would like to add, a particular point of pride in myself here in one of thw coolest things I ever managed to pull off in this game, that I jumpjetted off a ledge, landed on a DWF, and shot it to death from atop its roof with my IV4. "A one in a million shot boss, I swear"

pics or it didn't happen
lol yeah stuff like that is quite fun. I've gotten one or two lucky headshots like that in my spider while running through the enemy team to cause chaos and give my team a chance to regroup in the last 4 years it's rare but awesome when it happens

[cSand]

Death Drow, on 15 December 2015 - 01:12 PM, said:

pics or it didn't happen
lol yeah stuff like that is quite fun. I've gotten one or two lucky headshots like that in my spider while running through the enemy team to cause chaos and give my team a chance to regroup in the last 4 years it's rare but awesome when it happens

lol, yea, you never got the camera at the right time - like that time I saw the sasquatch!!

Man did I feel like a badass though.

[Kraftwerkedup]

Leaping and jumping is the same thing.

If you jump a half inch high, its still a jump. There may be some semantics going on here, but yes, mechs can jump.

Mechs can do pretty much anything, depending on the type, though theres not alot of rules to cover that in the TT, since well, that would just be bloat (its already bloated).

Mechs can do handstands, pole vault, jump over walls, do backflips, throw javelins, use clubs, some of them have hands and can play paddycake.

Some mechs move like a sack of potatoes.

The rules push them together to make the board game coherent. So while a Charger can probably jump a good 10 feet off the ground and maybe even clear a level 1 building, 99.9% of mechs cant. And while a Direwolf really cant slide on pavement, it does. Because "boardgame".

[Kraftwerkedup]

Theres literally no reason a 100 ton object moving 53kph, would slide while turning on pavement if it has legs and a gyroscope...but, theres a 95 ton mech that can move 80kph, with flat feet, that would totally slide on pavement if it turned at max speed. Might even fall into a building.

So all mechs are subject to the same rules, with modifiers for likelihood of something happening.

While a mech without hand actuators cant articulate a club, any mech with them, can, even if the design art for mech makes that totally impossible (clan mechs with hands mostly).

If you can bend over, rip a tree out of the ground, then go beat another giant robot to death with it in a brawl...youre pretty agile.

I find most people just arent that familiar with the 25 years of insane rule bloat that the franchise has received.

Go load up megamek, tick EVERYTHING, then play. It makes Dwarf Fortress look like Call of Duty.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 15 December 2015 - 01:20 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:15 PM, said:

Leaping and jumping is the same thing.

If you jump a half inch high, its still a jump. There may be some semantics going on here, but yes, mechs can jump.

Mechs can do pretty much anything, depending on the type, though theres not alot of rules to cover that in the TT, since well, that would just be bloat (its already bloated).

Mechs can do handstands, pole vault, jump over walls, do backflips, throw javelins, use clubs, some of them have hands and can play paddycake.

Some mechs move like a sack of potatoes.

The rules push them together to make the board game coherent. So while a Charger can probably jump a good 10 feet off the ground and maybe even clear a level 1 building, 99.9% of mechs cant. And while a Direwolf really cant slide on pavement, it does. Because "boardgame".

No leaping and jumping is not necessarily the same thing. Can be, but not always. One does not have to move upwards at all to leap off a cliff. This is exemplified in those same rules. You can run full out off a cliff, leap off a cliff, and move forward and downward 1 hex. You can not move laterally across a chasm for instance which would be more of a jump as it requires some upwards movement to traverse the gap and still have your legs above the level plane on the other side.

How do hand actuators have anything to do with jumping? This is Battletech not Iron Man fantasies. Use of weapons in the hands has NOTHING to do with the ability to propel 20+ tons upwards even an inch. The biggest reason why they can't jump without jump jets is the damage it does to the mech. Even 1 inch of falling for 20+ Tons is a huge amount of energy to be absorbed by the leg actuators. I'm not trying to go all physics on you as it's a fantasy game but NO WHERE in the rules has it ever said a mech could propel it's self upwards, in any way, without jump jets. Backflips required jump jets, Hand stands I don't remember what or where that was put in and really don't care. This is not Voltron or Macross.

I find most people don't understand the difference between second hand rules bloating and source/canon.

Edited by Death Drow, 15 December 2015 - 01:25 PM.

[cSand]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:18 PM, said:

Theres literally no reason a 100 ton object moving 53kph, would slide while turning on pavement if it has legs and a gyroscope...but, theres a 95 ton mech that can move 80kph, with flat feet, that would totally slide on pavement if it turned at max speed. Might even fall into a building.

So all mechs are subject to the same rules, with modifiers for likelihood of something happening.

While a mech without hand actuators cant articulate a club, any mech with them, can, even if the design art for mech makes that totally impossible (clan mechs with hands mostly).

If you can bend over, rip a tree out of the ground, then go beat another giant robot to death with it in a brawl...youre pretty agile.

I find most people just arent that familiar with the 25 years of insane rule bloat that the franchise has received.

Go load up megamek, tick EVERYTHING, then play. It makes Dwarf Fortress look like Call of Duty.

lol, DF is awesome but man. Universities could offer a whole course path on playing DF.

That said I started a game recently, having a godo time so far but... in small bites, lol.

[Nathan Foxbane]

Juodas Varnas, on 15 December 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

Does this count as Jumping?

That is charging a target in a hex one level lower than your ending hex or a possible DFA using a leap. Get to use the punch table for either, which is nice. In lore most 'Mechs could hop, which allowed them to clear obstacles of about two meters in height. There were advanced rules for climbing up cliffs and leaping down from them.

Death Drow, on 15 December 2015 - 01:22 PM, said:

No leaping and jumping is not necessarily the same thing. Can be, but not always. One does not have to move upwards at all to leap off a cliff. This is exemplified in those same rules. You can run full out off a cliff, leap off a cliff, and move forward and downward 1 hex. You can not move laterally across a chasm for instance which would be more of a jump as it requires some upwards movement to traverse the gap and still have your legs above the level plane on the other side.

Leaping from a BT rules standpoint is an intentional, controlled drop off a cliff without the aid of jump jets.

Death Drow, on 15 December 2015 - 01:22 PM, said:

How do hand actuators have anything to do with jumping? This is Battletech not Iron Man fantasies. Use of weapons in the hands has NOTHING to do with the ability to propel 20+ tons upwards even an inch. The biggest reason why they can't jump without jump jets is the damage it does to the mech. Even 1 inch of falling for 20+ Tons is a huge amount of energy to be absorbed by the leg actuators. I'm not trying to go all physics on you as it's a fantasy game but NO WHERE in the rules has it ever said a mech could propel it's self upwards, in any way, without jump jets. Backflips required jump jets, Hand stands I don't remember what or where that was put in and really don't care. This is not Voltron or Macross.

I find most people don't understand the difference between second hand rules bloating and source/canon.

Hand actuators are used for the "dangle-and-drop" maneuver in which a 'Mech with two functioning hand actuators does just that. Neither backflips or handstands were in the rules sets. One elevation level is 6 meters or half the average height of a 'Battle 'Mech. Both leaping and dangle-and-drop are advanced rules first put forth in the Maximum Tech rule set.

Edited by Nathan Foxbane, 15 December 2015 - 01:41 PM.

[Kaeb Odellas]

I just want to be able to hop up a knee-high obstacle without jump jets. Is that too much to ask?

[Kraftwerkedup]

Yeah that game spirals quickly into oblivion with all the options. Ive done pretty well just building simple little farming communities, then building enough traps to make it through a year or two. Cant seem to train armies or guards lol.

Death Drow, on 15 December 2015 - 01:22 PM, said:

No leaping and jumping is not necessarily the same thing. Can be, but not always. One does not have to move upwards at all to leap off a cliff. This is exemplified in those same rules. You can run full out off a cliff, leap off a cliff, and move forward and downward 1 hex. You can not move laterally across a chasm for instance which would be more of a jump as it requires some upwards movement to traverse the gap and still have your legs above the level plane on the other side.

How do hand actuators have anything to do with jumping? This is Battletech not Iron Man fantasies. Use of weapons in the hands has NOTHING to do with the ability to propel 20+ tons upwards even an inch. The biggest reason why they can't jump without jump jets is the damage it does to the mech. Even 1 inch of falling for 20+ Tons is a huge amount of energy to be absorbed by the leg actuators. I'm not trying to go all physics on you as it's a fantasy game but NO WHERE in the rules has it ever said a mech could propel it's self upwards, in any way, without jump jets. Backflips required jump jets, Hand stands I don't remember what or where that was put in and really don't care. This is not Voltron or Macross.

I find most people don't understand the difference between second hand rules bloating and source/canon.

Well a couple things. I think leaping and jumping is the same thing. If you leave the ground of your own movement, you have jumped. Semantics then.

Leaping from a cliff, and making it farther than you would if gravity acted on you from no upward velocity, is jumping from a cliff. Any upward momentum provided by yourself that makes both feet leave the ground, is a jump.

Hand actuators mean if you can lean over and stand up, you can probably jump. If you can brace yourself with a hand, you can leap over objects.

Mechs can jump. Just not very high, or very far.

Less than level 1 terrain, and less than 1 hex. But they can still jump.

Nathan Foxbane, on 15 December 2015 - 01:25 PM, said:

That is charging a target in a hex one level lower than your ending hex or a possible DFA using a leap. Get to use the punch table for either, which is nice. In lore most 'Mechs could hop, which allowed them to clear obstacles of about two meters in height. There were advanced rules for climbing up cliffs and leaping down from them.

Its an 'accidental fall' per the rules. Also you can run off a level 3 cliff, leap, and go up to 4 hexes, which means you can 'accidental fall' DFA without any jump jets.

Sadly theres no rules for hovercraft doing this, or Savannah Masters would be even THAT much more annoying.

You cant technically "Charge" off a cliff.

Megamek wont let you, and its not specifically in the rules. Otherwise I would have been "Charging" Savannah Masters off of cliffs for years. The way to avoid being smashed by a 16 hex charge is stand on the other side of level 2 terrain, since the system doesnt let you 'Charge attack' off a cliff. To the dismay of Hovercraft charging fools everywhere.

Since charging does damage based on weight and hexes moved, and hovercraft have insane movement points, they even had to house rule out hovercraft from charging, specifically because its downright abusive lol. For the BV you can take an enormous amount of hovercraft, and just charge attack them into enemy mechs for obscene damage.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 15 December 2015 - 01:35 PM.

[mogs01gt]

In lore they mentioned mechs "diving" to dodge incoming damage. Im not sure if that qualifies as jumping though.

[Bellum Dominum]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

Yeah that game spirals quickly into oblivion with all the options. Ive done pretty well just building simple little farming communities, then building enough traps to make it through a year or two. Cant seem to train armies or guards lol.



Well a couple things. I think leaping and jumping is the same thing. If you leave the ground of your own movement, you have jumped. Semantics then.

Leaping from a cliff, and making it farther than you would if gravity acted on you from no upward velocity, is jumping from a cliff. Any upward momentum provided by yourself that makes both feet leave the ground, is a jump.

Hand actuators mean if you can lean over and stand up, you can probably jump. If you can brace yourself with a hand, you can leap over objects.

Mechs can jump. Just not very high, or very far.

Less than level 1 terrain, and less than 1 hex. But they can still jump.



Its an 'accidental fall' per the rules.

Forward momentum is part of the calculation to how far you are going to traverse before reaching the ground. Upward momentum is not required at all for this. Rather than come up with the distance for each weight and velocity, every 5 tons of mech and then every 1kph of speed, that could be traveled this way the game designers made it simple and said simply 1 forward 1 down. The specifically did not say 1 forward then 1 down which would present the possibility that some upwards momentum is possible with out the use of jumpjets.

Also per the rules both apply in regards to that picture. The pilot performing the manuever gets to decide which rules they want to go by 'accidental fall' or 'dfa'. Accidental fall actually has less likely a chance to damage the legs than the DFA would but also less of a chance to do serious damage to the opponent mech.

mogs01gt, on 15 December 2015 - 01:29 PM, said:

In lore they mentioned mechs "diving" to dodge incoming damage. Im not sure if that qualifies as jumping though.

lore vs rules there is a lot in 'lore' that never makes it to TT. the only crouching for instance was omnimech's if I remember correctly

Edited by Death Drow, 15 December 2015 - 01:36 PM.

[Kraftwerkedup]

Death Drow, on 15 December 2015 - 01:34 PM, said:

Also per the rules both apply in regards to that picture. The pilot performing the manuever gets to decide which rules they want to go by 'accidental fall' or 'dfa'. Accidental fall actually has less likely a chance to damage the legs than the DFA would.

Very true. Always smart to min max that if it comes up. So you take the damage clusters where you want them.

And upward momentum isnt required, but can be a part of the equation, per the leaping rules for moving more than two levels down.

If there was no upward momentum, you couldnt end up more hexes away on a roll than gravity would allow.

I mean unless youre saying the mech lands, then rolls to a stop like a parachutist...

Which id say pretty much also indicates that theyre agile enough to at least give themselves some amount of upward momentum that could make both feet leave the ground.

Just taking a step they can achieve some amount of momentum going upwards, its beyond reason to me to think they couldnt hop in place. Or leap off a cliff. Especially when its mentioned and implied in the rules, and mentioned multiple times in the fluffy lore.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 15 December 2015 - 01:41 PM.

[Bellum Dominum]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:38 PM, said:

Very true. Always smart to min max that if it comes up. So you take the damage clusters where you want them.

And upward momentum isnt required, but can be a part of the equation, per the leaping rules for moving more than two levels down.

If there was no upward momentum, you couldnt end up more hexes away on a roll than gravity would allow.

Velocity plays more of a part in this than you are giving it credit for. Gravity comes more into play as velocity is lost.

Upward momentum again is not required to move farther based on a 'bad or good' roll. You keep saying than gravity would allow yet ignoring the fact that high or low gravity planets do not change this rule.

Edited by Death Drow, 15 December 2015 - 01:42 PM.

[C E Dwyer]

battle mechs could never jump in the game mechanic's without JJ's

There are a few fluff examples like Drop Kick Darvin, which would suggest a mech can launch to a point, but even the fluff said it was a very bad idea that would in the long term badly damage the mech.

mind you mechs with JJ's in M.W.O jump like a granny with bad hips

[Kraftwerkedup]

If a 100 ton object at 80 kph goes off a cliff, it will always land in the exact place, if it runs off the cliff the same way. (perhaps not to the inch)

Just there being an arty roll to see which hex you land in, implies that the mechs arent going off the cliff the same way, and that some of them (if you land at the farthest possible point) have given themselves upward momentum at the cliffs edge, to travel farther than other mechs of the exact same speed and weight.|

Landing closer to the cliff face, implies you probably tripped and face planted, instead of cleanly running off, IE falling in the middle hex.

Edited by Kraftwerkedup, 15 December 2015 - 01:45 PM.

[Steinar Bergstol]

Juodas Varnas, on 15 December 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

Does this count as Jumping?

DRAGON BOWLING!

[Revis Volek]

cSand, on 15 December 2015 - 01:13 PM, said:

lol, yea, you never got the camera at the right time - like that time I saw the sasquatch!!

Man did I feel like a badass though.

I Jumped off a ledge on Tourmaline once, Spun myself in mid air with my jj's and took a PPC shot at a jenner giving chase and headshot him.


He was so salty "HAX, reported" but I was to busy trying to get up off the floor being crippled by laughter.

[Bellum Dominum]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:44 PM, said:

If a 100 ton object at 80 kph goes off a cliff, it will always land in the exact place, if it runs off the cliff the same way. (perhaps not to the inch)

Just there being an arty roll to see which hex you land in, implies that the mechs arent going off the cliff the same way, and that some of them (if you land at the farthest possible point) have given themselves upward momentum at the cliffs edge, to travel farther than other mechs of the exact same speed and weight.|

Landing closer to the cliff face, implies you probably tripped and face planted, instead of cleanly running off, IE falling in the middle hex.

That roll incorporates a lot of variables. What was the ground density at the edge of the cliff? Was the pilot paying attention to where their footing was or where the enemy is. I could go on and on and on. Again none of which incorporate upward momentum. None. Sorry you can keep grasping but again there is a reason why in the rules NO upward momentum is allowed without jump jets. If it was it would be listed on each mechs stats.

Steinar Bergstol, on 15 December 2015 - 01:50 PM, said:

DRAGON BOWLING!

Man! I just missed out on dragon bowling

[Tyler Valentine]

Juodas Varnas, on 15 December 2015 - 12:53 PM, said:

Does this count as Jumping?

LOL!

Everyone in the office is looking at me funny now...

[Nathan Foxbane]

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

Its an 'accidental fall' per the rules. Also you can run off a level 3 cliff, leap, and go up to 4 hexes, which means you can 'accidental fall' DFA without any jump jets.
Sadly theres no rules for hovercraft doing this, or Savannah Masters would be even THAT much more annoying.

As far as I can tell from the rule books, yes, it is an accidental fall if a leap is used. Still, considering the intent and if the pilot made their leap PSRs the DFA rules should be used. Failed leap PSRs should result in a normal accidental fall mechanic. Considering the way hovercraft work though a leap would be a suicide action because it would gut their motive system at the least to do one.

Kraftwerkedup, on 15 December 2015 - 01:28 PM, said:

You cant technically "Charge" off a cliff.


Megamek wont let you, and its not specifically in the rules. Otherwise I would have been "Charging" Savannah Masters off of cliffs for years. The way to avoid being smashed by a 16 hex charge is stand on the other side of level 2 terrain, since the system doesnt let you 'Charge attack' off a cliff. To the dismay of Hovercraft charging fools everywhere.

Since charging does damage based on weight and hexes moved, and hovercraft have insane movement points, they even had to house rule out hovercraft from charging, specifically because its downright abusive lol. For the BV you can take an enormous amount of hovercraft, and just charge attack them into enemy mechs for obscene damage.

Maybe Megamek won't let you do a charge of a level two cliff (it shouldn't at that point it is a leap), but it should let you do a charge into a hex one elevation level lower than you. At that point charges and kicks both use the punch table and this lines up with the image.