181 replies to this topic

[Pocket_Aces]

The higher the caliber of an auto-cannon, the shorter the range. In the real world a 7.62mm round has a longer ranger than a 5.56mm round.

[Bombast]

Paigan, on 24 October 2017 - 06:26 AM, said:

That is nonsense.
They just would have had to use 100 m hexes instead of 30 m hexes. The hexes are already tactically abstracted. Why not just use a proper scale?

At 'realistic' hex sizes, maps stop making much sense. There's no light forest or lone trees or rural areas - There's just forest boxes, building boxes and non-of-the-above boxes.

Even at 30m it's a bit silly. Why does a rural town of a couple thousand have a 4 lane highway running through it?

You're kind of right though - It's not the main reason. The main reason is the same reason why Star Trek space battles are all knife fights at a range of a kilometer or so, or why the goa'uld don't glass planets from orbit - Range is lame, and you can't punch someone who's in another map grid square.

Edited by Bombast, 24 October 2017 - 06:33 AM.

[Lily from animove]

Paigan, on 24 October 2017 - 06:26 AM, said:

That is nonsense.
They just would have had to use 100 m hexes instead of 30 m hexes. The hexes are already tactically abstracted. Why not just use a proper scale?

because this would be too much madness when your atlas is suddenly too out of scale of your hex. figurine to hex size to range is always a compromised abtraction between scales. it wopuld look rather awkward if two hexes between two mechs denies MG's from beeing used. You can only break the one or the other scale or find a sowmhat middle way between them.

TT like BT or Warhammer are made to give the impression of a battlefield otherwise you would end up in a more tactical only boardlike game, like risk. And at that point size and scale ebtween hex and figurine shouldn't bee too much apart from each other because the "battlefield feeling". gets gone.

Edited by Lily from animove, 24 October 2017 - 06:48 AM.

[A Shoddy Rental Mech]

MatesRates, on 24 October 2017 - 06:32 AM, said:

The higher the caliber of an auto-cannon, the shorter the range. In the real world a 7.62mm round has a longer ranger than a 5.56mm round.

USS Iowa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16%22/50_caliber_Mark_7_gun
They fired projectiles weighing from 1,900 to 2,700 pounds (850 to 1,200 kg) at a maximum speed of 2,690 feet per second (820 m/s) with a range of up to 24 miles

Big shells go long ways.

[TLBFestus]

Computers that are weighed in TONS.

Just imagine how heavy their smartphones are! "It comes with a Shoulder Strappppp....."

Edited by TLBFestus, 24 October 2017 - 07:15 AM.

[MeiSooHaityu]

Ammo stored in legs and making it all the way, past all those joints, to where it needs to go.

I don't know if it is the most unrealistic, but it is the one I find my mind goes to when I think of something like this.

[Angel of Annihilation]

The short weapons ranges.

On the modern battlefield, we have missiles that can't take out a tank at around 4000 meters, the main guns can kill out to 2500 meters, a 50 cal MG can hit out to 2000 meters, etc, yet SRMs only fly 270m, MGs 140m, hell even the longest range weapons are short ranged by comparison.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 24 October 2017 - 07:11 AM.

[davoodoo]

Lets see
1)mechs, while its selling point i find it rather unplausible that any civilization would decide to make giant bipedal robots instead of developing tanks or vtols
2)weight of equipment and mechs, cicada weighs as much ww2 panther while carrying more of everything
3)during 300 years of constant war, military technology not only didnt advance but somehow regressed.

Edited by davoodoo, 24 October 2017 - 07:15 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

Ammo stored in legs and making it all the way, past all those joints, to where it needs to go.

I don't know if it is the most unrealistic, but it is the one I find my mind goes to when I think of something like this.

makes sense to me

[MeiSooHaityu]

Khobai, on 24 October 2017 - 07:15 AM, said:

makes sense to me

LOL...Sure! Just like a Portal turret, right?

[Captain Polux]

Mechs. Cool as hell (of course) but seem impractical.

[Y E O N N E]

MeiSooHaityu, on 24 October 2017 - 07:17 AM, said:

LOL...Sure! Just like a Portal turret, right?

But...Portal's turrets use Combine pulse tech. They are energy weapons. With an onboard power source, they may not even need energy caps.

[Bombast]

Yeonne Greene, on 24 October 2017 - 07:23 AM, said:

But...Portal's turrets use Combine pulse tech. They are energy weapons. With an onboard power source, they may not even need energy caps.

[Esarai]

TLBFestus, on 24 October 2017 - 07:01 AM, said:

Computers that are weighed in TONS.

Well you have to remember, this was a game made in the 80s, where most computers were still the size of whole rooms and PCs were a relatively new thing.



But outdated computer tech aside, the single most unrealistic thing in BattleTech for me is that Large Lasers are gamma ray lasers.

I'm a physicist, and this is just so many orders of nope.

Why?

Because gamma rays have such a high energy that they tend to tunnel right through most matter. There's a reason we use massive slabs of concrete and lead sarcophagi to contain our current nuclear stuff, and that's because gamma rays usually don't give a ****. And when they do, they will wreck your face, ionizing the hell out of whatever was unlucky enough to fail its interaction roll.

So now apply this to the BattleMech, which has incredibly light-weight (read 'low density, thus low mass') components using diamond-weave armor and foamed metal to achieve the structural integrity and weight density needed to get a mech even in the realm of plausibility... and we see that a Large Laser, if firing gamma photons, would pierce through the BattleMech, scrambling computer systems and giving the pilots acute radiation sickness. Even if the laser missed, they're still pretty screwed because there's a thing called Compton Scattering, where a gamma ray smacking an atom causes it to re-emit X-Rays... which also cause cancer. So yeah, good luck with living more than 2 years after you climb into the cockpit of one of these things.

But oh, it doesn't stop there. Whoever designed the Large Laser thought that instant cancer and acute radiation sickness wasn't enough of a weapon... no. He needed to melt things with it. Using photons that only sometimes transfer energy, this madman thought it'd be a good idea to use it to impart heat, ignoring the many lower wavelengths which are much better at this sort of thing. They're wasting most of the energy spent firing the weapon since it passes clean through the target and are irradiating whatever is behind the target.

The collateral damage of a Mech battle isn't just the toxic ashes and crushed buildings... it's every living thing in the immediate area suddenly dying because someone ignored basic quantum mechanics.

Edited by Esarai, 24 October 2017 - 07:32 AM.

[Khobai]

mechs having to hide behind rocks because rocks give better protection than armor is the most unrealistic thing in MWO

if rocks are such good protection why dont we just attach rocks to our mechs

mechs should not have to hide and play peekaboo because their armor is made of wet tissue paper draped over cardboard structure.

game needs to go back to 8v8 or triple armor structure for 12v12

Edited by Khobai, 24 October 2017 - 07:39 AM.

[davoodoo]

Esarai, on 24 October 2017 - 07:27 AM, said:

Well you have to remember, this was a game made in the 80s, where most computers were still the size of whole rooms and PCs were a relatively new thing.

Except targeting computer first appeared with clans.

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

Edited by davoodoo, 24 October 2017 - 07:48 AM.

[Bombast]

Khobai, on 24 October 2017 - 07:36 AM, said:

mechs having to hide behind rocks because rocks give better protection than armor is the most unrealistic thing in MWO

if rocks are such good protection why dont we just attach rocks to our mechs

A mech sized rock would provide more armor than a mech can carry purely due to mass. Ton for ton, metal/ceramic armor is more durable than raw rock, but there's just so muck rock in that kind of formation.

The question you ask it like asking why modern body armor isn't made of concrete.

[HGAK47]

Escort mode. Specifically the Atlas mech and lack of awareness it shows.

[Mole]

Most unrealistic thing about Battletech? Giant robots that don't get one-shot by some guided missile from three miles away launched from the back of a truck.

[Davegt27]

"the battletech universe uses torch ships for most of the space operations."

whats a torch ship?

the biggest problem I had was the original problem I had with MW2 that is
having ammo stored all over the Mech

I was like how is this ammo in my legs getting way up where my gun is mounted lol

also PPC's ok so I am now shooting lighting out of my finger tips like some sith lord--what!

https://youtu.be/PqaiKmm8gsY?t=136

we used to talk about stuff like this at work and it was explained to me it was ball lightning
so that is why MW2 had the big ********** edit: (seems blue kbals gets edited out lol) (ok I can live with that)

then I get here and people are saying no its lightning out of your finger tips
geez

Edited by Davegt27, 24 October 2017 - 09:27 AM.