79 replies to this topic

[Catamount]

The Halo wiki isn't exactly running on a great track record for math, but if the velocity and mass figures are right, then 270TJ, or 64.5kt is correct, and that sounds like it's in the right ballpark, although I bet the mass is still a fair bit too high (more than an actual slug of that size and composition would be).

but then why are the Super-MAC rounds so out of whack? There's just no way they're a million times as powerful, the fact that it would take a fusion reactor bigger than Cairo station to fire one not being the least of the problems with such a figure.

Edited by Catamount, 26 December 2011 - 02:06 PM.

[xSidewinder]

I know nothing of Battletech fleet technology, so I can only offer my opinion on Halo vs Mass Effect.

As of 2553 the UNSC fleet has developed ships incorporating both Covenant and Forerunner technology. The UNSC Infinity is equipped with energy shielding, energy weapons, and pinpoint slip space jumps which can be used in system for instantaneous point to point maneuvering (like the Covenant did at Reach). That, and the standard three meter think honeycombed titanium armor and mass accelerator weapons. Considering how much firepower it takes to drop Covenant shields, and UNSC/Forerunner shields are much better, I'd have to say a UNSC fleet circa 2553 could take and dish substantially more punishment than it's Mass Effect counter parts.

Which makes me kind of sad, I like Mass Effect more than Halo

On a side note, did anyone take into account Mass Effect ships rate of overheating and buggering in and out of fights? I didn't read all of the posts.

[Niftal]

Seems to me, we are forgetting a few things:

1. Space combat is all about navigation and Mass Effect has that hands down, especially with the frigate class of the Normandy.

2. Mass Effects weapons far out range and are faster than those of either Battle Tech or Halo.

3. Stealth systems of the Normandy would allow for some very interesting hit-and-run tactics.

4. What about the possibilities of Mass Effect fields used as weaponry?

5. The space combat in Battle Tech and Halo seem far more compatible than that of Mass Effect; Halo and Battle Tech each feature giant ships with slow, hard hitting weapons which can be outmaneuvered, while Mass Effect has short, frantic space battles that can start at very long ranges.

6. In terms of boarding parties, I'd like to see either of the heavy assualt troops from Battle Tech or Halo stand up to Mass Effect fields and tech abilities that can render weapons useless. In Mass Effect 1, a fully developed biotic lift could lift a geth colossus and throw could toss one aside like a child's toy.

I personally never liked the Halo series because it was mediocre at best when compared to PC games of the same genre at the same time; however, Battle Tech has always been a favorite of mine, going back to the original Mech Warrior for the PC, and Mass Effect is a fantastic series.

Those are my thoughts on the debate. Take them for what they are worth.

Edited by Niftal, 26 December 2011 - 03:09 PM.

[Rayah]

A space battle here would seem VERY close, but take the war to the ground and Battletech tears everything apart.

[HappySpawn]

Is Captain Keyes around and have time to create some crazy, last second plan that will make everyone ask "*** JUST HAPPENED?!" ? If so, I'll take him and 1 UNSC Frigate.

Now, for comparisons:

BT vs Halo: Since I know very little about BT Space Combat, I'm not even gonna bother. I'll just have to take everyone else's word on it.

Halo vs ME: Its really a toss-up. TIME FOR SOME MATH!

Assuming the MAC and Mass Acc. are using solid slugs, using the forumula kinetic energy = 1/2 mass x velocity²:

Standard MAC (600 ton @ 30 km/s): 244.9 terajoules
Dreadnought Mass Acc. (20 kg @ 4025 m/s): 162 terajoules

While it may take a while for the MAC round to reach its target, it is highly unlikely that a kinetic barrier could withstand that kind of energy. In addition, the MAC was often used to break the shields of a ship which would open the door for the wave of missiles following behind it. Something else to consider is that UNSC ships seem to be build to withstand heavy damage and keep fighting, whereas SA ships seem to follow Star Trek Federation designs: comfort over effectiveness. And, if nothing else, NUKE 'EM!

In my eyes, it comes down to this: can a Systems Alliance ship get off enough shots to destroy a UNSC ship before its MAC rounds hit?

[Catamount]

HappySpawn, on 26 December 2011 - 06:59 PM, said:

Is Captain Keyes around and have time to create some crazy, last second plan that will make everyone ask "*** JUST HAPPENED?!" ? If so, I'll take him and 1 UNSC Frigate.

Now, for comparisons:

BT vs Halo: Since I know very little about BT Space Combat, I'm not even gonna bother. I'll just have to take everyone else's word on it.

Halo vs ME: Its really a toss-up. TIME FOR SOME MATH!

Assuming the MAC and Mass Acc. are using solid slugs, using the forumula kinetic energy = 1/2 mass x velocity²:

Standard MAC (600 ton @ 30 km/s): 244.9 terajoules
Dreadnought Mass Acc. (20 kg @ 4025 m/s): 162 terajoules

While it may take a while for the MAC round to reach its target, it is highly unlikely that a kinetic barrier could withstand that kind of energy. In addition, the MAC was often used to break the shields of a ship which would open the door for the wave of missiles following behind it.

In my eyes, it comes down to this: can a Systems Alliance ship get off enough shots to destroy a UNSC ship before its MAC rounds hit?

The halo figure could be 270PJ if metric tons are used. I know that's usually spelled tonnes, but it seems to me to make little sense to use a metric figure for velocity, and an English system figure for mass.


With that said, I think you've left out a crucial factor here in ship combat between the weapons. Halo weapons, shot for shot, may have higher energetic outputs, but ME weapons are much more likely to actually hit the desired target, since they have a much higher travel velocity (or put another way, they offer the same hit probability at over a hundred times the distance).


That means, especially given what we know about ME ship maneuverability, that Halo vessels likely wouldn't even be able to HIT ME ships, because the ME ships could easily engage outside of the effective range of MAC rounds, but still be well within their own effective engagement range. At even a few hundred km away, MAC rounds wouldn't have a chance in hell of finding their mark (it's a 10-second travel time at 300km), while ME rounds would almost always hit the much slower Halo ships (and would hit them even if they weren't slower), as they'd cross that same 300km distance that wold render MAC rounds useless in a mere, and very effective ~0.075 seconds.


ME ships could even very comfortably triple or quadruple that distance (1200-1500km), and so long as their computers and sensors were up to the task (which in-game dialogue indicates they clearly are), they'd STILL be able to effectively engage without even a hint of trouble. At 30km/s, a MAC round's effective range is probably 10-20km against most ME ships, if that, given their rate of movement.

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Something else to consider is that UNSC ships seem to be build to withstand heavy damage and keep fighting, whereas SA ships seem to follow Star Trek Federation designs: comfort over effectiveness. And, if nothing else, NUKE 'EM!

Not much familiarity with Trek design philosophy I take it?

High petajoule to low exajoule energy outputs aside, Trek ships have taken absurd punishment and remained operational. The Enterprise-C, in her battle with the Romulans, had sustained HUNDREDS of hull penetrations from Romulan weapons fire, and was fully operational after a few hours of repairs. You can ask Ilithi for the exact number; he's counted, and again, this is from ships which can literally throw out the energetic equivalent of the Tsar Bomba several times a second.


ME ships... well that's harder to judge. The Destiny Ascension took little time being destroyed once her kinetic barriers went down, yes, but she was engaging dozens, maybe hundreds of enemy vessels. We couldn't see all the Geth ships, so we didn't know how many were engaging her from offscreen, but the ship would have been the #1 priority target of all of them (and from the looks of it, she was basically the last functioning capital ship still in the fight). The Normandy was destroyed after only a few minutes herself, but again, only against a vastly superior force (the Collector Ship).

The seem to be more shield-dependent than some franchises, but armor is apparently not insignificant, and a significant portion of ship research does seem to go into armor, hence it being an upgrade in ME2.

[Nebfer]

The short straw is MASS effect has range and decent power, but B-tech can do some damage if they can get into range, though many of the lighter ME ships have to get into B-tech ranges in order to do their own damage.

Halo AFAIK has the strongest weapons but is some what out ranged by the others, so if they can get into range they can do some damage.

On the ground B-tech holds a lot of cards, but that's not part of this debate.

Though Spartans vs B-tech power armor the Spartans are in for some trouble.
The Main arms for a Spartan is little different from regular infantry arms. B-tech Battle armor often however use much more powerful weapons.

[HappySpawn]

I wouldn't bring the cut scenes into this debate. They took everything listed in the codex and threw it out the window. Point-blank charges being the biggest offender.

Firstly, the terms of this scenario are 2000 km engagement. Secondly, we're talking about the big, lumbering SA cruisers, not the Normandy which has the maneuvering statistics of a Fighter rather than a Frigate. To quote the ME Codex (something I missed before) "Neither dreadnoughts nor cruisers can use their main guns at close range; laying the bow on a moving target becomes impossible." With that said, Halo-universe MAC rounds are still fair-game.

An SA commander now has 3 options: flee, close, or hold.

• If he flees, then the UNSC cruiser has won the fight (for now)
  
• If he holds, he can present a broadside of smaller Mass. Acc. cannons (maybe) and possibly GARDIAN point-defenses, but also gives the UNSC cruiser a much larger target to strike.
  
• If he closes, he can get onto the UNSC cruiser's weaker flanks or rear and use its Mass. Acc. or GARDIAN point-defenses to possible disable the ship. However, while closing the SA cruiser presents a smaller but near-motionless target for the UNSC cruiser to target. One major issue, however: in order for the SA cruiser to slow down, it must rotate 180 degrees and thrust in the opposite direction, which means that only its prow weapons are of any actual use. It if decelerates too quickly, its own intertia will crush the ship. The UNSC cruiser, however, does not suffer from the same deceleration issues as a Spartan simply gets out and pushes on the hull of the ship, thus causing it to slow and eventually stop.

In the end, the Covenant will just show up and own both parties simply because they have actual SHIELDS and shoot giant balls of PLASMA. THAT or ponies will arrive and spread tolerance and love to all (had to throw it in there somewhere).

Also, what I meant about the Federation ships is how they are designed to rely on emergency force fields. One power fluctuation and the entire deck(s) is now screwed.

[Ilithi Dragon]

HappySpawn, on 26 December 2011 - 11:08 PM, said:

Also, what I meant about the Federation ships is how they are designed to rely on emergency force fields. One power fluctuation and the entire deck(s) is now screwed.

Which is why Starfleet has back-up systems for their back-up systems (and sometimes even back-up systems for their back-up systems for their back-up systems...).


At 2,000km, the SA ships have a LOT of options, and can out-range any of the other forces. As Catamount mentioned, their rounds travel much faster, which is crucial, especially at range. SA ships might not be that much more maneuverable than UNSC ships, but they will still be far better able to out-maneuver UNSC weapons than UNSC ships will be able to out-maneuver SA weapons. SA ships will basically be able to reliably hit UNSC ships from several times the UNSC weapons' effective range, and while they don't hit quite as hard, they do hit nearly as hard, which is good enough when they can hit far more reliably from far greater range, AND they also have a much smaller profile, allowing for greater armor penetration (nail point vs nail head).

Factoring in the Kinetic Barrier system, and the superiority of ME hull materials in general, SA ships will have a huge advantage over UNSC ships (BT ships are unfortunately neutered by their next-to-nothing acceleration, even though they have the firepower and some of the range to compete otherwise).

[HellsBlackAces]

Pre-Fall of Reach I'd give this to Halo in a heartbeat, but that game hit them with a nerf bat so hard their heads are still spinning.

I've done and perticipated in a few Battletech vs MassEffect deabates and from what I can tell Mass Effect dominates on the large end, but comes out even or even loses to Battletech on the small scale. Basicly what I'm saying is a ME dreadnought will cut through Battletech warships like a hot knife though butter, but a small Battletech Assault Dropship let alone an actual warship has a good chance against a ME frigate.


If ME first contact with say the Star League goes the same as it did in Mass Effect and the Star League gets a few decades to up tech it will have a crushing population and industrual advantage agaisnt all of the Citidel Powers combined. Thousands of worlds vs a few tens, trillions of people vs billions, etc.

[Zervziel]

It depends. I really think at the smaller range of ships such as frigates they are far more evenly matched. In case you are wondering the 64kt figure for the Halo ship-based MACs is canon. the measurements giving on the wiki which are on this page are straight from one of the rewritten books, which have been elevated in canon to be equivalent to the games.

The UNSC's biggest problem is their MACs are mounted on the bow and run a good part of the ships length. Battletech has similar probelms with most of their weapons being used in freaking broadsides like it's the 1700s all over again. I know little of ME but I think most of their weapons are turret based which would give them better firing angles.

As you scale up, the difference get exaggerated more. While the UNSC cruisers and destroyers have multiple MACs, destroyers having 2 of the things. For Halo the armor on the ships gets thicker and thicker. Only like the 60 cm of the frigates, the destroyers have 2 meters of armor and the brand new supercarrier Trafalgar had 10 meters at it thickest.

I wonder what a battle group from Battletech would think of a Covenant Fleet jumping in? I mean heck the Covenant corvette is over half the length of a Leviathan class WarShip and is larger than most of Battletechs cruisers.

[Catamount]

Zervziel, on 09 January 2012 - 12:22 PM, said:

It depends. I really think at the smaller range of ships such as frigates they are far more evenly matched. In case you are wondering the 64kt figure for the Halo ship-based MACs is canon. the measurements giving on the wiki which are on this page are straight from one of the rewritten books, which have been elevated in canon to be equivalent to the games.

Yeah, like I said, it sounds right too. My problem is just that the scale-up to some of the figures for the super-mac guns (which, if correct, would make major Halo installation invincible in conventional combat, pretty much against any franchise), you start getting numbers that defy all reason, don't fit the rest of the canon well, don't fit real-world science very well, and just confuse the heck out of me because I don't know what to make of them

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The UNSC's biggest problem is their MACs are mounted on the bow and run a good part of the ships length. Battletech has similar probelms with most of their weapons being used in freaking broadsides like it's the 1700s all over again. I know little of ME but I think most of their weapons are turret based which would give them better firing angles.

So many franchises do this, and I know what you mean. Why do countless, often high-tech franchises feature ship designs that are literally pre-dreadnought in nature?! Some of them even are nearly age of sail designs that run up alongside each other and hammer away at point-blank broadsides. It is rather hilarious.

[HappySpawn]

Its easier to mount smaller guns on the broadsides and your larger ones on the prow. It is possible to simply create a WIDER ship design, but that presents 2 potential problems:

1. While more weapons can be mounted on the prow, the ship now has a much larger "closing" and "moving away" profile. These two profiles are when ships are most vulnerable due to a lack of maneuverability. It is almost always impossible to "dodge" incoming fire. In addition, conventional star craft have a smaller profile when closing and moving away, whereas a wider design would not. Bigger profile = easier to hit.

Also, most conventional star craft have weapons mounted on the broadsides because that is generally the side that will be facing the enemy. While a broadside presents a much larger target, it also presents the hardest to hit target. A ship moving away or closing will, from the view of the attacking ship, not be moving, whereas a ship moving abeam will be. A moving target is much harder to hit as it is much more difficult for a computer system to track and calculate weapon trajectories, especially over distances of hundreds of kilometers. The reduction of speed by as little as 1% can complete screw up a system's calculations.

2. The distance between prow and stern is now (most likely) much smaller. This means that a penetrating hit is much more likely to pass completely through the ship as well as damage both the engine(s) and the core. Damaged core 99.9% of the time results in a spectacular KABOOM!!

Now, this could all be resolved if people remembered physics: a ship can start going one direction, kill the engines, use maneuvering thrusters to rotate on its axis, and fire away while still traveling in the original direction.

[guardiandashi]

I am going to say I am not fully familiar with mass effect, but from wht I have read in ship to ship combat their primary weapon of choice is the "mass driver ballistic weapon" now depending on the effective ranges these may or may not be effective weapons against other universes cited

battletech is in part limited by sensors and the fact that they do NOT have artificial gravity systems (they use rotating "grav decks" that use centripital force to simulate gravity, and use fusion based power generation ships accelerate in single didget (mostly) g's
here is where things get odd. battletech space combat "turns" are 1 minute long and all weapons may strike to their max range in under (likely well under that time)
battletech weapons NL (naval laser) 35, 45, 55 these are called this because this is how much ground combat (IE battlemech) scale damage they do in a single shot being capital scale weapons they fire to capital ranges before they stop being tracked but realistically would keep going "forever" I would have to double check but I believe they range to ~50ish 18km hexes weapon speed light speed

particle Projection weapons (PPC's) fire proton or ion bolts... bigger hit harder etc ~speed of the rounds 80-90+% of light speed

naval autocannons a naval autocannon fire BIG rounds at relatively high speeds a nac10 gets 5 rounds per ton, a nac 40 gets 1 shot for every 1.2 tons of ammo... personally I suspect if a mass efect ship runs into THAT it is not gonna be happy

missiles range from 30 to 50 tons per single missile

battletech does pick up the nuke card from time to time and they are either devistating ... or ineffectual depending on when /where they go off

[k1ll3rkan1n3]

I just happened to be poking around in the forums today and i was just wondering why didn't you guys put Crysis be in this thread?

[Jack Gammel]

Catamount, on 09 January 2012 - 12:57 PM, said:

So many franchises do this, and I know what you mean. Why do countless, often high-tech franchises feature ship designs that are literally pre-dreadnought in nature?! Some of them even are nearly age of sail designs that run up alongside each other and hammer away at point-blank broadsides. It is rather hilarious.

Agreed. Actually, in 40k they give a reason for this. The point of the massed weapons on many 40k ships is, supposedly, to allow Imperial and Chaos ships to fill an entire sector of space with explosive ordinance, effectively removing the need to achieve pinpoint accuracy in a fully 3 dimensional environment (which kind of makes sense I suppose?). At least thats the fluff...eldar, necrons, tau, etc. all rely more on turrent based weapony or other weapon systems which allow for wide-ranging accuracy.

Sorry, this thread isn't about 40k. I just can't help myself. It's a disease...

I would really like BT to win this fight (its my favorite scifi franchise outside of pre-Brian Herbert Dune), and I think that if you were figuring in ground combat BT would have a real advantage. However, in terms of pure space combat this fight really comes down to ME and Halo. BT has the power and its FTL tech is at least as good as the other two franchises, but BT ships simply lack the range and durability to compete here.

If space warfare were to become a reality we could assume that it would be based on two principle factors: range and survivabilty. Range should be defined in terms of both sensors and effective weapon ranges. Basically, the ship which can fire first will have a distinct advantage, and if the other ship is unable to instantly return fire that advantage becomes nearly insurmountable.

If I remember correctly, ME sensors are limited by the normal relativity of lightspeed. This is why frigates are so important as scouts. Since ME communications are actually capable of FTL transmissions, a frigate can pick up enemy signatures and relay this information to the main fleet before the enemy has a chance to ambush the main fleet using light lag to hide their position. I don't know Halo, so I can't say how their sensors work. However, based on what I've seen in previous threads, ME ships enjoy a reasonable advantage in weapon ranges.

Survivability can be determined as a ship's ability to accept an attack and still operate. This is, after all, the horrible inky blackness of space. Even minor malfunctions could prove fatal to the entire crew in such an environment. Both ME ships and UNSC ships have shields (a huge advantage over BT ships). Like I said before, Halo isn't my thing, but it looks like ME and UNSC ships enjoy a similar level of durability. The real difference is that ME ships are capable of entering and disengaging from combat almost at will.

I think that a fight between SA and UNSC ships would be close, but the mobility of SA ships insofar as their capacity to carry out hit-and-run attacks (and I'm guessing SA ships are more manueverable overall) gives them an edge. I think that if Halo ships have more advanced sensors with longer ranges (I don't know about Halo...did I say that already?) then that advantage might be nuetralized, but until such time as someone points this out I'm giving the fight to Mass Effect.

Note: Mass Effect ships turn off their artificial gravity in battle in order to conserve power and keep their ships cool, so I don't think artificial gravity should be an advantage for ME ships in this contest.

Edited by Jack Gammel, 11 January 2012 - 08:32 AM.

[Catamount]

ME ships' biggest advantages in this context are probably agility and weapon speed, both of which in turn translate to an enormous weapons range advantage. They can engage at ranges such that their weapons would reach Halo targets in a fraction of a second, while Halo weapons would take so long getting back, the ME ships could meander out of the way without even having to be in a particular hurry about it.

That's going to be a tough on to overcome.

[Applejack]

And then a TDF Cruiser comes in and ***** everyone up with six in-line Naval MFACs.

[Man From AUNTIE]

Having played Freespace, I have to say that it will come down to the spacecraft fighters. Since I only know of BT AeroSpace, and even that is VERY rusty knowledge, I would go with X-wings dropping a photon torpedo down a exhaust port.

[Zakatak]

After a little bit of researching, I think I have some yields on the BTech weapons. The result is... saddening.

A standard Gauss rifle fires 125kg slugs at (from what I estimated in MW3/MW4) about 2400m/s. 360MJ (megajoules) or about 9x that of the US Navy prototype Railgun. Heavy Naval Gauss fires 500kg slugs, and uses Battlestar Galactica footage as a reference point (similar level of shipping technology), I got around 16000m/s, as a upper-end measurement. That is only 64GJ (gigajoules). Considering that kinetic, energy, and missile weapons in BTech are designed to be "equal", the Lasers/PPC's can't be far off.

Problem? Ship-based railguns in Halo fire 600 ton projectiles at 64000m/s, that is 267000GJ or 4000x the power. Mass Effect railguns are around 125000GJ for frigates/light cruisers. UNSC orbital heavy-railguns fire 3000 ton slugs at 120km/s, and I don't need to make a measurement to know that it could split 10 Leviathan Warships in half. The difference isn't even fair. So basically, BTech loses in space.

Edited by Zakatak, 12 January 2012 - 03:20 PM.