18 replies to this topic

[razenWing]

Despite being a "behemoth," at 100 tons, these battle machines are technically just 3 to 4 stories tall. Meaning, you won't even see them if they walk around in downtown Manhattan.

(Where if we present human can figure out buildings 40-50 stories easy, future human must have like hundred stories buildings everywhere)

My point is, the game, and perhaps the lore surrounding it, kind of glorified battlemechs to a degree that they are literally larger than life. I was walking around in River city the other day and was trying to size up my EBJ with a delivery truck. Now, that comparison seems legit because my mech was about 3 stories tall, and the truck was about 1/3 my size.

But on other maps, cars barely reach your ankle... when in fact, your Honda Civic should be the size of your cockpit. So I guess what I am getting at, is that if we putting the everything in terms of the correct scaling, we get a totally different feel of the world. Mechs don't seem so large, and in a way, diminish its importance in the battlefield.

Let's be honest here. Assuming these future planets are around the size of earth, would take about 500,000 mechs from two sides to even have meaningful engagement and the eventual occupation. (Cause, what makes air superiority so important is for the simple fact that a single fighter jet can cover 500 miles in 2 hours vs a tank might require 2-3 days.) Iraqis fielded like what... 5000 tanks in Gulf War I?

So assume we go the other route, and make you, a battlemech pilot, more like an infantry grunt. (As they should be? Feels like Battlemechs are just glorified power suits anyways) You instantly get a more grunge, more Dystopian, and more... intimate in-your face experience.

Which brings me to another point, mech to mech ratio...

If we HAVE to accept that you sit in the cockpit of a Jenner, then technically, the Jenner is the size of EBJ. The only plausible explanation for light mechs to maintain their size comparison is with extreme cockpit positioning. In the example of Jenner, the pilot must be lying down or something. ACH, I once brought up that the pilot would literally be strapping himself in. Meaning, if you blow off an ACH arm, you are literally blowing off an arm of a human being. Making lights, some of the worst survival machines with no chance of ejection.

Anyways, just random thoughts. I'm tired and hungry.

[Chagear]

This would be an interesting take on it, and fun I think.

[El Bandito]

It is all 80's sci-fantasy. Don't think too much into it.

For example:

Quote

In BattleTech, a large Dropship weighs ten thousand tons, and is protected by 30 tons of armor. Considering it's a hundred meter sphere, it comes to the ship being about fifteen times as dense as air, and the armor being paper thin. Most of the mechs have the density of styrofoam - the Atlas is a 100 ton mech that is something like 18 meters tall. A stiff breeze would blow them over. Additionally, the mech's mass would cause them to sink through paved concrete roads as they have a relatively small contact area with the ground - while in the case of the Atlas, it's a fairly large area due to its ginormous feet, and yet some mechs have pencil-thin feet.

On the other side of the scale, the Star League-era Rotunda scout car (a combat vehicle disguised as a luxury sports car or any other civilian vehicle and armed with a Large Laser) has its official gameplay stats list it canonically with a weight of twenty tons. While this is fairly light by combat vehicle standards, this is far too heavy for a vehicle meant to look like a sports car: twenty tons is 40,000 lbs. A rail car loaded empty is typically 30 tons. The Rotunda apparently has the weight of a road train (multiple trailer semi) and sports cars usually have gross total weights that don't exceed 4,000 lbs. This means the Rotunda cannot move on its own power without being turned into a lard bunker and it cannot possibly mount any weapon larger than a dinky machine gun.

Edited by El Bandito, 03 November 2016 - 09:50 AM.

[Bombast]

Welcome to tropes.

Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale

Edited by Bombast, 03 November 2016 - 09:34 AM.

[MW Waldorf Statler]

in Lore the Tallest mech ,the Atlas is 16m ,the Heavys 10-12m ,the Mediums up to 8-12m...here most MWO Mechs oversized...most Mech has in lore fullcover by level 2-(each level=~ 1 stories)2 level =~10m in lore

Edited by Old MW4 Ranger, 03 November 2016 - 09:52 AM.

[Single Mom]

I read what I wrote, it was ********. This is my post now.

Edited by Single Mom, 03 November 2016 - 09:40 AM.

[Accused]

razenWing, on 03 November 2016 - 09:24 AM, said:

Anyways, just random thoughts. I'm tired and hungry.

Someone actually did go into cryengine and used the pilot model figure to see how well the mechs are scaled to humans. Pretty interesting thread, should still be around here somewhere if you look for it.

[Pariah Devalis]

Accused, on 03 November 2016 - 09:39 AM, said:

Someone actually did go into cryengine and used the pilot model figure to see how well the mechs are scaled to humans. Pretty interesting thread, should still be around here somewhere if you look for it.

IIRC, on River City the buildings are actually about 20% smaller than they should be. A lot of the props are, as well. This really, really doesn't help the sense of scale at all. Further, a lot of items that could be used as a reference for scale don't really bear much resemblance to things we associate with. Take, for example, the building designs. A lot of them have a bunch of gribblies, have weird shapes, and generally look more like boxy terrain features than recognizably like apartment buildings, offices, or stores. So not only are they undersized, but they are hard to relate to in a general sense.

Move to maps like Forest Colony, and you have places where the grass is so tall, it's like the mech was moving through cornstalks, except they don't look like corn, nor does it make any logical sense for the grass to be as tall as it is where it is. Ironically, the normal sized trees on maps like Colony actually serve as better scale reference points than many of the structures in the city maps.

[MechWarrior5152251]

Robotech SDF (Super Dimensional Fortress) had a robot configuration....

[FupDup]

If the EBJ was the same size as the Jenner, this means that either the EBJ has absurdly high density or that the Jenner has absurdly low density.

65-ton objects have almost double the mass of 35-ton objects, they are damn well going to be a lot bigger if they are made of similar materials and design standards.


Beyond that, our mechs realistically should not be "towering" if we compare them to modern day tanks that weigh around 60-70 tons but don't take up much space. If you want to talk realism, having mechs filled with huge expanses of empty air is hella unrealistic.

The problem is that the creators of BT made mechs with either too little mass for their size or too much size for their mass. If they really wanted towering monstrosities, they should have just made every single mech heavier. Going by MWO scaling, the Atlas should be AT MINIMUM 300 tons.

[Bandilly]

Yes mechs are oversized, or the terrain is terrible undersized. There are some large warehouse buildings you can step on with a Locust when those buildings should be able to store properly sized Locusts.

[maniacos]

Fighting in huge battlemechs makes totally no sense, especially in an age where you have space ships and -cannons ect. BT-tanks are much better, they have a low profile and are fast. And then you have air vehicles. Take also into account, that the construction of a mech is a damn complex job, you need all the joints and the engine, the gyro, the computers to stabilize that damn thing ect, effort that you better put into space ships, planes and tanks.

The only reason why this exists is: It's just freaking cool. Yes the excuse is to have heavy weapons that can't fit on a tank or a plane but honestly, that's no real reason. It's just cool to roam the land stomping with 20-100 tons over the terain, thats all.

That being said, I often had the thought, that it doesn't always really feel like you sit 15m up in the air in a huge thing. Even not in cities where you have a comparisation to cars and buildings, which more feels like you are walking through a miniature Gozilla-film set.

Edited by maniacos, 03 November 2016 - 10:33 AM.

[Mole]

Battlemechs on the scale we see in Battletech are completely unfeasible and would do nothing but die in a real life battlefield. Part of being able to enjoy science fiction or any fiction for that matter is the ability to use one's own suspension of disbelief. Seriously, don't think about it so hard. You'll ruin it for yourself.

[XtremWarrior]

Accused, on 03 November 2016 - 09:39 AM, said:

Someone actually did go into cryengine and used the pilot model figure to see how well the mechs are scaled to humans. Pretty interesting thread, should still be around here somewhere if you look for it.

Oups, i miss-read your post - i though i had the link but nope...

EDIT:(i remember this thread talking about Pilot vs Mech size, but all of this was pre-Rescale)

Edited by XtremWarrior, 03 November 2016 - 10:59 AM.

[RedDragon]

El Bandito, on 03 November 2016 - 09:32 AM, said:

It is all 80's sci-fantasy. Don't think too much into it.

For example:

*Sigh* always this myth about "styrofoam mechs". If you grow a normal human of 2m and 100kg to 16m, he will weigh about 50 tons. So if you don't have the density of styrofoam, neither will a mech. It won't float on water, and it will not be pushed over by normal wind. Granted, 100 tons is still a bit light for a machine that big, but on the other hand, most parts of a mech are made of lightweight materials and it has a lot of unused space inside.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Battlemechs ARENT that big. The DIREWOLF, is only 39 feet tall. The Atlas is like 48 feet tall. The shortest mechs, the lights, are 8m tall. The reason everything is out of wack is the whole "gotta meet a meta" deal. Gotta make the big mechs big and easy to hit.

It would be amazing if PGI made all the mechs the proper size. The only mechs currently even remotely close to the proper size if the Catapult and the Light mechs. Where the Warhawk, the 85tonner would be about the same height as the Catapult, right now the Catapult basically looks like a Light mech alongside a Warhammer, a mech only 5 tons heavier, yet the Warhammer towers over the Catapult now.

That rescale PGI did was a joke, it literally accomplished nothing.

[razenWing]

I don't think Jenner should be the same size as EBJ. That's why I think the pilot inside must be lying down (like a motorcycle) with the front windshield only the size of helmet. THEN the size of Jenner will make sense comparing to everything else. Otherwise, if that is indeed a sitdown cockpit, that thing looks more like it should be the size of an Annhilator, which is absurd.

And that's the thing though, I know there's the budget concern that they can't stylized 80 different cockpits, but how cool would that be if when piloting the ACH, it feels like you are wearing a power suit, or yea, like in a Jenner, piloting a motorbike. Or I don't know... maybe Jenners were designed by the people of Alpha Centurion IV, where people evolved into midgets of 2 feet tall.

[FupDup]

razenWing, on 03 November 2016 - 01:12 PM, said:

I don't think Jenner should be the same size as EBJ. That's why I think the pilot inside must be lying down (like a motorcycle) with the front windshield only the size of helmet. THEN the size of Jenner will make sense comparing to everything else. Otherwise, if that is indeed a sitdown cockpit, that thing looks more like it should be the size of an Annhilator, which is absurd.

And that's the thing though, I know there's the budget concern that they can't stylized 80 different cockpits, but how cool would that be if when piloting the ACH, it feels like you are wearing a power suit, or yea, like in a Jenner, piloting a motorbike. Or I don't know... maybe Jenners were designed by the people of Alpha Centurion IV, where people evolved into midgets of 2 feet tall.

Or, you know, perhaps they have the same cockpit size but the size of the mech body around the cockpit is different?

At least, that's how it would seem realistically. It would require a remodeling of most mechs to reflect this.

Edited by FupDup, 03 November 2016 - 01:16 PM.

[Mole]

razenWing, on 03 November 2016 - 01:12 PM, said:

I don't think Jenner should be the same size as EBJ. That's why I think the pilot inside must be lying down (like a motorcycle) with the front windshield only the size of helmet. THEN the size of Jenner will make sense comparing to everything else. Otherwise, if that is indeed a sitdown cockpit, that thing looks more like it should be the size of an Annhilator, which is absurd.

And that's the thing though, I know there's the budget concern that they can't stylized 80 different cockpits, but how cool would that be if when piloting the ACH, it feels like you are wearing a power suit, or yea, like in a Jenner, piloting a motorbike. Or I don't know... maybe Jenners were designed by the people of Alpha Centurion IV, where people evolved into midgets of 2 feet tall.

If we are to believe that a dude can sit in one of the eyes of the Atlas then perhaps the cockpits of other 'mechs are just too big.