23 replies to this topic

[Hit the Deck]

It must be scary when you, the pilot, realize that your 'mech is falling because it's like jumping down from a 3-4 story building.

In order to minimize the trauma the pilot takes, there has to be some form of inertial dampener inside the mech so the pilot has some time to deccelerate when the 'mech hits the ground. How is this handled in the source material? If the 'mech has arms, can it use them to lessen the impact?

[MechaBattler]

I've not read that many of the books. But I've never read mention of any inertial dampening. Curious to hear what they came up with, if anything.

In Gundam they pretty much had airbags and I believe gyro stabilized seats. Gyro stabilized cockpits seem like a good idea to prevent a pilot from snapping his own neck.

[Karl Streiger]

There is not such a thing.
When you drop your Mech from a 3-4 story building (you need some luck not to fall down) If you fall the damage to the pilot is serious.

One of the dirty tactics of BT combat is to charge an enemy at a cliff and the gravity does the rest - even a Atlas can be neutralized with its pilot pasted as ketchup on the cockpit walls.

JumpJets use automated thrusts and dedicated actuators and joints with shock absorbers at the legs or similar

[SilentScreamer]

Hit the Deck, on 18 January 2018 - 01:22 PM, said:

It must be scary when you, the pilot, realize that your 'mech is falling because it's like jumping down from a 3-4 story building.

In order to minimize the trauma the pilot takes, there has to be some form of inertial dampener inside the mech so the pilot has some time to deccelerate when the 'mech hits the ground. How is this handled in the source material? If the 'mech has arms, can it use them to lessen the impact?

The tabletop game tracks damage taken by the mech's pilot in addition to the mech itself. A lucky shot to the head of a mech (even with armor intact) or a mech falling to the ground from standing can knock the pilot unconcious or even kill them. A helmet, a five point harness and a padded chair are likely the only things protecting the pilot.

Karl Streiger, on 18 January 2018 - 11:16 PM, said:

One of the dirty tactics of BT combat is to charge an enemy at a cliff and the gravity does the rest - even a Atlas can be neutralized with its pilot pasted as ketchup on the cockpit walls.

Not your fault if the enemy pilot can't make his skill check. Knocking the mech down is a great way to deal with min/maxers with 1 in gunnery and 5 in piloting

Edited by SilentScreamer, 19 January 2018 - 04:35 PM.

[Darrious Quinn]

Hit the Deck, on 18 January 2018 - 01:22 PM, said:

It must be scary when you, the pilot, realize that your 'mech is falling because it's like jumping down from a 3-4 story building.

In order to minimize the trauma the pilot takes, there has to be some form of inertial dampener inside the mech so the pilot has some time to deccelerate when the 'mech hits the ground. How is this handled in the source material? If the 'mech has arms, can it use them to lessen the impact?

No, the concept of Inertial Dampeners do not exist in any form in within the Battletech Universe. Simply put, the technology level for something like that is way beyond Battletech. We may have giant stompy robots with lasers and interstellar travel, but only a very small percentage of humanity actually understands how that tech works and even fewer can replicate. Dropships for example, since we are talking about them, are built by an ancient robotic shipyard in Davion space. The techs in that shipyard maintain the mechanical aspect of the factory and components, but they are not capable of building a another shipyard like it. To paraphrase a scene out of "Coupe" of the Warrior Trilogy, "losing that factory would set humanity back centuries".

When it came to mech drops into a zone, jump capable mechs relied on the well timed firing of their jump jets. Non-jump mechs were equipped with booster pods, like current day JATO pods, that would slow their decent. Sadly however, yes, if something bad happened during decent... it went very bad. 100 tons of falling steel is still 100 tons of falling steel.

[Koniving]

Gundam Unicorn has the closest thing you'd find in Battletech, featured in the second episode, in which a violent potential collision is softened for the pilot.

If your mech was so equipped and you took a 3-4 story fall... you'd be treated to an airbag.

....I'm serious.

That's all you get.

The shortest height you can fall from in Battletech is 6 meters or "1" level. Now at Mech Con 2017, Battletech original creator Jordan Weisman in his match against the Harebrained Schemes guy in charge of directing game development Matt-something stated that his mechs (Jenner, Shadow Hawk, Quickdraw, Victor) were 30 to 40 feet tall.
That's 9.144 meters to 12.192 meters tall. Google states that generally a story is 3 meters tall. This means the minimum fall is 2 stories down.

I've fallen 2 levels and avoided injury by skill roll, so in theory you could brace yourself... or depending on the fluff have air bags save you from injury. At the same time from the same height, you're subject to more than one skill roll which means more than one potential injury.

Your pilot has a total of 5 health. With 2 injuries your ability to pilot becomes impaired. With a third, you're likely to fail any future skill rolls. With a fourth you'll lapse in and out of consciousness quite often. And with the fifth you're dead. With four injuries you'll be hospitalized for 6 months to over a year and likely need prostheses. Prostheses is quite common in the Bt/MW world.
MW1 1989:

Japanese 1993 remake (sadly no prosthetic).


Battletech (Harebrained, 2017-)


Mechwarrior (RPG) 1st edition even talks about prosthetic tails, which I confirmed is available in Megamek's digital tabletop, too.

So... yeah. Its airbags, brace, or bust. Good luck when you hit the deck!

(These are some of the special implants and not among the normal run of the mill sort...)
Search "Level 5" and there's a good set of six images. Ghost in the Shell sort of **** long before the Ghost in the Shell movie.

Edited by Koniving, 21 January 2018 - 05:30 PM.

[Hit the Deck]

Koniving, on 21 January 2018 - 05:25 PM, said:

So... yeah. Its airbags, brace, or bust. Good luck when you hit the deck!

Lol.

This is pretty grim. Why would anyone want to pilot a 'Mech in BT?

This falling from great height stuff makes giant robots even less probable IRL, unless they are controlled remotely or by an AI.

[Koniving]

Hit the Deck, on 22 January 2018 - 10:14 AM, said:

Lol.

This is pretty grim. Why would anyone want to pilot a 'Mech in BT?

This falling from great height stuff makes giant robots even less probable IRL, unless they are controlled remotely or by an AI.

Well, figure this...

Unless the structure is hardened, and even then unless you're under a certain weight, you'd never get on top of one without crushing it. (I remember a folly where I landed on a roof without checking it, fell through it and lost both my mech's arm and leg. The pilot was injured but was able to continue, in fact I spent the next 3 minutes jumping from place to place since I couldn't walk, until I was cornered by the Battlemaster and shot to death. In fact you can follow that fight, it's one of many under "King Crab versus Dire Wolf and other tabletop battles."

Another situation, I was a Kintaro and I tried to run through a building and it collapsed on top of me. The situation wasn't as dire, but since I did the act to get away from an enemy... it didn't help me any, since I was trapped there for about 20 seconds and levelled soon after.

Finally, there was a situation with the testing of a series of tutorial missions I made for players that were / are willing to do a campaign with me in Megamek to help me write short stories. In it, while testing it out myself, I crossed a parking lot in heavy rain, and slipped on the turn. I skid 90 meters and collided with a random building (in telling the story I like calling it a Star Bucks), in which the basement check stated there was a basement, and I fell through that too. In the skid the mech's arm was ripped off. The pilot managed to have no injuries by sheer luck (he wasn't a good pilot; we're talking about Ota after all), but he managed to get out of the basement with one arm and resume the test.

His nickname in my test runs is "Insurance Nightmare". For obvious reasons. We're not gonna get into the 23 vehicle pile up he once created by crossing a road of AI-run traffic in Megamek...

Ideally, stay the hell away from cliffs. Pretty simple, right? There's a reason mechs in Battletech do not take the high ground.

[Koniving]

Mechs are not much better than tanks, officially, except in the fact that they outclass tanks tremendously in agility. They also outclass 'most' vehicles in firepower, primarily due to most vehicles being powered by conventional engines and thus few having energy based weapons.. and they're not neutered by breaking their tires/tracks/"hover" system.

[Hit the Deck]

Rereading the posts in this thread, I think I didn't convey what I want to say clearly that I mainly interested what would happen to the pilot inside a 'mech's head (cockpit) when the 'mech falls flat on its face. This is interesting because some BT 'mechs are tall enough that this situation is dangerous (for the pilot inside).

Of course if a 'mech is standing on a cliff then it falls to the bottom of said cliff and lands on its face then it would be much worse for the pilot inside

[Karl Streiger]

Hit the Deck, on 22 January 2018 - 01:27 PM, said:

Rereading the posts in this thread, I think I didn't convey what I want to say clearly that I mainly interested what would happen to the pilot inside a 'mech's head (cockpit) when the 'mech falls flat on its face. This is interesting because some BT 'mechs are tall enough that this situation is dangerous (for the pilot inside).

There is always the chance that your pilot get injured.
There are novels were the pilot get killed and this could also happen in TT combat.
A volley of 4 LB10X (annihilator) can neutralize any mech when the dices are falling in a bad way

[Koniving]

Falling flat on its face as in falling forward?

Or landing directly on the head?

If the latter, the pilot is likely to die instantly.
if the prior, then there's a chance for injury just like if it falls backwards. We're assuming the mech falls over "Battletech" PC game style, yeah pilots have a risk of getting a single injury. Could go up based on other conditions, such as the 'landing' registering a 'hit' on the cockpit. You can lose quite a bit of mech armor or structure from a fall, too. The 'skid' fall earlier that I described was a running fall and it ripped a healthy 25 ton mech's arm clean off.

[Bombast]

Remember that Battlemechs are basically giant humanoid tanks. So, ask yourself - How does a human deal with falling? If you fall onto your feet, you absorb the impact with your legs and waist. If you fall sideways or backwards, you cushion the fall with your arms, or by falling in 'stages,' letting your body absorb the impact as you go down so your head isn't moving so fast when it makes it to the bottom. Battlemechs can do the same.

I imagine the gyro can absorb some of the impact as well by arresting the right rotation wheels on the way down.

[Hit the Deck]

Bombast, on 23 January 2018 - 08:19 AM, said:

Remember that Battlemechs are basically giant humanoid tanks. So, ask yourself - How does a human deal with falling? If you fall onto your feet, you absorb the impact with your legs and waist. If you fall sideways or backwards, you cushion the fall with your arms, or by falling in 'stages,' letting your body absorb the impact as you go down so your head isn't moving so fast when it makes it to the bottom. Battlemechs can do the same.

I imagine the gyro can absorb some of the impact as well by arresting the right rotation wheels on the way down.

It's about the pilot inside the cockpit when his/her 'mech falls down then its head touches the ground.

The inertial dampener is for the pilot.

Edited by Hit the Deck, 23 January 2018 - 09:09 AM.

[Bombast]

Hit the Deck, on 23 January 2018 - 09:06 AM, said:

It's about the pilot inside the cockpit when his/her 'mech hit the ground head first.

The inertial dampener is for the pilot.

And I don't think you understand how falling works.

About 90% of preventing brain damage when you fall is reducing the speed at which your head hits the ground by absorbing the impact with the body, whether it be the legs, arms, or other parts. It's the same way with a mechwarrior - Fall damage is primarly avoided by absorbing the impact before the head/cockpit reaches the ground. In Battletech, that's reflected by the piloting roll one does when falling.

There's are no inertial dampeners in Battletech. Just gyros, hydraulics, myomer, skill and luck.

[Jonathan8883]

Jumpjets can help with falls from high places. Bracing with the mech's arms, knees, etc. helps if the mech is knocked over. It's still a violent ride.

Tanks are often overlooked in the MW games. Hell's Horses supposedly uses lots of armor, but they never get any screen time.
'Mech advantages:
-No treads to get caught, jammed, thrown, etc.; no wheels to deflate.
-Near immunity to mud, broken concrete, and other obstacles that would stop a tracked or wheeled vehicle.
-Ability to jump, turn sideways, and otherwise get through forests and broken terrain that's impassable to tanks
-Ability to manipulate the environment (arms, stomp on vehicles)
-Greater ability to duck, dodge, and otherwise be hard to hit
-More variability with weapon aiming (tank tracks with turret; mech tracks with torso twist, shoulder, and elbow, for a much faster retargeting rate).

That said, tanks in BT seem to be intentionally gimped. A 100 ton tank should be able to defeat a 100 ton mech in a straight up fight at a distance. The tank has a smaller target profile, and thus better armor thickness for a given tonnage, doesn't have a bunch of tonnage tied up in gyros, actuators, and myomers, and can mount the same amount of firepower.
Get off the open plains, and the Mech suddenly has the advantage thanks to its maneuverability; the 100 ton tank also has no counter to being stepped on by a 100 ton mech.


Artillery is still lord of the battlefield in sufficient quantities.

[Karl Streiger]

Jonathan8883, on 23 January 2018 - 10:47 AM, said:

That said, tanks in BT seem to be intentionally gimped. A 100 ton tank should be able to defeat a 100 ton mech in a straight up fight at a distance. The tank has a smaller target profile, and thus better armor thickness for a given tonnage, doesn't have a bunch of tonnage tied up in gyros, actuators, and myomers, and can mount the same amount of firepower.
Get off the open plains, and the Mech suddenly has the advantage thanks to its maneuverability; the 100 ton tank also has no counter to being stepped on by a 100 ton mech.

well partly wrong.... Konving said in a different topic - the main difference is the bigger mobility.
while he try to explain in in BT canon rule - i war game the BT stuff vs todays (maybe) better technology

lets assume your tank goes hull down - full M1 style (Scorpion) only the top of the turret is visible.... and he aims his 120mm smoothbore cannon down range 3km at a striding Centurion - with oveclocked autoloader 2 rounds in 3 seconds are possible.

and then the gunner/commander got a warning before its raining guided missiles from above - fubar they missed the UAV. Those tiny 90mm missiles have only a range of 10km but their warhead is more then enough to penetrate the upper armor.
So for a tank - going hull down is death

ok other cenario they are aiming for a enforcer - this guy has no missiles.
Well now its a fair fight. more or less.
3km thats ~2seconds flight time for a APFSDS. so the second shot left the barrel before the first arrives - however read about those sensors and the highly automated DI of the MEch?
That sensors if they did not have seen your tank then - they see you the moment you fire (so muzzle brakes are ok) - the DI might run a couple of statistical doge manouver - so the striding Mech becomes a erratic moving target.
Your first shot will miss for sure - hope you did aim for the center - the second depends on your targeting programm.

Ok now two things might happen - you hit or not. Congratulation you are correct the armor of a Mech is not very strong but still a lot of energy of your rod is done for good while it pulverize the metal / nitride foam alloy. maybe it even shatters.
Consider it doesn't shatter - well either you hit something vital - or also a option you did not hit something vital - and the mech is still there, only with a bullet hole. A reason why tanks might hunt battlemechs with not so fast but heavier APCR ammunition either squeeze bore or SLAP (for example a 75mm APCR in a 120mm sabot) - the impulse might be enough to stop the Mech (when falling down the pilot might get injured)

So considering you did not hit - or you did not cripple the mech. then the pilot can either go prone (in this case the pilot will not get injured because its a controlled fall) - or he can move to attack.
In both cases he can call the Javelin in his lance to come to play - or call fire from a Trebuchet with its Air & Land Target Zeus LRM system. He would also use hot smoke to conceal his position when falling down.

well you know that your tank is dead when it stays in position so he turns and try to run - unfortunatly the 80mm AC in the arm of the Enforcer works with Gast principle - and it fires 4 rounds per second. each shot does not have the penetration of your 120mm.... but its not nice to get peppered by that gun... and your tank can hardly evade incoming fire as good as you can.

The next rounds of your tank are fired on the move while the hull is ringing with impacts (lets predict it is strong enough to take some direct hits)
Your aim would get worse and when you are on the move the enforcer finally cut loose with its large laser. It doesn't have much energy that shot... hey the infamous 88 of WW2 might have the same energy...but one thing is kinetic that laser is thermal energy. it touches your tanks flank just for less then a millisecond....and boom - the metal explodes (a 48cm and a visible violett laser lense would have all that energy on a spot less then a centimeter in diameter) - the force will whirl your tank to a violent stop.
The next 4 round burst will hit on spot while the laser is charging... your tracks will be blow to pieces... better to bail out
.

So a tank gets into the open - its mobility / predictability of a dodge manouver vs bigger guns.
A tank even in BattleTech will have the more powerfull alpha. a mechs weapon will always be smaller and more compact and designed to deal damage over time. The exception might be missiles.
Speaking of missiles - a tank can be defeated by rather small warheads - so a AT volley will consists of multiple projectiles that will break through your passive and active defense systems (Hard kill, AMS etc.)
A mech will have the same anti missile systems but is less vulnerable from an attack from above - you need to hit it horizontally - so you would user bigger missiles - with a bigger warhead.
You don't want just a tiny hole in that Mech - you want a big hole ideally with enough force that it smashes to the ground.

option for tanks vs mechs is to aim for the legs and work in unison.... for example instead of one scorpion you might have a lance of them and suddenly there are 4 computer directed projectiles each second. Much harder to dodge so your guys have already loaded some SLAPs or even those century old anti tank explosives (that are mech killers - go through the armor and explode - nasty)

[Darrious Quinn]

Hit the Deck, on 23 January 2018 - 09:06 AM, said:

It's about the pilot inside the cockpit when his/her 'mech falls down then its head touches the ground.

The inertial dampener is for the pilot.

Getting back on point.
As Bombast and I had mentioned earlier, no such Dampeners for the pilot.

In the TT event a mech went uncontrollably face down, there are tables to be rolled on to determine if the cockpit took damage. You apply fall damage according to tonnage and fall distance and fill in the appropriate bubbles on the mech sheet. Assuming the cockpit isn't crushed in the fall, the pilot then must make a "concessions check" to see if the impact of the fall knocks him out. If the pilot fails a check, he takes 1 of 6(?) personal point of damage. So it is possible for a pilot to survive a vicious fall to the front, but it all depends on how if the armor holds on the cockpit area.

From the Lore and Novel point of view its a little different.
Cockpit destruction is unnervingly common in the books. The Mechwarriors are strapped into their command chair and their neuro-helmets come down to rest on their shoulders and heads. That's about it. So if a Centurion goes inverted and nose dives into the ground, the cockpit would surly be destroyed on impact as the full 50 tons of the mech is coming down on that one point. This would obviously leave the pilot as a fine puree. The mech however would likely be highly salvageable.

Inside the cockpit, the pilots do not have any special protection from environment or physical force. If they take a direct hit to the cockpit and lives, it would ring their bell pretty hard and stun them. A mech fist to the cockpit was almost always fatal.

So to answer you're question as simply and directly as possible. When a mech falls and its head/cockpit hits the ground, the pilot would be held tight into the command chair by his restraints, the weight of his neuro-helmet could potentially pull itself off the pilots head, but wouldn't likely be a source of injury since its weight is distributed onto his shoulders. If the cockpit holds and the pilot remained conscious, the pilot could shake it off and stand the mech back up.

If the cockpit fails... then the pilot simply gets eviscerated and crushed by the imploding steel of the cockpit as it folds in on top of him.

Simple enough?

[Hit the Deck]

Darrious Quinn, on 26 January 2018 - 09:58 AM, said:

...
Simple enough?

I understood that there's no added protection for the pilot inside the cockpit based on earlier replies, it's just that I wanted to clarify the original post

It must be then precarious for a battlemech pilot because he/she sits inside the head of something really tall which isn't rock stable. For a lot of things against giant walking robots, I think this one is a reality checker. Even a bipedal construction bot can trip and fall which then injures its pilot.

[Koniving]

Hit the Deck, on 26 January 2018 - 10:42 AM, said:

I understood that there's no added protection for the pilot inside the cockpit based on earlier replies, it's just that I wanted to clarify the original post

It must be then precarious for a battlemech pilot because he/she sits inside the head of something really tall which isn't rock stable. For a lot of things against giant walking robots, I think this one is a reality checker. Even a bipedal construction bot can trip and fall which then injures its pilot.

The slight issue is the "tall" part.
Battletech mechs are NO WHERE NEAR as tall as they are in MWO.

As an example, take the height of MWO's Hunchback.
You're looking at Battletech's Atlas.
Now look at MWO's Centurion.
You're looking at something 0.3 meters taller than the tallest battlemech in Battletech until well after 3070+