Argent Leviathan was commissioned by ComStar in 3060 as an exploratory upgrade to existing King Crabs. Largely driven by the logistical problems plaguing ComStar's thinly stretched armies, the KGC-AL prototype would carry eight extended range medium lasers and two large pulse lasers along with functional claws that would enable it to drag large battlefield salvage or even grasp its prey. Unfortunately the mech facilities that would have been tasked to convert more King Crabs to the new configuration were acquired by The Word of Blake along with many of the projects engineers. Since The Word of Blake had their own KGC variants and production lines further refits were never commenced.
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Torment
Torment charged into the opposing pack of mechs, grabbing a Trebuchet with its huge right-hand claw while simultaneously knocking a Jenner over, the smaller mech rolled over twice breaking its leg actuators and shedding both of its side pods on the ground. Dale Mason, the pilot of the one hundred ton King Crab battlemech paused a moment to let the dust settle, he was a showman, this was a show, he wanted the arena audience to witness the carnage and glory as much as they themselves wanted it. Then he riddled the Trebutchet's torso with a hailstorm of bullets from three heavy machine guns embedded within the mechs claw and threw it to mercilessly to the ground. He re-aligned Torment to face his final opponent in this three-on-one demonstration spectacle, an old and very worn Witworth. The Witworth fired a volley of missiles from its twin LRM-10 launchers, Dale laughed like a maniac as Torment's four anti-missile systems chewed them up in mid-flight. The Witworth stood motionless, already defeated as it watched Torments twin rotary auto-cannons begin to spool up while the crowd roared with excitement.
You've motivated me to end my hiatus from 3D modeling. Am working on Torment's claw.
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I know these are built for MWO, however I would like your advice (or simply input) for keeping their flavor while still making them tabletop legal. (So that I can run these mechs in Megamek.)
Here's my initial take: Argent Leviathan using a KGC 000 as a base.
Still using base KGC 000 Ferro armor and amount. Removed all placeable equipment (original weapons, both CASE, etc).
Unable to use a non-hundred denomination engine, gave an XL 400 engine to reflect the superior speed.
Installed 8 ER ML total, 4 per arm. Two LPL, one per shoulder. Currently have 15 DHS, all engine mounted. 68 heat alpha, 30 heat cooling in 10 seconds. 99.5 tons. No room for a targeting computer, but it would have to be 9 slots and 9 tons to be used with a 100 ton mech. So sadly I won't be able to try this guy out in Megamek.
Using it exactly as I was able to do, however, using up the last half point in extra armor... It destroyed its 4 heatsinks in a single firing and shutdown despite firing all lasers at only 75% power. After another 10 seconds I tried again, with 100% power. Pilot died. And another 6 DHS were lost. (So out of 15 DHS, only had 5 left to salvage).
Its a cool concept and would easily work in MWO... but in Battletech this guy never would have made it past the concept stage as is. Dropping it to medium lasers made it manageable, but still a heat trap in TW/TacOps/Maxtech rules. Dropping the LPL for Clan LPL allowed 2 more DHS but that did almost nothing and ultimately the additional heat made it worse. Dropping to Large Lasers also helped with 4 more DHS (bringing the total to 19 DHS), but even after putting it in 40 below 0 degrees Fahrenheit, just too hot. Though in BT heat management and weapons control are supposed to be a thing, so there's that.
Would like to hear your mods for it to work in BT.
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So skipping to round number 2. Torment
Using a KGC 0000 as a base.
Removed stock equipment.
Unable to use a non-hundred denomination for engine, downgraded to 300. Kept as STD.
Fitted all given weapons.
Found the ammunition to be absolutely excessive... Like insanely so. Put it all in anyway.
Found the additional heatsinks to be excessive and unnecessary, actually reduced stock heatsink count by 1 (so 14 DHS), but they are doubles now. Can get warm, but there's slots free now.
After EVERYTHING else (except armor allocation) including just using a STD engine... still only 97 tons.
Test ran. Died by ammo explosion. Added two CASE. Still an ammo exploding death trap.
Quad AMS sounds fancy, but decided to drop 2 of them and dropped 1 ton AMS ammo, and 1 ton HMG ammo. Moved remaining AMS AMMO and HMG ammo to CT. (Two AMS is pretty impressive in BT anyway).
Tied two RAC/5 ammo tons to each RAC/5 for even consumption, the two AMS to the central AMS ammo and the twin HMGs to the central HMG ammo.
For the remaining six tons, I gave the hands two "Small Vibroblades" so that it could perform additional melee attacks.
HMG ammo lasts 250 seconds of standard Battletech use, or about 80-ish seconds of TacOps "Burst Fire", though they generate quite a bit of heat and of the three attempts to really use them they had jammed in 20 to 30 seconds.
Torment's pilot Dale Mason, received the following aToW skill: Melee Master. Allowing the pilot to perform more than one functional melee attack at a time. (Such as Charge then Grapple, or a flurry of three punches, two kicks, etc. Mainly for the ability to make a charging attack and then a second melee move after).
Dale Mason's also given a +1 bonus to initiative, allowing him to move later and better react to enemies as part of his 'showman' persona. (This is proving somewhat advantageous in simultaineous turns with actual combat scenarios, though meaningless in simultaineous turns with him as the only pilot under my control. In traditional taketurn tabletop, this effectively means I usually get to move him later than other characters.)
Thoughts? Want a Torment for your Megamek? It's really fun!
^ Shows how much about tabletop and RPG battletech I know. (Practically zilch).
Very interesting post though, clearly my builds only have MWO's rules and real-time play dynamics in mind, but its good to see them adapted.
One thing I found while researching for Torment is the claw http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Claw. I left it out to avoid too much massaging of the rules, but could be allowed under Solaris 7 rules.
For Argent Leviathan I decided early on to limit my build to Ferro to make a lore-friendly modification of the King Crab. I would have no idea how to make it viable if laser vomit doesn't work as well on paper. Put its AC-20s back where they belong probably
^ Shows how much about tabletop and RPG battletech I know. (Practically zilch).
Very interesting post though, clearly my builds only have MWO's rules and real-time play dynamics in mind, but its good to see them adapted.
One thing I found while researching for Torment is the claw http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Claw. I left it out to avoid too much massaging of the rules, but could be allowed under Solaris 7 rules.
For Argent Leviathan I decided early on to limit my build to Ferro to make a lore-friendly modification of the King Crab. I would have no idea how to make it viable if laser vomit doesn't work as well on paper. Put its AC-20s back where they belong probably
I thought of Claws, but... They were 7 tons EACH for a 100 ton mech. That weight varies with how heavy a mech is, of course. Another thought I had was Lift Hoist, which would give it forklift-like functionality (when equipped on arms) and allow it lift mechs with regular actuators. That only weighs 3 tons. While not technically a combat weapon it has combat potential.
I can try to fit the claws in.
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Its not so much the laser vomit, that exists a lot in BT mechs. They just spread out the volume of fire.
What I mean is (and how BT weapon damage is intended to be converted in real time; it is not "shoot once in 10 seconds", it's a summary of "what happens in 10 seconds, over-simplified to make it reasonable given the medium.")
Spoiler
Consider this: A RAC/5 can only achieve a maximum rating of 30 damage in 10 seconds (unlike what it does in MWO) (its actual damage can top out at around 54 in Battletech under near perfect conditions and rolls),
AC/20 I was able to get to top out at 47 damage once though not entirely sure how (I know direct blow + rapid fire autocannon rules both played a part), UAC/20 is about the same but no risk of the weapon exploding due to a melting barrel, but in both cases jams keep the fire low.
A LPL would only do no more than 12 damage in IDEAL PERFECT conditions (at extremely close range with TacOps Variable Laser Damage + a strong Direct Blow), though the base is 9 damage.
The ER MLs have a base of 5 but could get somewhere in 7 or 8 per 10 seconds.
The base rating is how much damage is roughly expected, within a given accurate range, and the approximate amount of heat you will endure under normal use, all within a given amount of time. The weapon could fire once, it could fire 2,973 times, it could fire 17 times, it doesn't really matter how it fires, energy and ballistic ratings are straight forward in that "this is how much damage, this is the range we expect even the greenest pilots to hit in, here's the heat we expect and this is how much time we expect to see this result in." Ammo is simply rated by how many "ratings" can be achieved.
Coincidentally your average medium laser needs to fire 3 times to achieve its rating, so they do something in the 1.667 damage range. There's only one medium laser in lore that delivers the whole 5 damage in a single quick blow, the Rassal Blu Beam. Its also the only IS laser that can do 5 damage in a single shot, not even the large lasers can. There's also 6 design flaws, such as it knocks out your sensors for several seconds
It has an Exposed Weapon Linkage, possesses a poor (and Degrading; not listed) Cooling Jacket(this counts as 2 as it starts poor and after 10 uses you shift to No Cooling Jacket), inaccurate and after 15 uses with no cooling jacket (so 25 uses in total), it becomes a Non-Functional Item. What that basically boils down is few weapons deliver on the payload instantly. (This is why Light, std, etc. PPCs exist though; PPCs are single shot = rating weapons with very long down times; hence why they are called Siege Cannons).
Missiles are a little different in how their rating works but we won't get into that since there's no missiles here.
What you might notice is we are not seeing is MWO's 3 or more shots to achieve 15 or greater damage in 9 seconds for a medium laser. No, it's 5 damage in 10 seconds with some flexible leeway.
or MWO's AC/20 churning out 60 damage or greater (depending on quirks and skills) or UAC/20 churning out 120 damage in just 8 seconds. Nope, it's no greater than 50 possible, with a rating for 20 per cassette.
If you compare an autocannon to an AR-15, this is a cassette.
In Autocannons it varies. Here's a real life autocannon's cassette.
As a good baseline, the largest AC/5 and AC/10 caliber is 120mm, and requires 3 rounds to deliver approximately 5 damage or 6 rounds to deliver approximately 10 damage. The difference between an AC/5, a UAC/5, and finally an AC/10, is that an AC/5 is rated in safe operation for 5 damage in 10 seconds but could do double this in unsafe operation. The UAC/5 can do the same thing except it is made to endure it, but heat of the weapon (not of the mech) can cause issues. The AC/10 is designed to easily handle double the firing rate of the equivalent caliber AC/5 (so an AC/10 would pump out twice as many shells as an AC/5 in the same time or less) but have no issues with the heat buildup or jamming. In fact they could do up to twice that before running into problems.
Lighter calibers of the same autocannons churn even more bullets just to arrive at similar damage. But as such they often fire faster and more frequently with less down time.
What am I getting at? Ultimately, a lot less damage is going around and only one rating for lasers, up to 2 for most cannons and up to 6 ratings for the RACs within 10 seconds, all requiring a lot less heat. Meaning we don't need anywhere near as many heatsinks and often even single heatsinks are perfectly viable. You wouldn't really go with double heatsinks unless absolutely necessary.
So laser vomit in a different form is pretty viable. Alpha strike vomit, not so much. Mechs effectively have a limit of 30 heat at any given time. If there's a chance of going over that when you break down weapons fire by the second, the heat scale reflects this with a shutdown risk and the dice roll ultimately determines how effective the pilot's firing discipline was. If you shut down, it wasn't good enough. If you didn't, then it was pretty good.
As an example, a common one I throw around is Lordred showing me the Dire Wolf prime and firing every single weapon once. 76 heat. He lost his left arm due to an ammo explosion, the pilot got injured twice (pilots have a health of 5) but stayed conscious. Didn't shut down despite the immense heat, coming out to 29 heat after the 10 seconds of cooling is applied. Now technically if he fired everything at once, he'd cook in a cockpit reaching over a thousand degrees.
But fired in succession, with overheated weapons allowed to cool as other weapons take over (the limitation of all weapons is heat on the weapon itself before the heatsinks pump it away into the mech threshold tolerance on its way into the atmosphere around the mech), laser vomit is pretty effective. Your large pulse lasers would fire kind of like laser gatling guns and the ER MLs would (depending on the brand names) vary in intensity from a number of quick but powerful beams with some time in between them, similar to the Spartan Laser from Halo, (And if you play the Battletech PC game, you can hear exactly that effect as the lasers power, fire, then cool) or it will be a beam lasting up to no more than 2 seconds which would deliver the damage much faster than the other method but have a looooong delay before it could be used again.
Ultimately, this problem doesn't really matter, however. Good firing discipline and situational use of the weapons and it is a very effective machine if using Battletech's lore in real time. Weapon redundancy is common, seen the Nova? It can't possible use them all at once, but if toned down to reduced power it has good chances of landing more, weaker, shots. The main reason however, is if you ever take note of how fragile equipment is in Battletech... think of it like playing MWO with no armor, and 1 health on every piece of equipment. That's what it is like to play Battletech with all the rules, because shots can and do Go Through Armor. You can destroy an engine without even doing much to the armor itself if the weapon can pierce well enough, and there's a Barrier Armor Rating, too. So you know, World of Tanks and War Thunder type stuff with armor penetration and hits that do no discernible or reduced damage.
So firing them all at once, or even within 10 seconds isn't viable in any form of Battletech lore. PGI's technically given us near quad heatsinks instead of doubles (much like we have almost 3x earth gravity on all maps) to help facilitate 'fun' when given their interpretation of what a "rating" means. As such they had to redefine how an autocannon even works in terms of damage delivery as a result.
However the weapon setup on the Argent Leviathan is perfectly suited to canon. And lets face it at base amage values you're looking at 6*5 + 2*9 = 30 and 18 = 48 expected damage.
Torment's got 5*2*6 = 30 + 6*3 = 18 = 48 expected damage though at wildly different ranges.
Far as weapons go they are equally matched.
The issue's basically the elements from PGI's game design. Engine variants aren't widely available. In fact an engine 300 for a 25 ton, a 30 ton, a 50 ton, 75 ton and 100 ton mech are all completely incompataible with one another. Going beyond tabletop campaigns into the RPG, unless the brand name is also identical, a 300 engine for an Atlas will not power another 100 ton mech unless it can take that brand name. So you're not going to find a 305, 355, etc, let alone even cross brands. Then there's the TC sizes which I am about to cover.
So yeah, basically the issue here is PGI.
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The targeting computer
Spoiler
Back to the Argent Leviathan, the reason why it doesn't work out is basically it was made with some of PGI's made up rules. Yes there's a 4 slot, 4 ton-ish targeting computer (I think). However what PGI doesn't realize (and kinda doesn't need to, lets be honest but lets assume for a moment we went into Star Citizen level detail).. The Targeting Computer isn't just a 4 ton PC you stuff in your mech. It is a host of sensors, actuator controls for the body and the individual weapon pivots that will adjust weapons individually as well as the mech as a whole, and while the result is improving accuracy what it really does it takes the most of the control way from the pilot and instead only allows the pilot to go "I want to hit this here." The TC does the rest. The only reason it ever misses is attributed more to sudden movement or enemy evasion. TCs even compensate for the aiming offset from weapon temperature, something the standard mech advanced fire control system cannot do.
This is basically Battletech targeting computer.
Except it connects to all your weapons and taps into the mech's muscles for precision motor control and wrestles that away from you, the pilot. Combined with EI implants, a Clan pilot doesn't even have to be IN the mech to control it. Just somewhere nearby. (Unlike an exoskeleton, though, the TC only has finer motor control abilities, it does not and cannot enhance strength).
But because of that, Bt doesn't offer varying sizes for one mech. It's one size for a mech of one size, because its just that extensively integrated. PGI made up the sizes and such because in terms of programming and flexibility it is just easier. There's also the aspect that the TCs in MWO don't really do any of the fancy stuff they do in Battletech lore, so they wouldn't be worth it.
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The reason the Torment works out is ballistics are incredibly low heat solutions. If it tried to use the RACs to the full potential it could certainly still run the risk of overheat, but you'd probably get them jammed first as it would take well over 30 seconds of fire (or maybe less than 20 seconds if combined with the lasers and the rapid firing of the HMGs).
(Which all BT MGs generate heat, but under normal use the heat isn't significant enough to even be registerable on the heat scale, however in lore the weapons overheat pretty often).
Til then will see if I can manage to fit the Claws on. Given the actual shape of the Torment's claws, however, I believe the small Vibroblade, while not physically the same thing, would effectively give something close to the same effect. Grappling can be done without actually needing claws (just need hand actuators). Instead of pinching, you're getting extra bonus damage from cutting.. which is basically what a claw does anyway. They don't really look 7 tons heavier as they are, yet still look pretty cool. (Course like the Targeting Computers, the claws don't have all their weight in the actual claw, there's a lot of enhancements to strength and the like.
Some Solaris mech artwork related to claws and machine guns, because why not?
Spoiler
(As a quicky, the Solaris VII Cudgel has a lot of laser vomit; the trick is just picking and choosing when to fire them and keeping in mind that redunancy keeps you going in a fight).
This is just being shared to show what 12 MGs looked like on a mech in 1991.
Here it is, the Mantis is what I was thinking of.
Actually your rendition's pretty close. Though I think yours still looks more bladed than jagged grabby (and looks better because of that). Sure the Claw would do 14 damage for 7 tons on the attack and the Small Vibro Blade only does 7 damage for 3 tons on the attack. (Interestingly, a large vibro blade does 14 damage for 7 tons).
I admit an issue with using a vibroblade is it generates heat when on and if not on, does basic mech sword damage (which is a bit less).
I don't know if this in addition to base punch damage or in place of it. Considering that base punching can easily do more than 7 damage I think that this in addtion to the base punch damage.
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For fun. (Some King Crab lore about their autocannons, one of a few minor differences between the Triple Zero and the Quad Zero, and finally a related FASA Battletech riddle about King Crabs. Read and try to solve if you want!)
Spoiler
If curious, aside from the ferro armor, want to know the real difference between the KGC 000 and 0000?
Cosmetically, nothing. The only way to tell the difference is when the claws open or when they fire, as all the weapon classes are identical, but the brand names are very different.
The classic and near extinct Corsara Weapons Industries KGC 000 sports twin 120mm Deathgivers (12 shots = 20 damage) which are cassette fed and fire in a 3 round burst, the user can control when to fire each burst allowing him 4 trigger pulls before a 3 second reload, and can easily churn [with the reload] 24 rounds per Deathgiver and finish a second reload about 10 seconds.
The quad-zero (0000) sports Twin Imperator Ds. I used to wonder if this was an error because the Imperator D is technically an AC/2 equipped on aircraft, but that is in fact what "AC/20" is on the KGC 0000. The Imperator brand name only has 80 and 100mm autocannons with the 100s under the Denomination "Code Red." Meaning that the Imperator-D is 80mm. What's also interesting is that the Imperator Nomenclature actually indicates how the weapon is fed, with "D" being belt-fed with no down time for reloads, leaving the only limiting factor to be heat-related jams and barrel/chamber warpage.
So what the quad-zero King Crab has are twin belt-fed 80mm AC/20s. ...Knowing this, the obscure short story "Queen's Gambit" makes a bit more sense.
Quote
A pilot in a bar asks you, another pilot, to participate in a "what would you do" scenario. Your target is inside a structure. There's a shot, but only if you get past a King Crab. You need only get the shot past him but if you try to make the shot your much smaller mech will literally be sawed in half. The King Crab's claws -- already open -- fired a total of 18 shots in your comrade's direction and destroying his mech. His sacrifice is how you got into your current position of opportunity. The King Crab does not have a shot on you and cannot risk moving or it would expose what it is protecting. You do not have a shot or even a visual on him and cannot risk moving out or it will surely obliterate you.
-- Its a stale mate, practically a Mexican standoff. --
But then your audio sensors pick up something. The King Crab has closed its claws. You know from your history that the King Crab automatically closes its claws when reloading to protect its vulnerable AC/20s during the 3 second process. Is it reloading? Is it a bluff to lure you out? If it is reloading then you need to make your move right now. What do you do? Three seconds, the time is ticking.
If you have read starting from "For Fun", you might have the correct answer to the FASA Battletech's "Queen's Gambit" short story riddle-thing. I think I'll leave that up for a day to see if anyone gets the right answer before I spoil it.
Aw, no attempts at the Battletech riddle about King Crabs yet? Kinda figured some old BT fans would already know the riddle's answer if they had seen it.
The King Crab is bluffing. The 3 seconds had already passed; And even if they hadn't, you won't be able to deal enough damage to it to kill it before it kills you.
Catten Hart, on 25 November 2017 - 12:24 PM, said:
The King Crab is bluffing. The 3 seconds had already passed; And even if they hadn't, you won't be able to deal enough damage to it to kill it before it kills you.
Correct, it is bluffing to lure you out.
When the pilot given this hypothetical situation tried to answer what he would do, he was cut off with "It doesn't matter, its a four-zero model. Fact is you never had a chance to begin with."
How to draw the conclusion: There is no external visual difference between a KGC 000 and KGC 0000 according to lore. TRO 2750 (TRO 3025 Revised, not 2750) specifically states the only way to tell the difference is when they fire. TRO 2750 says the Deathgivers are among the most potent weapons ever created, while the inferior Imperator D autocannons need a few bursts (TRO 3025 revised). They also gave you the number of shots. A triple 000 only has 12 shots per magazine/cassette/reload with 5 reloads per ton of ammo (extrapolated from shot count and damage done by the Marauder in 2750, which at 120mm [same as Deathgiver] 3 shots accomplish 5 damage.). Though it doesn't actually say whether it fired from one or both guns so they could kinda get you with that. Supposedly though, that would mean it has at most 10 damage that it could deliver on you (6 shots) if they are Deathgivers which wouldn't kill you if it was bluffing but still a KGC-000, so you'd have a chance.
Admittedly by the way it tells the story, it just closed its claws after you got into position and you're being rushed to think do you move or hold fast in an instant decision. So you have 3 seconds to make your move and the sooner you make it the better.
But there's one more piece of information the story automatically believes you are already aware of... King Crab triple 0s are almost extinct by 3025, beyond encountering extremely influential pilots and locations, you'd never see a triple 0 in your life, therefore it is almost certainly a quad zero and the Queen's Gambit, also known as the Queen's Bluff, plays on the King Crab's reputation rather than the fact: there are less than 200 King Crab triple 0s left in the Inner Sphere and 140 of them are in the hands of Comstar, which when finally put to use about half of them came out as the Clan Buster King Crabs, heavily modified and rigged with LB-10xs. The remaining sixty are scattered about with the highest collection of them in some Steiner collector's garage not far from Dust Bowl, he had 3 of them I believe and two of them weren't functional as they were mothballed for parts, since finding parts to fix one was "next to impossible."
Some of that was contained within the same issue as the Queen's Gambit from BattleTechnology, which some info from that issue made it into the 1989 TRO 2750 and 1996 revised TRO 3025 (the original 3025 did not include the King Crab).
TL;DR:
In the Queen's Gambit scenario, you're screwed because its a KGC-0000, they never have to change cassettes to keep firing. While triple 0s do reload and that reputation is in the minds of all pilots, you will probably never encounter a triple 0 in your entire life and as such, the pilot the hypothetical challenge is given to is effectively told he's dumb for relying on reputations.
(Catten is correct, the Hangar Queen aka the King Crab is bluffing to lure the pilot out; he never needs to change cassettes/magazines on his Imperator Ds and it is a near statistical impossibility for it to be a triple 0 KGC with Deathgivers.)
(Catten is correct, the Hangar Queen aka the King Crab is bluffing to lure the pilot out; he never needs to change cassettes/magazines on his Imperator Ds and it is a near statistical impossibility for it to be a triple 0 KGC with Deathgivers.)
So I was right, but for the wrong reasons. Nice to learn that tidbit about KGC-000 and KGC-0000 numbers, though.
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