950 replies to this topic

[Reitar]

Truth is stranger then fiction, thank god for the number of people in this thread that cannot suspend belief and need to rationlize things but there are others that need to argue about it. Thank god no one relizes it but BT universe is sort of a Rennisance post Middle ages (aka Star League and Better Tech™ ) where humanity had better technology but lost the ability to produce it so it got dumbed down in a sort of WWI era style world (Slow stagnant wars like trench warfare for example being jump points and travel time). Weapon technology certainly didn't advance as much as the WWII did then WWI. Of course its easier to rationlize it as a movie instead of understanding it under real world concenpts (cause we all know, every movie is based on things that really happened like alien invasions amirite? )

So, tl;dr aspect is this: It only makes since if you don't think about it .

[Xaira]

Very nice facts )

[Skylarr]

C3


A C3 Network is a network consisting of either a C3 Command Unit and up to three C3 Slave Units or six C3i units. Basically a special tight-beam communications network, they are used to share targeting data between 'Mechs and Combat Vehicles. The original C3 Networks were introduced in 3050 by the Draconis Combine.


The C3 Networks that exist today are geared towards the smallest level of tactical command: This means that each 'Mech in a Lance (or a ComGuard Level I for C3i) can share targeting data. There have been efforts to expand this targeting coordination to the Company level by using a 'Mech with a pair of C3 Command Units, like the Draconis Combine's Tai-sho.


A C3 Network of C3 Command units and C3 Slave units cannot share targeting data with units using a C3i system.

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The technology for you Command unit and slaves do not exist.Give it 10 more years and you can do that.

You still have not explained how you will handle the Economics of what you want to do. Or how you will keep the peace with your disgruntle civilians.

[bikerbass77]

In the future, no one knows how to make a guided missile work properly.

[Pht]

Melcyna, on 09 August 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

With regard to MG if this is the case then the most natural outcome is that there should be NO ARMOR DAMAGE whatsoever caused by it..

No.

For one thing, the armor on 'mechs is not totally uniform in it's coverage, simply due to the humanoid form factor. It's well known that things like knee joints, elbows, armpits, necks and such are well nigh impossible to armor fully without completely locking the joint into one position.

Second - we don't know the damage poential of BT mech class machine guns compared to ours. If the creators say they do damage to mech scale armor... they do.

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As for the mech mobility, i assume you are referring to this with comparison to the tank in terms of hit probability... Unfortunately BT shot themselves here... the mechwarrior isn't gonna evade lasers once fired, the only difficulty is in getting a firing solution in the first place so unless the mech dances on the spot constantly till the shot is taken his agility here counts for little, nor will he dodge the projectiles because BT describes them as an INCREDIBLY fast (but when you calculate it, their projectile speed is actually not that fast) hyper velocity projectiles. The two combined essentially GUARANTEES that the mechwarrior isn't going to be able to realistically dodge anything through reactive action, in the same way that human does not expect to dodge bullets (no you are not Neo thank you), we MINIMIZE the chance of being hit in the first place, we don't ACTIVELY try to dodge them...

You're putting words into my mouth and completly missing the point.

Relative to tanks battlemechs are *much* harder to shoot.


You should use the enter button in your post and make some paragraph breaks. Giant chunks of unbroken text will be ignored by virtually everyone.

Nebfer, on 09 August 2012 - 08:37 PM, said:

Well lets put it simply, your mad if you think you can easily solve the issues around B-tech armor with it's known capability's... Cray simply says B-tech armor is Magic, Painrack (another guy I know who deals with "B-tech info" but is not involved with Catalyst) would agree with the fact that it's impossible to find a good one all theory on how B-tech armor works.

AMEN.

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... Also note B-tech rules while canon, are also said to be not a perfect simulation of reality...

To go further, it's impossible for humans to make a rules simulation of reality. ALL gaming systems break.

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in regards to B-tech targeting computers keep in mind the description of the system, mentions that it's not just a computer but also includes recoil compensators and enhanced actuators and the likes.

Are you talking about the basic, built in system? Or the advanced component add-in targeting computer?

Edited by Pht, 10 August 2012 - 11:47 AM.

[Elessar]

Melcyna, on 09 August 2012 - 03:44 PM, said:

.....

If that's the extent of their capability, then all the more reason that they would saturate the orbit on the likely entry path with mines and orbital defensive satellite.

But probably the most ironic thing here is that they lack mines but have an alarming tendency to RAM THE DROPSHIP with their aerospace fighter.

I mean of course it's most likely chalked up to rule of cool and dramatization for novel, but for someone who won't build simple mines... they sure as hell don't seems to mind to resort to slamming their even larger and expensive aerospace fighter at the dropship.

and of course as according to the rule of cool, when they actually successfully ram the dropship, the effect is usually super effective (ramming is always effective after all in entertainment).

In fact the reemergence of Star League technology gave rise to the technology of BattleSats (developed by the house of Kurita and deployed in orbit of Luthien):
http://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleSat

The Star League also had (semi) automated defenses ...
But most of them were not immobile Sats, but mobile drones (well, Drones of Warship size ). Kerensky had to fight this automated defense network in the Sol system in order to conquer Terra, after Stefan Amaris ursurped the power over the Star League in his Amaris coup (the coup which finally led to the Exodus and afterwards the foundation of the clans)

Edited by Elessar, 10 August 2012 - 11:46 AM.

[Punisher22]

Old tabletop fact: the best move for a stock Battlemaster mech in the first round of play is to dump the machinegun ammo.

[Elessar]

Punisher22, on 10 August 2012 - 12:44 PM, said:

Old tabletop fact: the best move for a stock Battlemaster mech in the first round of play is to dump the machinegun ammo.

Not true if you face enemy tanks ...
10 shots with an MG and even the heaviest tank is with >= 50% probability immobile and with 25% probability even dead

[CarnifexMaximus]

Fusion power stations and engines by the 2020s. I am 27 years old... In my lifetime I would LOVE to see this happen more than anything (forget Mars, forget nuclear pulse propulsion). But I don't think we will stop burning dinosaurs anytime soon.

FTL by 2107 or in general ever... One of my most crushing moments was in my intro to astronomy class at university where my childhood dreams of visiting the stars and returning home in the same epoch were coldly and brutally crushed by the TA who said more or less that it ain't happening.

The fact that earth is also still hospitable to human life.

I rather do like the idea that no first contact has been made... The IS is so minuscule in comparison to our whole galaxy. I don't ever doubt that intelligent life exists somewhere but the conditions of said life to evolve and flourish must be rather rare... Also in the documentary "cosmos" Carl Sagan proposes that there must be a factor considered in the equation that a certain percentage of intelligent life is never able to cope with itself and its technology and promptly snuffs itself out before reaching a level of technical skill to settle other worlds. Intelligent life runs the risk of destroying itself through violence or it's technology destroys their home planet (or a combination of both)... We are yet to overcome this problem I think.

[Melcyna]

Elessar, on 10 August 2012 - 11:45 AM, said:

In fact the reemergence of Star League technology gave rise to the technology of BattleSats (developed by the house of Kurita and deployed in orbit of Luthien): http://www.sarna.net/wiki/BattleSat The Star League also had (semi) automated defenses ... But most of them were not immobile Sats, but mobile drones (well, Drones of Warship size ). Kerensky had to fight this automated defense network in the Sol system in order to conquer Terra, after Stefan Amaris ursurped the power over the Star League in his Amaris coup (the coup which finally led to the Exodus and afterwards the foundation of the clans)

Interesting, what were they missing in terms of tech capability from producing it earlier?

I mean even if there's no warships around to threaten them, logically the design should be perfectly viable as a weapon platform to deter dropship sized vessel with the right armament so what were they missing that prevented them from designing and deploying them earlier?

Skylarr, on 10 August 2012 - 07:56 AM, said:

C3


A C3 Network is a network consisting of either a C3 Command Unit and up to three C3 Slave Units or six C3i units. Basically a special tight-beam communications network, they are used to share targeting data between 'Mechs and Combat Vehicles. The original C3 Networks were introduced in 3050 by the Draconis Combine.


The C3 Networks that exist today are geared towards the smallest level of tactical command: This means that each 'Mech in a Lance (or a ComGuard Level I for C3i) can share targeting data. There have been efforts to expand this targeting coordination to the Company level by using a 'Mech with a pair of C3 Command Units, like the Draconis Combine's Tai-sho.


A C3 Network of C3 Command units and C3 Slave units cannot share targeting data with units using a C3i system.

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The technology for you Command unit and slaves do not exist.Give it 10 more years and you can do that.

You still have not explained how you will handle the Economics of what you want to do. Or how you will keep the peace with your disgruntle civilians.

Putting it into the core we get: How much does it cost for them to manufacture a ship, a civilian ship at that of various type...

From the description of their interstellar transport and trade they have ENORMOUS amount of ships active, they are describing planets shipping resources for factories, etc and other materials sufficient to maintain them and keeping the economy lifeblood active.

They would have needed some form of capacity of producing the ships used to move these materials and resources across the galaxy, and maintaining existing ones... which seems to be true from the description of some of the Shipyards existing still in IS. (How did all the shipyards lost their capability of manufacturing warships heaven knows)

So... what we are aiming here is to use these capacities to slowly acquire a fleet of our own to replace the fleet lost during the previous war and especially when SLDF left with most of it's fleet.

From here we can argue, 'but what if they are already at maximum capacity just to replace civilian ships?' of which that doesn't seems to agree given some of these shipyards endured anything from raids, attacks etc... lost production capacity, regain it when they repaired it, and so on... which means there exist some form of BUFFER production capacity, that allowed the nation to still function despite the damage caused every time these problems occurred.

To build the fleet itself we have 2 ways to look at it:
A. We literally buy a civilian vessel (taking an asset and compensating them for it is essentially buying it, except on mostly our term) and have the shipyard replace the lost civilian ship, why not just have the shipyard produce it for the fleet? Well this only makes sense if we need the ship for the fleet ASAP, and we cannot wait for the shipyard to produce the ship for the fleet... essentially we shift the wait to the civilian sector instead, and rearm an existing ship as soon as possible for the earliest possible usage.

B. If time is not paramount, we siphon some of the shipyard capability (apparently some of these shipyards continue producing them through the worst of the tech regression which is most odd, as to why they don't use information that these yards obviously retained to other shipyards that seems to lost their capability) to produce a ship that we intend to convert to our Q ships essentially.

This one takes more time, but the interesting part i noted is that many of the shipyards that were supposed to be able to manufacture warships and then LOST the capability, only seems to lost the drive manufacturing capability, nothing seems to describe their lost capability in manufacturing the rest of the components including capital ship weapons EXCEPT that since capital ships were non existent they simply stop manufacturing them since there's no one to use them on or put them on.

Pht, on 10 August 2012 - 11:08 AM, said:

You're putting words into my mouth and completly missing the point.

Relative to tanks battlemechs are *much* harder to shoot.

Let's ponder about that for a second... why are they much harder to shoot?

The reason why i ask this is because originally you mentioned they can stop from high speed in a few steps (tanks can do this even earlier btw, they can stop from 70kph to stand still in a few meters thanks to their track which gives them high traction, the high traction of the track is part of the reason why they are used in war in the first place giving them better offroad capacity) and move their limbs, body, etc...

If the projectile is extremely fast however, none of the movement means anything since the shot will land before a reaction on the pilot can come out.

If we argue that they are harder to shoot at in the sense that it's harder to aim at in the first place because of their movement capacity then we run into the very first problem humanoid and other bipedal design face in large scale machines for war, ie: the fact that their profile is VERY high and creates a massive surface area to be shot at compared to one that went for a very low profile.

Think about it, a tall large surface area target board... moves around the field, the board can be jumping, jinking, and do anything it wants except something that a mech can't do (ie: being flat as a board), and compare that to a sort small surface area target board... which is easier to shoot at?

The faster the speed of our projectile, or weapon... the less relevant the movement that the target makes in relation to it's probability of being hit, but the surface area that he presents to his enemy regardless of the two previous factor are going to be always relevant in the likelihood of being hit by an incoming fire and in here a bipedal mech by virtue of the bipedal locomotion design is at a severe disadvantage.

Beazle, on 10 August 2012 - 05:26 AM, said:

'a lot of stuff that goes back and forth with all the description before but i'll bite'

They don't come in straight line? Good!, that's the whole point... of mines

if they come in straight line, they come in the shortest possible course to the planet direction.
if they go AROUND the mines, doesn't matter which way around, they take a longer course which is the whole point.

Since time is always the critical part in either attacking or defending then by simply making him take a longer route you are already buying more time to decide what to do with the condition.

And we don't mine them in peace? Of course we don't... we also happens to not be expecting a raid coming out of no where in time of peace, so only 1 of 2 things are possible: A. it's actually a peaceful condition that required no such defensive measure in the first place, or B. such attack are actually taking place in which case there's something really wrong with your definition of peace here.

Incidentally, why do the mines need to expend power beyond the ones it need to maintain a link? Skylarr does mention that C3 network doesn't come until later and apparently there's absolutely nothing that can send telemetry information through until then (which comes up with a slew of oddities as to how they perform many action that technically require such information but that's another matter) so that's something to work out, but as far as the energy and fuel are concerned, the mines are not intended to be active until it's needed so why does it need expend fuel for being essentially dormant?

To put it into perspective, the only power requirement needed to maintain their function is the one it needs to keep it's sensor (in the case of mines with it's own seeker) or it's telemetry link. In the case of OUR modern mines, these are usually battery powered to last until the mines life expectancy which works since passive sensors generally takes little power to function, and the active sensors are not needed UNTIL the passive warns it of a presence.

For space, we have a convenient source of power that constantly radiates them all the time... ie: the star itself on the system, they can figure that part out.

There's also a whole slew of potential that one can use from their recharging stations on the stars that can be used for as far as one can imagine but that's a whole different pie to cut later.

Edited by Melcyna, 10 August 2012 - 03:57 PM.

[Skylarr]

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Interesting, what were they missing in terms of tech capability from producing it earlier?

LostTec, A majority of the equipment used has not been seen since the Star League area.

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I mean even if there's no warships around to threaten them, logically the design should be perfectly viable as a weapon platform to deter dropship sized vessel with the right armament so what were they missing that prevented them from designing and deploying them earlier?

Three Succession Wars

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Putting it into the core we get: How much does it cost for them to manufacture a ship, a civilian ship at that of various type...

From the description of their interstellar transport and trade they have ENORMOUS amount of ships active, they are describing planets shipping resources for factories, etc and other materials sufficient to maintain them and keeping the economy lifeblood active.

They would have needed some form of capacity of producing the ships used to move these materials and resources across the galaxy, and maintaining existing ones... which seems to be true from the description of some of the Shipyards existing still in IS. (How did all the shipyards lost their capability of manufacturing warships heaven knows)

So... what we are aiming here is to use these capacities to slowly acquire a fleet of our own to replace the fleet lost during the previous war and especially when SLDF left with most of it's fleet.

Did you read any of the source books or SarnaWiki? In the first two Succession Wars these facilities were targetted for capture or destruction.

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From here we can argue, 'but what if they are already at maximum capacity just to replace civilian ships?' of which that doesn't seems to agree given some of these shipyards endured anything from raids, attacks etc... lost production capacity, regain it when they repaired it, and so on... which means there exist some form of BUFFER production capacity, that allowed the nation to still function despite the damage caused every time these problems occurred.

I would say they are at Max Capacity. You cannot just walk into a Dropship show room and pick one out. TT has rules for trying to aquire a dropship. The larger they are, the harder it is to aquire it. You would get this impression just by reading the source books.

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To build the fleet itself we have 2 ways to look at it:
A. We literally buy a civilian vessel (taking an asset and compensating them for it is essentially buying it, except on mostly our term) and have the shipyard replace the lost civilian ship, why not just have the shipyard produce it for the fleet? Well this only makes sense if we need the ship for the fleet ASAP, and we cannot wait for the shipyard to produce the ship for the fleet... essentially we shift the wait to the civilian sector instead, and rearm an existing ship as soon as possible for the earliest possible usage.

I am sure the corporation would love the idea of the governmant telling them what their dropships is worth when it is seized. An I am sure the crew just love the sudden reduction in pay.

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B. If time is not paramount, we siphon some of the shipyard capability (apparently some of these shipyards continue producing them through the worst of the tech regression which is most odd, as to why they don't use information that these yards obviously retained to other shipyards that seems to lost their capability) to produce a ship that we intend to convert to our Q ships essentially.

The companies that produce vehicle (Mech, Tank, Dropships, etc.) are at max production. New facilities cannot be build do to many reason. Resources (material, skilled labor), Logistics (lack of transpotation, and/or location), Defense.

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This one takes more time, but the interesting part i noted is that many of the shipyards that were supposed to be able to manufacture warships and then LOST the capability, only seems to lost the drive manufacturing capability, nothing seems to describe their lost capability in manufacturing the rest of the components including capital ship weapons EXCEPT that since capital ships were non existent they simply stop manufacturing them since there's no one to use them on or put them on.

Naval meapons were not re-produced until after the Helm Memory Core was discovered. Why would they put time and effort into producing equipment for warships, that they cannot make, when they can spend their time and efforts into improving exist vehicle?

Originally you were talking about having fleets of Militarized dropships at strategically important planets. What is that about 100 planets minimum? How many Dropships per planet 10. That is a minimum of 1000 Dropships you wanted to sieze and have tham all refited at the same time time. Your new slow approach will still be about how many at a time 4 to 10. Each taking about 2 months.

[Skylarr]

Melcyna, on 10 August 2012 - 02:30 PM, said:

They don't come in straight line? Good!, that's the whole point... of mines

if they come in straight line, they come in the shortest possible course to the planet direction.
if they go AROUND the mines, doesn't matter which way around, they take a longer course which is the whole point.

Since time is always the critical part in either attacking or defending then by simply making him take a longer route you are already buying more time to decide what to do with the condition.

Ok so they must take into account that they will have a longer travel time. So they need to bring in more force for when your re-inforcements arrive. If it take 6 days to get to your planet and your minfield makes them take 10 days they will land before your reinforcemnts get on planet.

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And we don't mine them in peace? Of course we don't... we also happens to not be expecting a raid coming out of no where in time of peace, so only 1 of 2 things are possible: A. it's actually a peaceful condition that required no such defensive measure in the first place, or B. such attack are actually taking place in which case there's something really wrong with your definition of peace here.

So you intellinge arm tells you your about to be attacked. They tell you one of 4 planets are likely targets. How long will it take to unmothball all the factories and unmothball the Mines (you will need need maintenance while they are in storage). How long to assemble the couple hundred you will need and put them in position. Do you have personnel and dropships standing by at all 100 planets? This is going to be exspensive. I can see you loosing factories to sabatoge and accidents.

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Incidentally, why do the mines need to expend power beyond the ones it need to maintain a link? Skylarr does mention that C3 network doesn't come until later and apparently there's absolutely nothing that can send telemetry information through until then (which comes up with a slew of oddities as to how they perform many action that technically require such information but that's another matter) so that's something to work out, but as far as the energy and fuel are concerned, the mines are not intended to be active until it's needed so why does it need expend fuel for being essentially dormant?

To put it into perspective, the only power requirement needed to maintain their function is the one it needs to keep it's sensor (in the case of mines with it's own seeker) or it's telemetry link. In the case of OUR modern mines, these are usually battery powered to last until the mines life expectancy which works since passive sensors generally takes little power to function, and the active sensors are not needed UNTIL the passive warns it of a presence.

For space, we have a convenient source of power that constantly radiates them all the time... ie: the star itself on the system, they can figure that part out.

There's also a whole slew of potential that one can use from their recharging stations on the stars that can be used for as far as one can imagine but that's a whole different pie to cut later.

Originally you wanted to have them put in place and stay there for years. then they would all need stabilizers to keep them inplace, plus electronics so they can detect each. You do not want them flying into each other.

Now with your new idea of getting them into place when you think your about to be attacked you will only need dumb Mines. I can see the other realms feeding false info to your intell arm just to get your planets on a higher stae of allert. Then I can see garrison comanders thinking about the whole crying wolf incident and not place out the mines. It is cutting into their budget.

[Quietly Crazy]

I love how this thread started as (somewhat fun) a way to catalog all the somewhat silly things that show up in Battletech, from the TT starting version onward. And then people came in and started applying real-world rules and physics to it.

"I know this is a game about giant humanoid robot suits blowing the snot out of one another, but the way the game represents machine guns/space travel/warfare/whatever thing bothers me about the game and/or canon is totally unrealistic!"

Is anyone else getting this? Or is it just me?

[Skylarr]

the BT universe is based on Technology 1000 years in the future. People are trying to prove it cannot happen because of today science.

[Melcyna]

Quietly Crazy, on 10 August 2012 - 09:41 PM, said:

I love how this thread started as (somewhat fun) a way to catalog all the somewhat silly things that show up in Battletech, from the TT starting version onward. And then people came in and started applying real-world rules and physics to it.

"I know this is a game about giant humanoid robot suits blowing the snot out of one another, but the way the game represents machine guns/space travel/warfare/whatever thing bothers me about the game and/or canon is totally unrealistic!"

Is anyone else getting this? Or is it just me?

Some of us (including me) totally enjoy poking it precisely for that though... ie: spinning their lore around in place till it spew everything out entirely.

Skylarr, on 10 August 2012 - 09:24 PM, said:

Ok so they must take into account that they will have a longer travel time. So they need to bring in more force for when your re-inforcements arrive. If it take 6 days to get to your planet and your minfield makes them take 10 days they will land before your reinforcemnts get on planet.

I'll process the rest slowly, but something here is not right...

if it takes 6 days to reach the planet from the jump point, and they take 4 extra days to go around it then that's 4 days of which the reinforcement can arrive late and STILL be in time to intercept them from outside the system, because they logically don't have to go around the mines.

If we pretend the mines are totally crude and we possess no IFF whatsoever (a bit of a stretch since transponder tech is very basic, and generally speaking if they have basic radio signal equipment tech then IFF is within the same level), then the common method used in previous war (back when IFF didn't exist yet and we used mechanical mines) is to create a specific path in the minefield that can be safely traversed, and obviously keep the path known only to the defending navy.

The rest of it would be nice to consider one by one, though by far the most powerful (and convenient) excuse we can use to cover for the lore is of course Lostech, why can't they do this... Lostech, why can't they do that... Lostech.

Which is fine i suppose, in soft sci fi we do need something powerful like this to help manage the irregularities...

But probably the most interesting thing was that after Elessar mentioned the battlesat, i dug around for more info on them... and found something i didn't expect.

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• Pocket WarShip - A military DropShip type based on the Assault DropShips. These ships are designed to carry Capital Missiles and sometimes Sub-Capital Weaponry. Most are typically heavily armed with standard BattleMech scale weaponry. Early versions of this ship type were known as Q-Ships. Following the Jihad, with so many nations' shipyards damaged or destroyed, many factions turned to these as the backbone of their navies.

• Q-Ship - Military conversion of a civilian vessel, typically cargo ships. First introduced by the Star League Defense Forces prior to the Star League Civil War.

The first one was essentially what we discussed before... arming dropship to serve as part of the fleet with no ships around...

The part i don't understand of course is why they didn't do this earlier, and why this was not done when no warships are around... of which we can sort of apply the tech didn't exist then or Lostech argument again based on it's non availability before the tech regression though it's difficult for me to pinpoint when the first of these were fielded (someone with the Aerotech manual perhaps can tell).

The one i am more confused is the SECOND part...

it suggests that as far back as 1st SLDF era they were already doing exactly that... ie: arming merchant ships (heck, even calling it Q ships too just like the WW original), what i don't understand is why they ceased doing that afterwards... when they still produce the same civilian ships that were converted to Q ships, perhaps even more confusing is that some of these shipyards also produced the capital ship weapon that would be needed to arm them including the one in FedSun that was supposed to be intact and functional throughout the period even during the tech regression.


Incidentally, your argument on how to hold the mines position is perhaps the most effective one on their application (cost and resources are difficult personally to accept as an excuse given that the houses were waging war and raids on such frequency during these periods that you'd think they are throwing resources like candies around during a period on which they are supposed to be strapped)

Logically the 4 L points around the planet is prime candidate to put them at a fixed position from the planet but this only covers the orbit plane and not the are above, or below which would present a complications on how to maintain the position.

Ironically however... it seems their Lore did pretty much just that...

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The primary defensive element of the SDS was a series of automated space stations located at a solar system's primary jump points, the largest of which was known as the M-9 Pavise.^[5] These stations mounted capital weapons and could easily destroy any attacker that came into range.

Now of course this technically confirmed that they had at ONE point at least the capability to actually target ships as far as the jump point areas from outside of it and shoot them down.

How exactly they anchor this immobile station is anyone's guess of course, and i am still pondering on what's the most economical way of doing this honestly.

What i am curious though is that they actually could position a massive station with range sufficient to cover the jump point area (only one of them of course, i don't think it's logical to assume they can target the jump point on the opposite pole of the system), and they managed to cover it with direct fire weapon at that.

The mine idea essentially would be an extremely down scaled version of such defensive mean except that instead of shooting them with direct fire weapon (and thus reusable of course) the mines would head directly to the target and detonate on it (single use), except with the cost of just a single mine, instead of a full sized battle station.

Then of course we can argue on what became lostech and how much of them are lostech to the point that not even the mine will be feasible.

[SakuranoSenshi]

Skylarr, on 10 August 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

the BT universe is based on Technology 1000 years in the future. People are trying to prove it cannot happen because of today science.

What is your point exactly? Science and technology are not the same thing and many things in Battletech are simply impossible as written. Mechs are totally impossible at the sizes given, for example, even with cold fusion as a free gift.

[Brenden]

~Hundreds of different brands and they all do the same thing.. What's the difference?

~For every scout mech you have in your army, a Lyran has fify Atlasi.

~The Jenner's cockpit looks a bit like a flying saucer.

~No cosmic horror found yet.

~Wonder why they haven't created something that fires like a Pulse Laser, but has a slight explosion like a grenade. I'd call it, the Large/Medium/Small Burst Laser. Splash damage and archs at longer ranges. Half the range of regular lasers.

~In the early days of the Battlemechs, why didn't they come up with an idea for a 'mech with a Hatchet, Sword or Mace?

~LAMs, 'nuff said.

[SakuranoSenshi]

Hate to break it to you but here in reality, you'll find that branding is mostly psychology and not technical differences, too.

[Skylarr]

SakuranoSenshi, on 10 August 2012 - 10:32 PM, said:

What is your point exactly? Science and technology are not the same thing and many things in Battletech are simply impossible as written. Mechs are totally impossible at the sizes given, for example, even with cold fusion as a free gift.

What is your point? The designers have always suggested that the BT Universe had solved what ever problem there was to make it happen.

[Melcyna]

Skylarr, on 10 August 2012 - 09:46 PM, said:

the BT universe is based on Technology 1000 years in the future. People are trying to prove it cannot happen because of today science.

Having a good imagination is fine and should be encouraged so it's fine to explore ideas...

But exploring them without Logic and sensibility does not serve much good...

To give an analogy,

With the tech as far back as millenias ago we can technically make a cart with square wheels... and we CAN make it move and do work...
But we don't do it for real use... why? Because it serves no practical purpose that the more obvious round wheel don't do MUCH better.

The problem many mecha fans including BT face when they say 'It's X years in the future, they can do it then' is that they generally did not realize that when you check their usage sensibility, their practical use value vanish into thin air...

even in the future if they have the capability to do just like what they needed to make the device (via much improved power output for example), be it mecha, spacecraft, weapon, whatever it is... if it does not provide a practical reason that justify it, then it will simply not be used.