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For Giggles: What's The Most Unrealistic Thing To You In Bt/mw?


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#81 Athom83

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 04:36 AM

View PostSnowbluff, on 24 October 2017 - 08:24 PM, said:

Point of order, if he didn't write everything he down, I don't think he qualifies as a scientist. Even if he didn't copy it for distribution, his technique would still need to be recorded during refinement and then for regular use.

To be fair. he was ultra paranoid about his formula being ripped off from him and absolutely refused to sell it without retaining at least 51% of the rights to the material. Because he did share some small samples of it (but never let it out of his sight for fer of it being reverse engineered), we do know it is partially an organic polymer of some sort combined with other ingredients, but we simply don't know what those ingredients are not the method he used to combine them. And then he either hid or destroyed all of his samples and written documents leading to the months of his death.

View PostMole, on 24 October 2017 - 11:38 AM, said:

The kind of tech that was lost in the succession wars was known by many. It would be like there being a huge war here on earth and then everyone forgot how to make cars. There are enough people out there who understand how cars work that barring a total extinction of the species the knowledge would never be completely lost.

The succession wars would be more like nuking almost every car manufacturing site and construction companies that build those sites, and going in to make sure you've killed all the workers, then moving on to all of the technical institutes that teaches people how to make cars and killing everyone there. Sure, there would be people who've survived that knows how to build/maintain cars from spare parts, yet the knowledge and capability to build those parts are now gone and the people who know how to build that capability back up are mostly dead.

#82 RangerGee412

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 05:18 AM

No air conditioning on mechs. Got this crazy walking machine of destruction.... but no air conditioning....

#83 Karl Streiger

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 05:35 AM

View PostRangerGee412, on 25 October 2017 - 05:18 AM, said:

No air conditioning on mechs. Got this crazy walking machine of destruction.... but no air conditioning....

Doesn't an air-condition produce heat on its own? Waste Heat is Waste Heat - trying to generate energy from waste heat will result in even more waste heat Posted Image

ok keeping a small pressurized cabin shouldn't produce to much waste heat - but boy the costs. All the coolant pods and additional parts you need to maintain. A shower after a fight is cheaper in the long run

Edited by Karl Streiger, 25 October 2017 - 05:37 AM.


#84 The Amazing Atomic Spaniel

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 05:41 AM

Sure it's been mentioned, but for me:

- the large-amplitude bouncy mech animations in MWO would turn a real-life pilot to jelly

- mech legs are so far apart that they couldn't walk in real life (unless driven by John Wayne)

- at high speeds, mechs would need to lean over into corners just as much as a motorcycle

- light mechs are far too small compared to larger mechs

- weapons ranges, errr....

But the rule of cool overcomes all these objections because big space robots.

#85 Magnus Santini

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 06:34 AM

Are we not going to talk about the population? 1000 years from now, hundreds of worlds are populated? How fast do people have kids in the future and who teaches school to all of them while everyone is building planetary infrastructure (and making more kids).

#86 jss78

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 07:10 AM

View PostMagnus Santini, on 25 October 2017 - 06:34 AM, said:

Are we not going to talk about the population? 1000 years from now, hundreds of worlds are populated? How fast do people have kids in the future and who teaches school to all of them while everyone is building planetary infrastructure (and making more kids).


Well, BT is a thousand years into the future. When it comes to population growth, that's a very long time.

Consider the growth of human population during the past one thousand years. Also look at the trajectory of growth during the industrial period.

Spoiler


Let's take a hypothetical example. We transport 1000 people to a planet in 2500AD. They have plenty of fertile land -- and modern medicine -- so let's suppose the population grows at 4% a year. That's about the same as fastest growing developing country populations on Earth today. By 3000AD the population of that planet will be about 330 million people. If they go to veritable rabbit mode at 5% growth rate per year, 39 billion people by 3000AD.

In essence, take a small bunch of settlers out there, give them half a millennium, and you can redo Earth population no problem.

Edited by jss78, 25 October 2017 - 07:12 AM.


#87 Bombast

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 07:16 AM

View PostRangerGee412, on 25 October 2017 - 05:18 AM, said:

No air conditioning on mechs. Got this crazy walking machine of destruction.... but no air conditioning....


Battlemechs have a full suite of life support systems. That includes 'air conditioning.'

View PostMagnus Santini, on 25 October 2017 - 06:34 AM, said:

Are we not going to talk about the population? 1000 years from now, hundreds of worlds are populated? How fast do people have kids in the future and who teaches school to all of them while everyone is building planetary infrastructure (and making more kids).


Most planets in the Inner Sphere would be considered 'low population' by modern standards. And people tend to breed a lot when conditions are poor (And less when conditions are good. Weird, eh?).

View PostShifty McSwift, on 24 October 2017 - 09:11 PM, said:

Ah, OK, so then giant robot wars make total sense now with that knowledge, thanks guy /s


You're that guy that doesn't understand why we don't just nuke North Korea, aren't you?

Edited by Bombast, 25 October 2017 - 07:17 AM.


#88 Zookeeper Dan

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 09:35 AM

Pilots in the head!

Behind glass!

Without windshield wipers!

They should be in the torso of a headless mech piloting by sensors!

#89 InfinityBall

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 09:58 AM

People in the future who write "alot" and see that red line under it and can't figure out why their computer is telling them that's not a word for year after year.

(I assume this is still a thing 1000 years from now)

#90 Rick T Dangerous

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 10:43 AM

The most unrealistic thing in MWO?

Shrubbery stopping AC20s and Gaussballs.

#91 Jman5

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 11:18 AM

View PostAthom83, on 25 October 2017 - 04:36 AM, said:

To be fair. he was ultra paranoid about his formula being ripped off from him and absolutely refused to sell it without retaining at least 51% of the rights to the material. Because he did share some small samples of it (but never let it out of his sight for fer of it being reverse engineered), we do know it is partially an organic polymer of some sort combined with other ingredients, but we simply don't know what those ingredients are not the method he used to combine them. And then he either hid or destroyed all of his samples and written documents leading to the months of his death.


The succession wars would be more like nuking almost every car manufacturing site and construction companies that build those sites, and going in to make sure you've killed all the workers, then moving on to all of the technical institutes that teaches people how to make cars and killing everyone there. Sure, there would be people who've survived that knows how to build/maintain cars from spare parts, yet the knowledge and capability to build those parts are now gone and the people who know how to build that capability back up are mostly dead.


You'll have to take this analogy even further. It would be like somehow finding and destroying every person and scrap of data that has to do with building cars across a huge expanse of space, but leaving the cars around. Throughout that entire process, no government body, except Switzerland, has the foresight to save a copy of a car's blueprint on their laptop. Then for hundreds of years no one can backward engineer the car even though you've got a bunch of working models lying around in working condition. And even though Switzerland is apparently hell-bent on preventing other governments from rediscovering the car they're apparently cool with leaving these working antiques in their hands. Also these other governments are apparently powerful enough to not be taken over by comstar, but aren't powerful enough to protect a building.

I feel like a more believable way to tell this sort of story would be to frame it like Nuclear Proliferation. The knowledge of building an atomic bomb is well known, but because of the existential threat they represent as witnessed in the succession wars, the material and proliferation are tightly monitored and controlled by comstar with collective agreements by the houses. The limited tech that already exists at the time of the agreement are grandfathered in and used as the backbone to enforce the agreement.

It's not until the Clans invade that the idea of non-proliferation goes out the window and the houses start going into full production and R&D.

Or you could do something like the the treaty after World War 1 that established limits on the scope and size of navies to prevent another arms race.

Near total and extreme technological regression is a clumsy and unbelievable plot point.

#92 TWIAFU

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 12:05 PM

View PostRangerGee412, on 25 October 2017 - 05:18 AM, said:

No air conditioning on mechs. Got this crazy walking machine of destruction.... but no air conditioning....


Or rear view mirror.

:/

#93 Captain Polux

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 12:14 PM

Pilots are headless:

Posted Image

#94 Bombast

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 12:17 PM

View PostTWIAFU, on 25 October 2017 - 12:05 PM, said:


Or rear view mirror.

:/


Interestingly, several class of warrior (Including Mechwarrior) used compression screens, taking a 360 visual arc around them and displaying it on a 180 degree or smaller arc, so they could see everything.

Needless to say, I don't think that's very practical for MWO. Unless you like throwing up.

#95 Johnny Z

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 02:45 PM

View PostThoseWhoFearTomorrow, on 25 October 2017 - 12:14 PM, said:

Pilots are headless:

Posted Image


The game would be a lot more popular if they had heads.

#96 Dr Hobo

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 02:50 PM

Convergence isn't a thing in MWO,but is a thing in other titles and a thing in TT.

Sure makes driving lights fun when you get deleted by a 90pt alpha.

#97 InfinityBall

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 04:10 PM

View Postdavoodoo, on 24 October 2017 - 07:37 AM, said:

Except targeting computer first appeared with clans.

http://www.sarna.net...ans_(sourcebook)
1994

Even in 1984 desktops and other small computers, if not ubiquitous, were known about by pretty much everyone. Nintendo was out, the Apple IIC was out, there were 286 PCs. Ataris, Commodore 64, etc.

#98 Trenchbird

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 04:41 PM

View PostShifty McSwift, on 24 October 2017 - 09:11 PM, said:


Ah, OK, so then giant robot wars make total sense now with that knowledge, thanks guy /s
Okay, I'll give you a non-smart-*** answer.

It's actually a LOT less resource intensive to build a mech or tank than a Starship.

In the first Succession Wars alone, Warships-of which there were hundreds-were destroyed en masse, and they were all but extinct after the Second Succession War. To that end, most Houses-when they regained the ability to make new Warships-found that they were still incredibly costly, and use them more to defend locations or provide a force multiplier on their own territory. While exceptions exist-mostly Word of Blake Examples there, post-SWs-The loss of the resources of a Warship, combined with the sheer scarcity of them, and relative 'inferiority' compared to massed Assault Dropships and Pocket Warships (Both of which are more capable of acting independently of a fleet in-system, but are also all-but-helpless when it comes to interstellar travel), means that Warships are overall just too much of a financial and political problem compared to the much cheaper and more ubiquitous dropship.

Also requiring mention is that the goal of most fights in Battletech isn't to annihilate infrastructure, at least in the more 'sensible' (Read: Pragmatic) eras post-1st and 2nd SWs. A large amount of emphasis is put onto taking and holding infrastructure, equipment, etc. etc. You see a microcosm of this in the Clans, who trial to trade/keep/maintain a military surplus among eachother, as opposed to simply leveling one another in bouts of omnicidal rage, Wars of Reaving notwithstanding. (And even then, the Society made it perfectly clear that their intent was the usurpation of the Warrior Caste, not necessarily the dissolution of all things Clan. It stands to reason that Clan Society would not be much different if they had succeeded, aside from the obvious change of Warrior Caste to either second or third rung on the ladder.)

TL;DR; They don't Warship Spam because Warships are incredibly costly (As in, several times more expensive than a full company of Dire Wolves), because you can spam Dropships that do pretty well for cheaper, and that the goal in Battletech isn't to destroy the actual infrastructure of the enemy, but to take it as your own.

EDIT; Unless you hate the enemy that much. But most people think "I'll just take this ****** IS weapon and melt it down to make my SUPERIOR CLAN AUTOCANNON", so even the Clanners partake in this. Because the Clanners are apparently all about not wasting crap.

Edited by Catten Hart, 25 October 2017 - 04:44 PM.


#99 Shwinboy

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 05:18 PM

Not being able to crouch or go hull down. In modern armored warfare it's all about presenting your enemy with the smallest possible target. That's why tanks a long and low. You only want to present your weapon system and protect the rest of the tank behind cover. Somehow this lesson was lost on mech designers resulting in tall fighting machines on an unstable bipedal platform and low slung weapons requiring the pilot to expose them selves to fire the weapon.

Mechs are pretty dumb.

#100 InfinityBall

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Posted 25 October 2017 - 07:42 PM

View PostCatten Hart, on 25 October 2017 - 04:41 PM, said:


TL;DR; They don't Warship Spam because Warships are incredibly costly (As in, several times more expensive than a full company of Dire Wolves), because you can spam Dropships that do pretty well for cheaper, and that the goal in Battletech isn't to destroy the actual infrastructure of the enemy, but to take it as your own.


That doesn't make sense. Drop 10,000 direwolves on a planet. A warship will destroy them all.





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