37 replies to this topic

[GreyGriffin]

I know this is going to call down the thunder.

But, please, if you do allow customization of 'mechs, please break canon and allow Rocket Launchers before, in the illustrious year of 3060-odd, some ******* finally thought of strapping a disposable missile rack to a Battlemech. The idea that this weapon didn't exist before the latter part of the FedCom Civil War is frankly ridiculous.

Thank you.

[Mattiator]

I quite frankly cannot agree more. I adored RLs in MekPak 3.1 as a nice way to add some additional firepower to my wee little light 'Mechs. They were a nice blend of acceptable firepower, fast reloads, but hampered by a serious lack of ammunition, and in the Heavy variants, heat buildup.

[Helmer]

<grumble> <grumble> <thunder> <thunder>

[God of War]

Rocket Launchers are the MOST useless weapon, closly followed by the improved Heavy Gauss!
Oneshot, dumb-missile launcherrs? Ohh, come on!? No one needs them!

[Naughtyboy]

God of War, on 11 December 2011 - 06:20 AM, said:

Rocket Launchers are the MOST useless weapon, closly followed by the improved Heavy Gauss!
Oneshot, dumb-missile launcherrs? Ohh, come on!? No one needs them!

i can not agree more ..but there is true when you you say taste is like your butt, its devided but i think we should not step off the timeline in any way things come when they do...

[Cyote13]

well by going with near canon times for tech it will give the devs a timeline on when they need to code and test new tech before it hits the battlefield.

Have us all start a yearish before the Clans arrive will let them figure out most balance issues before they introduce a whole set of new mechs and tech that one for one is general better than the IS version

[Dihm]

Eeewwwww, rocket launchers?

But yes, it is sort of silly there weren't dumb fire rockets.

[Strum Wealh]

GreyGriffin, on 11 December 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

I know this is going to call down the thunder.

But, please, if you do allow customization of 'mechs, please break canon and allow Rocket Launchers before, in the illustrious year of 3060-odd, some ******* finally thought of strapping a disposable missile rack to a Battlemech. The idea that this weapon didn't exist before the latter part of the FedCom Civil War is frankly ridiculous.

Thank you.

Mattiator, on 11 December 2011 - 03:07 AM, said:

I quite frankly cannot agree more. I adored RLs in MekPak 3.1 as a nice way to add some additional firepower to my wee little light 'Mechs. They were a nice blend of acceptable firepower, fast reloads, but hampered by a serious lack of ammunition, and in the Heavy variants, heat buildup.

The thing is, though, that the RLs in Mektek's MW4 don't work like the ones in the canon in the first place.
The canon RL-10 weighs 0.5t, has a range of 540m, and can carry no additional ammo - ten rockets are all you get.
The canon RL-15 weighs 1.0t, has a range of 450m, and can carry no additional ammo - fifteen rockets are all you get.
The canon RL-20 weighs 1.5t, has a range of 360m, and can carry no additional ammo - twenty rockets are all you get.
All RL rockets deal 1 unit of damage per rocket.

And they came after the similarly-ranged (450m), reload-capable, unguided Medium-Range Missiles (3058 for MRMs, 3064 for BT-"modern"** RLs).

The Mektek RLs (1.5t, 500m range, 0.5s recycle, 1 rocket per salvo, 4 units of damage per rocket (keep in mind MW4's inflated armor values for each 'Mech)) do allow additional ammo - a RL-20 very quickly becomes a RL-80 (for 4.5t).

For similar tonnage to the multiple-tons-of-ammo RL, one could outfit a LRM-5 or SRM-6 with dead-fire missiles*** and have either a long-range weapon with the same per-salvo damage output as a RL-10 and multiple (~24) reloads or a short-range weapon with very-nearly the per-salvo damage of a RL-20 and multiple (~15) reloads - and do so while still more-or-less sticking to the canon, to boot (as DFMs "existed for only a brief time before being superseded by Medium Range Missile launchers" without giving a specific year for their introduction; 8-10 years could be considered a "brief time" ).

Your thoughts?



** There are, however, provisions for "crude", "primitive" RLs developed by both pre-Star League Terra and the tech-deprived Pentagon Powers (part of the "Star League-in-Exile", destroyed by the Clans shortly after the latters' formation). So, RLs did exist in some form prior to the Periphery's implementation, but fell into disuse in favor of the guided, multi-salvo LRMs and SRMs...

*** Assuming the Devs 1.) implement alternative ammo for LRMs and SRMs and 2.) DFMs are one of the ammo types implemented.

Edited by Strum Wealh, 11 December 2011 - 08:40 PM.

[Tweaks]

There's no point for the devs to follow the canon timeline if they are not going to respect when technology was actually released per canon. It would skew it all. As much as you're not going to see Clan Tech until the Clans have manifested themselves (at least 1 year of real time after the game's release), you won't be seeing technology that had not been discovered yet.

Edited by Tweaks, 11 December 2011 - 08:45 AM.

[Mchawkeye]

Whilst I basically agree with the time-line sentiment, I have to admit that I don't mind them making small changes to the timeline if it makes a better game. Dumb fire rockets are up there with one of the "huh?" moments of the BT time-line for sure.

[Stormwolf]

The "level 2" tech introduced by the Helm memory core is all the tech you need.

I'm not really sure how rocket launchers work in MW4, but in the boardgame they are useless after the first shot.
You will get more milage out of Streak SRM's if you ask me.

Edited by Stormwolf, 11 December 2011 - 01:29 PM.

[Corsair114]

An RL20 in MW4 Mercs is akin to a 500m range, dead-fired Thunderbolt. It fires a single projectile that flies a straight line at fairly high velocity, impacting anything that happens to intersect its flight path. It has a recycle time of .5 sec, generates 1.5 heat per shot, weighs 1.5 tons, does 4 damage a shot, and comes with 20 rounds out of the box. It is one of the best anti-assault 'mech weapons available to lights, due to its high RoF and extremely hard knock.

Edited by Corsair114, 11 December 2011 - 02:58 PM.

[verybad]

Rocket Launchers were used in the Reunification war. They fell out of broad use during the Star League and Succession Wars, but the technology was not lost, simply not used often. It wouldn't be breaking canon to have them in the game in 3049.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

GreyGriffin, on 11 December 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

I know this is going to call down the thunder.

But, please, if you do allow customization of 'mechs, please break canon and allow Rocket Launchers before, in the illustrious year of 3060-odd, some ******* finally thought of strapping a disposable missile rack to a Battlemech. The idea that this weapon didn't exist before the latter part of the FedCom Civil War is frankly ridiculous.

Thank you.

Its already been retconned, ya know...
(Primitive)Rocket Launchers are in since the Reunification War (2577-2597), if not earlier.
MRMs, on the other hand? >_>

Quote

Rocket Launchers are the MOST useless weapon, closly followed by the improved Heavy Gauss!
Oneshot, dumb-missile launcherrs? Ohh, come on!? No one needs them!

Imo, any one-shot weapon is a waste of tonnage.
As for the iHGR, it ain't useless. Its still a headcapper, even against Super-Heavy BattleMechs.

[VYCanis]

oh god yes

RLs are not attractive because of their actual performance

RLs are attractive because you can amass a massive quantity of them very very easily for maximum short term firepower for minimum cost.
They are so painfully low tech that yeah, they really should always be available.

Other equipment that has very odd dates for development

-Tracer ammo http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tracer developed in 2300 my butt
-Heavy MG http://www.sarna.net...avy_Machine_Gun IS = 3068 Clan = 3059 SAY WHAT!?
-Light MG http://www.sarna.net...ght_Machine_Gun IS = 3068 Clan = 3060 ...what are we paying these weapon designers that it takes 1000 years to figure out bigger bullets out of MGs do more damage and smaller bullets do less, dear god. Took clan scientists to figure this out no less.
-Mortar http://www.sarna.net...i/Mech_Mortar/8 2531 wuuut?

Basically equipment that we already have...right now..in real life... presently, that you can see videos of it working, there is no reason at all why equipment based off that shouldn't be common and easily available regardless of whatever the original introduction date is.

Edited by VYCanis, 11 December 2011 - 05:14 PM.

[Strum Wealh]

VYCanis, on 11 December 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

oh god yes

RLs are not attractive because of their actual performance

RLs are attractive because you can amass a massive quantity of them very very easily for maximum short term firepower for minimum cost.
They are so painfully low tech that yeah, they really should always be available.

Other equipment that has very odd dates for development

-Tracer ammo http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tracer developed in 2300 my butt
-Heavy MG http://www.sarna.net...avy_Machine_Gun IS = 3068 Clan = 3059 SAY WHAT!?
-Light MG http://www.sarna.net...ght_Machine_Gun IS = 3068 Clan = 3060 ...what are we paying these weapon designers that it takes 1000 years to figure out bigger bullets out of MGs do more damage and smaller bullets do less, dear god. Took clan scientists to figure this out no less.
-Mortar http://www.sarna.net...i/Mech_Mortar/8 2531 wuuut?

Basically equipment that we already have...right now..in real life... presently, that you can see videos of it working, there is no reason at all why equipment based off that shouldn't be common and easily available regardless of whatever the original introduction date is.

I suspect that, like the rocket launchers (examples of which one can currently find on various attack helicopters - e.g. the Hydra 70 used by the AH-64 Apache), it's less that they "don't exist" and more that there are alternatives that are just so much better that they're largely irrelevant unless one just doesn't have access to the alternatives.

Take, for example, the Heavy Machine Gun. Compare the IS HMG to a standard IS Small Laser:
- The Small Laser has half-again the range of the HMG.
- The Small Laser weighs half as much as the HMG (and that's just the weapon - factor in the HMG's ammo and the laser weighs between 1/3 (if carrying 0.5t of HMG ammo) and 1/4 (if carrying 1.0t of HMG ammo) as much).
- The Small Laser takes half as much space (as the HMG needs space for both the weapon itself and its ammo).
- Both have the same damage profile (3 pts).
- The HMG is cheaper (8500 C-Bills, vs 11,250 C-Bills for the Small Laser).
- The HMG is heat-free, vs 1 unit of heat per salvo from the Small Laser.

Unless one is really tight on capital or heat capacity, or really wants MGs (HMGs, specifically) for reasons all their own, the laser is rather clearly the superior option.

Similar with Small Laser vs Light Machine Gun, except that the LMG wins on range and loses even more on damage.
Similar for ER Small Laser vs both alt. MGs.

Or, back to my previous post and closer to on topic, RLs vs LRMs/SRMs with dead-fire rounds vs MRMs vs LRMs/SRMs with normal (guided) rounds.

Why the "standard" MG would then have become so common while other variants languished is anyone's guess (perhaps because it has exactly the same range and similar damage profile as both the Small Laser and the standard Flamer, thus complementing them better than most/any other weapon(s) could, while HMGs (and, to a somewhat lesser extent, LMGs) don't really fill the same complementary niche with any other weapons?)...

Then again, we are talking about an interplanetary civilization that has forgotten how to build what is essentially an M61 Vulcan (that is, a RAC-2) or a GAU-8 Avenger (that is, a RAC-5) without having it jam every 6th round/~5 seconds (at best)...

Edited by Strum Wealh, 11 December 2011 - 08:42 PM.

[VYCanis]

i dunno, i can understand availability and all that. But i mean, something as painfully low tech as a machinegun in a setting that features weaponized particle accelerators (ppcs being considered basic level 1 tech no less), it just seems weird that anyone would have to spend any considerable amount of R&D time into something as simple as an mg. Heavy, standard, and light MGs should have been labeled as being pre space flight tech from the get go.

[Alizabeth Aijou]

VYCanis, on 11 December 2011 - 05:12 PM, said:

oh god yes

RLs are not attractive because of their actual performance

RLs are attractive because you can amass a massive quantity of them very very easily for maximum short term firepower for minimum cost.

Except that after a few skirmishes, you'll find that MRMs are cheaper in the long run, and more efficient.
For an MRM-10 with one ton of ammo (4 tons total) I can get 8 RL-10s, which is only 1/3rd the number of shots of the MRM-10. And the RLs take up 5 crits more than the MRM+ammo. Cost-wise, the MRM costs 55k C-Bills, while the 8 RL-10s cost 120k C-Bills. So the only advantage of the RL is that you can fire them all at the same time.

Edited by Alizabeth Aijou, 11 December 2011 - 11:29 PM.

[Dlardrageth]

I'd also like Stealth Armor option and Null-Signature System as customizeable upgrade for every Mech at game start right away. Then you can have your rocket launcher because it likely won't matter at all any more. You'd be most likely dead before even knowing what shot you. And how about Arrow IV system with nuclear warheads? Just because canon says... yadda-yadda. If PGI starts deviating with one weapon system, everybody has some "special consideration" that needs to be adressed suddenly.

Thus, I think, this is, most respectfully, a terribad idea. kthxbb

[GreyGriffin]

I love rocket launchers simply because they're ridiculous. There are some great 'mechs posted on S7 that have huge quantities of Rocket Launchers, and I myself have designed a handful of guerilla 'mechs designed to use their cheap and plentiful ammunition (commonality with infantry LAWs, remember?) They certainly aren't the best weapon for your tonnage, or even your C-Bill, but they make sense in the context of the setting, especially the succession wars, where MadMaxTech ruled, and it was entirely reasonable that you might want something to blow up the enemy, but didn't have anything else to put on that Zeus Arm but a huge rack o' rockets.