144 replies to this topic

[Kaeb Odellas]

Khobai, on 16 December 2017 - 09:14 PM, said:

yes but a modern day cruise missile also couldnt even lock on to a mech and would just bounce off its armor anyway. so comparing them is silly.

ARROWIV can lockon to mechs, penetrate mech armor, and its miniaturized to 1/5th the weight.

id much rather have ARROWIV than 1000 year old tomahawk. but an ARROWIV isnt even really the battletech equivalent of a cruise missile anyway.

battletech has its own version of cruise missiles, like the cruise missile 120. and yes it does 120 damage. it weighs 60 tons too.

Don't be crazy. There is no reason a modern day cruise missile would be unable to lock onto a Mech, and there's no way a missile carrying half a ton of explosives traveling at 890 kph would simply bounce off a mech's armor. If a melee attack can do damage, a goddamn Tomahawk can.

[Khobai]

Quote

There is no reason a modern day cruise missile would be unable to lock onto a Mech, and there's no way a missile carrying half a ton of explosives traveling at 890 kph would simply bounce off a mech's armor

nope. even the cruise missiles that exist in battletech cant lock onto mechs. so why would a less sophisticated tomahawk cruise missile be able to? its also why all the weapons in battletech have short ranges. because mechs have very sophisticated ecm and jamming technology. mechs have to get within a couple hundred meters of their targets to lock-on.

"Unlike the Arrow IV missile system, there is no "guided" or "homing" cruise missile. This relative inaccuracy offsets the tremendous damage they cause. What cruise missiles lack in precision however, they make up for in sheer terror." http://www.sarna.net...ise_Missile_120

the cruise missiles in battletech are 60 tons compared to a 1 ton tomahawk... lmao. and even the largest cruise missile, the cruise missile 120, isnt guaranteed to take out a mech.

a tomahawk thats only 1/60th the weight of the cruise missile 120 might do like 2 damage to a mech (1/60th of 120 damage). so yeah it would basically just bounce off the armor.

in battletech, armor technology far surpasses weapon technology. battletech's ablative armor can absorb ridiculous amounts of damage.

Edited by Khobai, 16 December 2017 - 11:58 PM.

[Y E O N N E]

Using a part of the lore to try and counter an argument saying the lore makes no sense is circular and ignoring the point.

[Khobai]

Quote

Using a part of the lore to try and counter an argument saying the lore makes no sense is circular and ignoring the point.

my point is that in order to reconcile the lore, you have to accept that armor technology in battletech greatly outpaces weapons technology.

if you believe the lore, then armor technology has reach an absolute technological pinnacle, while weapon technology is lagging greatly behind.

Edited by Khobai, 17 December 2017 - 12:13 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Khobai, on 17 December 2017 - 12:01 AM, said:

my point is that in order to reconcile the lore, you have to accept that armor technology in battletech greatly outpaces weapons technology.

There are inconsistencies even within the lore. We have plenty of references that give us an idea of the energies involved to deal X amount of damage to a target. You are trying to say that, magically, that kind of damage can't be delivered by a missile when it already is today.

There is nothing in BT that precludes a cruise missile except the fact that the writers didn't want cruise missiles. The end.

[The Lighthouse]

Khobai, on 16 December 2017 - 11:44 PM, said:

nope. even the cruise missiles that exist in battletech cant lock onto mechs. so why would a less sophisticated tomahawk cruise missile be able to? its also why all the weapons in battletech have short ranges. because mechs have very sophisticated ecm and jamming technology. mechs have to get within a couple hundred meters of their targets to lock-on.

Yeah, this makes zero sense because modern cruise missiles do not entirely rely on radar to lock on the mechs.


See, I have to keep telling you guys : Trying to debate Battletech based on reality will only result in disappointment and realization that typical cheap fantasy novel setting has far more common sense than Battletech's. If you read some specs on BT weapons in general, and compare with real life arms, one can only conclude that the world of Battletech has completely alien laws of physics, otherwise those specifications make zero common sense (let alone realistic).

But those numbers are like those, because they make sense on... tabletop games...


...only.

[Khobai]

Quote

You are trying to say that, magically, that kind of damage can't be delivered by a missile when it already is today.

how? we dont have the ablative armor technology that exists in battletech.

if we had battletech's armor made of unobtanium fused with space magic, today's missiles certainly couldn't hurt it, at least not very much. I mean they might do a few points of damage, but thats all.

nothing we have today, short of nuclear weapons, could severely damage it, and nuclear weapons are banned in battletech

battletech's ablative armor is the real deal.

Quote

There is nothing in BT that precludes a cruise missile except the fact that the writers didn't want cruise missiles. The end.

there are cruise missiles in battletech though.

if they didnt want cruise missiles, why are there cruise missiles? you make no sense.

look cruise missiles in battletech. theyre real:
http://www.sarna.net...ise_Missile_120

the cruise missiles in battletech weigh as much as mechs do and still cant reliably kill mechs lol. so why would a 1 ton tomahawk missile severely damage a mech? you need a way bigger missile than a tomahawk to take out a mech.

Quote

Yeah, this makes zero sense because modern cruise missiles do not entirely rely on radar to lock on the mechs.

mechs jam more than just radar. they jam every conceivable way there is to lockon with a long-range missile (they jam radar, sonar, satillite, infrared, etc...) thats why locking missiles onto a mech is hard unless you get within several hundred meters. A couple hundred meters is as far as sensors can detect mechs because of how powerful the electronic countermeasures are in the lore.

its why most of the offboard strategic level weapons in battletech have to be dumbfired.

Edited by Khobai, 17 December 2017 - 12:31 AM.

[Y E O N N E]

Khobai, on 17 December 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:

how? we dont have the ablative armor technology that exists in battletech.

It literally does not matter. We can figure out roughly how powerful an AC/20 is because they give us bore sizes. If I have the power of an AC/20 in that missile, then I'm going to do 20 points of damage to that 'Mech. Whether or not it can kill it in one hit is immaterial, we'll just send two, or three, or four...

[Kaeb Odellas]

Khobai, on 17 December 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:

how? we dont have the ablative armor technology that exists in battletech.

if we had battletech's armor made of unobtanium fused with space magic, today's missiles certainly couldn't hurt it, at least not very much. I mean they might do a few points of damage, but thats all.

nothing we have today, short of nuclear weapons, could severely damage it, and nuclear weapons are banned in battletech

battletech's ablative armor is the real deal.



there are cruise missiles in battletech though.

if they didnt want cruise missiles, why are there cruise missiles? you make no sense.

look cruise missiles in battletech. theyre real:
http://www.sarna.net...ise_Missile_120

the cruise missiles in battletech weigh as much as mechs do and still cant reliably kill mechs lol. so why would a 1 ton tomahawk missile severely damage a mech? you need a way bigger missile than a tomahawk to take out a mech.



mechs jam more than just radar. they jam every conceivable way there is to lockon with a long-range missile (they jam radar, sonar, satillite, infrared, etc...) thats why locking missiles onto a mech is hard unless you get within several hundred meters. A couple hundred meters is as far as sensors can detect mechs because of how powerful the electronic countermeasures are in the lore.

its why most of the offboard strategic level weapons in battletech have to be dumbfired.

Ablative armor is designed to break apart. That's the point of ablative armor. It breaks apart to absorb the energy from an impact. Ablative armor is not some magical adamantium that can only be breached by advanced weapons. It can be damaged by impact alone.

If a punch from an Atlas deals 20 points of damage to ablative armor, then a 1.5 ton missile flying at 800 kph carrying 450 kg of high explosive is probably going to do a lot of damage.

[The Lighthouse]

Khobai, on 17 December 2017 - 12:15 AM, said:

mechs jam more than just radar. they jam every conceivable way there is to lockon with a long-range missile (they jam radar, sonar, satillite, infrared, etc...) thats why locking missiles onto a mech is hard unless you get within several hundred meters. A couple hundred meters is as far as sensors can detect mechs because of how powerful the electronic countermeasures are in the lore.

its why most of the offboard strategic level weapons in battletech have to be dumbfired.

Yeah, this really shows why BT is so out of touch with reality...

You don't need all of those fancy stuffs, long before we had missiles that uses camera (television guidance) to identify target, and these days AI is so advanced enough that computer can easily discern targets just from optics.

To make things worse, bipedal nature of battlemechs make them very hard to apply camouflage; they are basically giant, big target s just cannot be missed by optical sensors (which fundamentally cannot be 'jammed' unless we are talking about something like the invisibility cape from Harry Potter series)

I have to keep saying this, but Battletech is about as realistic as cheap fantasy novel setting. You are just not going to have a good time if you try to prove otherwise.

[Mechatankzilla]

razenWing, on 14 December 2017 - 10:04 PM, said:

You're welcome, internet.

Well you've got one thing going for you - massive brazen balls

Seriously though, if you want to write your own novels and create your own mech game then it's a reasonable start, even if it is a bit derivative, but proposing to completely get rid of the millions of lines of Battletech lore by dozens of authors and replace it with this mashup is a deeply silly idea.

Oh and never make the mistake of trying to justify Battletech physics or do any sort of 'real world' comparison - it cannot be done and any attempt just makes you look foolish. It's all about 'rule of cool'.

Edited by Mechatankzilla, 17 December 2017 - 02:39 AM.

[Khobai]

Quote

big target s just cannot be missed by optical sensors (which fundamentally cannot be 'jammed' unless we are talking about something like the invisibility cape from Harry Potter series)

thats exactly what were talking about. space magic. mechs are basically invisible to all forms of long range detection.

if it were any other way, you could just park a massive warship in orbit, and wipe out every mech on the planet with cruise missiles. and there would be no point to mechs whatsoever.

and that tactic is even more valid if most planets dont have orbital defenses. theres nothing the ground forces could do to stop it.

which is the whole reason mechs have space magic invisibility cloaks. Because it explains why mechs actually get used instead of just orbitally bombarding every planet.

Quote

You don't need all of those fancy stuffs, long before we had missiles that uses camera (television guidance) to identify target, and these days AI is so advanced enough that computer can easily discern targets just from optics.

mechs jam literally everything. they can jam camera transmissions too.

the electronic countermeasures in battletech far surpass anything we have in real life.

thats why the only practical way to destroy enemy mechs is by sending in mechs of your own.

its how mech vs mech combat is rationalized in the lore setting.

Quote

To make things worse, bipedal nature of battlemechs make them very hard to apply camouflage

they dont need to apply camouflage. they jam every form of long range detection. you cant see mechs unless you get close enough to them to get eyes on them.

Quote

Yeah, this really shows why BT is so out of touch with reality...

of course its out of touch with reality. its SCIENCE FICTION.

pretty much all science fiction is out of touch with reality. thats why its fiction.

mechs use space magic. its that simple.

Edited by Khobai, 17 December 2017 - 05:33 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

Mechs unless they can completely replicate human fluidity of body movement, while very fast, are simply none starters as far as a combat system goes.

They're big impossible to hide under modern conditions, in a world where low small is far more important, than the level of armour in modern battle fields.

Where it's been proven since the end of the first world war that local air superiority is the winning factor, you not going to have mechs fighting other mechs larger than some apartment blocks.

So to make the franchise more realistic, you have to remove the core reason for the franchise to exist.

[Anjian]

razenWing, on 15 December 2017 - 05:40 AM, said:

Lol with multiple comments like this:

"You don't agree with my undying devotion, so either you don't know and don't like it."

Either way, my point is... if there is a Armor Core version of Battletech, where it's a balanced version of retro 80s stompy robits on a relatable setting + creative designs (instead of generic robits looking like the Avatar robits, que Titanfall and etc.)

I would jumpship so fast.

But alas, we don't.

You missed the boat long ago, on the finest mech game ever made. Relatable setting, try the area around what in the real world is Georgia, Azerbajian and Armania, in a war between a Russian backed, NATO backed, and a Ottoman Empire revival faction.

[HGAK47]

From time to time I will have a browse through the pages of Sarna and sit there imagining what a combine arms Battletech universe in the spirit of MWO would be like.

It had infantry suits like the elementals all the way up through the classes of hardware, past 100 tonners, past 150 tonners all the way up to Spaceship dreadnaughts and space battle stations. It would be an inasne game to try and code and get right with all of the aspects of balance but damn would that be some game!

(Someone do a Battletech mod For Star Citizen perhaps in about 10 years when that game is finished lol?)

Edited by HGAK47, 17 December 2017 - 07:50 AM.

[Lykaon]

razenWing, on 15 December 2017 - 12:17 AM, said:

even if you have a planet of 5 cities, how do you plan on overtaking them with 100 men? Do they need bathroom breaks? Do they need to administrate? Do they need to step into their new office?

So unless your plan is to annihilate all 5 cities with dropships ferrying you (which, as mech games so far have suggested, you will need about 5 dropships of supplies in addition), you are not "conquering" anything.

That's why my earth idea is much more... realistic. If your robots can't do ninja moves at Mach 5, then it's probably more like modern combat where a MBT (your mech) is supported by squads of infantry with logistic support from CAS and other units. (which means, you will need thousands upon thousands of men for even 1 city siege)

Earth will be able to provide on an immediate basis a background with the human resource and a confined enough battle space where a Toyota Yaris speed war machine (and keep in mind, that's only the light mechs, you can reverse faster than pretty much all the assault mechs in game) is not overburdened by logistics.

If anything, I think the new setting adds more grit by painting the focus closer to the battle itself than the jumpship interstellar technobabble.

But again, that's just me.

So 100 "men" is actually a mech regiment.

This would be from the top down in magnitude of "biggness"

1 Invader Class Jumpship and it's crew
3 Overlord class Dropships and their crews
100 Battlemechs and their pilots
18 Aerospace fighters and their pilots
Technicians to maintain the above
Logistics and support as well as medical crews

100 mechwarriors
18 Aerospace pilots
350 techs
60-80 jumpship crew
150 Dropship crew
50 medical personel
100 logistics and support personel
10-20 command and control (officers and attending crews)


Now a reasonable assumption of the size of a defending force on planet that would have a single regiment deployed to take it would be about 3-5 Regiments of militia infantry, 2-3 Regiments of militia military Vehicles (including planetary aircraft) and maybe a Battalion of Mechs (36 mechs House affiliated troops) and a squadron or three of Aerospace fighters (6-18 fighters also House affiliated)

The Militia making up the bulk of the force would have a much lower level of training than a Mech Regiment or House Affiliated troops. Many of the militia regiments (if not all) would never have seen actual combat while mech/aerospace pilots would most certainly have seen several operations like the one being undertaken.

In lore (and table top game rules) a Battlemech can easily handle 5 times it's number in conventional military vehicles. And basic Infantry doesn't stand much of a chance against mechs at all.

So right from the Get Go the planetary militia is way out matched by a mech regiment even if all forces from both sides engaged all together.

But, The militia would be split to defend the 5 cities while the attacker can opt to deply any number of the attacking force to any one theatre of battle via orbital drop from FRICKEN SPACE! landing troops on the planets surface in under an hour.

The Militia forces would be quickly overwhelmed and the Dropships would then land at the now secured loaction to retrieve the Battlemechs and return to the saftey of orbit for another deployment.

In a Planetary invasion situation the invading force would also include massive numbers of conventional forces to occupy the now undefended city. The mech forces would be freed up to redeploy on another offensive within a few days rapidly taking out another city's defenders (and again conventional forces deployed to occupy the captured territory)


But if ONLY the mech regiment is deployed then the objective is not to hold the planet but to make several strategic strikes on priority targets like ammo depots command and control centers orbital defense networks or if you're really feeling like breaking the rules factories and HPG networks.



I think much of you failure to comprehend the lore is due to not knowing it fully.

Mechs do not "walk" all over the place on a planet under attack. They are orbitaly inserted via dropship ( initial phase attack) or landed on the planetary surface on a dropship (if the area is secured) You would obviously drop your troops where they needed to be so a few kilometers from the intended targets.

After the mechs complete their mission they are retrieved by the dropship and deployed again as needed.

They do not walk the entire distance a deployment from a city on one planet to attack a city on another planet 10 light years away (60 trillion miles give or take) would take...

3 days of loading onto a dropship.
1-2 weeks traveling in system to the Jumpship (depending on the size and class of the star in the system)
a couple of hours to spool up the jumpdrive
a split second to arrive 10 light years away
1-2 weeks travel to the target planet
a couple of hours to be deployed on the target planet's surface.

Now think about our real world, Think about England. How much of the planet Earth did England "own" by the end of the 18th century? How did they do this if the average speed on their infantry was 16 miles a day? How was this done with no fossil fuel engines? just feet and sail?

Or before them Rome?

Edited by Lykaon, 17 December 2017 - 12:21 PM.

[Anjian]

Cruise missiles cannot lock on to mechs, because cruise missiles are set to attack a fixed coordinate, guided by GPS and verified by imaging.

Anti tank missiles however, can, via optical and thermal imaging. Do note from a vertical or plane setting, the antitank missile cannot use radar on a tank, because of the ground reflection of the radar, as it becomes hard to differentiate the tank from the terrain. Antitank missiles can use radar however, if they are set on the same plane or ground as the tank, since you have this empty space behind the tank and allow the tank to have contrast on the background.

But optical and thermal will do just as well on the ground.

Mechs giving off heat as much as they do in the game, makes them easy pickings for thermally guided missiles. I can imagine that heaters (AAMs like Sidewinders) on fighter jets could successfully lock on to a hot battlemech. For that matter, thermally guided PGMs.

For a cruise missile to attack a mech, it would have to use a thermally or optically guided system, and able to loiter (modern days there are such things like loiter missiles --- effectively kamikaze drones) or do an search pattern over an area, ID the targets and dive to them.

Another and even more precise way would be laser targeting, where the target mechs are lit up by a tagging laser by ground troops, tanks, helicopters or even another mech, and loiter cruise missiles will go after them.

In the anime Aldnoah Zero, an enemy Martian Cataphract was taken out by cruise missiles after being lit up by lasers.

With regards to armor,

Ablative armor is armor that is supposed to burn off, which absorbs and takes away the energy of a hostile beam, and the smoke it generates diffuses more of the incoming beam. A fictional example of this is the ablative armor used on the USS Defiant on Star Trek DS9, which is used to counter direct hits by phasers on the hull. Ablative armor, for that purpose, is expendable and consumable, but will give away under repeated hits. That can easily be represented by an HP based armor system.

Reactive armor relies on the principle of the counter explosion. As the shell hits the armor, the armor explodes outwards taking out the blast and the shell to the opposite direction. This is also another consumable and expendable armor, that will eventually give way to multiple hits. This armor is commonly found in modern tanks.


If mechs are possible, however, given our understanding of technology, mechs like you see in Battletech just won't work. Should note that tanks themselves can be fitted with both ablative and reactive armor, and can be as equally or better protected than mechs, due to the much lower surface area ratio to armor weight the tank can have. The mech advantage would have to rely on ability and mobility over the tank, like jumping or hovering, and mainly its ability to autonomously either autonomously, or require only one person or crew, versus five to a tank (T-14 Armata with its automation, reduces crew to three). The autonomous mechs like you see in Chappie, Robocop or in the last Transformer movies are probably a lot more justifiable, simply because they remove the risk to human life.

With future technology, you may also have to depend on energy or force shields if that is possible.

[Y E O N N E]

Cruise missiles can easily be used against moving targets.

[Vellron2005]

razenWing, on 14 December 2017 - 10:04 PM, said:

Thus create some of the most confusing plot element to the whole "battletech" universe. Why are mechwarriors even the center piece?

The fact is, because of the way mechs are... they are NOT for intergalactic conflicts. As self sustaining robots, they are great for planetary deployment with different atmospheric conditions. But, in a galaxy measured by light years, what the hell is a 30 foot robot with the top speed of 150kph (pretty much slower than the top speed of my Toyota Yaris) going to do?


But in a gear and pegs setup with top speed of not even a modern commuter car... the universe is just way too big. I mean, is Hans Davion really going to conquer a planet of 2 billion with 200 battle mechs that takes 20 years to go around a planet? (and we are talking about countless planets too)

So that's where the Battletech universe completely falls apart.

Keep in mind most of those planets are villages and mostly small cities, and a single assault mech can basically level those..

Also, keep in mind that planets are not won by huge invasion armies. They are won by walking a few hundred mechs to the planetary authority's front lawn..

And than that planetary leader says "ok, the planet is yours".

Its more feudal than massive-scale..

Also, note that mechs are usually followed by a host of tanks, aerofighters, helicopters and such..

[Anjian]

Yeonne Greene, on 17 December 2017 - 08:48 PM, said:

Cruise missiles can easily be used against moving targets.

Not with the particular kind of guidance system you have on many land attack cruise missiles right now.

The kind of cruise missiles that can be used against moving targets are anti ship missiles, particularly the sea skimming kind. But they can only be used against ships, since radar seeking doesn't work very well against ground targets due to the fact that ground can reflect radar and scatter the target's radar return with background reflection.

The kind of missiles used for land attack are usually things like AGM-65 Mavericks, which uses TV optical sensors, infrared sensors and laser guidance, or Hellfire missiles, which uses laser homing.

Land attack requires the following: to search and identify the target. Cruise missiles don't have that ability against temporal moving targets, and hence used against known, fixed structures. Cruise missiles don't also have the ability to attack on opportunity. For this to happen, the weapon needs to be on site, in loiter mode, scanning, searching for targets. Hence UAV with Maverick and/or Hellfire missiles.

Even if you want to use cruise missiles or a full blown airstrike, you still need the drone to search and identify the targets properly. assuming if the cruise missile has laser guidance, something still needs to paint the target with a laser, and that would have to be the job of special forces in the field or via drone.