68 replies to this topic

[Koniving]

Nightbird, on 13 June 2019 - 11:09 AM, said:

Even cost doesn't mean different sizes does it? If the weight is the same? One can be more cube shaped, another more rectangular.

If the 300 engine on the 100 tonner produces more power than on the 50 tonner, I think it has to be larger and heavier. That's just common sense.

You could have an engine for a Delorian, an engine for a Volkswagon beetle and an engine for a Dodge Ram.

If we assume for a minute that they weighed the same and despite them all being completely different shapes, had the same volume

Spoiler

(although we know in Battletech that slot count has NO correlation with volume or size which is proven both in art and in the slot mechanics themselves as tanks which people [for some reason] generally agree are smaller than mechs, we still have the issue that on said smaller vehicles a medium laser and an AC/20 that's both also used on mechs are magically the same slot count).

we still have the issue that they're completely incompatible with one another even if they had exactly the same power output as well. But in reality, nothing works that way. You can, of course, have two different engines weigh the same and be different sizes. They can even have the potential of one outperforming the other. You can also have two engines be the same size and weigh something different, For example a V6 and a V8 engine can both fit into a car with the same amount of space available for the engine, and the engine can have a weight difference of only 25 to 120 lbs in a typical car. Does it mean the engine is the same size? Of course not; but it consumed the same "slot" in the car.

Since we already know the slots mean nothing in relation to actual size of objects -- since you could stuff a 35 ton Jenner with every single slot being filled with paramedic equipment at 0.25 tons each.. but an Atlas D with many slots free is "filled to the brim" and so packed that its LRM-20 only gets 5 tubes and looks to be added on as an after thought (the hip pack)and that a 15 ton mech with the no/minimal arms quirk still has the arm slots and the same number of slots total [including full/empty actuator slots] as a 150 ton mech, and between vehicles having 1 slot AC/20s while they occupy 10 slots on Battlemechs we know that slots do not equal size.. and between Gabriel and Savannah Master's medium laser, we know that tonnage is not an indication of the weapon's physical size as one's a LOT bigger than the other. -- we may as well also acknowledge some of these additional facts.

For some units, Battletech tracks weight by the kilogram. For Battlemechs anything in kilograms is basically ignored unless scrutinized to the nearest decimal when tracked at all. And even then when the decimal is 0.1 or 0.25, it isn't really tracked unless it was to the nearest half ton (1,000 lbs) so anything less than half of that is technically ignored when stating the weight. In fact, many mechs with max armor are, by default, written to weigh more than they really do because of "wasted tonnage", where that extra 2 points of armor costs a half ton when a half ton could've gotten you 8 points of armor. What am I getting at? Just because engines generically weight the same in summary...doesn't necessarily mean they actually do as anything out of the 'standard' is ignored... therefore if there really is a difference in weight, the uniqueness of it would be dropped in favor of conformity to simplicity.

Furthering this is another good example of mechlab tomfoolery.
Powerman is a "35 ton mech".. when the cargo bays are loaded. Each cargo bay is visually represented as a spoke and placement on which to attach cargo, two with two tons of capacity each and a third with half a ton of capacity on the rear torso. This actually means the mech is 32.5 tons. But then what of the Cataphract 4X? If it weighs 70 tons fully loaded, what about when the ammunition bins are empty, does it only really weigh 66 tons? Or is it 70 tons and when fully loaded does it then become 74 tons?

These things typically get ignored for the sake of simplicity in an already complicated and overly involved game. Engines, likewise, are kept the same weight for the same reason. Simplicity and conformity.

That said: the ratings are supposed to be universal. An engine with a 300 rating is an engine with a 300 rating. So whatever the 300 represents, that's what it is supposed to mean whether it's a 200 made by Nissan in a 50 tonner, a VLAR 200 in a 25 tonner, or a Magna 200 in a 100 ton beast.

Whether its the Omni 25, the "most efficient engine ever created" and small enough to fit into a 5 ton hovercraft as small as a car going 216 kph, or the bus-sized 216 kph Gabriel, the engine weighs the same for simplicty.
But while looking up the both of those for a speed discrepancy (turns out the 2750 Gabriel uses a Vox 35 engine while the TRO 3050 upgrade one uses a Vox 25 engine)... I found another interesting and related tidbit.
The listed mass for a 25 Fusion engine on a hovercraft is 0.67 units (I'm assuming tons as everything else here is in tons).
"Shielding and transmission equipment" is 0.33 (which makes the engine in total 1 ton).
This is interesting for two reasons: One the weight of this engine in a mech is 0.5 tons. The gyro-etc added in and the total needed is 1.5 tons, versus a vehicle's 1 ton despite their version of the fusion engine being heavier for no explicable reason.

In the TRO 3039 version of the Savannah Master, we actually get a little detail on this in which the Omni 25 apparently strays from the default norm.
First:

Quote

The Savannah Master uses the most efficient fusion engine ever manufactured - the Omni 25. This engine is no longer in production,

Second

Quote

Lewis felt that he could design an effective and cheaper vehicle using the Omni. After incorporating himself, he began a prototype. He installed the Omni on a Skimmer frame, plated additional armor over the hull, and mounted a defiance B3M laser on the bow. Although the Omni needed an extra quarter ton of shielding and an extra quarter ton for a chamber booster, the fusion planty allowed the laser to be mounted without adding additional heat sinks or power amps

If the default 25 fusion engine for vehicles (specifically hovercraft) is 0.67 tons and the default shielding and transmission equipment is 0.33 tons..
Then either the Vox 25's 0.67 ton engine and 0.33 shielding and transmission comes out to 1 ton while the "more efficient" Omni 25 engine is 0.67 tons but needs 0.5 tons of shielding and transmission equipment coming out to 1.17 tons..
Or the Omni 25 engine is actually 0.5 tons, and the 0.5 tons of shielding and transmission equipment totals out to 1 ton.

(But again, its actually a quarter ton for the shielding (and I guess transmission too), and an extra quarter ton for a chamber booster assuming this isn't transmission related, since the tally is still 1 ton, welp that still puts the Omni at half a ton rather than 0.67 tons.)

But, the rabbit hole goes even deeper.
Many fusion engines of different powers are actually the same weight.
For example 160, 165, and 170 ratings are all 6 tons. For obvious reasons you'll never get a 160 rated engine and then a 170 rated engine into the same machine by way of the construction rules about engine ratings. However the important thing is that what this also proves is that engine rating is also NOT tied directly to weight, since multiple different engine ratings can be the same weight, and two identical powered engines, a Fusion 25 for a mech at 0.5 tons and a Fusion 25 engine for a hovercraft at 0.67 tons...also tells us that that the inverse is also true, weight is not tied to power either.

Between those two tidbits, and how mechlab ignores minor weight differences, fluffed or deliberately put in by way of using the mechlab, there's nothing really saying that engines actually are 100% identical in weight. There's fluff that some are more efficient than others, that some have better peak times while yet others are more fuel efficient (something often forgotten is yes, Fusion engine Battlemechs still have a finite amount of energy and they can deplete this over time...just that time is usually much longer than any BT battle on the board. But it has been described that some Fusion engines are more of a fuel hog than others making their extended duration much shorter than other designs.)

Now, sadly, BT doesn't go into major detail about the differences in fusion engines. I'm surprised it went into as far as it did in what I pulled for examples and in particular the tidbit I found in the Savannah Master.

Spoiler

For fun I looked up the skimmer, it runs a 50 fusion engine, has virtually no armor and two weapons. No image. Though I assume compared to a Savannah Master, the back end's "engine" looking thing would be covered up and possibly given a longer section to cover and protect it...or perhaps it really is just exposed, considering how much less armor the skimmer gets.

Edited by Koniving, 15 June 2019 - 03:36 AM.

[Koniving]

Also, random find but neat.
www.ci-n.com/~jcampbel/rpgs/battletech/rnd/engineweight.php
Engine power (in movement ability for all weight classes that can use them) to engine weight ratios.

[Nightbird]

Urrr... too much mental gymnastics to make slots not volume dependent.

Put a HGauss and a ton of ammo into a Hunchback or an Atlas, and the ST is full. If there's unusable empty space for 5 tons of ammo in the Atlas ST still, shoot the designer.

[Koniving]

Problem with slots = volume is that then all mechs must be identically sized, and tanks of the same weight [given how few slots they get] must be small enough to fit on your lap. if you think that makes your head hurt, wait til you get a load of this...

For your Atlas and Hunchback examples, they are packed as full as they get least with the Atlas D and the original Hunchback G [more on that later]. But variants within a line of mechs... aren't necessarily identical in size. Shadowhawk 2 series and 5 series are a perfect example as they are physically distinct in that one is well over a meter taller and able to fit quite a bit more inside..
Long after the Shadowhawk 5 series is out, a new "3" series model comes out for Kurita... why? Unsurprisingly, its because the 3rd generation was much smaller (and unfortunately more compact).

Now unless you're adhering to individual aspects of the lore, nothing is stopping you from doing this with Battletech's "build your own gundam" construction rules (in fact I did exactly that, I built a gundam using them)... but one of the biggest differences between the SHK 2 and the SHK 5 is a complete redesign which, yes, increased its size in order to fit larger equipment. Namely XL engine and double heatsinks, as the original SHK 1 and 2 were 9.63 meters tall. Yes, a 55 ton mech barely taller than this.

So here's the SHK 2-D.



(Admittedly this art is specifically the 5D rather than the 5M, the point though is that the machine was redesigned.)
But when looking at the original model, note this is the Shadowhawk 2's size on the left (edit referring to the link after this image; I chose instead to use this other image as the primary one as it is illustrated by the very novelist that put the SHK into a novel, so when fleshing out the fluff for it in a novel, this is what the author had actually envisioned, William H. Keith Jr.)

(Comparison to BT and a 55 to 60 ton tank) Meanwhile in the 5, it "would be quite a bit rmore spacious than his old Shadowhawk if not for the missile feed going through the back overhead. This is quite a change from the old system feeding along the exterior. They said it was a safer design with armor between the enemy weapons fire and live ammo loading into tubes but now there wasn't any armor between the ammo and himself." Though the pilot's legs still go into the neck. The SHK 3 series I mentioned earlier is the SHK 3K made over 30 years after the SHK 5. But why make a new 3? Simple is an upgrade to the SHK 2 series K version, using the same basic chassis and mods and taking advantage of the much smaller body. The 5 series, however...

Quote

The 5M Shadow Hawk is the first complete overhaul and upgrade of the design, unveiled in 3048 by Earthwerks for the Free Worlds League. The chassis has been upgraded to an Earthwerks SHD II Endo Steel frame

The new frame needed the same strength as the original, as with anything in endo steel, this required the machine to be larger. (if you look at canonical sizes of Clan Omnimechs, those with endo-steel are much larger than standard structure mechs of even greater weight) With the larger size, it was capable of holding all the new, also larger equipment (note the slot count never changed, in fact due to the endo steel it diminished but by giving it a larger endo steel construction, we suddenly have all this "space" or volume to put in bigger stuff.) And thus, one could actually argue the depletion (reduction) of available slots by way of endo steel structure actually creates more volume. In BT it "frees up weight", but in fluff it creates more volume.

Then you have original and "classic" remake of the Hunchback 4 series which have a similar story and a similar start. In spoiler for those that haven't heard it before.

Spoiler

Company gets license to the design but none of the original stuff to do it. In this case though Endo Steel isn't a factor, its just double heatsinks are really popular and the original was too compact to do it (in fact it is so compact that the hump on its left side [CT for the 4SP artwork] is actually an armored drum of ammunition. They redesign it and deliberately make changes so that the new model is incompatible with the "aftermarket" on Hesperus II for the original, with the full intention of factory building all common refit designs as brand new models. Why? Moar money, moar orders, less "refits".. First it started with their new "5M". One of the biggest things was they got rid of the drum and stored the ammo inside. While Mariks changed it to the 5N as a field downgrade to get back that classic feeling [including strapping a smaller custom-made drum onto the back to fit an extra ton of ammo), Kali-Yama went about producing the "classic" line.. 1989 BT lore, doing "remakes" before "remakes" were a thing in video games.

In the end it only got slightly bigger so as to store the ammo internally, and in the end nobody really liked it, so people slapped the drum back onto the back and that extra room, welp the remade "classics" could easily be upgraded to DHS or even an XL engine...meanwhile the original was so small that on the left torso which was basically empty slot-wise aside from the two tons of ammo, was unable to fit the ammo bins and as such they were put in an external drum that could be swapped out with a loaded drum in the field which also doubled as a counter balance.

Also noteworthy:
The "remade" Hunchback 4Gs were unable to even mount Gauss Rifles effectively, in TRO 3039. They'd fall on their *** even while braced. (This led to the Hollander and its unique legs, which that 35 ton mess due to those legs is actually bigger than a Hunchback). The original, given that it packed a 180mm rapid fire cannon instead of a burst firing 120mm cannon, and shorter things have a better center of gravity, probably could. I doubt either would be able to handle a H-Gauss canonically. The barrel of the H-Gauss is 3 men tall, and both Hunchbacks are shorter than Shadowhawks. In fact you'll find in MechCommander, the Hunchback and Commando are virtually the same height which is between 8 and 9 and a quarter meters. MWO's Commando is 9.5 meters (which is almost as tall as the Shadowhawk 2D..)
So eyeing the Commando's 9.5 meter height, 3 men tall is over half its height, so if taking realism into account, you won't be getting the Fafnir's HG in there.


Evidently, Hunchback doesn't become capable of sporting Gauss Rifles safely until the 5S complete redesign.

Quote

the -5S is a complete overhaul of the Hunchback design developed by Norse-Storm BattleMechs in 3058. The structure has been modified to use Endo Steel construction techniques,

Something tells me with its bigger size came better leg length to better brace, as the issue for the Kali-Yama's remade "classic" design was that even when braced, it was too top heavy and the legs too weak to handle the machine tipping back.
(Another fun thing, in the battle described in TRO 3039 in which the new 4G remake was being used with prototype Gauss Rifles, they were firing from beyond visual range (likely using spotters) which in BT is 60 hexes, or 1,800 meters and occasionally landing devastating hits.
So not only do slots mean nothing in terms of volume (lets face it, given enough weight available I can fit a HGR on a tank using one slot + a slot for each ton of ammo), not only is minor weight of equipment "generically" subjective and not really counted, not only are different variants of the same mech often not even the same size in several cases, and not only can you slap on equipment with the rules that the fluff basically says can't be done, but the range rules are relatively meaningless in the fluff.

Now for that migraine you're probably getting, I prefer Alieve for seriously fast relief. But I usually have to budget for advil instead.

Oh and one more look at 9.5 meters, which is MWO's Commando height.

The SHK 2D is canonically 9.63 meters tall (the same height as the Dougram it is based off of).
Meanwhile, the Blackhawk (Clan's Nova) is 8.3 meters, which is almost the height of MWO's Locust.
The Kitfox is 8,7 and the Adder is 8.8 meters tall. [Noteworthy, Nova has no torso twist, no pelvis and legs are connected around the shoulders. Kitfox has endo steel and ferro fibrous but no torso twist or it'd be even bigger, and the Adder has standard structure and full torso twist. Endo-steel machines are always bigger, and mechs without torso twist make up for this in their lack of height. The 55 ton Ryoken (Stormcrow) is 10.1 meters tall. Which is still smaller than several lights in MWO.)

If the Atlas's lack of space despite slots is disturbing.. then perhaps this might shed some light, the Atlas's height varies from 13 meters to exaggerations of 15.1 meters from unreliable narrators (BT is notorious for this; any character directly narrating events is often unreliable due to bias or if their emotional state is compromised; it was a big thing that Jordan Weisman liked as it added more intrigue as well as made it easier to explain away unintentional inconsistencies. The companion for the cartoon series has it in their word from the creators.). Anywho, the most consistent height is between 13.6 and "just under 14 meters".

At the time this shot was taken, the MWO Hunchback was 13.6 meters tall.

(Also fun: Pre-93 the official scale height of the Timber Wolf was 11.557 meters)

Though the scale was raised later for the omnimech scale chart, to 12.6 meters tall.

A scale model of the Clan's Jupiter 100 ton Omnimech is 36 feet, which is 10.9728 meters.


If one could say anything about Battletech, it's that there is no universal "this is how it is," whether it's volume, weight, output, etc.

Edited by Koniving, 16 June 2019 - 09:44 PM.

[Koniving]

Anyway: What ultimately matters is this:

It's a game. A game in which it openly states as early as 1987 that it deliberately leaves things open to interpretation, that it has gaps intended for the players to fill from happenings in the timeline to gaps between mechs and models (SHK goes from 1st generation to 2nd generation to 5th generation and introduces a 3 30 years after the 5th, but does so as if the 3rd generation has been around in other factions despite them never being officially made... Why? Because the fans have made them and it acknowledges that fan-made SHK 3s and 4s exist).

(In fact will edit this sometime Monday or Tuesday to include the word from the creators, which includes references to deliberately using "unreliable narrators" and leaving gaps so that the players can interpret the world as they see fit and fun. Of course, from what I've seen, Catalyst is much more strict on its interpreting than FASA was, as they like to slam down the "Not canon" hammer on much of the old fluff which included 'false propaganda',i.e. the Alliance Mech. "or may never have existed outside Davion-supplied propaganda." Personally, it bugs me that the non-canon hammer also hits the Trooper 14, nicknamed the Flea, as it is the literal origin story of what became the modern Flea from the source of its name to what led to enough success in its design to actually create a finally useful model of the Flea 15. Also, the fact that the Trooper 14 was a double-hopping 15 ton mech that doubled as a troop transport..made it super interesting. But while its known hero and death in a dare to climb a mountain in the Trooper 14 is still canon... the Trooper 14 becoming the first Flea is changed to the Trooper 4..which makes no sense to me because the Trooper 4 can't jump. Gah that bugs me so much. )

But to come to the original question:

So what does the rating mean on an engine? Good question. For tabletop it exclusively affects speed and "on board heatsink" potential, as 250 has them all on board in that tiny set of slots, while a 25 requires 9 heatsink slots to be consumed (all for 0 tonnage)...which in a way could mean that a 25 engine is much larger than a 250 engine...if slots equaled volume. Which makes no sense for a lighter, poorer version of something to be much bigger and stretch out into slots of the STs, arms and legs.. when compared to a 250 standard fusion engine... and that only happens if it's on a mech. So slots..really mean nothing. What is universal though, is that any mech declared as "not having any room left" is the full weight, even with many slots free, so in effect "Weight = volume" in the BT mech/vee lab. Least it holds up to scrutiny better, but its still flawed.

So does bigger rating have more power?
The simple fact is.. there is no fluff really letting us know.

Sure there's fluff that a Javelin's jumpjets propel it through the air nearly twice as fast as a Phoenix Hawk's jumpjets. There's fluff that many LRMs are often actually just free-falling rockets. Or that Holly launchers take longer to stream their missiles out than a Siani Ceres Jaguar. There's fluff that Martel lasers are ton for energy the most efficient ML of all the brands, able to fire faster and more often than Defiance B3M where each hit is weaker but overwhelms in short order. There's fluff outright stating that the Ceres Arms Smasher is bulkier than the much smaller Lord's Light PPC, and yet both are sporting 7 tons and 3 slots on the mechlab. (Everything referenced in this paragraph has been pulled from Wolves on the Border).

Now, there might not anything on whether rating affects actual power output... I do have these two things:

1) There's fluff about how a Fusion Reactor could go weeks to around 3 months (unknown if this is continuous or assuming regular use time per day, but it does seem to be implied that how long depends on the size of the engine which is the closest we're gonna get to an answer) without a refueling of new rods (typically hydrogen but there's been mention of other fuels).
Below takes what little info there is and attempts to get a rough idea of how much power one might have.

Spoiler

The actual total time it can run is reduced every time it fires an energy weapon. A hint as to how much time is cut was given in regards to a medium laser that each use cut its operational time by two hours.

If we assume 3 months is continuous operation and are measuring the energy in time, then without factoring movement or anything else, then a full Fusion Reactor could potentially have 1,080 uses of one medium laser before it runs out of power. For comparison, that's a lot of uses compared to a Fuel Cell engine or an ICE, both of which range in under 100 uses without additional tonnage in fuel.

If the typical medium laser is 1.5 to 3 MW.. 1 MW of energy is enough power to power 750 US homes for about 1 second .

If we assume those 1080 shots can generate 2 MW or 1500 for 1 second each, then a Mech's Fusion engine can power 1,500 homes for 18 minutes before it runs out of energy., or almost 1.5 homes for 163.2 hours (or 6.8 days).

So that's a speculation based on some mathematical assumptions about it based on a loose mention in source material. But that's also interesting, as short of the energy weapons... If the same reactor can last 3 months for a mech, but only 6.8 days on a US home in 2003.. its a lot more energy efficient than I thought it would be. And significantly inferior in all but size compared to our current fission reactors on naval ships. Neat. I always figured BT's Fusion reactors would be something that ShoddyCast would do a video about how ridiculous it is..

But curiously, not here.

The other tidbit I can offer is that it is possible to drain so much power that restarting the machine becomes an ordeal. Somewhere in the past 5 years I read about the difficulties of restarting a mech that's powered down from pulling too much energy in an all energy alpha strike. It was noteworthy enough to jot down that it was using 7 ML and 2 LL. If we take the MW usage of the lasers and assume the best case scenario 16.5 MW, or in the worst case scenario that's 31 MW Not only did the mech try to lock the pilot out from following through the command requiring a jab on the override and hitting the alpha strike key again to ready it,.. It took several seconds for the machine to prepare for the strike due to the exceptionally high demand it would need (with some emphasis that this was very different than a machine with only a couple of lasers and other more conventional weapons), but she couldn't wait and she jammed it again and again until it complied. the machine followed through by funneling virtually the energy it had into the attack, including the reserve. The gyro stopped functioning and some screens and panels blew from the surge as did numerous systems throughout the machine. Broken glass from a monitor hit her face and pierced her eye but she remained conscious long enough to see her foe explode. When she came to, the battle was still going on around her as her machine was ignored as another rust bucket rotting on the field. After what seemed an eternity in an adrenaline-filled haze, but according to her combat recorder log was just shy of 1 minute since her neural pattern was restored...

Anyway, that's what I could remember of it. Of other interesting notes I jotted down, the pilot had to repeatedly pump a crank [similar to alien isolation] to prime enough power to get the initial emergency fission reaction that'd then jump-start the fusion reaction and get the reactor running. This means the Fusion reactor was drained so badly it had no reserve energy left needed to start a new Fusion reaction. In real life the amount of energy necessary to start a fusion reaction requires a temperature of 100 million Kelvin or "179,999,540.33 degress Fahrenheit" I imagine Battletech's engines don't require nearly as much, but apparently it normally stores reserve power in order to start the reactor, and from this specific story a fission reaction can be used to jumpstart the fusion reaction, as significantly less energy is needed to start a fission reaction.) Though part of the reason for the delay in getting the engine started is because she was half blind, physically exhausted and partly delirious [initially she started to try and jumpstart the power by jerking the targeting stick, not realizing it until it broke. Keep in mind at this point the mech had fallen over and partly rolled toward a partially upside down angle.

That's all I've got for you, OP.

Thinking on the above reminded me of why MWO lost its spark with me. In the spoiler if anyone wants to know.

Spoiler

The magic and desperation of that alpha strike... true desperation and the consequences of it... I think it was reading that which made me disillusioned with MWO. "ghost heat" and other silliness to try and fix ongoing issues with a heat system that was far too generous (that's finally fixed; tried firing 4 PPCs recently and it's cause for pause... in 2014 if we fired 4 PPCs under ghost heat.. it was a joke. I've got a video in which 36 PPCs are fired in 18 seconds before it goes from slap on the wrist to a real punishment. Anyway, all these systems in MWO were a complicated mess and people just worked around them to make things even worse than what was originally being punished... where this one tidbit in one story has a punishment that would in turn produce its own tale... which like DayZ back in the day, sharing the tales of the game brought in other people to play it. And sure it wasn't for everyone, but somehow even strangers would come over as they're overhearing a story from DayZ and soon become enraptured in it. If MWO had that kind of effect, imagine how much bigger the playerbase could have been as the tales bring in more players.

Instead, MWO is..mwo.

When I first played MWO, my battle produced a story so great I jumped from Veteran founder to Legendary. I chased a Jenner in mine, we rammed each other, jumped through the air performing acrobatics, one of us slammed into a Catapult and knocked it over, another one of us tripped in the water, we struggled with our heat which prolonged the chase and made it that much more tense. My movement was impaired when my mech began dragging to the left in conjunction with left leg damage, requiring course corrections. As I pushed the heat and rode above 80%, my heatsink display showed that I lost a heatsink and since I had my armor at that time I assumed it was lost due to just how hot I was running which made it all the more intense. And then as I found myself nearly triumphant but broke my leg, I began calling for help...but the dead cannot speak.

In the distance, in the fog and smoke, a pair of glowing eyes turned to face me as the disarmed Jenner I had been chasing shares my location with his team. An AC/20 round flies through the air and I track it with my eyes as it hits my right arm and instantly the arm is destroyed, armor and all. An Atlas emerges. I'm putting out the call for my team, giving my location and requesting help. Another shell blows off the other arm. Four machines come out to greet me and the Atlas looks down into my cockpit. "Welcome to MWO," he told me...and they tore me apart.

In another one, I hid among dead mechs in a Raven 4X against an Atlas, got stared at and he walked away, and so I got him in the backside with an AC/20 and immediately powered down. He turned around, looked about, fired a laser at a couple of corpses and started to go; so I did it again and powered down immediately. The pilot's absolutely paranoid now and finally I realize he might be on to me so soon as he looks away I power up and get behind a building, jump on it, then jump on him to knock the Atlas over. My mech got up quicker, so I turned around and gave him another AC/20 shell.

Or another one, I turned a corner on Frozen City and saw 5 mechs staring at me, so I panicked and ran. Being the first time on the mech I ended up literally falling off a ledge, freaking out but was okay, so I powered down. At the time sensors only updated once a second or every 2 seconds, not sure which, so you'd have a sensor ping with a direction it was facing and then you'd have 1 to 2 seconds before you'd get an update on it unless you targeted it... as such it was easy to disappear and hide despite only being 97 kph. Looking up, a Dragon came up to the edge, stopped, and looked around while I crossed my fingers before it gave up and left.

Now think about those stories.

If someone new played now.. well we know how the game is.. "I turned on my machine, got dropped by the ship and went forward and died because I went out of bounds." Or "I encountered an enemy and I got hit once and I died."

That's the difference between then and now. Closed beta was riddled with issues, but it had a number of mechanics that are missing which really created an experience..

[Nightbird]

Koniving, on 15 June 2019 - 11:47 PM, said:

Problem with slots = volume is that then all mechs must be identically sized, and tanks of the same weight [given how few slots they get] must be small enough to fit on your lap. if you think that makes your head hurt, wait til you get a load of this...

Actually, I can easily reason it as the people who worked on battletech were high AF No, actually, it's probably more a limitation of being able to use pre-printed sheets for any mech more than anything else.

Today, there's no reason mechs cannot have more slots or less slots. Put all 10 HS in every engine because there's no need for lights to use up extra slots that way. Start with 5 slots in STs for 20 tonners, 4 in arms, 10 in the CT (still gotta fit the engine). Mechs like the hunchback can have 12/4 slots in the left, right torso instead of 8/8. Mechs with hands can hold rifles that essentially add free slots. Etc etc.

[Karl Streiger]

Nightbird, on 17 June 2019 - 03:50 AM, said:

Actually, I can easily reason it as the people who worked on battletech were high AF No, actually, it's probably more a limitation of being able to use pre-printed sheets for any mech more than anything else.

Today, there's no reason mechs cannot have more slots or less slots. Put all 10 HS in every engine because there's no need for lights to use up extra slots that way. Start with 5 slots in STs for 20 tonners, 4 in arms, 10 in the CT (still gotta fit the engine). Mechs like the hunchback can have 12/4 slots in the left, right torso instead of 8/8. Mechs with hands can hold rifles that essentially add free slots. Etc etc.

You don't need to use slots at all and rather use volume. Volume = area also translates into the ability to dissipate heat - so this cut two ways.
We all remember the "good" Zeus - that small power box compared to the 80t Awesome it would have translated in missing the ability to mount more then the 17 single heatsinks, plus much smaller room for equipment - on the other hand the Awesome might have been able to mount more then 3 DHS and a PPC in each ST (maybe a PPC and 4-5 DHS)

[evilauthor]

Nightbird, on 15 June 2019 - 09:02 AM, said:

Urrr... too much mental gymnastics to make slots not volume dependent.

Slots don't make sense as volume when many mechs are different volumes.

Try this bit of head canon for size: Slots == Internal Structure Attachment Points.

So basically, everything on a mech attaches to its internal structure. Internal structure isn't just the mech's skeleton, but also includes things like plumbing, power lines, and data lines and all that mundane stuff that the mech needs but the construction system doesn't actually model as a separate items or systems. So when you attach mount a weapon in a mech, you're using up an internal structures attachment points, physically bolting it to the skeleton, plugging in the power lines and data feeds and plumbing, and if necessary, including venting for missile exhaust and ammo feed lines.

Endosteel is an advanced internal structure, getting its lighter weight at the cost of having fewer attachment points due to its extra bulk. For much the same reason, ferro-fibrous armor likewise needs more attachment points to anchor it to the internal structure than standard. And so on and so forth.

[Nightbird]

evilauthor, on 18 June 2019 - 09:48 PM, said:

Slots don't make sense as volume when many mechs are different volumes.

Try this bit of head canon for size: Slots == Internal Structure Attachment Points.

So basically, everything on a mech attaches to its internal structure. Internal structure isn't just the mech's skeleton, but also includes things like plumbing, power lines, and data lines and all that mundane stuff that the mech needs but the construction system doesn't actually model as a separate items or systems. So when you attach mount a weapon in a mech, you're using up an internal structures attachment points, physically bolting it to the skeleton, plugging in the power lines and data feeds and plumbing, and if necessary, including venting for missile exhaust and ammo feed lines.

Endosteel is an advanced internal structure, getting its lighter weight at the cost of having fewer attachment points due to its extra bulk. For much the same reason, ferro-fibrous armor likewise needs more attachment points to anchor it to the internal structure than standard. And so on and so forth.

We went through this already.... take a heavy gauss rifle and 1 ton of ammo and install it in the ST of any 40-100 tonner, is there free space left afterwards? If yes, shoot the designer of the mech since you can't use that space for anything.

[evilauthor]

Nightbird, on 18 June 2019 - 10:06 PM, said:

We went through this already.... take a heavy gauss rifle and 1 ton of ammo and install it in the ST of any 40-100 tonner, is there free space left afterwards? If yes, shoot the designer of the mech since you can't use that space for anything.

Here's the thing: despite what the BT construction would have you believe, mechs aren't designed in-universe as hollow boxes to be filled with weapons and equipment... well anything that's not an Omnimech isn't designed that way anyway.

You take a skeleton, hang equipment off it, and then shape the armor to fit around the equipment. Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that,- like arranging said equipment to take up less volume to reduce surface area that needs to be armroed, but that's just details. Big hollow spaces aren't left inside the armor unless they're either a) meant to be used to transport something, or move things around inside the mech (air from outside to dump heat into for example.

You want to put a weapon on that mech? If it's not replacing an existing weapon, you're going to need to reshape the armor - and possibly rearrange the innards of the mech - to create a space the weapon can fit into. Hell, I've always suspected that part of a weapon's weight went into the extra armor and internal structure required to protect it from enemy fire. Just look at the Hunchback for example; it supposedly has the same armor count on both side torsos (at least in TT), but one side torso obviously has far.more surface area to protect which means it should be getting less protection for the same weight of armor due to what armor it has being stretched thinner due to the greater surface area.

This is why crits=volume makes no sense. No mech except maybe a civilian cargo hauler (or an Omnimech) is going to have big open voids in them.like a computer case.

Crits=Internal Structure attachment points makes more sense because you can only hang so many things on a skeleton before you run out of places on the skeleton to put attach things regardless of how you shape that skeleton. Or maybe it would be better to call them potential attachment points since one look should make it obvious that different mech designs put them in different places and don't always use all the ones they could theoretically have.

After all, if you add more equipment to mech, you're also adding more mass, and if the mech's total mass is greater than what its internal structure is rated to carry, then you need to beef up the internal structure itself to handle the extra mass... which basically means you've redesigned the mech to increase its weight. Which isn't actually impossible since it's happened in lore a few time.

Edit: Been meaning to reply to this but I keep forgetting...til now.

Half Ear, on 11 June 2019 - 03:33 PM, said:

And with Canon max weight 100 tons, the largest engine available is the 400 engine rating, thus allowing a 100 tonner move a max 4 walk/6run. Advanced rules have sprinting, which is 2x walk points so 4 walk/ 6 run/8 sprint

I think 400 is the max engine rating (there's higher in lore) because engine weight increases on a logarithmic scale or something and around 400 is where engines start to get too heavy to be practical for use on a mech.

Heck, arguably, no one should EVER be using a 400 rated engine anyway. Why? Because a 400 rated engine is 52.5 tons. Step down to 395 rated engine and weight gets reduced to 49 tons. Sure, the weight savings of 3.5 tons might not look like much, but for a mech like say, the Charger which is armed with all of 5 Small Lasers, a barely noticeable reduction in speed could result in more than doubling the mass of weapons it carries which is more than an acceptable tradeoff.

But you can't do that in TT Battletech because movement is done in whole numbers of hexes and moving part of hex makes no sense in that context. But in a sim like MWO, there's no need for that and the engine rating can be anything as long as the mech in question has the tonnage to spare due to mechs speeds not being restricted to whole number multiples of 10.8 kph.

Edited by evilauthor, 29 June 2019 - 11:09 PM.

[Nightbird]

The argument that slots are attachments points, and structure and armor is reshaped each time to different sized components doesn't hold water. That's equivalent to re-designing a mech every time you change the loadout.

[Karl Streiger]

Nightbird, on 30 June 2019 - 11:57 AM, said:

The argument that slots are attachments points, and structure and armor is reshaped each time to different sized components doesn't hold water. That's equivalent to re-designing a mech every time you change the loadout.

well with exception of the omni mechs this is exactly what does happen unless your weapon is smaller or has the same size.
take the canon JaegerMech variants not a single variants arm weapons exceed 15t and 7slots.

Edited by Karl Streiger, 01 July 2019 - 01:12 AM.

[Tarl Cabot]

Nightbird, on 30 June 2019 - 11:57 AM, said:

The argument that slots are attachments points, and structure and armor is reshaped each time to different sized components doesn't hold water. That's equivalent to re-designing a mech every time you change the loadout.

The construction rules are for the players though. Events, scenarios, etc are done with stock loadouts. Even when the Clans were initially playtested, they playtested using Star League mechs/tech while IS utilized primarily their 3025-era mechs, which with numbers and the tactics used, brough the Clans to a standstill early.... Then FASA created Clan tech...

[Horseman]

Nightbird, on 30 June 2019 - 11:57 AM, said:

The argument that slots are attachments points, and structure and armor is reshaped each time to different sized components doesn't hold water. That's equivalent to re-designing a mech every time you change the loadout.

Far from equivalent, and the rules in Strategic Operations indeed support such an interpretation.

Edited by Horseman, 01 July 2019 - 12:41 AM.

[Nightbird]

Horseman, on 01 July 2019 - 12:40 AM, said:

Far from equivalent, and the rules in Strategic Operations indeed support such an interpretation.

That developing a new chassis takes years to do, and obviously can't happen in a drop ship mech bay? yep

[Horseman]

Nightbird, on 01 July 2019 - 05:42 AM, said:

That developing a new chassis takes years to do, and obviously can't happen in a drop ship mech bay? yep

No, that installing a weapon of greater bulk (or adding a new one) involves partially rebuilding the mech, even if the rebuild in question can be carried out in a mech bay.

[Nightbird]

Horseman, on 01 July 2019 - 06:05 AM, said:

No, that installing a weapon of greater bulk (or adding a new one) involves partially rebuilding the mech, even if the rebuild in question can be carried out in a mech bay.

No... you can put a larger engine into your car without changing the frame, as long as it fits into the existing space.

[Horseman]

Nightbird, on 01 July 2019 - 06:54 AM, said:

No... you can put a larger engine into your car without changing the frame, as long as it fits into the existing space.

Non-sequitur. Work with the rules and how you can interpret them, but do not disregard them because they didn't fit your narrative.

[Nightbird]

Horseman, on 01 July 2019 - 02:14 PM, said:

Non-sequitur. Work with the rules and how you can interpret them, but do not disregard them because they didn't fit your narrative.

Who is disregarding rules (of physics)

[Karl Streiger]

Nightbird, on 01 July 2019 - 06:54 AM, said:

No... you can put a larger engine into your car without changing the frame, as long as it fits into the existing space.

this totally depends on space available. take for example my car a nice compact three cylinder engine and there is much space there to mount a bigger engine. because the frame (P208) is capable of havinv bigger engines.

however no Mech nor combat vehicle will have spare volume for engine and movement train. because they are already designed to have only this size of enigine. yes you should have extra space for mounting a smaller engine, although i don't think the reactor core gets smaller, you need more bulk for power generation and heat sinks and fuel when the core produces more power.

but if you want to have extra space for smaller engines you should have not a single slot more over the "factory" build.
so the PPzc cicada would not have any space to mount a ppc unless its welded on top with independent power/ammunition supply.