Edit: See the "EDIT" in bold text.
mad kat, on 12 April 2018 - 01:45 AM, said:
I've often wondered why the ranges of weapons in this game are so...........Pathetic.......
I mean current main battle tanks have guns that supposedly do an equivalent damage to an AC10. Yet a quick Wikipedia of the M1 Abrams for example reveals they can effectively make kills at over 2.5km.
So just look at those numbers. A current main battle tank has a main gun roughly equivalent to an AC10 but can make 'kills' at 6.25 times the ac10's effective base range. Granted armour levels would be different but still.
So the obvious answer is that Battletech and mechwarrior weapons are considerably more powerful than current weapons so much that the AC10/120mm gun comparison simply isn't true with such huge calibres (or masses in the form of missiles) that the projectiles can't go that far. Weapon weights without ammor would lend some credence to this. If that's the case a Heavy machine gun should be capable of killing a current main battle tank surely. MG's another weapon that has laughably short range.
Current missiles like the hellfire, again Wikipedia are capable of just reaching five miles (8K) away and considering they can mounted to drones shouldn't be massively larger than the small LRM's that mechs use albeit in a cluster.
Energy weapons though......well that's another matter as i don't know much to compare it too but again seem pretty poor in range.
What i'm getting at is if a mech appeared in current day times in the distance i'd imagine a couple of Abrams/challengers/leopards or even an Apache would of killed the thing or at least messed it up before it even got into effective range! Gauss and ERPPC's would be the mechs only chance at actually doing noticeable damage.
Here we go.
First: The typical taller mechs are 12 meters tall or less with the tallest being 14.4 meters (shorter than MWO's Centurion.)
For comparison, the length of an M1/A1 Abrams tank is 9.77 meters with the gun being forward.
For visual reference.
So in height, that's
Note how HUGE the TINY Wolfhound is....
http://i.imgur.com/g7JDxEu.png
So there's part of it. Complete misinterpretation of size.
Second...
A huge part of the "accurate range" limitation, is the assumption that your target is going to try to evade your attack. The DI computer under Cockpit under the TechManual describes a machine that will dodge street lights in the middle of a sprint (or swat them out of the way), avoid stepping on cars (they are tripping hazards), shy from shooting through a building if the action requires putting the arm through the building, UNLESS the pilot explicitly intends to do so (thereby avoiding self harm), and will attempt to avoid and deflect all incoming fire with whatever means the mech is able to do so long as it won't throw off its own return fire and the pilot's movement intentions (or the pilot deliberately intends to take the shot, so as to protect something else).
EDIT: Further gameplay proof of this, consider that there are only TWO situations that you can call for "Targeted" shots in BOTH the tabletop game and Harebrained Schemes' Battletech game: When the mech has No Power due to being shut down...where it can't react and dodge... and when the pilot is unconscious, which the TechManual states the mech can only dodge if the pilot wants to. (This is a very specific base AI restriction, which I thought was interesting but odd, however Mechwarrior RPG 1st edition makes a specific mention about how AI is capable of independent action, but not independent thought. Another resource which I need to find again, makes specific mention of how humanity learned its lesson with AI-controlled warships long before Mechs... So yeah, even before the knowhow was lost, there was a pretty big ban on true AI.)
Which brings us to third...
I'll let FASA explain itself.
Basically picture that you're playing "Battletech or MWO", in the middle of Battlefield Bad Company 2... with the extreme amounts of smoke, haze, things exploding, trees soaking up bullets, autocannons pumping HUNDREDS of shells per ton of ammo, missiles giving fairly big boom for the low buck (30,000 bills for 120 missiles,
$264,300 which sure beats the 1 missile 1.87 million, or the Stinger Missile [a more fair and comparable equivalent today] being $38,000 per missile or $4,560,000 for 1 ton worth or converted to cbills would be
517,594
(rounded up). A stinger can engage up to 3,810 meters.
So.. Consider that for price.
Now consider this:
A Dire Wolf at the MWO price (17,785,796
) is 156,692,862.76 USD.
156 million, 692 thousand, 862 US dollars and 76 cents, 2016 USD to 3052 cbill conversion rate.
Except that's not the BT price.
That's 29,350,000
or 258,573,500 USD.
258 million, 573 thousand, 500 USD.
120 missiles at 1.87 million per missile with the Tomahawk style cruise missiles... would be 224.4 million USD, so that's not very practical.
But beyond this... Its ability tocontinue to put dozens to hundreds of shells
onto the target, just to net the "10" or "5" damage rating against hefty recoil.
More on ACs
ACs have a maximum possible range of 2 kilometers.. Hitting something at 2 kilometers "as small and as manueverable as a Battlemech" at that range, however, is virtually impossible.
Note how difficult it is for World War II tanks using autocannons to land multiple successive hits per 'reload'.
This one might be better.
Now note that Gyro stablization of weapon systems is NOT standard in Battletech. Specific mechs have SPECIFIC mention of when they are, such as the Mongoose
The use of weapon "compensators" that is to say weapon-specific gyroscopic stablization gives +2 accuracy to the weapon and only that specific weapon. In this case there are two such stablized weapons... out of four. That gives the same accuracy in a full run as most mechs have while stationary.
Most mechs lack this. So there's a bit more to that pie.
Lasers thereotically have unlimited range, but the laser degrades in atmosphere through smoke particles, sand, dust, etc. There's also the fact that every mech has "anti-laser aerosol" counter measures (which is apparently what happens when you 'miss', at least some of the time). Not to mention that lasers either have 0.1 to 0.2 second durations but require multiple successive shots in the same area to be effective, or 1 to 2 second long beams.
Note a correction to laser power levels came later.
So, there's a lot of stuff that factors in.
Edited by Koniving, 13 April 2018 - 05:13 PM.
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