35 replies to this topic

[Tavington]

Hi Folks and BT Veterans,

I recently started reading BT Novels. Since BT takes place in a Universe with Spaceships and Fusion Reactors, is there an explanation somewhere, why the weapon ranges are so short?

Long Range Missiles with a range of max. a few thousand meters? AC, Railguns, Lasers with 1k max?
Aircrafts using direct fire autocannons and lasers?

Where are the "Im over the horizon and fire my XX km heat seaking missile"?
Where is the 1000 year old tank with a range of 4 or 5 km? The artillery with ranges of 40km+ ?
Why are there so few orbital bombardments?

I know, for the TT or PC Games, it is necessary to limit weapon ranges, but in novels, for the sake of immersion, there should be such things as real long range Missiles.

Or is there a reason for this, somewhere in the BT Universe, which explains the lack of long range weaponry?

I would love to hear your opions! (Since Im pretty sure, Im not the first one who mentions this, there should be a certain amount of arguments already. If there is a story/forum thread somewhere out there where this topic is discussed, a Link would be very nice.)

Thanks guys!

[Feindfeuer]

Battletech was created with the idea of giant robots murdering each other, face to face, with lasers, rockets and guns. This looks and feels the best when you do it at ranges where you can see the enemy, and as no weapon-category is allowed to surpas mechs in that setting, they can't field extremly superior/longer range weapons either.

Like many future-fantasy (not using the term sci-fi here) it's a mix of a romanticized understanding of WW2 warfare mixed in with romanticized/mythical knightly combat. With the mechs and the mechwarrior/pilots taking the role of the knight, with the rest of the setting revolving around them, making them feel special and important.

Edit:
And you can't have heroic knightly figures have a ecm/eccm long range information warfare with weapon fire exchanged beyond visual range... that just not fits the 'feeling' of the setting.

Edited by Feindfeuer, 17 July 2012 - 01:38 AM.

[Tavington]

Ok, thats what I thought too. I just wondered, if there is an "Ingame" explanation for that phenomenon. Like: "The treaty of 3032 says that every weapons manufacturer is to be destroyed by all means, if he dares to develop weapons with a range exceeding the range of a Mech by more than ... " or something similar.

Or the way Wh40k does, by an extremely backward facing, religious like Tech-caste and the loss of knowledge.

[Feindfeuer]

40K has other problems, like the weapon range and techlevel changing a lot depending on who wrote the fluff/novel you're currently reading or what edition you have in front of you. 40K knows a lot of over-the-top long range combat and extremly advanced weapons... but the ingame stats only allow for engagements that make an ancient handgone look like a long-range precision rifle.

BT also uses the lost tech approach to limit the available weaponry in some parts of it's timeline, but i can't personaly think of any technical reason ever mentioned why all weapon (including the high-tech ones) are of such limited range. Especially when you get confronted with technology that allows 150mm guns firing fully automatic 10 round bursts.

[Tavington]

I know that Wh40k has Tech to blast Planets appart, but this crude approach to tech delivers a nice explanation why the 2.000 years old starship could blast planets appart, but if it gets destroyed, it probably will never get replaced.... unless... in some dark, old place, there might be an old temple of Mars.... you know? Wh40k is so obviously crazy, you do not realy ask why the f**** they use Swords against spacetravelling, fusionbombing and teleporting enemies...

BT seems, to me at last, use a more realistic approach to things, their society did not go crazy and science seems to work pretty fine. At least fine enough to allow spaceflight to be a not so unusual way of traveling and trading. So this question did come up, and the answer is kind of... unsatisfieing.

[Feindfeuer]

Well, Jumpship drives are one of the technologies that are 'lost' in the inner sphere leading to no warships* left in the inner sphere at this point in time with the last warship beeing destroyed during the 2nd succesion war. Only after the clan invasion in 3056 will the IS start to build warships again. Normal jumpships are also rare and hard to maintain for the IS at the current point in the timeline (though they can't be as rare as the fluff suggests, or interstellar trade would be non-existant).
So at least interstellar travel is not realy common in the BT universe before the clan invasion, and a lot of tech is realy just as lost as it is in 40k. Add to that that comstar, the interstellar post/telecommunication service, is also a quasi-religious institution and there are quiet some similiarities between the two settings. Though 40K is a lot more extreme in all tose areas... also it has more skulls.

*Warships are jumpships with a compact jumpdrive, capable of transitional flight inside a system, armed and armored.

[Theodor Kling]

I think it was something about lostech and targeting systems being just not that good, although theoretical weapon ranges are reaching further..
Which is somewhat strange considering they got computer systems that support 3D holographic displays and can controll a fusion power plant in a mech ( reading: one that gets shaken by every step, hit on the mech etc.)

The lack of orbital bombardments is easier: On the political side there is the Ares Convention, forbidding it and most other weapons of mass destruction. Breaking it would mean all the other houses gang up on you, and probably half your own house as well.
And on the more practical side most warships as well as the production yards were lost in the 2nd succesion war. As a result the IS has problems enough maintaining and replacing their regular jump ships. Producing war ships is out of the question until sometime close to the clan invasion ( using reverse engenieered clan tech and the star league data core found by the Grey Death Legion in 3028 )
The few remainign warships are mainly on guard duty around capital worlds or extremely important ones like Hesperus II.

Edit: ah damm Feindfeuer was faster then me

Edited by Theodor Kling, 17 July 2012 - 02:42 AM.

[BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON]

Well, as far as I know there are 2 explanations for weapon ranges:

One is that targeting computers have become so bad that many weapons can't target beyond 800 meters. This is generally regarded as a poor explanation because so many holes can be put through it.

Second, is that armour has become so well developed that weapons are only be effective at close range. That is, if you fired your autocannon 4 kilometres away, it may hit but it won't do damage. There are logical problems with this too, but much less so than the first explanation.

[Tokra]

First of all, say 3 times, “this is Battletech, not Realtech.”

For the good of the playability you have to sacrifice some realism

In canon the explanation was more the limited targeting range. Not the range of the weapons. But even with this, the range of some weapons is not realistic.

For Fighter battles on the Aerotech maps, the range of the weapons is larger. The Weapons have the same range, but each hex is 500m long (not 30m as on the groundmaps). Same in Space, the weapon range is still the same, but each hex in space is equal to several 1000 km. So the weapons can fire way further. But it is not practicable.

And if you would do the high tech long range heat seeking rules, you would end at ranges of 10.000 hexes. And everything under 100 hex is like short range. After this you have to change the range of each hex to 3000m to be able to play again on it. Problem will be after this the movement. You have to stand in one hex for at least 10 round. Or the movement speed would have be increased so much, that this is unrealistic again. So you have to increase the time for each round to several minutes for you to being able to move normally. After this you might ask why you can fire a weapon only once every 5 min. And so on, and so on. One fix will end in another problem-

As second problem would it be not so much fun, if you fire, and the opponent is destroyed on a 2 (with 2d6) with one shot, because of your “super targeting auto focus heat seeking mega blaster Laser”. Sadly your opponent only need a 2 to reflect the laser with his mirror. You should have shot with your micro atom missiles. To bad.

In addition, there was a rule set for Solaris VII. Where everything was factor 4 (one round was 2.5 sec, one hex was 7.5m). This end in ranges of the weapons 112 hex for LRMs. Really not playable. But short range weapons were way more fun, and the heat management was way better. Because weapons had recharge times and did as well 4x the heat (a PPC did 40) while the heat sinks of the Mech remain the same (heat modifier table was 4x as well). MGs and small Lasers were suddenly the king


It’s a narrow walk between playable, fun, balance and a bit realism. And in my opinion, I prefer a playable fun game over a realistic one.

[Feindfeuer]

Ah yeah... i always forget about the mildly retarded target-computer explanation as it just seems so wrong when there are manual fire control systems that are able to place hits at comparable and longer ranges with much cruder weapons than what we have access to in the BT lore. Some things should not be tried to be explained.... or just handeled different between the game and the fluff, or explanation just ends up sounding just as stupid as the 'problem' it tries to solve.

[Theodor Kling]

BenEEeees VAT GROWN BACON, on 17 July 2012 - 02:51 AM, said:

Second, is that armour has become so well developed that weapons are only be effective at close range. That is, if you fired your autocannon 4 kilometres away, it may hit but it won't do damage. There are logical problems with this too, but much less so than the first explanation.

There are huge problems with that explanation as well indeed. Let´s start with soft targets. No novel mentiones weapons used at logner ranges against less armoured targets.
And while that explanation works pretty well for missiles( bigger warheads, less space for fuel), it does not work at all for ballisic weapons. Sure a bullet does loose some energy to air friction. but not THAT much. 150mm WWII guns easily could be fired at 14km range. Sure, not as a direct fire weapon, but still.
Same goes for lasers: A laser that is powefull enoguh to produce a visible beam in air looses power while ionizing the air it passes through. but rather slowly. The only real world laser I know of that has a visible beam due to its 4.7TW/cm^2 pulse densitiy travels for 29km before having lost enough energy to not be visible anymore.
Funny enough loss of focus is no problem at those energy densities, since non-linear optics come to play there.

In the end the already given explanation is probably right: Realistic weapon ranges would neihter make a good TT, nor a good novel. And certainly not a good PC game.

[Tavington]

Thanks for the explanation guys.

What I was pointing at with my question was the a) Some tech lost bad targeting computer c) no Warships d)Good armor explanation.

(Warships: For orbitals, wouldnt a Dropship be good enough? No need for jump capabilities, just fill all the cavernous space meant for mechs, tanks and troops, with large guns, lasers, fusion reactors, heat sinks and ammunition and flat out the hostile staging ground... )

Edit: As a TT player myself, I know that ranges have to be balanced. But I tend to differ between novels and fluff (no such things as balancing) and game rules. When I play a PC Game about WW 2, I do not complain about my tank shooting only a couple of hundred meters. When I read a book about WW2, I would complain about that fact.
Wh40k differs there too. The Novels seem to use pretty "realistic" standards for weapon ranges (couple hundreds for rifles), while in the TT a standard rifle fires about 20m or so, I would guess.

So my question was not pointed at actual game rules, but only at the fluff explanation.

Edited by Tavington, 17 July 2012 - 03:26 AM.

[Machalel]

I always assumed that it was an unintended by-product of the ritualisation of warfare and the desire to minimise any collateral damage. If you can see your enemy, and shoot directly at him/her, you are far less likely to destroy large swathes of civilian lives and infrastructure. Considering the amount of weaponry on a lance of mechs, let alone an army, one could see how you could start to skirt close to the Ares Convention:

"We, the undersigned, on this 13th day of June, 2412, in accordance with our commitment to preserving human life, do solemnly pledge to prevent the loss of civilian life in war. Let this document testify to our desire to end the senseless atrocities attendant upon human conflict and our pledge to uphold the ideals contained with these Convention or suffer the harshest consequences."

Edited by Machalel, 17 July 2012 - 03:42 AM.

[Tokra]

Well. Depend with what they come. If the attacker is coming with a Nightlord, your Union will not help you at all, and if you try to attack a planet with your dropship while there is a warship at it, it will be a short fight


At 3049 (before the clans came back with warships), the biggest usual ships were drop ships. And maybe space stations (like the Wolf`s Dragoons had).

There have been a handful of warships left, but most were destroyed in the first 3 succession wars (most in the first, rest after). But warships are a total different size. These are armed jumpships that carry as well dropships.

[Elkarlo]

For the ranges is a very Simple Answer...
It's Battletech !
You got a Heygrid with 17x16 fields... each field is bout 30 Yards.
So you got half a Kilometer on one Map. On a Normal Table 3x2 is the maximum you can have...

Thats the reason why weapon ranges are like they are... no weapon have more then 1 1/2 Maps range. so you can't fire from Edge to Edge from the Starting Zone.

Simple explanation. No thinking and Star Trek tinkering needed.

[Karl Streiger]

Tokra, on 17 July 2012 - 03:40 AM, said:

Well. Depend with what they come. If the attacker is coming with a Nightlord, your Union will not help you at all, and if you try to attack a planet with your dropship while there is a warship at it, it will be a short fight

Noting a Kraken T with a PeaceMaker Warhead mount on a Union can't handle

The explanation why in the novels the ranges doesn't differ may be easy. Some novel look like a 1:1 conversation of the board game - with Price of Havoc as good/bad example.
You shouldn't forgot the nerdrage.. for example you read a novel where the LRM 15 of a Zeus started a single missile that hit a target 12km away and the autocannon is used to fire 120mm laser guided smart shells at a target behind a ridge - you will close the book and rethink if you really read battletech. When they are able to hit something at this ranges the weapons should be able to kill them with one or two hits. But we love BattleTech for machines that fire hundreds of rounds - shreading armor or melting armor away.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 17 July 2012 - 04:08 AM.

[Elkarlo]

When we assume the AK/5 as Standard variant range and the Ultra Ac5 as good long barrel.
(Descripted as the year old long Standard Main battletech on Conventional Engine with a Standard Gun)

Our Mainbattle Tank would be an Upgraded Vendette with Ultra range gun.

a AC/5 got 18 Field range thats about 500 meters.
a AC/5 Ultra got 21 Field range, thats about 600 Meters.
A standard Reinruhr 120mm gun has a full hit capability of 2km ( Up to 4km in good condition depending on Wind etc..)
A 88mm L/71 had a full hit capability of 1500 meters.. and thats a freaking 1943 weapon.

Yes i noticed yes i don't care because i don't see walking Robots move around.
And it's Cooler this way. And more praktical for a Board game and more FUN.

[Strum Wealh]

Tavington, on 17 July 2012 - 01:27 AM, said:

Hi Folks and BT Veterans,

I recently started reading BT Novels. Since BT takes place in a Universe with Spaceships and Fusion Reactors, is there an explanation somewhere, why the weapon ranges are so short?

Long Range Missiles with a range of max. a few thousand meters? AC, Railguns, Lasers with 1k max?
Aircrafts using direct fire autocannons and lasers?

Where are the "Im over the horizon and fire my XX km heat seaking missile"?
Where is the 1000 year old tank with a range of 4 or 5 km? The artillery with ranges of 40km+ ?
Why are there so few orbital bombardments?

I know, for the TT or PC Games, it is necessary to limit weapon ranges, but in novels, for the sake of immersion, there should be such things as real long range Missiles.

Or is there a reason for this, somewhere in the BT Universe, which explains the lack of long range weaponry?

I would love to hear your opions! (Since Im pretty sure, Im not the first one who mentions this, there should be a certain amount of arguments already. If there is a story/forum thread somewhere out there where this topic is discussed, a Link would be very nice.)

Thanks guys!

Arguably, the weapons do have much longer ranges; the "Extreme Range Rules" and "LOS Range Rules" are described in Tactical Operations on page 85 (viewable here as the 87th page of the e-document).

Quote

Ranged weapons can fire at targets beyond long range, but such shots are diffcult.

Extreme Range starts 1 hex beyond long range and extends to a range equal to the weapon’s maximummedium range times 2.
For example, extreme range for a Medium Laser extends from 10 to 12 hexes; the Medium Laser’s long range is 9 (9 + 1 = 10), and its maximum medium range is 6 (6 x 2 = 12). For Variable Range weapons, multiply the Long Range by 1.5 (round down). If a weapon does not have a Long Range, it cannot have an Extreme Range.

Apply a +6 to-hit modifer to any weapon attacks against targets at extreme range.

Quote

For those playing truly large games across dozens of maps,players can institute LOS Range.
Note that for added realism, players can use the LOS Range rule in conjunction with theVisual Range Table found in the Double Blind rules (see p. 221), to provide a “hard number” of hexes that a player can visually see under a variety of Planetary Conditions: if you can see it, you can try to make an attack.

LOS Range starts 1 hex beyond extreme range and extends to the limits of the entire playing area, regardlessof how large.

Apply a +8 to-hit modifer for any weapon attacks against targets made at LOS range.

There's more to each section, mainly regarding damage-reduction for various weapon types (e.g. "subtract X units of damage for weapon type Y" or "multiply damage by A (where 0.00 < A < 1.00) for weapon type B").

So, the limited ranges have the in-story explanation of combining "targeting and tracking difficulty at longer ranges" and "energy loss to the environment (e.g. "blooming" for energy weapons, air friction and gravity for ballistics, depletion of fuel and air friction and gravity for missiles)" - in other words, the same issues that affect real-life weapons.

The effects are made more pronounced in-game in order to make playing in a space the size of the average kitchen table viable, as well as to maintain the "in-your-face combat!" aspect intended/desired by the game's designers.

Edited by Strum Wealh, 17 July 2012 - 04:17 AM.

[Ralen Sharr]

the way I've always looked at it is this
Battlemechs come standard with a stealth/ECM package (which is why we can't detect a battlemech more than a few km out)
So targeting systems would have difficulty accurately tracking a battlemech at very long range.
If cruise missiles started to become an issue, AMS systems would become more commonplace and make them useless.
Armor technology is also extremely advanced, and it takes a LOT of energy to do anything to it.
There are long range artillery cannons, it just takes one hell of a shell to crack the armor of a battlemech.

All this together renders extreme range weapons impractical or outright unusable. I've seen several instances on these very forums of people comparing modern weapons to battletech and I can't help but quietly facepalm over it.
In example = many battlemechs have 15 points of armor or more SOMEWHERE if not in multiple places. This is enough to take a 125KG slug at mach 5+ and continue functioning normally. Today's weapons are PEA SHOOTERS in comparison. Your tomahawk cruise missle is not going to do anything to a jenner. Any modern tank could empty every shell it's got at a commando, and it's going to shrug it off, smile and proceed to run down that tank and cut it in half with a small laser.

[Theodor Kling]

That´s just plain wrong.
It might very well be that advances in armour tech would make a Jenner basicly imune to a Tomahwk cruise missile. But the Jenner CAN be damaged by let´s say an LRM 10 quite a bit. So there must have been anvances in explosives as well. Loading those on a Tomahawk, with the much bigger payload capacitiy, would one hit the Jenner. See Arrow IV Homing basicly.
Same goes for balistic weapons. You could easily use those advances in explosives to propell heavier slugs faster then today. Making the range discussion potentially worse, because depending on the ratio between higher velocity and slug mass you get flatter trajectories and even more range. And it won´t affect accuaracy. Sure, you get more recoil. But with single shots or burst fire this is not exactly an issue.

A modern tank probably has less damage potential then any BT Mech. But on the other hand: they are not imune even to lighter weapons then their own. And most MBTs could outfight a medium or heavy i would say. The enourmous range difference combined with the speed difference is not to be underestimated. Actual outcome might depend on the differences in raw firewpower in the end.
To use your example: A modern tanks main gun might just equal an AC2 when it comes to damage. But even an AC2 can be deadly if shot with great accuracy.