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Ok, can someone answer this computing question about 3048-9?


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#1 Felicitatem Parco

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 10:52 AM

I don't know enough about the canon to answer this question, but how's the general state of computing power in this era (in the Inner Sphere)? Let's compare ComStar's stash with what the Houses have, and let's say, what NATO or the US military has nowadays in terms of fire control systems, target tracking and acquisition, personal mobile computing power (i.e. laptops and military-type smartphones coupled to GPS, etc.) and stuff like that... I'm asking because the cockpit looks a little 1980's...

How does battlefield technology in the MWO launch window compare to early 21st century technology?

Edited by Prosperity Park, 03 December 2011 - 10:55 AM.


#2 guardiandashi

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:05 AM

I would say in some ways it makes current technology look like a sick joke (so advanced that a wrist watch or calculator has the processing power of a modern mainframe) and in other ways it has regressed to the point that modern stuff can make their stuff looks sad

#3 Jacob

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:10 AM

In the grim future of third millennium there are none good cockpit designers..

#4 Atlas3060

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:11 AM

View PostProsperity Park, on 03 December 2011 - 10:52 AM, said:

I'm asking because the cockpit looks a little 1980's...

Because Battletech/Mechwarrior history is supposed to be 80's future in ssssppppaaaaccceeee (insert echo here).

#5 phelanjkell

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:14 AM

Military vehicles are also built to handle the extremes of nature. Hop into any military vehicle of today and you'll see its not the fancy looking stuff in sci-fi movies.

Remember these are war machines, sometimes being in use for 300+ years.

OP, I think it is tough to estimate, but they do have some futuristic technology. I think the biggest thing to take out of the universe is that at one point in time, the golden age, of the star league there was incredible technologies being used. Terraforming of planets etc...

#6 Wolftrap

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:18 AM

Well when you decided to nuke yourself to the stone age and than have to reverse engineer whats left afterwards I think the gaps between stuff unheard of now and things you could run down to Radio Shack for is understandable. If its not broke don't fix it. Go Retro cockpit design.

Edited by Wolftrap, 03 December 2011 - 11:21 AM.


#7 Felicitatem Parco

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:35 AM

Don't get me wrong, I think it's "deliciously" 1980's, just like it's supposed to be. But, when it comes to what's fielded in battle, can the Houses afford to give all their infantry personal computers and health monitors and all that techy jazz? I'm wondering what all the succession wars has done to the common troop load-out. Also, do these Mechs have the ability to link up to command vehicles for linked fire control or data sharing?

Edited by Prosperity Park, 03 December 2011 - 11:36 AM.


#8 Skwisgaar Skwigelf

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:37 AM

I like the 80s looking cockpits with the manual buttons and dials. Even with the technology they have that is advanced they would use that kind of setup for reliability and cost-effectiveness.

#9 Atlas3060

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 11:46 AM

View PostProsperity Park, on 03 December 2011 - 11:35 AM, said:

Don't get me wrong, I think it's "deliciously" 1980's, just like it's supposed to be. But, when it comes to what's fielded in battle, can the Houses afford to give all their infantry personal computers and health monitors and all that techy jazz? I'm wondering what all the succession wars has done to the common troop load-out. Also, do these Mechs have the ability to link up to command vehicles for linked fire control or data sharing?

During the Golden Age of the Star League they had quite a bit of technology that was lost during the 300 years of warfare called The Succession Wars. They beat themselves into the Stone Age nearly, but now since the discovery of the Helm memory core* certain technologies are being rediscovered.

Your last sentence would probably be closer to the C3 technology they create much later in the years where your battlecomputer shares data with the others within your network, one Master computer controls three slave systems.

Eventually that technology is replaced with C3i where each unit can network with each other and doesn't require a Master/slave setup.

*The Helm memory Core was this abandoned Star League computer discovered by a young merc group called the Gray Death Legion. Elements within Comstar wanted to either steal or sabotage this discovery but were foiled in the attempt. The GDL sent copies of the memory core to every House so the technology won't be easily lost again.

#10 Cattra Kell

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 12:13 PM

Just wan't to hit on something about the gold age of tech, in the book Tactics of Duty, I forget what Carlyle, I'm pretty sure it was Grayson, made a comment about how the technology hit a point where people were documented to live into their 200's and still act and look like they were in their late 50's.

#11 Atlas3060

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 12:25 PM

They mention something similiar in the Hot Spots Terra Sourcebook about Terra and the Golden Age. It wasn't uncommon for people to start raising a family around their 100th year of life since they've mastered a career or two by then and had the money for a family.

Edited by Atlas3060, 03 December 2011 - 12:32 PM.


#12 Felicitatem Parco

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 12:42 PM

Yes... the Golden Age ruled...

...but if the C3 system was introduced by Draconis Combine in 3050 (thanks Sarna.net!), then we can't use it until 2013... that makes me sad, but it does give some time for the developers to tweak the game and smooth out any glitches in the XP/Leveling process so someone can seriously progress toward Spec'ing their character as an Officer/Commander.

#13 Atlas3060

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 12:46 PM

And remember although it was introduced in 3050 who's to say they weren't working on prototypes around 3049 or so?
Sure it might be glitchy but it'd be fun! :)

#14 UncleKulikov

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 04:33 PM

A good analogy is to the dark ages in Europe, where almost all the science that had been discovered in Rome was lost. They still had concrete and knew how to build arches, but there wasn't any understanding beyond that.

#15 jojobear

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 04:33 PM

Best way to answer this is to look at how mechs can walk.

Mechs walk and move through the use of artificial muscle attached to a skeletal frame, just like humans (kind of).

In order for the mech to walk and keep balance reliably in a combat setting, a neurohelmet needs to be worn by a pilot. This helmet uses the balance-control part of the brain to keet itself upright.

This means that the mech's computer takes readings from the helmet. It then needs to run all the necessary calculations on that input and forward the output to the mech's artificial muscles. However, input would need to be collected at a phenomenal frequency to keep a bipedal mech upright in combat conditions. If the computer's processor is not fast enough, there will indeed be lag occurring.

A mech's cpu would need to be haul-*** fast compared to today's technology. We're talking multi-core processors beyond peta-herz range in order to manage walking, balance, fire control, radar, life support, and everything else.

Edited by jojobear, 03 December 2011 - 04:34 PM.


#16 Felicitatem Parco

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 04:40 PM

I know there's supposed to be a Neurohelmet that links the pilot's mind to the machine... but why does the cockpit contain joystick that looks like it was made by Logitech and a throttle-lever straight from a high-end bassfishing boat? I mean, there's a little disparity here. Also, the technology and computational power needed to control a live fusion reactor would be harder to come by than a fancy targeting computer...

#17 jojobear

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 04:56 PM

View PostProsperity Park, on 03 December 2011 - 04:40 PM, said:

I know there's supposed to be a Neurohelmet that links the pilot's mind to the machine... but why does the cockpit contain joystick that looks like it was made by Logitech and a throttle-lever straight from a high-end bassfishing boat? I mean, there's a little disparity here. Also, the technology and computational power needed to control a live fusion reactor would be harder to come by than a fancy targeting computer...


The neurohelmet simply acts as a balance and fine-motor-control interface. It allows the pilot to keep the mech balanced and to control any hands/fingers. Manual joysticks are still needed. It seems the neurohelmets are not advanced enough to allow full neural control of a mech (lost technology perhaps?).

For the fusion reactor, it depends on the control system in place. It probably has its own dedicated computer charged with monitoring and regulating.

#18 mithril coyote

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 07:20 PM

modern realworld computing power makes BT computers look rather wimpy. this partly due to writer fiat, since the game dates back to when computers were still pretty wimpy in rea life and the feel established then has been the standard long enough to make updating it hard. but there is a in universe element to it as well.

battletech computing system use optical computers (as per the star league sourcebook), which in the BT timeline were invented in the 'late 20th century', meaning the 80's or 90's. (the timeline matches ours until around that point) on it's own optical computing sounds all fancy, right? the downside comes from the mechanics of optical computing. optical computers use photons instead of electrons for computing. an optical computer is basically a set of crystals and fibers whose internal structure creates logic gates that allow calculation. optical computing gives a great improvement over 1980's level electrical computing, but it would be far bulkier and use alot more power. and it can't be miniaturized as easily, so making improvements on it would be harder. this is why most BT computers are terminal systems. they are little more than a screen and a keyboard hooked up to a massive mainframe system somewhere else in the building. you can't build a 'desktop' optical computing rig capable of much more than basic 1970's-80's level desktop performance without nanoscale manufacturing, which BT doesn't have.

there is also an element of how it calculated. an electrical computer is a linear computing system. binary. great for doing mathmatical calculations fast. Optical computers have nonlinear, non-binary calculation capabilities. instead of just "off and on", they can also put out "sort of on", sort of off", and so on. they can't handle fast mathmatical calculations as well, but they are good at working with fuzzy logic. so an optical computer wouldn't be as good at calculating firing solutions for example (which is just crunching numbers fast), but would be able to do things like interprete EM imaging of the brain or controlling an inherently unstable vehicle, at a level greater than it's on-paper specs would imply to us.

and battletech builds nearly all their hardware to last, almost to the level of airline black-box systems. you can literally blow it out a location with a ton+ of explosives, and any intact components will still function perfectly well, able to be picked up and reused. this is one of the reasons the successor states manage to keep their surviving technology going during the 3rd and 4th succession wars after most of the support infrastrucutre was blasted to hell...and why there are mechs and parts in constant use for centuries. the stuff is so durable that to break it practically requires active sabotage. the downside of this 'ragnarok proofing', as some fans have taken to calling it? your bulk and mass goes up, and your performance goes down. (look at the 'space rated' electric computing stuff we have in real life. space probes run on processors that can be out performed by some modern calculators, but they can basically survive anything except destructive lithobraking (read: slamming into a planet) and still function. optical computing is more durable, but still suffers much the same problems.)

plus the issue of programming. from the novels, BT doesn't seem to have developed object based programming, like used in modern computers. indeed, their software seems to have more in common with pre-windows methods. in addition, they seem to use a lot of hardware dedicated methods, using the physical design of the computer to control many of the things we'd have a OS process or App do.this has been changing a bit lately, but not by much.


all of this means that you can't really give a one to one comparison of BT to real world computer capability, but from the setting material (novels, canon short stories, and other such fluff), modern computing systems are much more capable than BT computer systems in most cases...the main differences being in Artificial intellegence (which BT does better than us, though it's all soft AI), controlling mechs (which is an outgrowth of the AI stuff), and brain interfacing ( understanding the data from neurohelmets, direct neural interfaces, and so on.)

Edited by mithril coyote, 03 December 2011 - 07:48 PM.


#19 Uncl Munkeh

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 07:57 PM

View Postjojobear, on 03 December 2011 - 04:33 PM, said:

Best way to answer this is to look at how mechs can walk.

Mechs walk and move through the use of artificial muscle attached to a skeletal frame, just like humans (kind of).

In order for the mech to walk and keep balance reliably in a combat setting, a neurohelmet needs to be worn by a pilot. This helmet uses the balance-control part of the brain to keet itself upright.

This means that the mech's computer takes readings from the helmet. It then needs to run all the necessary calculations on that input and forward the output to the mech's artificial muscles. However, input would need to be collected at a phenomenal frequency to keep a bipedal mech upright in combat conditions. If the computer's processor is not fast enough, there will indeed be lag occurring.

A mech's cpu would need to be haul-*** fast compared to today's technology. We're talking multi-core processors beyond peta-herz range in order to manage walking, balance, fire control, radar, life support, and everything else.


http://www.ted.com/s...fankhauser.html

I'm not sure it needs to be all that. Have a gander at this little robot...

#20 Mechteric

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Posted 03 December 2011 - 08:41 PM

Answer: the game and art was made like 20 years ago

I mean does anyone question why Star Wars didn't have hackers that could turn a giant star destroyer into a useless hulk of metal by sending a virus. By the way, big thanks to Independence Day for this crappy idea.





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