22 replies to this topic

[Dr Duke]

How do the ranges on what we might call real life LRMs compare to the ones in the BT verse? I mean don't todays militarys most sophisticated weapons platforms (i guess gunships, battleships, aircraft carriers?) have missiles that can be fired at pretty specific locations from many miles away? And I'm pretty sure I remember from reading that book Jarhead a few years ago that a state of the art sniper rifle, or at least a 1990 SotA sniper rifle, can reliably hit targets about a mile away? How does that compare to the range of a BT machine gun? I am pretty certain from what i remember of MW4 that the range on most weapons is alot shorter than its real life counterparts but i could be wrong so im just checking, and then my next question would be are there any good reasons for this other than game balance and fun factor?

[Kaemon]

You're falling down the reality vs TT/BT universe hole.

You're going to hurt your brain.

[Brakkyn]

The discrepancy between the ranges is dramatic. But the idea is for BattleMechs to fight each other in relatively close quarters (1000 meters plus or minus a few hundred meters).

Applying "realistic", modern ranges would severely change the face of BattleTech warfare and remove what sets it apart from other universes.

[EDMW CSN]

If you follow Mech ranges, the ERLL has a range of 570m.
1 Mech hex = 30m

If you follow ASF ranges, the ERLL has a range of 9.5km.
1 ASF hex = 500m

If you follow CAPITAL ranges, the ERLL has a range of.... well never mind.
1 Capital hex = 18000m

Edited by [EDMW]CSN, 29 December 2011 - 09:48 AM.

[MuffinTop]

Ok I'll bite the bait on this one....during the first Gulf war American Abrams and Iraqi T-72s and I'm guessing T-80s were shooting at each other at point blank range. It wasn't the first war that it happened and I'm sure it won't be the last. Now imagine a megaton Mech going blow to blow with another mech in urban combat. For startes everything is shall we say close quarters in urban combat....most of the time. Its been like that for a while. Now if I could just find my wikipedia reference......

[Felicitatem Parco]

It's true that modern tank fights can be close-up, but they are designed to engage from kilometers away.

A modern 120mm tank gun can engage (and hit) targets 4000m away, and that's the equivalent power of, say, an AC/10.

The navy is currently testing a railgun that will engage targets from tens to over a hundred miles away.

A machine gun bullet (.50 BMG) can hit man-sized targets 1400m away if fired from a good rifle.

I'm not going into missiles because I'll get hit with an EMP-flare.

Edited by Prosperity Park, 29 December 2011 - 10:05 AM.

[MuffinTop]

Yes prosperity I know that tanks are designed and are able to shoot a 120mm or bigger round a few kilometers away. The US Navy already has the railgun, and perhaps other countries will or already have it. Weapons will not always be used for what they are designed for hence the E tool or shovel as a melee weapon,since WW 1,or the Flak 88 by the Germans as an anti-tank weapon in North Africa during World War 2,when in fact it was designed and intended as an anti-aircraft. With that being said, I'm sure it will happen and that certain mechs and weapons will be used by players for roles or combat that they are not designed for. I don't mean game exploits,thats an entire different discussion, and one I don't care to get into here for the sake of staying on topic.

Edited by MuffinTop, 29 December 2011 - 10:32 AM.

[Felicitatem Parco]

Oh, I was just addressing the OP with some stats. I do love the ingenious use of repurposed weapons

[CaveMan]

I always rationalized it as the effects of ground clutter. 'Mech weapons fired in anti-air mode have like 10 times the range they do when fired at ground targets, so it's probably just ground clutter fouling up the sensors. The air is really empty (and space is REALLY empty) so it's much easier to pick out a target against the background.

If they could afford to sit still long enough to work out the elevation angles and had a stationary target, autocannons and such would have the same ranges as Snipers and Long Toms. Though I've worked out BT autocannon shells using a Powley computer before and I have to figure they're firing REALLY heavy shells at low muzzle velocities. Almost more like rapid-fire mortars than modern-day tank guns. Aerospace autocannons likely use much lighter shells with far more propellant and kill with kinetic energy rather than big warheads.

There's also the effect of weapon spread for missiles and autocannon. To put all the shells of an AC burst onto a 'Mech limb means a circular error of no more than about one meter for the whole burst. An AC/20 can put all its shells into a 1m radius circular target at 270m, but at 1km the shells are spreading over an area 16 times larger. Its effectiveness would be more comparable to an LRM-20 at that range. At 5km you'd barely be able to hit anything.

Though, it should be noted that the BTU authors can't care much about physics if the lasers in AeroTech have discrete ranges. A space battle turn is 60 seconds. A laser would be able to hit a target many light-seconds away, which is millions of km. Even one light-second would be way larger than the whole AT2 map.

Edited by CaveMan, 30 December 2011 - 12:43 AM.

[Arctic Fox]

BattleTech's ranges are explicitly only so low for gameplay reasons, and in reality most (All except low range ballistic and laser weapons, which would suffer from atmospheric friction and diffraction) would extend out to the horizon. Tactical Operations actually has rules for Extreme and LOS ranges, which basically allow you to fire medium and long ranged weapons at anything you can see regardless of distance but much less accurately and with less damage.

CaveMan, on 30 December 2011 - 12:38 AM, said:

Though, it should be noted that the BTU authors can't care much about physics if the lasers in AeroTech have discrete ranges. A space battle turn is 60 seconds. A laser would be able to hit a target many light-seconds away, which is millions of km. Even one light-second would be way larger than the whole AT2 map.

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Lasers would suffer diffraction even in vacuum, so they would be unable to inflict damage after some distance, and the ranges of lasers on the BattleTech space map still extend out to dozens or hundreds of kilometers. Also, I'd imagine anything other than large WarShips and JumpShips would be immensely hard to hit beyond several hundred kilometers, especially if it's constantly maneuvering.

Edited by Arctic Fox, 30 December 2011 - 01:28 AM.

[CaveMan]

Arctic Fox, on 30 December 2011 - 01:27 AM, said:

I wouldn't be so sure about that. Lasers would suffer diffraction even in vacuum, so they would be unable to inflict damage after some distance, and the ranges of lasers on the BattleTech space map still extend out to dozens or hundreds of kilometers. Also, I'd imagine anything other than large WarShips and JumpShips would be immensely hard to hit beyond several hundred kilometers, especially if it's constantly maneuvering.

The effects of diffraction in vacuum are tiny for lasers that can have apertures over a meter in diameter. Beams that big stay very well collimated over long distances. The beam would retain its original size for least 20 or 30 thousand km.

And, again, we're talking about mapsheets that are only about 300km across, no more than 1200 if you're using all four sheets in a line. A tenth of a second delay lets a laser hit a target 30,000km away, or about 1700 space hexes. A lowly 1 deg/sec turret tracking rate could cover about 52km/sec at that range, or hit a target moving at a game speed of 173 or so.

[LordKnightFandragon]

Well, I quite liked the ranges of MW4, maybe they will keep them somewhere in that realm, or they will transfer CBT ranges into this game....skip RL, this isnt RL, its MECHWARRIOR!!!!

[Arctic Fox]

CaveMan, on 30 December 2011 - 01:59 AM, said:

The effects of diffraction in vacuum are tiny for lasers that can have apertures over a meter in diameter. Beams that big stay very well collimated over long distances. The beam would retain its original size for least 20 or 30 thousand km.

And, again, we're talking about mapsheets that are only about 300km across, no more than 1200 if you're using all four sheets in a line. A tenth of a second delay lets a laser hit a target 30,000km away, or about 1700 space hexes. A lowly 1 deg/sec turret tracking rate could cover about 52km/sec at that range, or hit a target moving at a game speed of 173 or so.

Hmm. Wouldn't the beam's size increase (mostly) linearly over distance, so that the beam at 300km would have about 16 times the radius at 18km? I might well be wrong, but what I know indicates the increase in distance would render the beam significantly less powerful as the range increases even at these distances.

As for accuracy, you're assuming the tracking system is perfect. Even a slight defect, error or inaccuracy in the mechanism or software will mean that you've completely missed your target at these ranges, especially against tiny targets like ASFs. This is made even worse by the fact that the target will usually be actively maneuvering and accelerating while you're trying to fire.

[CaveMan]

Arctic Fox, on 30 December 2011 - 03:05 AM, said:

Hmm. Wouldn't the beam's size increase (mostly) linearly over distance, so that the beam at 300km would have about 16 times the radius at 18km? I might well be wrong, but what I know indicates the increase in distance would render the beam significantly less powerful as the range increases even at these distances.

Lasers are highly collimated (rays are parallel). Unless you run the beam through a lens to focus it on a specific point, there's not going to be any meaningful variation in the beam width for a thousand km or so. Beyond that the beam takes on a Gaussian distribution, meaning it narrows to a "waist" and then expands over distance.

For a 650nm laser (red) with a 1m aperture, the beam waist is about 6150km from the aperture. About 20 mapsheets, at which point, the beam will actually have twice the intensity of normal (lasers are weird like that). Beyond that point it'll slowly spread out to infinity.

Quote

As for accuracy, you're assuming the tracking system is perfect. Even a slight defect, error or inaccuracy in the mechanism or software will mean that you've completely missed your target at these ranges, especially against tiny targets like ASFs. This is made even worse by the fact that the target will usually be actively maneuvering and accelerating while you're trying to fire.

True, although for a laser, targeting in space is basically just simple trigonometry. Unless they're running the old Pentium 4's with the math defect, it would be shameful for them to make an error at the distances involved. You could work it out on a mechanical adding machine using a slide rule, if you had to.

A 15m long ASF at 30,000km subtends an angle of about 0.1 arc-second, so it would take some real precision to hit. ECM might interfere with the radar targeting enough to make it impossible. WarShips, though, can be up to a hundred times larger, and you could actually eyeball them if you were trained to account for the 0.1s light lag.

[Pht]

As someone posted earlier; weapons ranges are short for game play reasons. Namely, tabletops aren't big enough for longer ranges.

Of course, if you count the aerotech end of things, mech grad weapons are scary long ranged. I think the vanilla IS small lasers shoot out to around 1.2 or so KM in space combat.

That and there's the extreme and LOS range rules to account for, which allow mechs to pick off targets on the horizon, miles away, with certain of their weapons.

[Hiroshi Tachibana]

One thing to keep in mind about ranges with RL vs B-Tech. Think about the barrels for these guns. For example, the Atlas' waist mounted AC-20. In B-Tech they have incredibly short barrels versus what we today would consider appropriate. This would alter the range dramatically.

As for laser weaponry, we're talking about something that can focus a damaging amount of energy while still withstanding the rigors of pitched combat. Nothing short of a direct hit (aka critical hit) would take them out of commission. I think that faced with this sort of problem, the engineers of the B-Tech world would have opted for function and durability rather than extreme range.

[Grithis]

We all seem to have forgotten something, here. If we applied RL ranges and attributes to BT and started shooting each other from the next county over........ where would the fun go?

[Phatt]

I would love to see realistic weapon physics in MWO so that we can experience what it would be like to pilot a mech for real, however I would be happy with just being able to play any kind of BTU based game.

My favourite pet hate with the BTU is how they totaly nerfed the Machine gun. With current technology a turret mounted .50cal MG with a computer targeting system and using SLAP amunition would have an effective range of 2500m at least. So Imagine how far advanced the MG would be in 3030 after 1000 years of development.

Just to clarify what the main limiting factor involved in the effective range of a .50cal MG, it is not accuracy or loss of kinetic impact but the trace rounds used to aid in targeting. .50cal MG trace rounds usualy burn out at about 1100m which is why it only has an extreme effective range of 1100m. A computerised targeting system would not need trace rounds to hit a target.

I have noticed that some people have a problem with long range sniping in MW, I say that if you have a weapon capable of firing accurately across the map then we should be able to use them if we want to. In MM4/M there were maps that allowed for long range combat as well as maps that were designed for urban close range combat. Some maps were high heat maps and some were low heat which all played a part in your battle planning. If we restrict all the maps to close range combat then the game will become boring very quickly.

[Liam]

It isn't impossible to adapt BT universe to realistic weapon physics. However you will need lot of changes and fixes. I tried to describe it in my topic, which is not easy to read.

BT with realistic appearance

I still think realistic physics with BT appearance and touch could be really nice and probably very popular. It would fix many problems and allowing more room for balance of the game.

There lot of stuff which could be more enjoyable such as:

- realistic artillery (long tom, sniper, thumper canon) shooting from cover in parabolic flight curve of the projectile
- realistic dmg model (more segmentation in hitboxes) > allowing more balance between pierce and splash damage (Laser - PPC, AC-LBX etc.).
- energy management
- ranges
etc.

[Karn Evil]

Phatt, on 01 January 2012 - 07:55 PM, said:

I would love to see realistic weapon physics in MWO so that we can experience what it would be like to pilot a mech for real, however I would be happy with just being able to play any kind of BTU based game.

My favourite pet hate with the BTU is how they totaly nerfed the Machine gun. With current technology a turret mounted .50cal MG with a computer targeting system and using SLAP amunition would have an effective range of 2500m at least. So Imagine how far advanced the MG would be in 3030 after 1000 years of development.

Just to clarify what the main limiting factor involved in the effective range of a .50cal MG, it is not accuracy or loss of kinetic impact but the trace rounds used to aid in targeting. .50cal MG trace rounds usualy burn out at about 1100m which is why it only has an extreme effective range of 1100m. A computerised targeting system would not need trace rounds to hit a target.

I have noticed that some people have a problem with long range sniping in MW, I say that if you have a weapon capable of firing accurately across the map then we should be able to use them if we want to. In MM4/M there were maps that allowed for long range combat as well as maps that were designed for urban close range combat. Some maps were high heat maps and some were low heat which all played a part in your battle planning. If we restrict all the maps to close range combat then the game will become boring very quickly.

If BT machine-guns were as effective as they should be in real life, everyone would be piloting Piranhas and much fun would be had by all.
...
Except the poor fool in an Atlas trying to kill at least one of the little blighters, of course.

As for real-world ranges taking away the fun, eh. Short-range combat would still be viable in some situations, and considering the almost knightly status of mechwarriors, they'd probably be thick enough to ignore the long-range capabilities in favor of short-range duels.

Then again, it would be funny if they suddenly introduced weapons with realistic ranges into Battletech - say, a new development by one faction. Mounted knights, meet English archers. English archers... oh, you guys already killed the knights, I see.