50 replies to this topic

[evilauthor]

Metus regem, on 06 April 2018 - 09:48 AM, said:

80's fluff is 80's fluff...

At the time that it was written with a 1 week transit time, access to the information to do the math wasn't widely available... Just like the data on how actual weapon systems really work wasn't readily available in the 80's... not with out some very expensive and very big books.

Looking at it now, with the easy of access to information we have, there are a lot of things in BT that need a re-look and refining... It's why something like the Argo makes a lot of sense as an in-system transport for the drop ships.

Yeah, but there's been a lot more fluff published for how BT aerospace works since the 80s. Most of my points come from more recent materials. Such as the transit times for Earth and that red dwarf system, not to mention the fuel consumption rates for dropship.

And the new Battletech game is likely to be based more on recent fluff since it's being made NOW, not back in the 80s. Given that the Argo doesn't appear to be 50+ percent fuel tanks, it's not really filling any hole in Battletech lore by carrying Dropships. It'd pretty much need to have the same insane fuel efficiency that canon Dropships have in order to work, at which point the question then becomes why anyone needs such a middle man in the first place?

Now, if the Argo really is a Star League relic, I can see a purpose for such a thing. It's sort of a poor man's warship, a mobile base that can provide greater facilities than the standard Dropship. Useful for supporting small unit actions in the back end of nowhere without needing to put a base on the ground where it could be attacked.

[Metus regem]

evilauthor, on 06 April 2018 - 10:03 AM, said:

Yeah, but there's been a lot more fluff published for how BT aerospace works since the 80s. Most of my points come from more recent materials. Such as the transit times for Earth and that red dwarf system, not to mention the fuel consumption rates for dropship.

And the new Battletech game is likely to be based more on recent fluff since it's being made NOW, not back in the 80s. Given that the Argo doesn't appear to be 50+ percent fuel tanks, it's not really filling any hole in Battletech lore by carrying Dropships. It'd pretty much need to have the same insane fuel efficiency that canon Dropships have in order to work, at which point the question then becomes why anyone needs such a middle man in the first place?

Now, if the Argo really is a Star League relic, I can see a purpose for such a thing. It's sort of a poor man's warship, a mobile base that can provide greater facilities than the standard Dropship. Useful for supporting small unit actions in the back end of nowhere without needing to put a base on the ground where it could be attacked.

I see the Argo as a mobile space station, it has what looks like to be artifical gravity thanks to the spinning sections.. at least in the story art... It does have better crew areas that most drop ships, this is a good thing for long trips, as it gives the crew areas to spend the time in... also who is to say that they will not change the transit times to something more plausible?

As for what has been published recently, the authors still have to work with the universe physics until such time as there is a reboot done that changes them.

[Koniving]

evilauthor, on 06 April 2018 - 09:18 AM, said:

In what kind of star system would a Dropship be traveling so long that it'd reach over 0.6c at 1G constant acceleration? It'd take the better part of the year of non-stop acceleration just to hit that speed and then the Dropship would have to turn around and start DECELERATING for the same amount of time if they didn't want to play RKKV with their destination. So you're looking at a transit time for OVER A YEAR just to travel one way.

Meanwhile, the average transit time in BT appears to be a week. For Earth, a 1 way trip between planet and jump point (which is farther from the Sun than Saturn) is 9 days with constant 1G acceleration. If a Dropship has enough fuel for the several months necessary to reach 0.6c, then a 9 day transit (18 day for round trip) with constant acceleration is a drop in the bucket as far as the Dropship is concerned. For some systems, the one way transit time is as little as 3 days (a planet orbiting a red dwarf for example).

AFAIK, no one goes up to 0.6c and then coasts unless they want to do an interstellar journey. But if they want t do an interstellar journey, then Jumpships are MUCH faster than a relativistic STL trip.

I didn't write it, but to be fair that's actually not under the dropships themselves but the Magellan probes they sent out to find suitable planets on page 8 of Dropships and Jumpships, in 2028. They were fusion powered with 8 90 meter long, 30 meter diameter, and 61,000 cubic meters of liquid nitrogen" (why is a chemical measured in meters?!)

It actually reached 68% of light speed using 2G acceleration "for months at a time."

Unfortunately the "68% of light speed" stuck in my head when trying to fill the gap of the actual speed stated during either a 15 minute break or lunch period while at work on a 5 PM to 5 AM shift.

[Koniving]

On a side note, got the size of a Leopard Class dropship here.

65 meters long. Approximately 1,700 tons. Powered by a reliable but difficult to service Starleague V84 Interplanetary Drive
Easy to maintain,operating costs low,making it popular with mercenary units and bandit kings.

Uses Crystal-steel armor, was designed in a time when that could only be formed in plates. Made after a breakthrough in technology made curved armor possible, a technology which became popular in Mechs (which is why they are all very rounded and curvy in design, unlike MWO's mechs).

Ship has 4 mechbays and two aerotech fighter bays.
All of these are cramped 'cubicles'.
The ship overall is incredibly cramped, even though up to 15 crew have their own tiny rooms that amount to a bed, a utilitarian washroom with a sink and mirror on top of the toilet in the shower stall in a space about the size of a closet, and a fold down 'desk' at which the user 'sits' on their bed.

....Now compare to the Leopard shown in MW5...

Specifically...

66.5 meters long, 22.4 meters tall, 51.6 meters wide.

For fun, I thought I'd do something interesting.

I took 22.4 meters, turned it into a purple figure next to the image of the Leopard, and gave two more figures. On the left is the tallest 'Mech in Battletech's Classic Battletech timelines, the Executioner at 14.4 meters tall.
On the right is MWO's Atlas, at 18.8 meters tall.
Please note the images are not perfectly resized, but roughly.

Note that the Atlas is among the mechs that can fit in the Leopard. So... its kinda interesting, eh?



Spacious...


That exterior.

Edited by Koniving, 06 April 2018 - 11:33 AM.

[evilauthor]

Koniving, on 06 April 2018 - 10:42 AM, said:

Spacious...

Spacious for the mechs maybe, but keep in mind that no one sleeps in the mech bay. And the rest of the Dropship is about the same size as that big spacious bay, split between the front and back half. And the back end is engine and engineering. As for the front end? Holds two fighter bays as well as the bridge/cockpit. Not a whole lot of room left over for living quarters.

Quote

That exterior.

An interesting thing to note is that there's a major design difference between the original BT Leopard and PGI/Harebrain's Leopard. The original Leopard's sides sloped inward as you go up so that the bottom of its fuselage is wider than its roof. But the PGI/Harebrain Leopard slopes the opposite way.



The reason I draw attention to this specific feature instead of any of all the other numerous changes made by PGI is because this difference is functional. Dropships - especially Dropships like the Leopard - don't always land first before deploying mechs. So when it comes to literally dropping mechs out of a Dropship, PGI/Harebrain's door configuration is actually superior to the the TT canon Leopard. This is because the PGI/Harebrain's door design gives it an overhanging roof, and you can just imagine a crane being hidden there carrying a mech out beyond the floor area in preparation for a drop.

[Koniving]

One could imagine a crane, though as evidenced by here, PGI imagined instead doors on the bottom (much like MWO's version).
As such, it wouldn't so much matter which way it sloped.

The MWO mechbay, actually, is supposed to be the inside of a Leopard dropship or so it was originally imagined. This is why they don't cycle between bays and instead keep you in one place, and why it is "bay 4"... there's also bays 1, 2, and 3.
(And this was the original deciding factor of the initial four bays).

Ignore the monologue, the original trailer is hard to find but this has the full length.

They do imagine some kind of device to propel the mechs forward overtop of the doors. Admittedly, this is in line with the 1980s lore (not how the doors work, but atmospheric drops from just beyond where everything catches on fire... drop the mech, let gravity take it and all mechs have just enough thrust and fuel to make a safe landing on any planet with 2x gravity or less from atmosphere (1st Somerset Strikers book's introduction to Battletech.) ---at first.
Then I realize he still has part of the crane on him... which I'm guessing surmises as the backpack... So I stand corrected (as I watch the last few seconds), that's in line with the 1990s lore (you know back when PGI paid attention to that ****). Basically they slap backpacks on the mechs that are good until they're out of fuel (and if there's still fuel left can function like jumpjets; though any rear torso shot endured while landing or at any time thereafter until the backpack is removed will hit the backpack and cause it to explode so nobody really wanted to keep these things into battle). (Can't remember if its tac ops, but its some post 90s / early 2000 sourcebook).

But yeah, much too spacious. These things were described as their own isolated cubicles (that way opening the doors in atmosphere wouldn't screw everyone over, and it is something they did often enough to include it in the Battletech cartoon....though I have no idea why they wouldn't use their dropships' weaponry instead to fight the aerotech fighters... or their own?). As such, each mechbay is supposed to be sealed off and isolated (beyond access doors for parts) with space enough in between to bring said parts as well as to dig into storage...meaning that there's also a cargo bay. Supposedly though each bay is large enough to house the basic supplies for each mech and quartered off with an armored interior wall to protect the inside of the ship even with the doors opened.

...There's no protection here, once the doors open a proper autocannon is free to rip through everything on the inside as well as all four mechs (or at least two given the firing lines.) Sever the catwalk with autocannon fire, rip multiple mechs apart... Screw trying to shoot down the dropship, just wait til those perfect downward angled doors open up and then let the ground turrets fire up into the sky; no need for perfect accuracy, just rely on ACs and their 2,000 meter max range and pelt all that unarmored goodness on the interior, crippling that dropship under its armor and butchering mechs as they drop -- and if they drop the mechs, its a free kill on that dropship.

The upward slope existed for a reason, I imagine it was so that mechs could step out while under some cover from the armored bottom end, meanwhile the slopes at the top would help reduce penetration from the top (the Leopard's design description goes into great detail about how the ship was designed and then built during the era when forming their strong crystal-based armor, which at the time was formed only in flat plates, was then able to take advantage of curved plates with the intention of protecting the ship from airborne weapons fire during a drop, as the bottom plating was much thicker and thus between it and its sloped doors, had no worries about ground-based fire. Also between an interior wall to protect the rest of the crew from virtually every possible problem (as well as space for the quarters likely toward the upper regions, after all it isn't as big as PGI's version), I doubt they'd have cranes hoisting mechs over the edge. To make room for PGI's version, the interior had to be full on open and honestly I doubt it would be strong enough by that design... thankfully all it really does is suspend the mech in the air and rotate it in their final design. Which something like that would make sense to have, considering that they need to effect minor repairs but they would be doing this without the ability to replace limbs anyway.

I don't deny that "dropping" the mech as opposed to having it walk out and fall is better. Though if the crane is similar to PGI's final design, it really wouldn't matter which way the doors went as the device extends from a central position rather than overhanging. A place where it could stand, however, would allow a mech that isn't intended to deploy, stand at the door and give supporting fire (or if intended to deploy, level nearby defenses before making the jump). The partial cover given by the wider bottom would help protect these mechs before they make their debut into the field as well as give an opportunity to abort the mission should visual evidence show that the intelligence was wrong.

Besides, BT has many sloped bottom ships, too.

Now, I know why they kept the sides open. The idea is that you can see "everything" on the inside to make it all the more magical.
But now you drop on a planet with a class 3 wind storm, and while mechs can handle this without much issue and so could the ship, you pop open the doors and everyone on the inside is gonna get swept off the catwalks and to most certain death... regardless of the slope (though with a top slope,they have a chance of landing on the wide bottom and stopping themselves before they fall to the planet). Or you open up in space, anybody that doesn't have a suit on beforehand is gonna suffocate; not to mention everything that isn't anchored down is going out to space during the decompression. But if you had the armored interior walls that made each mechbay into a cubicle, then.... none of that would be an issue.

Also protection from heat with a top slope design as the bottom of the ship bears the heat. Bottom slope and the heat glides along not just the bottom but the sides of the ship, heating everything up; don't land or hover over on Terra Therma with a bottom slope design... (I work a lot with rotomolding and giant ovens; the side with the slope will always suck in more heat than a flat side, but if it isn't rotating, the curved side will be cold if the flat side is toward the flames, where if the curved side is toward the flames...the whole thing is gonna be hot as heck, except that flat side. Since there's a lot more curved than flat... much more of the ship's gonna get hot when the curved end is toward the heat source)

[Jonathan8883]

A few HBS questions... the website doesn't seem to have a lot of details, and I'd rather not register for Yet Another forum.

-Is the maximum unit size in combat a lance, or do we eventually get to command a company?
-Is there a real-time with pause option for before/after battle times (moving towards contact, etc.)?
-Do we have to pick each pilot's move on each turn, or can they be set to follow a program or set of commands to avoid excessive micromanagement?
-Is there an option for fast enemy turns (display-wise)? From what little I've seen on streams, there's a substantial amount of time watching units move on both sides. It's fun to a point, but the Civilization games have "fast move" options for a very good reason.

I assume that if this is successful, we'll see some $20-$30 expansions with new campaigns and options (the engine doesn't change, so they're just big DLC):
-Wolf Dragoons (operate an independent company on their grand tour of the IS...good luck surviving Misery...all the way through the Dragoon Civil War in '54/'55)
-Regular IS Grand Campaign: Marik Civil War, 3SW, 4SW, etc. plus bandit-hunting on the Periphery or noble vs noble conflicts when there aren't state-to-state conflicts going on, all the way up to 3050
-Clan Invasion: IS side (merc working for RFR or FedSuns, with possible later contract with C*)
-Clan Invasion: Clan side (command a Binary or Trinary max)
-FedCom Civil War/Chaos March (already been done in MW4 mercs)
-Operation Serpent and a visit to Huntress & Strana Mechty

MechCommander 1 made an entire campaign out of taking a single world... there's yuuuuge amounts of content for DLCs/expacks if the game engine & gameplay are good.

[Davegt27]

Quote

-Do we have to pick each pilot's move on each turn, or can they be set to follow a program or set of commands to avoid excessive micromanagement?

not knowing a whole lot I had thought it would suck if we had to move each mech individually one at a time

but I just saw this from last year

time stamp 3:51
https://youtu.be/M9o...uHL_UjWcg&t=231

not ideal but a little better than I first thought

[Koniving]

Jonathan8883, on 08 April 2018 - 01:37 PM, said:

-Is the maximum unit size in combat a lance, or do we eventually get to command a company?
Maximum fielded unit size in combat is a lance. You can have more than that, but apparently will not deploy more than this at any point in time.

-Is there a real-time with pause option for before/after battle times (moving towards contact, etc.)?
The game has two modes. Simultaineous turns and "Contact." I came up with these names myself for lack of actual names.
During simultaneous turns both sides are moving one unit at a time at the same time. The game does not wait for the animations to complete (or at least it didn't in the alpha/beta testing.) So you could move your entire lance in under 3 seconds if you're clicking fast enough and then start moving again.
During this time everyone's movement range is much larger.

As soon as you detect an enemy, it changes. Lights move "4 times" per turn (this division equates to the movement of the simultaneous turn in 4 moves.). Mediums move 3 times, in which the range is roughly equal to their simultaneous turn movement. Heavies move twice which again comes out to the same range as their previous movement. And Assaults get a single move.
Basically lights get to attack and change direction 4 times in a "10 second" period. Assaults get to move once and attack once in that same time.

-Do we have to pick each pilot's move on each turn, or can they be set to follow a program or set of commands to avoid excessive micromanagement?
Each turn. Again the "micromanagement" doesn't start until there is enemy contact, and it ends when there is no enemy contact (even during the same mission if the enemy is lost for whatever reason and no longer detected it returns to the simultaneous turns and full movement brackets.

-Is there an option for fast enemy turns (display-wise)? From what little I've seen on streams, there's a substantial amount of time watching units move on both sides. It's fun to a point, but the Civilization games have "fast move" options for a very good reason.
If you can't see them visually, yes. They kinda teleport. Not sure about during combat; I never had the desire to fast forward them.

-I assume that if this is successful, we'll see some $20-$30 expansions with new campaigns and options (the engine doesn't change, so they're just big DLC):
Probably. Somehow I figure the Unseen will eventually be released either free or with a small fee among other things after the court ******** is over.

Looks like the rest are not actually questions but potential DLC ideas.
Hope I was able to help.

[Jonathan8883]

Koniving, you always have detailed/helpful posts.
Thanks.

[_Comrade_]

The hype and feels in this trailer showing the lore history are so real....RIP richard cameron don't worry Alexander Kerensky will avenge you (and then leave the inner sphere)

Edited by _Comrade_, 09 April 2018 - 02:59 PM.