206 replies to this topic

[Snowbluff]

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 09:56 PM, said:

If it wasn't 2 AM after a day of staring at a man's classic car collection, I'd be able to tell what you guys were talking about. But I can't because I did. So I'm just here looking at the forums barely registering what people are posting while also watching stuff like this.

Fair. I'm tired as hell after a long shift while breathing fumes from the floor being reskinned at work, but I have had too much caffeine to make it to sleep at this point. D:

[Shiroi Tsuki]

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 09:49 PM, said:

Okay, you can't use that gif without linking the original scene. That scene is too good to be left out. I'm sorry.



Now go back to debating stuff that I'm too tired to understand.

Top 10 saddest anime deaths of all time
Also thanks for reminding of the feels

[RestosIII]

Shiroi Tsuki, on 09 October 2016 - 10:03 PM, said:

Top 10 saddest anime deaths of all time
Also thanks for reminding of the feels

Here, have some Cromartie to make you 100% forget about it.

[dervishx5]

This thread is all rather pointless when Blake simply cleanses your tainted Frail bodies from orbit.

[RestosIII]

dervishx5, on 09 October 2016 - 10:08 PM, said:

This thread is all rather pointless when Blake simply cleanses your tainted Frail bodies from orbit.

We've got another one. Someone send in the cleaner.

[dervishx5]

RestosIII, on 09 October 2016 - 10:09 PM, said:

We've got another one. Someone send in the cleaner.

Your modern military cannot stop the power of my codpiece.

[Snowbluff]

dervishx5, on 09 October 2016 - 10:08 PM, said:

This thread is all rather pointless when Blake simply cleanses your tainted Frail bodies from orbit.

Down with the lies of Blake!

[RestosIII]

dervishx5, on 09 October 2016 - 10:11 PM, said:

Your modern military cannot stop the power of my codpiece.

[DovisKhan]

Bombast, on 08 October 2016 - 11:03 AM, said:

Or, you know... common sense.

Half of the battlemechs in 'existence' can almost float on water. They suffer from poor traction, and a crap ton of them have so much vertical surface that the mech would sway in the face of a stiff breeze.

Unless your argument is just 'unobtainium,' in which case Battlemechs still lose because Thor's a personal friend of mine and will destroy any mech that dare traverse the dimensional boundary that separates our realities.

If I seem a bit dismissive about this, it's because the whole thing is a dumb question, right up there with 'Who would win in a fight against Superman and Goku' and 'How many licks to get to the center of a star.' Regardless of any tech or handwaving or argument, the simple fact is the Battletech universe operates on a different rule set then out universe. There's no 'right' answer to the question, because the variables involved don't involve each other.

Anyway...



So, did I sleep with your mother at some point, or did I do something else to you to deserve a personal insult?

You're thinking very 20th century


There's ways to prevent them from falling down due to light breeze today already, how do you think buildings as tall as a kilometer stand?


Not to mention the huge advances in material science, like metal foam for example, it's incredibly lightweight and very strong.


Battletech level mechs are already possible, aside from fusion engines. However they would be so, SO overpriced, that no one would produce them, cause a truck with already existing railgns can make scrap metal of it

[Vellron2005]

Here's a very simple reason why Mechs would loose in a fight against today's conventional military - Lack of tactical data.

Modern helicopters and tanks can fire from well over 2-3 kilometers, and hit their target between the eyes. And don't event get em started on heat-guided missiles, tomahawks and other such weaponry. An Atlas would not stand a chance.

Also, Mechs are HUGE. They would be such a large target that you could pelt it with anti-armor from all angles, and it could not even see what was hitting it..

Even with ECM, its such a big target that you can still dumbfire artillery and beat it down..

Also, even if mech armor would simply bounce off modern shells, today's military have missiles that can blast through nuke-bunkers protected with layers upon layers of rock and armored concrete - I think they could handle Ferro Fibrous armor..

And then again, why not bypass armor entirely?

Today's weapons are so accurate that most every shot fired you would hear a deep mysterious voice call "Head shot" :-P

Edited by Vellron2005, 10 October 2016 - 02:22 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Anjian, on 09 October 2016 - 09:36 PM, said:

Sigh.

Look closely what is next or behind the rails.

What you are looking at are not coils, those are electrical terminals and restraints.

And the picture even says it:

"A huge electric current is then passed through the rails, which generates magnetic fields..."

I think you need to re-examine your own knowledge on the subject. Wikipedia is a good place to start.

[627]

I really like this nerdy discussion between tanks and how their rounds work

But we should get back to those damage values to see how futile tank guns are.

We have the gauss rifle as standard, 15 damage points are the equivalent of a 2000m/s projectile that weighs 100kg. That is the kinetic energy we are talking about.
That means a gauss rifle would one-shot everything from tank to battleship. by the way, the effective range of a projectile with this speed is more than 660meters

And the rifle is not even the strongest gun, we have the AC20 which can deal even more damage so on the offense side, you can't beat BT guns.


but what about Defense? You concluded that your generic tank guns do 1 damage and you have 16 tanks at once (like I have 4-12 mechs at once by the way).

Now look how many damage a BattleMech can take in its CT. I'm aware what modern targeting computers can do in a tank but I doubt that you can hit the cockpit reliably with all 16 tanks every time so let's see how fast you get through the CT of a mech (16 tanks need much space so you get into an angle to the mech pretty fast, all while moving through rough terrain).

And even when you hit the cockpit with all 16 every 3.3 seconds... if you face a lance of medium to heavy mechs those will take down at least 8 tanks in those 3 seconds given they can one-shot everything and have more than one weapon.


I'd be surprised if you can kill even one mechwarrior with a cockpit shot before your 16 tanks are down.

Edited by 627, 10 October 2016 - 05:43 AM.

[GreyNovember]

627, on 10 October 2016 - 05:41 AM, said:

Mech superiority

This of course, hinges on the pilots actually being able to hit anything.

IIRC, from the ramblings of the old farts around here, apparently aiming in a mech was a colossally impossible task, so difficult that no normal pilot could reliably hit things. Much less target parts of a thing.

Or are we not going to factor that part in?

[Snowbluff]

627, on 10 October 2016 - 05:41 AM, said:

That means a gauss rifle would one-shot everything from tank to battleship. by the way, the effective range of a projectile with this speed is more than 660meters

I think that might be the effective range against battlemech armor, or the round is optimized less for range and more for catastrophic armor sheering (like a hollow point round is for flesh).

[Albino Boo]

627, on 10 October 2016 - 05:41 AM, said:

I really like this nerdy discussion between tanks and how their rounds work

But we should get back to those damage values to see how futile tank guns are.

We have the gauss rifle as standard, 15 damage points are the equivalent of a 2000m/s projectile that weighs 100kg. That is the kinetic energy we are talking about.
That means a gauss rifle would one-shot everything from tank to battleship. by the way, the effective range of a projectile with this speed is more than 660meters

And the rifle is not even the strongest gun, we have the AC20 which can deal even more damage so on the offense side, you can't beat BT guns.


but what about Defense? You concluded that your generic tank guns do 1 damage and you have 16 tanks at once (like I have 4-12 mechs at once by the way).

Now look how many damage a BattleMech can take in its CT. I'm aware what modern targeting computers can do in a tank but I doubt that you can hit the cockpit reliably with all 16 tanks every time so let's see how fast you get through the CT of a mech (16 tanks need much space so you get into an angle to the mech pretty fast, all while moving through rough terrain).

And even when you hit the cockpit with all 16 every 3.3 seconds... if you face a lance of medium to heavy mechs those will take down at least 8 tanks in those 3 seconds given they can one-shot everything and have more than one weapon.


I'd be surprised if you can kill even one mechwarrior with a cockpit shot before your 16 tanks are down.

Apart from the small but rather important fact that the real world railgun that fires a 25 kg dart 100 miles with a velocity of 2000 m/s. So 100kg fired at 2000 m/s should have an effective range of 25 miles not 650 m. Various laser systems that are being developed now have range of 4000 m

Battletech weapons are designed to be played on a table top so a real world max distance of around 6 foot had to be max range of weapons to make the game playable. To give a rail gun a realistic range on a 6 foot table you would have to use 1/2200 scale, which would make mechs to small to see.

[Anjian]

Alek Ituin, on 09 October 2016 - 08:20 PM, said:

1 - Since we're not on a Lunar installation, the coils on a coilgun cannot be spaced far enough apart to prevent problematic field interaction, not to mention the issues with degaussing the coils when either shutting them down or swapping polarities. Making a round designed to interact as much as possible with the fields increases the chance of the round actually being impeded by physical constraints of the gun mechanisms. Thus a balance must be struck between the length and width of the round; not so wide as to induce obscene drag, not to long as to be impractical within a compact coilgun assembly. Ogive shaped projectiles are also the closest one can reasonably get to achieving the optimal aerodynamic form, while providing a good cross section and frontal area with which to deform on impact.

2 - Breaking up on impact is ideal for a kinetic weapon that relies on imparting kinetic energy on target, especially when that target uses ablative armor. You're simply not understanding the purpose of a hyper-velocity accelerator weapon. It's not to punch a hole through the target, it's to smash a crater in to it... then punch a hole through what's left. You're imparting the literally explosive kinetic energy of the round in to the target to cause damage. It's like the "Rods from God" idea for Kinetic Orbital Bombardment systems, but for vehicles.

3 - Heat is literally everything for a hyper-velocity round. The hotter the round gets, the weaker the round gets. And at hyper-velocity, vaporization and oxygen corrosion becomes serious problems. Not to useful to fire a dense slug if half of it is splattered all over the terrain as the round travels to the target. You need it to remain in one piece until it actually hits the target, or else it's pretty useless... Unless you want a shotgun that fires molten metal chunks at several times the speed of sound.

4 - Tungsten is indeed an impressive material, but a nickel-iron alloy such as Invar can surpass its low thermal expansion coefficient, and with the addition of trace elements such as silicon or chromium, you can get superalloys far surpassing the thermal resistance of tungsten. All while remaining highly ductile and easily deformed on impact... Perfect for a weapon designed to smash targets with kinetic projectiles.

God you are making this up. Nickel - Iron isn't harder than steel, and for something to penetrate and crater the projectile must be denser and harder than the surface its trying to penetrate.

If you want to compare alloys to pure tungsten, then what about comparing it to Tungsten alloys and matrices. The reason why Tungsten alloys are used for shells is because of density. The reason why DU is used is because of sheer density.

No matter how fast you fire a glass shell against a concrete wall, the glass will shatter at impact.

Quote

5 - It uses a sabot around the shell, yes... and that's about all you got right. Railguns exploit electromagnetism by turning the non-magnetic yet conductive rails, sabots, and shell in to a giant electromagnet by running a current up one rail and down the other. At no point are their dedicated electromagnets anywhere within the barrel assembly. This has several practical advantages, and several major disadvantages. Advantages being no need to worry about degaussing since it's basically a single "coil", less fiddly s**t and maintenance of multiple coil assemblies, and no need to worry about coil timing. Downsides being the rails get chunks disintegrated by plasma arcs every time you fire, reducing their effectiveness each shot; the ammunition is downright inconvenient with the sabots, and replacing the rails is an absolute pain. Oh, and they're brutally inefficient when scaled down.

Railguns aren't some fantastic "real engineer" solution to those silly sci-fi coilguns. They're actually a s**tty, underpowered, inefficient weapon that requires years more R&D in to power sources, capacitors, and general materials science before having a chance of becoming useful. And if we're being honest here, the Sci-fi engineers got it right, coilguns are infinitely superior to railguns when scaled down (yes the Gauss is a coilgun).

You are correct here, but the use of Gauss rifles or mass drivers or even railguns would still not be effective against tanks as long as you do not have the right penetrator of sufficient density and hardness.

You would have to invent a penetrator, perhaps a Tungsten alloy core or DU core which extends to an external point. Then around this core, you can wrap around a ferrous magnetic material around it. The cutaway view of this shell would look like a section of a lead pencil, with the "lead" being the high density core and point, and the "wood" being the ferrous alloy.

But this is not Battletech any longer.

Quote

"muh military training" is not an argument. Nor is that link, it explains nothing and basically says "hurr hurr DU self-sharpens". Super useful, much information.

Both DU and TC rounds undergo mushrooming upon impact, with the formation of adiabatic shear bands causing the penetrator to shear off the "mushroom" as it continues further in to the target. This resultant loss of material causes BOTH DU and TC rounds to become thinner as more armor is penetrated. There is no "sharpening" action, nothing becomes sharper as the round penetrates, and the end result is only a semi-molten chunk of dense metal of a lower diameter than the initial penetrator.

For this to happen you need highly angled armor which has high effective thickness due to the slope. The effective thickness may well exceed the length of the projectile.

Except battlemechs are not like that. They got flat, thinner armor with only fewer layers than modern tanks. Unless the mech uses highly angled armor, but it will not be a Battletech mech anymore.

Likely to have flat thinner armor on the torso, which is made worse with shot traps.




Angled and sloped armor around the torso.

Edited by Anjian, 10 October 2016 - 07:12 AM.

[Anjian]

627, on 10 October 2016 - 05:41 AM, said:

I really like this nerdy discussion between tanks and how their rounds work

But we should get back to those damage values to see how futile tank guns are.

We have the gauss rifle as standard, 15 damage points are the equivalent of a 2000m/s projectile that weighs 100kg. That is the kinetic energy we are talking about.
That means a gauss rifle would one-shot everything from tank to battleship. by the way, the effective range of a projectile with this speed is more than 660meters

And the rifle is not even the strongest gun, we have the AC20 which can deal even more damage so on the offense side, you can't beat BT guns.


but what about Defense? You concluded that your generic tank guns do 1 damage and you have 16 tanks at once (like I have 4-12 mechs at once by the way).

Now look how many damage a BattleMech can take in its CT. I'm aware what modern targeting computers can do in a tank but I doubt that you can hit the cockpit reliably with all 16 tanks every time so let's see how fast you get through the CT of a mech (16 tanks need much space so you get into an angle to the mech pretty fast, all while moving through rough terrain).

And even when you hit the cockpit with all 16 every 3.3 seconds... if you face a lance of medium to heavy mechs those will take down at least 8 tanks in those 3 seconds given they can one-shot everything and have more than one weapon.


I'd be surprised if you can kill even one mechwarrior with a cockpit shot before your 16 tanks are down.

15 points of damage, but that's a solid slug hit.

That has nothing to do if the shell or missile that brings an explosive warhead, or a shaped charge or HEAT shell which will blow through the armor and insert a stream of hot fragmented metal inside.

You don't need to hit the cockpit all the time, there are enough target points to hit a mech. Like both knees. Or every shot trap you can find in the body. The arms, the joints. A shot trap helps "capture" the round rather than glancing it away, and would even increase the shell's penetration and damage. Hits against areas that meet to form a joint or ring, if these are damaged, such as being dented, they will refuse to move, such as freezing the torso.

With many tanks, fast moving AFVs and wheeled tank destroyers, they can also be outflanking the mech, hitting it from the side and from the back.

The use of energy weapons on the mechs, causing the mech to heat up and glow, also makes it a beacon for aerial assets. They would be able to spot the mech from distance thanks to the heat signature, and fire optical or thermally guided missiles on it, if not PGMs like JDAMs.

A mech standing up, creates a large and strong reflection signature for radar, which makes it an eager target for missiles. You cannot fire at your targets at range because you cannot see them --- being small -- -but they can certainly see and fire at you.

Its possible to design a mech to fight a modern army. But it just won't look like a Battlemech.

Edited by Anjian, 10 October 2016 - 07:59 AM.

[Battlemaster56]

If both sides want to make a compromise a all terrian (AT) walker would be superior to both bringing the benefits of both worlds and few of the weaknesses.

[Aggravated Assault Mech]

Albino Boo, on 10 October 2016 - 06:49 AM, said:

Apart from the small but rather important fact that the real world railgun that fires a 25 kg dart 100 miles with a velocity of 2000 m/s. So 100kg fired at 2000 m/s should have an effective range of 25 miles not 650 m. Various laser systems that are being developed now have range of 4000 m

Battletech weapons are designed to be played on a table top so a real world max distance of around 6 foot had to be max range of weapons to make the game playable. To give a rail gun a realistic range on a 6 foot table you would have to use 1/2200 scale, which would make mechs to small to see.

If you're arguing that BT weapons have ranges longer than the rules say, then you're reading your way around the lore to rationalize something that was never intended to be rational, and debating about a thing that is no longer Battletech. All the novels describe mechs fighting one another from within visual range.

[rollermint]

I'd imagine the armor quality and material in Battletech will be FAR FAR superior to the most state of the art "armor" and munitions in our current day militaries that they can easily shrug off anything we throw at them.

Just like our modern battletank can take a thousand of the best medieval arrows without a scratch.
I mean, heck, in the first Iraq war, the Abrams were taking multiple hits from outdated iraqi munitions without much trouble.

So yeah, an agm 84 will hardly even register against the CT of an Atlas, the CT of which is where it has the most armor.

Edited by rollermint, 10 October 2016 - 11:07 AM.