26 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

razenWing, on 12 April 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

I was rewatching that video, and it pretty much made me realize that there's really only 1 way to fight.

Dropships.

I get why you don't hover one dropship over a city and obliterate everything. Cause, if you accidentally lose one, that's like a trillion space dollars gone bye bye.

But jeez... like the MW4 video, why even allow them the time to activate hangers? Why not drop ON the hangers? I mean, what's literally there to stop them? The same logic technically applies to every combat scenario. Just force drop onto every single combat zone before the enemy can react, and game over.

I mean, why do this "let's drop 20 miles outside of the cities and approach menacingly on radar" stuff? Fly over the city, unload in like 5 seconds, and instant win without retaliation.

In fact, in all of the MWO FP siege games, same concept applies. You have 12 mech defenders, but you can't possibly be in them the whole time. So I just drop 2 here, 2 there, 4 there, 3 at the objective. 1 Minute flyby, entire base conquered.

I also refer you to the MW5 announcement video, why have this weird sequence where you run in and out from a dropship to attack a base 5 minutes away? Why not land AT the base?

In fact, if all you are blowing up is that one building, why not do a flyby gauss cannon? Saves the landing fuel cost all together. Like literally they could open the side door, use computer to calculate telemetry, and alpha 4 mechs on the side. It's the literal future version of a gunship.

BOOM, objective complete. No silly trotting a 55 ton mech to then have to run away from enemy dropship.

(and how is it possible that you run away in an Atlas, and if you are a reinforcement with intel that ONE atlas is wrecking your base and running away, why would you not do your own flyby next to the atlas, drop like 5 mechs directly ontop... apprehend the convict, then blow up the convict's dropship? Literally... WHY LAND 3 MILES AWAY TO CHASE SOMEONE DOWN??)

Like the whole concept of dropships is just the most OP thing ever. Everything else can be explained away (rule of war to not orbit bomb a planet, limited range to shoot from space, space dollar and advance defensive system to use dumb missiles with shorter range... etc etc. But the mobility issue, that's just one thing that always bugged me about BTech)

There's a number of things to think about. First and foremost is the huge differential of "CG on a budget" and actual combat.

In there, AMS should have been activated but wasn't, and instead of doing it she gave some stupid excuse and made no attempt to dodge the incoming fire of what effectively amounted to an LRM-5... and died suddenly. This isn't even taking into consideration that the reason the Tabletop is so prone to leg and arm injury over torso injury is largely covered under the"DI Computer" under Cockpit in the TechManual. Mechs will -- so long as the pilot desires to do so -- automatically attempt to avoid or deflect ALL INCOMING FIRE and impending sources of damage, up to and including weaving the body to avoid hitting street lights in close proximity and automatically step over cars as opposed to stepping on them, as well as bring arms up to absorb laser fire. That mech would have thrown its arms in the way or simply ducked to try and avoid the missile that killed her. Mechs do not want to get injured. They see register damage as pain.

Now take the Mad Dog, which takes an insane amount of abuse for "going out with glory reasons" except... he fails to shoot anyone, and the abuse taken is WELL beyond the abuse the mad dog should take. It hardly has 3 tons more armor than the Shadow Cat.

Now, for some other comparisons... The"Wanzers" here are taken out with pathetic ease... when each of these would take dozens of similar attacks and keep ticking. In fact those things usually withstand the abuse of multiple attacking units and tanks for several turns. Yet as soon as any of these units are hit, two more bullets puts them out of their misery.

Unless they're important, which we'll get back to.
Meanwhile...

And the same scene from another perspective.

Take note that units completely capable of running... fail to do so.
Fire lines are set up but no one hits. In fact they are so far off it isn't even funny.
Machines take more abuse, but just enough to show off combo attacks.

And again..

Single hit syndrome comes up again. Except for a select few to show off combo attacks.

Helicopter hit on armor, barely even phased but it flies out of control for no reason just for dramatic effect.

But compare to gameplay, and these things take much more abuse.

Just like in Battletech, mechs can take quite a bit more abuse, and as someone that has run dropships down into the field...Armor, 480 points.
In MWO that'd be 960 points of armor.

That's all it would take to obliterate a dropship completely.
Now keep in mind your typical Hunchback is carrying 320 in MWO, or 160 in BT for stock armor. So you need the firepower of completely obliterating 3 Hunchbacks head to toe... and that's what it takes to destroy a Leopard by obliteration. Except you don't even need that.

Several successive uses of twin AC/5 twin AC/2 have shot down Leopard dropships in my campaigns in Megamek, sometimes a single fantastical use of an AC/5 was sufficient.
Have even done it with my "Heavy Rifle Carrier", and its Rifles have all damage reduced by 3 against armor. Still did it. AC/2 carriers (tanks with front mounted, turret-less, AC/2 arrays) are also good at taking down Leopards as are LRMs. LBX though is your best bet for a quick kill.
The subsequent crash also brings down multiple mechs too if they're not delivered, and potentially two Aero-fighters.

Dropships, of course...

Are not immune to the "One shot and done" phenomena.

Edited by Koniving, 13 April 2018 - 09:24 AM.

[Stridercal]

Bombast, on 13 April 2018 - 02:35 AM, said:

Battletech realism arguments are so beyond 'nerdism' at this point. It's pathetic and bad and frustrating and bad. There's no arguments or points to be made here, and OP knows it - Battletech tactics are dumb. Battletech tech is dumb. The entire universe is constructed of stupid because that's the only way to justify two multi-ton robots swinging tree trucks at each other. Why people feel the need to bring this up every 15 minutes is beyond me.

Yes, it is kinda sorta dumb, but the fiction DOES explain it rather well. If you're into that sort of thing...

[Brain Cancer]

razenWing, on 12 April 2018 - 07:20 PM, said:

I kinda thought about that, but if that was true, then you have to drop literally hundreds of miles away. I say that because in MW3, Clan naval lasers brought down 2 dropships while they were in orbit. The only way to counter those, is use the literal spherical nature of a planet and drop on the other side where there are no lasers.

But if that's the case, then we are talking about only legit tactics being orbital bombardment to limit losses.

(actually, if you kind of think about it, MW3 setup is a lot more real where the only way to get off the planet is to blow up all naval lasers along the way...)

My point is, if anti-air lasers are that potent, then dropping 3 miles outside of mission zone isn't going to save anyone. (unless your dropship literally fly as low as an attack helicopter for 100 miles of infiltration, which... the lower to the planet's surface, the more energy it requires to hover.)

Capital-class weapons are (usually) rare as ground weapons, and have a rather unique vulnerability in Battletech- they hit anything smaller than 200 tons at a hideous +5 (that means at short range, they're still less accurate than a weapon normally is at long) penalty. Aerospace fighters can and do horrid things to fixed anti-ship positions in many cases, another example of the classic "Battletech is a chess game, if all you play with are robots it's like nothing but pawns" thing the full game has going on.

And yes, sometimes people DO drop hundreds of miles off target and go the rest of the way by ground transport. Frequently, in fact if they can find a decent piece of terrain to set up defensively on as a portable fortress.

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I guess I am just saying, if you are in a situation where you are able to drop 3 miles outside the city, the you are in the same position to drop directly ON the city.

Of course, if you're high enough to drop without risking your dropship, you're also dropping essentially zero-evasion giant robots (and if from high enough, they're in drop pods to live through re-entry) that have a massive thermal and radar signature.

Battlemechs can and have been shot down mid-drop by not only ground fire, but aerospace or even conventional fightercraft, as even a glancing hit can cause an inescapable tumble with the resulting ending being one the pilot gets to think about all the way to the ground. At terminal velocity with his incredibly valuable giant robot becoming an incredibly worthless debris field. Again, this is why the low-risk tactic is "find someplace safe to land, disembark, and go from there".

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Besides, the MWO dropships are fairly OP. They really need to be nerfed in scouting.

They're undergunned for a Dropship- but then again, we can't shoot back and actually do what might normally happen at those engagement ranges. If actually damageable, there'd be a reasonable chance for even a light lance to do enough damage to possibly render a Dropship unable to land properly or take off against after it did, considering it's not that hard to get shots on the engines or lift jets. They're OP because they can't be hurt, really.

[Lykaon]

FupDup, on 12 April 2018 - 05:43 PM, said:

I guess maybe there could be some super-powerful anti-air defenses, so the point of dropping mechs away from the actual objective would be to ensure the dropship doesn't get shot down. However, then that would beg the question of why they don't just aim those same cannons at ground forces...

Ares conventions! It's a warcrime in the Inner Sphere to utilize orbital bombarment. However it is not a warcrime to utilize planetary "defense" weaponry on targets in orbit. ... well unless that target is a Jumpship then it would be illegal to fire upon a Jumpship.

Edited by Lykaon, 13 April 2018 - 03:45 PM.

[Lykaon]

razenWing, on 12 April 2018 - 07:20 PM, said:

I kinda thought about that, but if that was true, then you have to drop literally hundreds of miles away. I say that because in MW3, Clan naval lasers brought down 2 dropships while they were in orbit. The only way to counter those, is use the literal spherical nature of a planet and drop on the other side where there are no lasers.

But if that's the case, then we are talking about only legit tactics being orbital bombardment to limit losses.

(actually, if you kind of think about it, MW3 setup is a lot more real where the only way to get off the planet is to blow up all naval lasers along the way...)

My point is, if anti-air lasers are that potent, then dropping 3 miles outside of mission zone isn't going to save anyone. (unless your dropship literally fly as low as an attack helicopter for 100 miles of infiltration, which... the lower to the planet's surface, the more energy it requires to hover.)

I guess I am just saying, if you are in a situation where you are able to drop 3 miles outside the city, the you are in the same position to drop directly ON the city.

Besides, the MWO dropships are fairly OP. They really need to be nerfed in scouting.

Well,here is the thing. In Battletech lore the most common means of deploying forces onto a planet with active orbital defense is a combination of a stealth and orbital drops.

Firstly, your dropship needs to get into high orbit of the target planet. You have either spoofed a commercial IFF and appear as a ligitamate cargo ship or have used some seriously ninja space skills to not be "seen" by the planet's defenders.

If all goes well you can drop your mechs onto the planet. Sometimes however you can't wait to be in the perfect position to drop ON to the target but just near it.... "hey what is that Amazon prime cargo ship doing hovering over the presidents summer home? that's darn suspicious we should probably shoot it down"

There is another drop method that is a bit...um...crazy. This is drop slinging. A dropship releases it's cargo on one side of the planet and the mechs enter a rapidly decaying orbit so they land on the other side of the planet from the dropship's drop position. Needless to say this requires a lot more math and an uncomfortable amount of speed. But it will allow a dropship to hide away from planetary defense batteries on the opposite side of the planet.

Mech recovery is done by landing a retrieval dropship on the planet's surface presumably AFTER the attacking mechs have removed enough orbital defenses to make a dropship landing possible.

Or by having a recovery dropship already hidden days weeks or months before utilizing the afore mentioned ninja stealth method or diguised as a merchant craft.

it is also important to note that before the Clan invasion most mech drops onto planets were done for the purpose of executing a small objective raid. SO frequently the attacking raiding force were of company or smaller size with only a single dropship carrier needing to be deployed.

Edited by Lykaon, 13 April 2018 - 03:58 PM.

[zugnish]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the original btech rules (or was it the aerotech ones...) specifically covered dropping from high altitude. That's supposed to be part of the battlemech's tactical charm - apparently you can't do that with a tank in the thirtieth century i don't know why not.

Of course, landing a 100 ton mech from high altitude is not precise, unlike landing a 65 ton spacex rocket in 2018, again this all seemed reasonable in the mid-eighties. So you had to expect to land a bit scattered and off target, and then regroup your forces for an assault.

The basic problem is no MWO game has ever really bothered to model this orbital drop tactic, despite it being the primary planetary invasion method. Probably because it would be dificult to do well (since you'd need to animate a convincing high altitude view of a map when you only have about 10km square to work with, and plus it would be boring for the player to sit through. I guess you could join the action just before impact, though, rather than enduring the entire drop sequence.

But yeah, having aircav drop you 5km from your objective so you can slog the rest of the way while under heavy fire doesn't make an awful lot of tactical sense.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

So, there's a reason why dropships are not the end all.

Because dropships are often seen as too precious to loose... take Mechwarrior 2 Merc's opening, where the dropship pilot takes off, screwing over the unit leader.

Technology is precious, especially space faring tech... you don't blow up dropships, or endanger them any more than you have to.