206 replies to this topic

[Shiroi Tsuki]

XtremWarrior, on 09 October 2016 - 02:49 AM, said:

Just a quote from Sarna to illustrate your saying:

"Modern BattleMech and vehicle armor plating was originally introduced in 2470 by the Terran Hegemony^{. In theBattleTech universe, armor is ablative in nature. This means that it is generally destroyed or blown off when hit, but in the process of doing so, it absorbs enormous energies, protecting the unit it is mounted on. While powerful blows will still rock a vehicle, there will be little, if any, internal damage as long as armor plating still remains. Armor-piercing rounds do exist for certain weapons, but they require a higher technology level and cost more. As a result, destroying a 'Mech requires either immense firepower, concentrated fire on a vulnerable location, or a lucky hit.}
Standard BattleMech armor is composed of several layers providing various degrees of protection and support. The first layer is extremely strong Titanium alloyed with steel, the result of crystal alignment and radiation treatment, which is also very brittle. The second layer is a ceramic, cubic boron nitride, which combined with a web of artificial diamond fibers acts as a backstop to the steel layer. These two layers rest atop a titanium alloy honeycomb structure which provides support, and a layer of self-sealing polymer sealant which allows for space and underwater operations.^[2]"

Dem links tho
D E M L I N K S T H O

[Aiden Skye]

With capped weapon ranges mechs have, I'd imagine an A-10 armed with Maverick's from outside mechs weapon range will cause some serious problems. Could also air burst a nuke from outside their effective range...lots of destruction and heavy EMP damage at the least. Unless mechs are shielded from EMP. We also don't know how the power of battletech weapons matches up with modern weapons. For all we know they could be invincible gundams and all our weapons are like spitballs. Who knows.

[Dogstar]

Here's some more handwaving: All mechs are fitted with autonomous electronic warfare suites that have evolved over thousands of years to counter every type of smart weapon or targeting system that was ever invented.

Nobody ever mentions it because why would they mention such basic fact, it's like saying mechs have seats, of course they do, they all do.

These EW suites would immediately counter any 20th century guided missiles, and are perfectly capable of infecting armoured vehicle systems, effectively reducing them to only basic optical sights.

This is also why the ranges in BT are so short, everything relies primarily on the good old mk1 eyeball because all smart systems don't work in the 31st century battlefield.

Edited by Dogstar, 09 October 2016 - 09:00 AM.

[Anjian]

XtremWarrior, on 09 October 2016 - 02:49 AM, said:

Just a quote from Sarna to illustrate your saying:

"Modern BattleMech and vehicle armor plating was originally introduced in 2470 by the Terran Hegemony^{. In theBattleTech universe, armor is ablative in nature. This means that it is generally destroyed or blown off when hit, but in the process of doing so, it absorbs enormous energies, protecting the unit it is mounted on. While powerful blows will still rock a vehicle, there will be little, if any, internal damage as long as armor plating still remains. Armor-piercing rounds do exist for certain weapons, but they require a higher technology level and cost more. As a result, destroying a 'Mech requires either immense firepower, concentrated fire on a vulnerable location, or a lucky hit.}
Standard BattleMech armor is composed of several layers providing various degrees of protection and support. The first layer is extremely strong Titanium alloyed with steel, the result of crystal alignment and radiation treatment, which is also very brittle. The second layer is a ceramic, cubic boron nitride, which combined with a web of artificial diamond fibers acts as a backstop to the steel layer. These two layers rest atop a titanium alloy honeycomb structure which provides support, and a layer of self-sealing polymer sealant which allows for space and underwater operations.^[2]"


The game creators took literally all the hardest things they know about and then said BattleMech armor is a mix of all that put in the hardest molecular shape...
Closest real extrapolation from OP's question is thinking a M1 tank vs a 1-thousand-year-old army, which means regiments of archers, foot soldiers and horsemen, with maybe some siege weapons... Still wondering who would win?
I'm pretty sure a 11th century soldier would have laughed at the idea of a single giant steel war machine (ie: a tank)

The above passage is a bunch of gobblygook by people with no knowledge of materials science and metallurgy. For armor, you do NOT WANT it to be BRITTLE. If its brittle it will quickly crack and breakup upon impact. Armor needs to have to have a sense of malleability. Reminds what you do with Japanese swords, which have a soft inner core while the outer blade is face hardened. During WW2, naval and tank armor uses molybdenum to reduce the brittleness of armor.

Do you realize that modern tanks have multiple layers of composite armor? This includes the use of **spaced armor** which is actually just air between two plates. Spaced armor is necessary to defeat HEAT and HESH rounds. Spacing also strips off the caps of the shells and without the cap, the shell will have greater difficulty in penetrating. Spaced armor is also necessary to defeat explosive devices that are attached to the armor like limpet mines.

Modern tanks also have modular armor, which means they can easily add more, or change different layers. Another innovation of tank armor is ERA or Explosive Reactive Armor which appears to coat tanks with tiled bricks. When hit, ERA explodes outward, which takes outward the shell trying to penetrate it.

Ceramic between metal plates are also meant to defeat HEAT and HESH rounds. The mechanism behind using ceramic is this --- the very fragmentation of ceramic distorts the jets caused by the hollow shaped charge.

As for defeating lasers? Very simple. Modern tanks already have this mechanism. Its called smoke generators.

Combinations of ERA and spaced armor makes it difficult for missiles to get through.

Titanium is more brittle than steel, which is a negative for armor. It is however, light weight and thus used for airborne armor like around pilots.

Modern tanks also use Depleted Uranium --- because it is highly dense --- as one of the sandwiched layers in modern multilayered armor.

Other materials used for armor includes glass, plastics, and polycarbonate. Polycarbonate and plastic are sandwiched between glass to create bulletproof glass, while plastics can be embedded with granite particles for example, to be used in composite multilayered armor.

Multilayered armor, in order to work, is actually a mix of both hard and soft components, just like a katana is made of multiple folded layers, with a soft inner core.

[Anjian]

razenWing, on 09 October 2016 - 06:03 AM, said:

Really? Our tanks are fed by automatic loaders w/ automatic trajectory calculation by on-board computers? I did not know we have dumb fire missile artillery with lock-on capability guided by firing solutions. I also did not know that we have operational electromagnetic rail gun the size of a dining room table.

O, can our tanks survive in outer space or Mars?

Yea, don't sound so archaic to me...

Except for the rail gun which has not been demonstrated to be practical..or useful... modern tanks have already figured out the other two. This includes automatic gyrostabilization that keep a targets in sight when the tank is moving, and stabilizes the cannon to counter the vehicular movement over round ground.

No missile is dumb fired because you do not have a mechanism to identify friend or foe. Antitank missiles are currently fire and forget optically guided or through W band radar. However, old style control via wires or command guided by keeping the target locked via TV camera sight is, which is used on the first and second generation ATGMs are practically spoof proof.

T-14 Armata is the closest thing to a robot now, the turret is entirely automated.

Edited by Anjian, 09 October 2016 - 09:31 AM.

[Anjian]

Dogstar, on 09 October 2016 - 09:00 AM, said:

Here's some more handwaving: All mechs are fitted with autonomous electronic warfare suites that have evolved over thousands of years to counter every type of smart weapon or targeting system that was ever invented.

Nobody ever mentions it because why would they mention such basic fact, it's like saying mechs have seats, of course they do, they all do.

These EW suites would immediately counter any 20th century guided missiles, and are perfectly capable of infecting armoured vehicle systems, effectively reducing them to only basic optical sights.

This is also why the ranges in BT are so short, everything relies primarily on the good old mk1 eyeball because all smart systems don't work in the 31st century battlefield.

Easily defeated by first and second generation command guided antitank missiles that use wires. All it needs is for the operator to keep the target on lock.

Optically guided missiles are also impervious to jamming. They lock through the optical - thermal image of the target which is stored in their database.





People need to realize just because something is modern does not means its undefeatable. Sometimes the most modern of things can be defeated by something very simple, like how modern tanks and AFVs in the age of the IED.

Edited by Anjian, 09 October 2016 - 09:33 AM.

[Karl Streiger]

This discussion is getting old - because somebody mentioned nukes - really?
Would be somehow ironic when you live in St.Louis or Houston or Riga or Kairo.

Anyhow give me the SLS Bismark plus Dropships for relais and scouting to prevent the ship to get damaged while it is whining out the whole military might of this planet.

Heck don't even need a Texas - a Vincent Mk 42 is enough

Edited by Karl Streiger, 09 October 2016 - 10:06 AM.

[razenWing]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 09:23 AM, said:

Except for the rail gun which has not been demonstrated to be practical..or useful... modern tanks have already figured out the other two. This includes automatic gyrostabilization that keep a targets in sight when the tank is moving, and stabilizes the cannon to counter the vehicular movement over round ground.

No missile is dumb fired because you do not have a mechanism to identify friend or foe. Antitank missiles are currently fire and forget optically guided or through W band radar. However, old style control via wires or command guided by keeping the target locked via TV camera sight is, which is used on the first and second generation ATGMs are practically spoof proof.

T-14 Armata is the closest thing to a robot now, the turret is entirely automated.

Actually, respond to snowbluff as well, the tech he listed I am very well aware of. But none of them are at the scale of a battlemech. The armata autofeeder supplies one barrel. Your MX-90 does it to 6 barrels simultaneously with feeder that extract ammo from compartmentalized units that's not right next to the feeder. (Meaning, you can auto load ammo from the leg... let me know when the Armata can load ammo from the tread)

As for auto ballistic calculation, I am more referring to the fact that we play this game like point and click adventure. We certainly don't have that in real life. Keep in mind that the future computer is doing all of that in the background to allow you to point and click multiple weapon types without having to worry about not just kinetic ballistic trajectory, but missile flight paths. (automated correction with planetary spin, gravity, and air density? Keep in mind, like the 8 maps you get to drop, like 1 actual resemble earth. but they all fire like point and click without calibration, how did that happen?)

(And that's what I mean by dumb fire... those missiles do not have an active homing like the missiles we do now. But again, that's probably more because of the advance electronic suite of the future rendering active seekers obsolete, as opposed to future human not knowing to put sensors on their warheads)

Also, we do have railgun. It's not deployable, and it takes an entire freaking naval destroyer to power it. Also, I doubt it can fire every 6 seconds. So there's that.

I guess what I am getting at, is not that we don't have similar things right now... but their version is far more advanced and practical to a point that those advance weaponry to us now, is standard issue low tech to them. It's like saying that yea... technically people in the 1600s have grenade launchers by strapping bombs with fuses and deliver through arrows. But that's not quite the same thing, eh?

[cazidin]

Shiroi Tsuki, on 09 October 2016 - 08:11 AM, said:

What... exactly is that?

[FupDup]

cazidin, on 09 October 2016 - 10:20 AM, said:

What... exactly is that?

It's a cartoony interpretation of a Brood Lord from Starcraft.

It was made by Carbot Animations in his Starcrafts series.

The exact episode was this one I think:

Edited by FupDup, 09 October 2016 - 10:24 AM.

[Koniving]

Pariah Devalis, on 08 October 2016 - 09:36 AM, said:

Interestingly, standard armor like tanks have a different function in tabletop, and are supposed to be like our current conventional armor's protection. Mechs, as we know, only get crit if their armor is first depleted and start taking internal damage - outside of AP rounds that is. Tanks, however, can be crit through armor. In other words, you can damage internals without fully breaking the armor in the first place.

Mechs with full rules can be Crit with armor, regardless of AP. Standard AC rounds are APHE anyway. Dig in then explode. Gauss, missiles, LB-X and such tend to really rack them in.

Vehicles with armor BAR or barrier armor ratings of less than 10 (mech / most tanks) can get pierced in basic rules or in full level three or plus rules will have a higher risk of being pierced for through armor Crits; depending on the roll of the attacker.

[Koniving]

Shiroi Tsuki, on 08 October 2016 - 09:33 AM, said:

So I just had a random thought. How would Mechs (in MWO's current timeline) would fare against Modern Military?

If say a Direwolf Daishi was transported in our timeline and eats a Harpoon (AGM-84) right in the CT, would it survive? Or would it shrug it off like you're throwing pebbles on a tank?

Would MWO Lazurs (IS Medium Laser as an example) would completely melt through MBT armor anime style? Or would it take 500 million years before it even pierces through?

Also it's amazing how a 100 ton Atlas can be as huge as ~13 meters when MBTs are only ~2.5 meters tall that weighs in at ~70 tons

First... most tanks are 8 to 13 meters long sans cannon.

Mechs are supposed to be between 8 and 14.4 meters long with some more exaggerated accounts of unreliable narrators such as the one describing a Dark Ages Atlas as 26 meters tall with a god damn KIYCHEN in the torso!!! A kitchen which BT has... they are 3 tons and require three crew and are meant for vehicle headquarters or quartermaster vehicles.

Second... MWO's mechs are significantly taller than Battletech's versions on the heavy and assault end right now.
Third... you can test how some modern weapons work.

Find an analogue for a 190mm cannon...
Give a tank some commercial armor (BAR 5), slap on a Heavy Rifle or if going 120mm slap on a Medium Rifle and in either case slap on a machine gun with a poor cooling jacket quirk so it can overheat, a jam risk, and for the rifle set a bonus for long range which penalizes short range accuracy, and plug the gunner with the Maxtech Sniper quirk.

Far as missiles that is a bit harder. An Lrm is basically a Stinger and an Srm is a FM-98. So if that helps?

[Davers]

XtremWarrior, on 09 October 2016 - 02:49 AM, said:

Just a quote from Sarna to illustrate your saying:

"Modern BattleMech and vehicle armor plating was originally introduced in 2470 by the Terran Hegemony^{. In theBattleTech universe, armor is ablative in nature. This means that it is generally destroyed or blown off when hit, but in the process of doing so, it absorbs enormous energies, protecting the unit it is mounted on. While powerful blows will still rock a vehicle, there will be little, if any, internal damage as long as armor plating still remains. Armor-piercing rounds do exist for certain weapons, but they require a higher technology level and cost more. As a result, destroying a 'Mech requires either immense firepower, concentrated fire on a vulnerable location, or a lucky hit.}
Standard BattleMech armor is composed of several layers providing various degrees of protection and support. The first layer is extremely strong Titanium alloyed with steel, the result of crystal alignment and radiation treatment, which is also very brittle. The second layer is a ceramic, cubic boron nitride, which combined with a web of artificial diamond fibers acts as a backstop to the steel layer. These two layers rest atop a titanium alloy honeycomb structure which provides support, and a layer of self-sealing polymer sealant which allows for space and underwater operations.^[2]"


The game creators took literally all the hardest things they know about and then said BattleMech armor is a mix of all that put in the hardest molecular shape...
Closest real extrapolation from OP's question is thinking a M1 tank vs a 1-thousand-year-old army, which means regiments of archers, foot soldiers and horsemen, with maybe some siege weapons... Still wondering who would win?
I'm pretty sure a 11th century soldier would have laughed at the idea of a single giant steel war machine (ie: a tank)

The Trojan Horse is obviously an ancient wooden Battlemech.

[Anjian]

razenWing, on 09 October 2016 - 10:15 AM, said:

Actually, respond to snowbluff as well, the tech he listed I am very well aware of. But none of them are at the scale of a battlemech. The armata autofeeder supplies one barrel. Your MX-90 does it to 6 barrels simultaneously with feeder that extract ammo from compartmentalized units that's not right next to the feeder. (Meaning, you can auto load ammo from the leg... let me know when the Armata can load ammo from the tread)

As for auto ballistic calculation, I am more referring to the fact that we play this game like point and click adventure. We certainly don't have that in real life. Keep in mind that the future computer is doing all of that in the background to allow you to point and click multiple weapon types without having to worry about not just kinetic ballistic trajectory, but missile flight paths. (automated correction with planetary spin, gravity, and air density? Keep in mind, like the 8 maps you get to drop, like 1 actual resemble earth. but they all fire like point and click without calibration, how did that happen?)

(And that's what I mean by dumb fire... those missiles do not have an active homing like the missiles we do now. But again, that's probably more because of the advance electronic suite of the future rendering active seekers obsolete, as opposed to future human not knowing to put sensors on their warheads)

Also, we do have railgun. It's not deployable, and it takes an entire freaking naval destroyer to power it. Also, I doubt it can fire every 6 seconds. So there's that.

I guess what I am getting at, is not that we don't have similar things right now... but their version is far more advanced and practical to a point that those advance weaponry to us now, is standard issue low tech to them. It's like saying that yea... technically people in the 1600s have grenade launchers by strapping bombs with fuses and deliver through arrows. But that's not quite the same thing, eh?

Point and click is outdated. Real fire control systems act like aimbots. You don't even need to point and click. You just have to assign the target, and the FCR does that for you. It autocorrects your aim. Its like cheating. Armored Core and War Robots tend to get it right, all you have to do is bring the vehicle in the direction of enemies, and the FCR will even pick which is the most threatening target and prioritize on it by locking. Then you get a lock on, with aim assist (for games, the gun will autotrack as it locks).

Future computers? Present fire control computers are doing it right now. Pretty much what the AEGIS system on destroyers did two decades ago, and this system has been further refined and adapted.

As for missiles, yes, current ATGMs have fire and forget using optical, thermal and W band millimeter wave radar. You aim you shoot. Tanks shoot their ATGMs through the tank barrel, which is wonderfully efficient.

Their version far more advanced? Yet it does not seem that way.

Gauss rifle? Railgun? The one in the game does not have muzzle velocities much higher than conventional tank guns. With only 2000 mps, while a current 120mm gun already achieves 1,750 mps with a much superior range of 4km! The Soviet 125mm gun already achieves 1800 mps with a range of 8km.

The Chinese already has a tank gun demonstrator that achieves 2000 mps.

http://www.popsci.co...n-tries-hide-it

The gun is intended to be for their next generation of MBT following the Type 99 which by the way, uses laser blinding defense systems.



Let me remind you once again that Soviet, current Russian and Chinese tanks also use autoloaders.

Whether you are autoloading a single barrel or six barrels, it doesn't matter if you have the same rate of fire. a 130mm single barrel naval gun like the Soviet AK-130 that's fitted on destroyers, achieves a rate of fire of up to 40 rounds a minute, with a range against aircraft of up to 15 km. Modern gatling guns like the Goalkeeper CIWS has a rate of 7,000 rounds per minute.

I don't get your analogy. The real analogy is what the people falsely think future warfare is, and yet have no real conception of what true modern warfare is. In other words, their illusion of what future warfare is, is already obsolete by the current standards of modern warfare.

Edited by Anjian, 09 October 2016 - 11:18 AM.

[Wecx]

Snowbluff, on 08 October 2016 - 09:57 PM, said:

Daishi has 33 HP on the cockpit ferro-glass, 120mm cannon does 1 point of damage as show above.

You want aircraft with PGM.

Okay, there is no way they are/can be 100% accurate. I can't shoot down **** with them unless I have 2 or 3, and that's against missiles that travel at like half the speed of sound (160 m/s) and a total mass of like 10 pounds.

Mechwarrior AMS is awful.

You are thinking mid-last century, the size of the cannon means little "120mm cannon" doesn't mean anything. In today's time it is the type of ammo fired, not the size of the cannon.







The Sabot round is shelf sharping while it heats through the air, it has extreme penetrating abilities. There are other types of ammo

Edited by Wecx, 09 October 2016 - 11:35 AM.

[Snowbluff]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 11:00 AM, said:

Gauss rifle? Railgun? The one in the game does not have muzzle velocities much higher than conventional tank guns. With only 2000 mps, while a current 120mm gun already achieves 1,750 mps with a much superior range of 4km! The Soviet 125mm gun already achieves 1800 mps with a range of 8km.

The Chinese already has a tank gun demonstrator that achieves 2000 mps.

The Gauss rifle 2000 m/s is with a 100kg projectile. That's like 15 times the energy for the purpose of the abstraction. It'd go in one end of an MBT and out the other.
I'm not saying a Daishi wouldn't be bombed to kingdom come, but you're off by like an order of magnitude when comparing rifles.

Wecx, on 09 October 2016 - 11:32 AM, said:

You are thinking mid-last century, the size of the cannon means little "120mm cannon" doesn't mean anything. In today's time it is the type of ammo fired, not the size of the cannon.

Read what I said again. The typical "silver bullet" style round from a 120mm cannon has 1/15 the momentum of the goose waffle. I extrapolated that to 1 point of damage (excluding the explosive).

The reason I used the Gauss Rifle for the comparison is that it would have similiar round (long, thin) and more of the mass would be the round itself than any propellant.

Edited by Snowbluff, 09 October 2016 - 11:43 AM.

[Valdarion Silarius]

Here's a decent scale (and lol at the random dinosaur in the background)

[MW Waldorf Statler]

Battletech constructed for the Size of a tabletop and for play with 1:285 Miniatures ...with this TT Weapon Ranges, a Mech have no Chance gainst modern Military Weapons, all pilots in the TT fight blind, can not aim to Hitzones ,is only a Lucky Wheel with Dices...the sizes in MWO all very Bigger , now a Black Knight is 18m (CBT Atlas tallest Mech with 16m)

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 09 October 2016 - 12:16 PM.

[Wecx]

Snowbluff, on 09 October 2016 - 11:34 AM, said:

The Gauss rifle 2000 m/s is with a 100kg projectile. That's like 15 times the energy for the purpose of the abstraction. It'd go in one end of an MBT and out the other.
I'm not saying a Daishi wouldn't be bombed to kingdom come, but you're off by like an order of magnitude when comparing rifles.


Read what I said again. The typical "silver bullet" style round from a 120mm cannon has 1/15 the momentum of the goose waffle. I extrapolated that to 1 point of damage (excluding the explosive).

The reason I used the Gauss Rifle for the comparison is that it would have similiar round (long, thin) and more of the mass would be the round itself than any propellant.

Did you even watch how a HEAT Sabot works? momentum isn't the only tool to penetrate armor, i have a feeling you didn't watch the video.

Also APFSDS is self sharping as it heats up during flight, it isn't a Solid Slug like a bullet or ball.

Edited by Wecx, 09 October 2016 - 01:12 PM.

[Znail]

Wecx, on 09 October 2016 - 01:07 PM, said:

Did you even watch how a HEAT Sabot works? momentum isn't the only tool to penetrate armor, i have a feeling you didn't watch the video.

Also APFSDS is self sharping as it heats up during flight, it isn't a Solid Slug like a bullet or ball.

The sabot HEAT round that video talks about is a multi-purpose round for taking out lightly armored targets like APCs, Helicopters and people. I understand that the PR video makes it sound like it's totally awesome, but it's actually less powerfull then much older tank rounds even. The only advantage it has over older tanks HEAT rounds is a higher velocity making it easier to hit harder targets like Helicopters, wich is not an insignificant advantage, but it's on the other hand totally unsuited at damaging something like a tank. Wich isn't a major problem as the normal APFSDS round is ment for tanks.