16 replies to this topic

[MechaBattler]

Was talking with a friend about making my own faction for a campaign with my brother and his friend. I came to the idea of a mercenary and a group of merchants that find a hidden Age of War factory. Still intact, functioning, and with technical information. But the adjacent IS power gets clued in on it and seizes the merchant's local holdings if they dont' turn it all over. Instead they evacuate the factory onto several ships, the mercs fighting a holding action so they can do so.

After which the mercs and the merchants are blacklisted from that IS state. So they decide to manufacture aboard the ships and sell to whatever periphery state is willing to pay for retrotech equipment.

What I'm wondering though. Is what ships could make this work? And are there such things as mobile refineries and mining ships?

Haven't made a firm decision on when this would be taking place. But obviously it has to be in a time where factions wouldn't care much about some age of war factory. Even the faction in this scenario didn't care enough to divert serious assets, probably just some cheap mercs.

[Nesutizale]

Ship:
Depends on what you want to produce. Small stuff like limited number of weapons or armor plating might work but for entire Mechs or Tanks....that I find hard to do. Merchants and Mercs most likely don't use ships big enough to hold an entire factory.
Also you have to consider that you most likely would need a place to heavly modify any kind of ship to turn it into a factory.

A Yardship should be able to do it but those are rare
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Newgrange
https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Faslane

Dropships maybe if you have small production runs
https://www.sarna.ne...(DropShip_class)

As for mobile refineries and mining...can't remember somthing like that. Only some specialised transports for stuff like water, gas and so on.

Maybe try to work in an asteroid base or starbase. Look through Sarna.net to see if there is something that works for you. I mean if its just a scenario for you and your friends you can be "creative"

Timeframe...mabye clan invasion? Most houses where focused on fighting the clans. Jihad or MWDA timeline can also work as there where also some big conflicts that draw in the attention of the bigger players. Espacialy during the MWDA timeline you had tons of splitter factions, FWL was just a big mess and has IIIRC quite some unclaimed terretories.

Also might be an interesting chance to pit some old designs against the MWDA designs from the TRO 3075 + 3085 against...don't know how old your mercs are but maybe 3055 mechs or if the factoy is realy old some Starleague designs?

[MechaBattler]

The Newgrange looks perfect for the purposes of this group. Perhaps I'll have to center part of the campaign on finding a wrecked Newgrange and restoring it similar to the Argo from HBS' Battletech.

The Snowden seems like it would be a good addition. But they're also rare it seems and solely in the employ of the Taurians. But it's mention of the Space Hound prospector mech, makes me think you don't need a specialized mining ship. Just specialized mining industrialmechs. I want the group to be as independent as possible.

I was considering the MWDA timeline as well. So many splinter factions. So many potential customers who would be willing to buy lower tech equipment to fill out their armories.

Hadn't really given thought to what the mercs would be using. But I would assume they'd be using whatever is common for mercs of the era and region they're in. With the addition of whatever we could produce later on.

Edited by MechaBattler, 10 October 2019 - 01:46 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

Well Retro Tech might not be in the interest of the Great Houses, but a modified yard ship or production center is a complete different game.
with those you get the interests of all nations, consider it for your self if you had a moveable ship you might orbit a planet and throw fresh produced low tech material at your foe till they succumb.

What if your outfit just stumbled about a couple of mothballed or misjumped cargo of RetroMechs like the belerophon. the hegemony surly moved them from their deployment tables into garnison and finally marked them for the scrap yard.
maybe your crew stumbled over such a scrapyard full of half or completely deconstructed Mechs.
Enough stuff to make some one hundred mechs - still a game changer when you give a company if such Frankens a pirate outfit because usually a planetary militia has nothing to face even the smallest Mech.
(I know its not so much reflected in the games, but even a Wasp or Stinger had to be able to annihilate a couple of tanks ot VTOLs)

[Nesutizale]

Haveing a hundret mechs in a cargo ship in pirate space without the crew numbers to pilot them all or even haveing not enough firepower in space for protection against other ships....if that becomes common knowledge I bet you will be hunted by everyone that is able to. At least on the Periphery side. Still even with old tech some minor Lords could see it as a nice boost to their defance to capture those mechs or they would go after you just to make sure that no one in the Periphery gets them.

[VonBruinwald]

MechaBattler, on 10 October 2019 - 01:45 PM, said:

The Newgrange looks perfect for the purposes of this group. Perhaps I'll have to center part of the campaign on finding a wrecked Newgrange and restoring it similar to the Argo from HBS' Battletech.

That's a terrible idea, the only thing you should do with a Newgrange is turn it into a Planet Buster

[Nesutizale]

Why does every SF series needs planetbusters? I find the concept of a planetbuster pretty stupid as a planet is more valuable intact then destroyed. Sure you can get some people to **** their pants but in the end you will see more then one and when everyone is just nukeing planets left and right you won't have much left to life on.

"Heavy Artillery" to bomb military bases from orbit or stuff like that, okay that is totaly fine and quite efficient but most of the time you should want to take a planet then loosing it.

[VonBruinwald]

Nesutizale, on 17 October 2019 - 05:05 AM, said:

Why does every SF series needs planetbusters? I find the concept of a planetbuster pretty stupid as a planet is more valuable intact then destroyed.

Yeah. The Blakist take scorched earth tactics up to 11. Just like Comstar did to the Clanners at Tukayid so to did Blake, to everyone. They waged war in an unprecedented manner, they weren't playing, they knew they had to take things further than anyone else in order to succeed. And it worked.

Nesutizale, on 17 October 2019 - 05:05 AM, said:

Sure you can get some people to **** their pants but in the end you will see more then one and when everyone is just nukeing planets left and right you won't have much left to life on.

Where the nukes ended Mechwarrior began. It's pretty much the whole setting.

Edited by VonBruinwald, 17 October 2019 - 02:48 PM.

[Karl Streiger]

A Mass Driver is not a planet buster - its just a bigger slug and you need to aim with the ship, pretty worthless in comparison to the already available Naval Gauss.

As for the setting, when you have a space warship it beats the hell out of everything either in space or ground - heck it makes ground combat completely obsolete.

[Nesutizale]

Well it depends on the size of the rocks you throw and its speed. While it might not crack the planet appart it can very well turn it unhabitible by humans with a single shot. Also rocks are kinda hard to detect compared to a warship comming at you. Espacialy if you only look for warships and not for rocks.

Else I agree with you that a warship would make ground combat mostly obsolete. It depends on how well you can aim. If you are only able to inflict destruction on a big area you will still need ground forces to take out the leftovers or small targets.

I wonder how the Battletech univers would have been like if Warships where more available and the Ares convention wouldn't have been agreed on and followed so well.

[MechaBattler]

Yeah, after thinking about it, the ship is too conspicuous just on it's own. Although we wouldn't advertise that we're manufacturing aboard ship. Just play our selves off as independent traveling merchents. I wish there was some idea of how much room you would need to manufacture a single mech.

Some components could be purchased comparatively cheaply. Especially if we're going lowtech. So heavy industrial armor, primitive cockpits, ICE or Fuel Cells. Then it just comes down to building the structure, actuators, and gyro. Since they're supposed to have found an old factory. I'm looking through older mech designs. I was tempted by the Ostwar. Just because it looks like it's a bit primitive to begin with.

As amusing as the idea of unleashing a horde of primitive mechs on people is. I don't think that's how the group would work. It would probably operate pretty lowkey and try to avoid risky situations. Acting more like heavily armed merchants that cater to the periphery.

Anyways. I started having fun with making up my own lowtech improved weapons. First one is the "Squeezyboy" Rifle. I got the idea from watching a War Thunder Video. Evidently the Germans had the idea of using a barrel that got progressively smaller to ensure a greater build up of pressure behind the round. The result is a higher velocity round, at the cost of limited life of the barrel. Sabot rounds would of course make these obsolete. In game terms I was thinking just more damage. But you can only fire it a certain number of times. Anymore and you have a chance to critical the weapon.

Second idea I had was the group trying their hand at making a primitive PPC capacitor and failing. But use the design in conjuction with extra rifle barrels laying around and a lot of copper coiling. To create the "Periphery Magshot". It would be 1 ton, take up 3 critical slots, have a little less range. But manage to do the same damage as the real deal. And obviously if hit it will explode.

[Nesutizale]

Just an idea. How about a branching campaing?
Maybe let the group decide if they want to appear just like a merchant that has found some nice tech to sell or if they want to build up and "army" and take their own piece of periphery and be "Lords".

[Karl Streiger]

MechaBattler, on 21 October 2019 - 11:14 AM, said:

Anyways. I started having fun with making up my own lowtech improved weapons. First one is the "Squeezyboy" Rifle. I got the idea from watching a War Thunder Video. Evidently the Germans had the idea of using a barrel that got progressively smaller to ensure a greater build up of pressure behind the round. The result is a higher velocity round, at the cost of limited life of the barrel. Sabot rounds would of course make these obsolete. In game terms I was thinking just more damage. But you can only fire it a certain number of times. Anymore and you have a chance to critical the weapon.

Why bother with a tapered bore - compared to a sabot the only reason for the tapered bore is the rule of cool. Sabot has a couple of advantages (have a shipment of 57mm Mydron Ammunition but you only have a 105mm Federated Autocannon) use your industry printer to "print" light sabots and put the 57mm rounds into the 105mm sabots.... maybe its not that simple but this would do logistics quite simple - you only need 2-4 different projectiles (sometimes you really want your big gun to fire a big shell instead of several smaller ones)

and yeah when you consider the technology of the PPC to be a linac - its pretty similar to a GaussRifle - so it doesn't either make sense that a Gauss on hit explode and the PPC not or that the PPC has high heat and the Gauss has next to none (although 50% of the waste heat of the Gauss will be "carried" by the slug)

[MechaBattler]

They actually have sabot shot as an ammo type in Roguetech. 50% more damage to armor. But 50% less damage to structure. Which makes sense. Conversely they also have HE for the opposite effect. I guess the assumption is that standard ammo uses something like HEAT. It does make more sense to replace ammo instead of barrels.

As for the PPC capacitor. I wonder if perhaps it's not simply storing power, but particles somehow. In Universal Century Gundam, they have something similar to that. A 'capacitor' that stores half charged particles. Which reduces the amount of power needed, allowing for scaling down a ship's main mega particle cannon into a portable beam weapon. So perhaps they use something similar for the PPC capacitor. Which would also explain why some retrotech guys couldn't just reverse engineer one xD

Edited by MechaBattler, 22 October 2019 - 12:19 PM.

[VonBruinwald]

MechaBattler, on 21 October 2019 - 11:14 AM, said:

Yeah, after thinking about it, the ship is too conspicuous just on it's own. Although we wouldn't advertise that we're manufacturing aboard ship. Just play our selves off as independent traveling merchents. I wish there was some idea of how much room you would need to manufacture a single mech.

I imagine a Brigand is going to be the pinnacle of your production line. That mech is produced on a single (relatively low tech) planet and any essential components they can't build themselves are likely booty the pirates looted, stuff you can trade for instead.

[Koniving]

You could, if you wanted, put the Argo into your campaign.

It would solve the production issues.
You'd have finite space so there's no mass army building nonsense.
The Argo was made using existing rules and designed to fit back into tabletop. For building things you'd use the conventional repair rules for repairbay or factory hangar (depending on the condition of the Argo's facilities).

You can find the info you need here.
https://www.sarna.ne...DropShip_class)

You can, in theory, create something similar but perhaps even smaller to help keep your game from getting too bogged down as an alternative.

[Koniving]

As for how much room to manufacture a single mech...

Lets work with the assumption that assembly is basically the same as repairing from zilch.

You'd need storage space for the parts, one mechbay for molding, a second for part assembly, and a third for your final assembly, this is assuming that aside from molding the armor from scratch everything is being done by hand with the support of cranes and/or a loader/hauler mech to assist with lifting. (think of construction like making a hot rod from scratch, you'll need a place to work on the individual parts and a place to store what's been assembled thus far, i.e. your workbench and the garage.)

Now with automated manufacturing lines you'd be looking at a lot more, which is why the Argo's size is ginormous and it could have multiple union class dropships docked with it as if it were a jump ship.

For elaborate details, Battletech RPG or Mechwarrior RPG 1st edition (easily found) will give you everything you need in excruciating detail (right down to necessary kits for working on the different aspects, repair/building times, etc..) Thankfully Megamek HQ can handle all of that for you, you'd just have to manually restrict how many bays they can use for their own mechs and the things they're building.

Edited by Koniving, 30 October 2019 - 03:07 AM.