Judah Malganis, on 27 August 2017 - 12:19 PM, said:
Not saying 1 round will stop a mech, but I imagine hundreds of rounds hitting the same area of the mech would eventually crack through the armor, which I don't know if you play mgs in-game, but it takes thousands of rounds to break through the a front section of a heavy or assault of you're not using anything else to damage the armor.
Or hit in vulnerable places like joints. With AT rifles, one of the points to aim for is the turret ring.
Asym, on 27 August 2017 - 12:26 PM, said:
You couldn't mount a single GAU-8 in a 25 ton mech..... The torque on 1 firing would be so great, the mech would turn.....
The A10 weighs less than 25 tons in CAS payload...
The GAU-8 is only 281kg. So, assuming the BattleTech universe uses metric weight, since it uses metric velocities and ranges, that's just over 1/4 of a ton.
Clan LMGs & MGs are 250kg
IS LMGs & MGs and Clan HMGs are 500kg
IS HMGs are 1,000kg
Yes, we're playing a game and we have all sorts of magical weapons..... Unfortunately, MG's must be really magical to only shoot 100 to 500 meters and destroy armor that a Gauss rifle can only moderately damage.......
A single Gauss round shaves off a half a ton of armor in a single hit (a ton in TT), a single mg needs 15 seconds (7.5 rounds in TT) of continuous fire to achieve the same effect.
Discussing ranges in this context is moot. In real life, a rail gun would fire for several kilometers directly and probably tens of kilometers with a little arcing. We have lasers that can destroy missiles that are miles away, and 70mm rockets (Think dead-fire MRMs) can hit 8k ranges. Hellfires can hit targets at 5 miles. The reason why all weapons have gimped ranges in-game is deliberate. The creators of TT MechWarrior, Jordan Weissman and L. Ross Babcock, have been getting grilled about the unrealistically short weapon ranges and very heavy penalties for firing at long range since the inception of the game, and their answer was that they didn't want a game where 2 firing lines blasted at each other from miles away; they wanted players to be brave and try backstabs, flanking, and envelopment and you know, actually maneuver and keep the game dynamic. Funny that MWO players are constantly trying to undermine that vision.
Edited by Judah Malganis, 27 August 2017 - 06:10 PM.
The GAU-8 is an autocannon, now we have rotary versions in game, just like the GAU-8.
Autocannons vary in general from 20mm - 40mm. They dont get much bigger than that. Maybe the Russians have a 45mm AC floating around their arsenal...
Anything less than 20mm... is a machine gun. Heavy machine gun, sure, but still a machine gun.
Now in game... mechs, walking on two legs, have recoil issues, that is to say, they cant handle it. So in our battletech universe, all our weapons are funny and wrong when compared to IRL weapons because of this. An AC2 is a small bore (say a 20mm) high velocity weapon, but the AC20 is a larger bore (say, the 40mm), but due to recoil issues, low velocity weapon, that must rely on chemical energy stored in the projectile, not kinetic energy. A good ole fashioned High Explosive warhead.
In game Machine guns, we also must assume work the same way. A light machine gun, IRL these days, fires a 5.56 mm round. That's a .223 to you Muricans. Wheras the Heavy MGs are of course the Ma-Duece 12.7mm .50 freedomcals. The standard MG, is now and forever will be, the 7.62 mm .30 cal. But again, IRL the ranges are reversed... again chock that up to reduced powder charge to keep the fireing mech from falling over backwards from it's own recoil.
You must understand the violence of firing a projectile weapon. If you've ever seen a tank gun, they look complicated with all that other stuff mounted onto them. The gun it'self is simple. A breech and a barrel. Everything else is recoil absorbing stuff to contain that violence, and still watching an Abrams fire it's gun, you can see how much that 70 ton tank rocks and shakes from that shot. No legged vehicle could ever do that.
Now about the "Have you seen what a MG does to steel?" remark... Mechs arent using steel armor. Steel is not ablative like Battletech armor. Ablative being you have 30 points of armor that gets peeled away with each hit. Armor that works this way IRL is ceramic and bullet-proof glass. Steel armor would be more like 5 points of defense, say you shoot at a steel armored assault mech with 5 points of armor with your AC5 and Med laser... you would do NOTHING. But that 5 points of armor would be incredibly heavy. Like equivilant to 100 points of this ceramic stuff Mechs seem to be using, or even more. With a 50 ton IS-2 heavy tank, just about 40 tons of that vehicle is armor. That only gives you another 10 tons in engine, weapon, and personel ammenities. Battletech again doesnt work that way. Our armor maybe makes up 1/3 of total weight, instead of 3/4 of it. And since we are shooting at ceramic armors, every little hit matters, so we cram as many weapons as we can instead of one single big weapon like IRL because for steel, you need big. Ceramic you need lots.
This is for all you scrubs who dont study weapons and want to visualize in-game stuff...
The GAU-8 is an autocannon, now we have rotary versions in game, just like the GAU-8.
Autocannons vary in general from 20mm - 40mm. They dont get much bigger than that. Maybe the Russians have a 45mm AC floating around their arsenal...
Anything less than 20mm... is a machine gun. Heavy machine gun, sure, but still a machine gun.
Now in game... mechs, walking on two legs, have recoil issues, that is to say, they cant handle it. So in our battletech universe, all our weapons are funny and wrong when compared to IRL weapons because of this. An AC2 is a small bore (say a 20mm) high velocity weapon, but the AC20 is a larger bore (say, the 40mm), but due to recoil issues, low velocity weapon, that must rely on chemical energy stored in the projectile, not kinetic energy. A good ole fashioned High Explosive warhead.
In game Machine guns, we also must assume work the same way. A light machine gun, IRL these days, fires a 5.56 mm round. That's a .223 to you Muricans. Wheras the Heavy MGs are of course the Ma-Duece 12.7mm .50 freedomcals. But again, IRL the ranges are reversed... again chock that up to reduced powder charge to keep the fireing mech from falling over backwards from it's own recoil.
Now about the "Have you seen what a MG does to steel?" remark... Mechs arent using steel armor. Steel is not ablative like Battletech armor. Ablative being you have 30 points of armor that gets peeled away with each hit. Armor that works this way IRL is ceramic and bullet-proof glass. Steel armor would be more like 5 points of defense, say you shoot at a steel armored assault mech with 5 points of armor with your AC5 and Med laser... you would do NOTHING. But that 5 points of armor would be incredibly heavy. Like equivilant to 100 points of this ceramic stuff Mechs seem to be using, or even more. With a 50 ton IS-2 heavy tank, just about 40 tons of that vehicle is armor. That only gives you another 10 tons in engine, weapon, and personel ammenities. Battletech again doesnt work that way. Our armor maybe makes up 1/3 of total weight, instead of 3/4 of it. And since we are shooting at ceramic armors, every little hit matters, so we cram as many weapons as we can instead of one single big weapon like IRL because for steel, you need big. Ceramic you need lots.
This is for all you scrubs who dont study weapons and want to visualize in-game stuff...
Sure. Alienate people by name calling (scrub) and make your point of view passed over.
OK, reality check: MWO doesn't live in the real world..... It is a game; and, a silly game at that and getting goofier by the year. "Hint: think Solaris......" FP will cease to exist when that happens.
Think about this: Mechs are running with some pretty darn sophicated armor. That armor takes energy and kinetic damage and survives. ERLL, Gauss, UAC's, PPC's etc.... can damage that armor and it takes several hits to destroy that armor.... A lot of all forms of energy is necessary.....
Then. take MG's....... a single kinetic bullet. Ever see a 7.62 round strike AR500 steel? The bullet doesn't even scratch the surface....... How is it, in the far future where MWO lives, a MG bullet, no matter how many could even scratch this armor? Hmmmmmm????? Let alone kill un-damage rear armor in less than 1 minute?
Aside from the fact that they're bullets from the future? We're talking about 1000 lb machine guns (12 times heavier than the most common heavy machine gun, the M2 (I believe that's the most common) and 25 times heavier than the M60. Heavy enough for a small tank-caliber cannon with modern materials.
And 1000 bullets weigh 1000 lbs (well, I assume they're using metric tons, so 1238 lbs). IOW, the bullets are about 13 times the mass of the large M2 rounds. 8 HMGs in one second fire as much tonnage of ammo as the M1A2 (the US's main heavy battle tank) fires in 10 seconds. Except, again, of super future technology rounds.
And that's not even getting into the ablative armor issue
Edited by InfinityBall, 27 August 2017 - 01:48 PM.
This is a 40mm Bofors anti aircraft gun from WWII. One of the heaviest autocannons ever built. Battleships had these things all over them by the end of the war.
Again mounting one of these onto a legged mech, would be too much for it to handle. Even firmly planted (wheels up) the carriage slides along the ground.
edit: However if we cut that casing size in half, which explains the reduced range, we could make the recoil much more managable, and whalla, this is your AC20.
Aside from the fact that they're bullets from the future? We're talking about 1000 lb machine guns (12 times heavier than the most common heavy machine gun, the M2 (I believe that's the most common) and 25 times heavier than the M60. Heavy enough for a small tank-caliber cannon with modern materials.
And 1000 bullets weigh 1000 lbs (well, I assume they're using metric tons, so 1238 lbs). IOW, the bullets are about 13 times the mass of the large M2 rounds. 8 HMGs in one second fire as much tonnage of ammo as the M1A2 (the US's main heavy battle tank) fires in 10 seconds. Except, again, of super future technology rounds.
And that's not even getting into the ablative armor issue
Just like how the majority of a tank guns weight is recoil absorbtion equipment... all the extra weight on MGs in game is for ammo feed, recoil absorption, and aiming equipment. Not the gun itself.
This is a 40mm Bofors anti aircraft gun from WWII. One of the heaviest autocannons ever built. Battleships had these things all over them by the end of the war.
Again mounting one of these onto a legged mech, would be too much for it to handle. Even firmly planted (wheels up) the carriage slides along the ground.
And those shells weigh just 50% more than a HMG round
And those shells weigh just 50% more than a HMG round
Again that weight in game isnt just the rounds. You dont have a guy standing over the breech feeding in magazines like the old days (today). No, we have very complicated equipment to auto-feed, that is capable of clearing jams on it's own, and run that ammo from the legs to the weapon in the arms... etc.
That is what makes up our ghost weight. Not the individual bullets.
Just like how the majority of a tank guns weight is recoil absorbtion equipment... all the extra weight on MGs in game is for ammo feed, recoil absorption, and aiming equipment. Not the gun itself.
These guys developed weapons that used gel-propellant and electric triggers to fire at rates of 27-28K per minute, obviously more if you added more barrels. The US Army used some of their tech to take down RPGs, mortars and other stuff by creating an impenetrable wall of lead.
In their research, they also found that although a single small-caliber round at a steel armor plate did nothing (obviously), firing thousands in very rapid progression could stress the plates enough to shatter them.
The point is, there are multiple options even today, that with the advancement of 11 centuries, could explain how a mech's machine guns can damage mech armor. Also, remember that weapons development is usually one step ahead of armor technology in the real world, since it's easier to add more powder/explosive, or make a bullet from denser material, or make it bigger, that it is to develop a newer, better armor that will stop but still be functionally mobile.
Edited by Judah Malganis, 27 August 2017 - 02:48 PM.
Jay Leon Hart, on 27 August 2017 - 12:31 PM, said:
The GAU-8 is only 281kg. So, assuming the BattleTech universe uses metric weight, since it uses metric velocities and ranges, that's just over 1/4 of a ton.
Clan LMGs & MGs are 250kg
IS LMGs & MGs and Clan HMGs are 500kg
IS HMGs are 1,000kg
So weight is certainly not an issue, at least.
That is just the weapon ! Overall, the GAU-8 weighs in at over 4K lbs......... The A-10 variant..... Goalkeeper is even heavier.
But everyone is absolutely forgetting that a 25 ton biped, gyro stabilized for a waliking and running gait, isn't an Aircraft nor a stabile vehicle plaform. Mech's "walk" and that causes one leg to be off the ground. Running is worse. The barrels are spinning and the concussive force of the fired round translates into recoil.... That recoil, at 1400 rpm would cause the mech to twist, espeically if moving.... Where would you put the ammo drum?
Earlier, someone put a video of a 40mm Bofor.... The M68A1 105mm tank rifle causes the M1 to rock up to the 3rd roadwheel shooting combat ammo.... The M256 120mm is far worse.... Imagine 60 and 70 ton mechs on 1 leg firing munitions in those ranges....
Yes, we play with "magical" weapons and we should leave it at that me thinks...... Reality isn't meant for this game.
Let's take the points of damage off the MG's and make them what they are: last resort vehicle weapons.
An aircraft would have a harder time with the torque and recoil, not easier. What do you think was the primary thing that made the Sopwith Camel a finicky beast?
Then. take MG's....... a single kinetic bullet. Ever see a 7.62 round strike AR500 steel? The bullet doesn't even scratch the surface....... How is it, in the far future where MWO lives, a MG bullet, no matter how many could even scratch this armor? Hmmmmmm????? Let alone kill un-damage rear armor in less than 1 minute?
PUGtato plz
I'll go ahead and post the image of a quarter-half ton MG
Look at how worthless that is
Unable to...wait, it's designed to take out armored vehicles?
Yes, we play with "magical" weapons and we should leave it at that me thinks...... Reality isn't meant for this game.
DING DING DING! Correct, this is not reality.
BattleTech has FTL travel and fusion reaction engines, for crying out loud. The technology is much more advanced than ours, debating what modern weapons can or cannot do compared to BT ones is simply idiotic.
Legging a light in close combat is a bad idea. It only turns the light into an angry turret. And that angry turret probably has a better cooldown than the legger...
Yes, it's a 270kg RAC, but would likely be an MG based on weight and functionality.. The Battletech RAC2 weights 8 (metric) tons. I suspect it's a little bigger.
Don't be so literal. TT rules indicate that an MG has 200 rounds per ton and can fire once per round (10 seconds), or 5kg for a single "shot"... but I doubt it means they only fire one bullet per combat round. It's probably a burst. There is nothing that says a they have to be a single-barrel, or single-shot weapons. Even ACs are described in Sarna.net as coming in different calibers, firing modes and barrel counts based on the manufacturer, but all AC2/5/10/20s/whatevers all follow the same functional rules, regardless of the flavor text. In MWO, all isACs and cACs look identical for their size not because that's the way it should be, but because it saves them memory by making them uniform.
Edited by Judah Malganis, 27 August 2017 - 03:36 PM.
Now in game... mechs, walking on two legs, have recoil issues, that is to say, they cant handle it. So in our battletech universe, all our weapons are funny and wrong when compared to IRL weapons because of this. An AC2 is a small bore (say a 20mm) high velocity weapon, but the AC20 is a larger bore (say, the 40mm), but due to recoil issues, low velocity weapon, that must rely on chemical energy stored in the projectile, not kinetic energy. A good ole fashioned High Explosive warhead.
I just fought with someone claiming that Gauss Rifle is not made for long range purpose in lore, and now I am seeing this.
In lore, AC20 is never really implied that it has to be a larger bore than AC2. Surprised? AC2 can be actually a bigger bullet that does 2 damage per hit, and AC20 can be stream of 20 bullets that does 20 damage total. It is said that this behavior is depended on manufacturers. It is simplified in TT that in the end AC20 does just 20 damage.
People raise their eyebrows when they see a Hunchback in the original Mech Commander opening video. It seems instead of shooting one big round to Mad Cat (Timber Wolf), the effects indicate that it is shooting burst of bullets. It is actually very accurate based on lore. Actually in-game where all mechs shooting just one round is more weird.
By the way, you really do not want to apply real-world military stuffs into Battletech too much. There are a lot of nonsense that defiles common sense such as AC20 having less range than AC2 (in real world larger caliber usually has longer range.) If you read novels, the authors just do not make their minds regarding actual combat distance of mechs. Some do go for mechs fighting within 1~2km just like in TT and games, while others vaguely indicate battle where weapons reach tens of kilos.
So it is pretty messed up and I suggest you guys to restrain from using real-world examples too much.
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Judah Malganis, on 27 August 2017 - 12:19 PM, said:
