950 replies to this topic

[Lawler]

Thundar The Ork, on 03 August 2012 - 10:18 PM, said:

Damn, I so miss playing TT Battletech and Mechwarrior 2nd Edition. For me I think Battletech peaked at the clan wars. I really disliked 3rd edition MW:RPG and the Mechwarrior Dark Ages.

Mechwarrior: Dark Age sucked donkey balls, for sure, but the 3rd edition mechwarrior rules were quite an improvement over the old 2D6 2nd edition rues. There were some funky areas, but what RPG system is every really perfect. 2D10 with open ended results just allows for much greater variation and becomes much more difficult for players (and crafty or wicked GMs) to tabulate success or failure and let that motivate their actions. It's no longer "I have 1/13 chance to miss, so I'm gonna just aim for the cockpit". It becomes, "damn, I don't know if I can hit that without getting at least one 10 on these dice".
I also thought the 3rd edition character creation system was a vast improvement even though some of the time requirements were a little silly.

[KalebFenoir]

XxSaberxX, on 07 October 2012 - 05:32 PM, said:

Ridiculous? Well, I'd say the Neurohelmet itself.

When you're in a 25-100 ton mech running, falling, jumping, getting hit by gauss slugs, PPCs and whatnot, what kind of balance do you have? What kind of balance do you sense?

Okay, we can argue that the pilot is seated and thus he would have a good sense of balance. If that's the case, wouldn't it be the PERFECT sense of balance then? You're in the 2nd most stable position (only lying down is more stable) and yet your Mech is still able to fall over?

And anyway, how does your brain's 'sense of balance' HELP a 100 ton mech anyway? Your body is nowhere near that weight. Heck - your brain wouldn't even be able to 'help' a 20-25 ton mech because it does not / never had the experience of working with that kinda weight?

Only way a mechwarrior would have that perfect balance of stability is if the cockpit, wherever it is located, would be a free-floating piece of equipment that auto-stabilizes. So if the mech fell over, the pilot still sits 'facing forward', with the cockpit rotating around them as the mech falls, keeping them at-level with the ground or something.

I know in some animes they do that for the mechs, but I don't think that mechs even from 3063 would have been able to have that built into them. Probably would have had a cost on building the cockpit like that, like, it's twice as heavy or something.

[Melcyna]

FD Wulfette, on 08 October 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:

Blooming's effect is 1 MJ per CENTIMETER ok do the math and see for yourself 1 meter is 100MJ of power so 10 meters is 1000MJ dissapated a hex on TT is 30 meters so 30X1000=3000MJ lost in one hex distance. Yes todays lasers are ultra short ranged especially the ones used by science because the energy needed to weaponize and give it range just cant be harnessed to that effect at this point in time. Ballistics weapons suffer from limitations as well since a projectile of a gauss rifle is so dense it suffers from its own mass and bleeds energy more quickly. AC's are propellant baised so ranges are varying but look at

Japanese

fighters of WWII the lighter the weapon the further its projectile traveled. the 7.7 could outrange the 20mm due in part to a heavier powder charge in the 7.7 and the smaller of bore made the projectile lighter thus it traveled farther than the 20mm..


Gravity is still 9.8m² on earth. Not all celestial bodies have the exact same mass density or even composition as terra so it would really depend on those underlying factors on to what each weapon could effectivly do per planet. Look at earth and earths moon for example if you struck a golf ball with enough force to drive it 400 yards on earth then struck it with the same force on the moon the said golfball would be able to break the gravitational pull of the moon. Thus continueing outward to an unknown point. On earth it traveled only 400 yards but on the moon it traveled millions upon millions of miles.

Wait, what made you think that the atmosphere dissipates the energy at a rate of 1MJ per centimeter through blooming?

Blooming effect STARTS at energy density of around 1MJ per cubic centimeter of air, it is not related LINEARLY to it...

Our militarized laser (which we already have btw, just not in production ie: evaluation model only) been shooting mortars and artillery since several years back... granted that they are still too low powered for anti vehicle purpose of course, but the effective range on them? 10km +/- depending on atmospheric condition.

Quote

fighters of WWII the lighter the weapon the further its projectile traveled. the 7.7 could outrange the 20mm due in part to a heavier powder charge in the 7.7 and the smaller of bore made the projectile lighter thus it traveled farther than the 20mm..

...

let me give some figures on weapon range for aerial weapons in use at the time by spitfire for example to see what you are missing.

Browning 7.7mm, standard munition loaded: primarily AP with mixtures of tracer and incendiary depending on loadout weighing around 10-15g

Hispano 20mm, standard munition loaded: HE mixture with HEI, weighing around 130g

2 things to notice immediately here,

Hispano 20mm like most autocannon of the time is firing HE shells primarily and NOT solid AP, and this is why the cannon was widely used in the war because the HE destructive potency for aerial engagement was massive and necessary to inflict critical damage.

that unfortunately also means that the Hispano 20mm shells which were over 10 times heavier than typical 7.7mm rounds, does not quite carry as much kinetic energy comparatively considering it's size which does have an effect on it's ballistic property.

This is considered acceptable however because of the 20mm shell destructive power with it's HE charge on aircraft. (sadly Hispano 20mm had trouble when adapted to aircraft and took way too long to fix before they become reliable)

Now what happens when you have similar constructed rounds optimized for the same purpose?

welcome to modern era:
20mm cartridge (used in M61)
Velocity: 3450 ft/sec
Weight: 1550 grains
Energy: 40956 ft-lbs
maximum effective range vs aerial target: 2000ft

The 30x165mm cartridge cartridge (used in the russian autocannon)
Velocity: 2822 ft/sec
Weight: 6020 grains
Energy: 106429 ft-lbs
maximum effective range vs aerial target: 3900ft

note the muzzle velocity of the two cartridge, and note the maximum effective range of them both... the reason why the 20mm have much shorter effective range despite it's higher muzzle velocity is that the 20mm shell loses it's velocity quicker than the 30mm.

This applies to practically all similar rounds and hence why the Cobra's 20mm autocannon has shorter effective range as well than most other gunship's 30mm autocannon, compensated by the Cobra's higher fire rate.

heavier rounds bleed LESS energy downrange not more... for comparable profile.

This is why we use heavier rounds for marksman duty (such as 7.62mm NATO instead of 5.56mm NATO) and why the heavier autocannon 30-40mm loses less velocity as it travel downrange than the the lighter one 20-25mm.

HENCE why they are used often in Self Propelled Anti Aircraft gun replacing the smaller and lighter autocannon of the past model.

Edited by Melcyna, 08 October 2012 - 09:55 AM.

[Rokas]

The most ridiculous Battletech fact?

-There are still persons who keep posting about how unrealistic it is, as if it hadn't already been done do death back in the 1990s.

[Melcyna]

Of course we do it still, it's amusing and entertaining...

especially when someone actually still thought it had semblance of realism which arguably they tried to put in as much as they can with subsequent publications...

the operative word being 'TRIED', since too much of the existing publications have run contrary to be fixed.

[Zakatak]

Vanguard319, on 07 October 2012 - 09:01 PM, said:

There is a skill that makes the user undetectable to sensors and impossible to hit, even when on thier knees right in front of you. Has been used by Morgan Kell, Patrick Kell, Yorinaga Kurita, and possibly Aiden Pryde.

I'm pretty sure that is divine intervention.

Not sure why God would help a bunch of killers and mercs though.

Edited by Zakatak, 08 October 2012 - 09:23 AM.

[Kaziganthi]

Melcyna, on 08 October 2012 - 01:36 AM, said:

Since the mech doesn't auto dodge itself and the mechwarrior is the one with command on where to move in general basis? nope...

but if the mechwarrior orders the mech for example to lean to the right or the left (or otherwise brings the system out of balance)

we CAN and we KNOW how to right ourself back up and keep the balance because all the information is there...

if we are hit by a weapon fire that can topple the mech? we KNOW how to compensate that too automatically just by using the information available from the sensor.

to correct your statement


There is one more information at least that the mech knows... ie: the INERTIA, and this includes pitch, yaw, and roll movement of the mech at any time..

why does the mech knows this? because THIS IS WHAT GYROSCOPE sense... it's the whole point of gyroscope in a sensor function.
(incidentally this is how a cruise missile or other guided missile and vehicle KNOWS where they are even without GPS and camera or radar or any other form of sensor, all they need is a point of reference at the start and an accurate map and using the gyroscope and accelerometers they can know where they are at all time, the system forms what's called INS, Inertial Navigation System)

The question of AI and all that? irrelevant to us... because regardless of that the mechwarrior is the one that still gives the general movement and firing command.

what we're concerned with here is whether the pilot input is even needed for the mech balance or not... to which the answer is ... nope, unless if the mechwarrior has control over the limb movement DIRECTLY of which we know they don't, at least not until direct neural interface came in.

The use of the mechwarrior to send the machine purposely off balance or leaning or similar movement however either for dodging, or because the mechwarrior anticipates movement that he is about to execute (for example he leans to the right a moment before executing a hard right bank) is still valid since the sensor only responds AFTER a response is detected, and it does not know what the mechwarrior will attempt to do in advance.

So the sensor will most certainly give enough information for the mech to maintain balance (common sense since a human balance mechanism is essentially a GYROSCOPE in biological form) even if you banked hard to either side for example, but you might be able to cut the time it takes for the mech to bank itself by purposely putting yourself off balance to the right moments before you order the mech to bank hard to the right and then correcting the balance again.

What your still missing here is the amount of data that the mech would try and compute to keep itself upright in anything else but standing still. Essentialy humans have our own internal gyroscope "Balance", yet when we fall asleep or go unconcious we fall down. The mechs gyroscope stops this from happening, yet it can't do what is needed to stay balanced during movement or combat. This is where the pilots input is needed via the neural helmet.

Edit: Without the sensory input from the pilot, everytime he/she tried to correct the mechs movement via joystick/peddles to dodge attacks in split seconds, the gyroscope would try to compensate and stop the movement. This is why the helmet is needed to allow the gyroscope to act like human balance.

Edited by Kaziganthi, 08 October 2012 - 11:48 AM.

[Kaziganthi]

Zakatak, on 08 October 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure that is divine intervention.

Not sure why God would help a bunch of killers and mercs though.

It was called Phantom Mech Ability actually.

[Melcyna]

Kaziganthi, on 08 October 2012 - 11:19 AM, said:

What your still missing here is the amount of data that the mech would try and compute to keep itself upright in anything else but standing still. Essentialy humans have our own internal gyroscope "Balance", yet when we fall asleep or go unconcious we fall down. The mechs gyroscope stops this from happening, yet it can't do what is needed to stay balanced during movement or combat. This is where the pilots input is needed via the neural helmet.

Edit: Without the sensory input from the pilot, everytime he/she tried to correct the mechs movement via joystick/peddles to dodge attacks in split seconds, the gyroscope would try to compensate and stop the movement. This is why the helmet is needed to allow the gyroscope to act like human balance.

??? hold on a second,

a human internal balance is in fact a gyroscope indeed for all intent and purpose, and the information a gyroscope can detect and provide is more or less the same... short of an accelerometer, which we also have.

put the two together (gyroscope + accelerometer) and the mech knows pretty much the same thing as we do as far as balance is concerned (and this is pretty much mandatory since you cannot even remain standing still upright without them)

the only thing it doesn't know is the foreknowledge of a movement order the mechwarrior wants to make.

For a movement gait though this is not in fact necessary since the simple fact that it's a GAIT, means there is a pattern that is established. Nor does the pilot control the gait movement DIRECTLY (since that imply the pilot has direct control of the limb exact movement which we know they don't have).

So let's take an example of a walking gait, the mechwarrior throttles up and the mech enters a walking gait for that speed... the gait is already known and patterned and is essentially automatic, and as the mech moves each leg to walk the gyro and accelerometer would be feeding the mech with essentially THE SAME THING as what a human balance mechanism tells them, and until the mechwarrior intends to change the movement pattern there should be in fact zero need for his input (balance or otherwise).

Logically the mech should also know more information of the terrain itself that it's stepping on, but that's another story.

Some ppl seems to think that a walking or running gait is some sort of an art...

no it's not, it's a GAIT... it has a pattern, logical pattern taken with a good reason... granted that there are technically many patterns one can take to make similar movement attempt (not all of which are good or efficient), and since the mechwarrior does not dictate the limb movement of the mech directly (it has no input device to do so until the introduction of direct neural interface) it only makes sense that the gait pattern is built into the mech motive controller, for any pattern taken the mech should pretty much in fact have all the information it needs to maintain it's own balance subject to the limit of the hardware (ie: walking with one leg off a cliff is asking for it).

Mind you that a human does NOT necessarily even KNOW the optimal gait pattern (part of what differentiate us from runners who adopt proper running gait). So for any one specific pattern taken, the mechwarrior foreknowledge isn't even necessarily useful as far as balance is concerned, they are still useful however when they intend to make the mech enter a different pattern ahead of the time.

Edited by Melcyna, 08 October 2012 - 05:03 PM.

[Kaziganthi]

Correct, running or walking in a straight line probably wouldnt be that hard for the mech to work out. Look at the robots currently in Japan. They can get one to dance...sort of. Its when they have to actually mimic the movements of a human in combat situations that it would start to get tricky, and thats where the input from the mechwarrior via the neural helmet would come in. Your still only focusing on the mech walking or running. What about dodging, rolling, jumping, crouching all while giving/taking fire and reciving impacts from weaponry. Just because we can mimic it in a video game, wouldn;t mean a joystick, rudder and throttle would in actuality.

Your also forgetting that the neural helmet is also the mechs security system. Each mech is attuned to a particular persons brainwave patterns. Without the proper pattern, you cannot gain access to the mech. In some regiments they have them assigned to multiple warriors, or have the mechs movement enabled but not the weapon systems.

Point in fact is when Hanse Davion was replaced with a doppleganger, the only way they could work out who was the real Hanse Davion was to get him to pilot his Battlemaster. If I remember correctly (been a while since I've read the book), the copy could not even get the mech to move, whilst the real Hanse could.

In the Camacho's Caballero, Cassie Suthorn was able to make Kali McDougals mech walk but not shoot.

Edited by Kaziganthi, 08 October 2012 - 09:32 PM.

[Melcyna]

battlemech ??? roll???... (iirc, that's not actually possible because for whatever reason their armor breaks apart from low impulse pressure which makes me wonder why they don't just detonate a thermobaric warhead near a mech to strip it naked)

crouching, and jumping are both the same in that they are movement with clear pattern and it makes no sense either why you need the pilot balance to help that.

let's fix the idea one by one, the problem we have in the real world is not figuring out how to sense balance with our robots or other machines (we use gyroscope and accelerometer to balance MANY THINGS, and we've been doing so for decades)

Our problem primarily is HOW to actually make a limb with the movement range sufficient to replicate the necessary action, and how to get a power storage of sufficient density that can power the unit. We LITERALLY do NOT HAVE storage unit that can power the unit should it attempt to run (energy consumption of a running gait will burn through the energy reserve we have quickly), but we most certainly KNOW what gait it needs to take to do so ASSUMING the limb is capable of performing the movement because this is EXACTLY what gait analysis tells you and we already researched this and analyzed it since eons.

We KNOW from the information sensed by gyroscope and accelerometer, precisely what the attitude of the unit is... and thus what it's state of balance is at any point up to the present time.

The question is how to achieve the balance that we want based on the state that the sensor tells... and here we have a problem in the real world because our synthetic limbs are for the most part limited in their capability. Additional Gyroscope serves an extra purpose here to help produce the torque that can help stabilize the unit, but by and far our limbs are still relatively restrictive in it's degree of freedom.

That the neurohelmet works for security as well though? sure... i have nothing against that, nor do i have any objection of it's use... but mechwarrior balance being necessary for the battlemech to move in general? That makes no sense...

[Jukebox1986]

Zakatak, on 08 October 2012 - 09:19 AM, said:

I'm pretty sure that is divine intervention.

Not sure why God would help a bunch of killers and mercs though.

Laughed my *** of at this. xD

[Atlessa]

Melcyna, on 08 October 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

[stuff about Gyros]

Don't quote me on this, but as far as I know, the so-called Gyroscope in a Battlemech doesn't work as a Sensor*, but ONLY as an actor, to try to counter outside forces that might topple the 'Mech.

I will try to find references to this... but don't hold your breath.
If it is true, however, I'm pretty sure that explains why they need to 'tap' the pilot's sense of balance...



*Just like the so-called Heat Sinks are actually NOT heat sinks, but heat pumps...


Edit: from Sarna.net

Gyroscope

The gyroscope is the device that provides the swift, fine changes in force necessary to keep a BattleMech upright. Even the best 'Mech actuators are too slow and imprecise to apply the force needed to keep a 'Mech upright. Without an active gyroscope a BattleMech can not move - it will fall over and will not be able to get up.
A 'Mech's gyro system consists of a balance-sensing mechanism and a force-generating mechanism.


Yeah, so scratch all I said... XD

Edited by Atlessa, 09 October 2012 - 08:32 AM.

[Kaziganthi]

Melcyna, on 09 October 2012 - 03:54 AM, said:

battlemech ??? roll???... (iirc, that's not actually possible because for whatever reason their armor breaks apart from low impulse pressure which makes me wonder why they don't just detonate a thermobaric warhead near a mech to strip it naked)

I suggest you read the books with the Camacho Caballeros, they did things with mechs people didn't think possible as they were expert pilots, their gunnery skills were lacking however.

Edited by Kaziganthi, 09 October 2012 - 09:26 PM.

[Melcyna]

Kaziganthi, on 09 October 2012 - 11:09 AM, said:

I suggest you read the books with the Camacho Caballeros, they did things with mechs people didn't think possible as they were expert pilots, their gunnery skills were lacking however.

You can quote it if you like, i mean... my time of buying BT books are over a long time ago, and i sure as hell aint gonna buy one or find one in this day and age where there are excellent selections of soft and hard sci fi materials over just for that

then we can just dissect the material layer by layer and see how far we can go before we smack into another anomaly.

Atlessa, on 09 October 2012 - 08:29 AM, said:

Spoiler

Don't quote me on this, but as far as I know, the so-called Gyroscope in a Battlemech doesn't work as a Sensor*, but ONLY as an actor, to try to counter outside forces that might topple the 'Mech.

I will try to find references to this... but don't hold your breath.
If it is true, however, I'm pretty sure that explains why they need to 'tap' the pilot's sense of balance...



*Just like the so-called Heat Sinks are actually NOT heat sinks, but heat pumps...

Edit: from Sarna.net

Gyroscope

The gyroscope is the device that provides the swift, fine changes in force necessary to keep a BattleMech upright. Even the best 'Mech actuators are too slow and imprecise to apply the force needed to keep a 'Mech upright. Without an active gyroscope a BattleMech can not move - it will fall over and will not be able to get up.
A 'Mech's gyro system consists of a balance-sensing mechanism and a force-generating mechanism.


Yeah, so scratch all I said... XD

Wouldn't make sense anyhow if they didn't have both... gyroscope basically function as a sensor and as an inertia resistance through the same principle, except reversed depending on which one it needs to be... well not exactly reversed, but for simplicity let's leave it at that. If they know how to make it function as one, they know how to make it function as the other...

UNLESS they are suggesting that gyroscope tech is a lostech... which would be... well... quite ludicrous to say the least since that's a tech so old they essentially regressed to 19th century tech level if they didn't even know that.

Edited by Melcyna, 10 October 2012 - 01:15 AM.

[KalebFenoir]

The Gyro is the what keeps the mech upright, but without something telling it which way is 'up' or 'left' or 'right', it can't do its job. Hence the Neurohelmet taking the pilot's sense of balance (as distorted as it is being in a 30 foot tall giant robot), and uses that to direct the Gyro. If the mech starts tilting the wrong way, the pilot's inner ear would detect it, and he'd probably yank on the controls to go the opposite way. But if the Gyro wasn't able to shift the center-of-gravity that direction, the mech might still go over.

Lately, I've been kind of picturing a Gyro like that giant ball bearing they have in that one enormous skyscraper in Hong Kong (or was it Thailand? I can't recall). When the building leans one way in the wind, the ball moves the other direction (or rather, it stays perfectly centered in its cradle while the building moves away from it), and ends up forcing the building to bend back a bit. If you removed the ball bearing from the building, the higher-level winds would eventually snap or bend the structure, and it'd come down.

Course, when I actually PICTURE a Gyro, I keep thinking of a really incredibly complex version of the gyro toy you buy in shops. That one you tie a string around and then let loose like a top. XD Just way more complex.

Gyros might be a form of losTech, but one that can be reproduced easier. It took them a very long time to even think of making a Heavy Duty gyro, but that might be because no company wanted to take responsibility for retooling their construction lines to create a hypothetical and possibly costly mistake.

[Skylarr]

Would the Gyro be like a Gyrostat?

Gyrostat

A gyrostat is a variant of the gyroscope. It consists of a massive flywheel concealed in a solid casing. Its behaviour on a table, or with various modes of suspension or support, serves to illustrate the curious reversal of the ordinary laws of static equilibrium due to the gyrostatic behaviour of the interior invisible flywheel when rotated rapidly. The first gyrostat was designed by Lord Kelvin to illustrate the more complicated state of motion of a spinning body when free to wander about on a horizontal plane, like a top spun on the pavement, or a hoop or bicycle on the road. Kelvin also made use of gyrostats to develop mechanical theories of the elasticity of matter and of the ether; these theories are of purely historical interest today.

In modern times, the gyrostat concept is used in the design of attitude control systems for orbiting spacecraft and satellites. For instance, the Mir space station had three pairs of internally mounted flywheels known as gyrodynes or control moment gyros.

[Suskis]

at least in Gundam they invented the Minowsky particles to give a reason for mecha close combat

[ExSlyder]

The neurohelmet is what I find as the most far flung piece of tech in the Battletech/MW universe.

While very basic BCI's exist, (Brain Computer Interface), we are only beginning to understand how the brain functions. Some examples of current tech uses an EEG reader, but it is really only detecting any specific TYPE of activity, as opposed to actually interpreting what the activity. Examples are The Star Wars force trainer and the game Mindlink. They use an EEG sensor on the forehead as well as a reference and ground sensor and pretty much read if there is a lot of Alpha brainwave activity then raise the ball. It doesn't matter if you think about the ball or think about playing with your friends. It's just reading IF there is activity.

There have been tests where people have had 64 channel EEG sensors and the navigated an object through 3D space. But the responsiveness is far from "thought reading" used to get a mech to interface to interface with its pilot.

Other examples of the tech is Nekomimi and the not yet released Shippo by Neurosky, the Nekomimi are cat ears that respond to brain activity, and Shippo is a tail. Damn those Japanese for all of their Kawaii thinking. LOL

Akk! I just realized I sound like a commercial.

ExSlyder

Edited by ExSlyder, 11 October 2012 - 07:26 AM.

[CrashieJ]

The General Motors Corporation invented the first self-sustaining fusion reactor in 2020
They seem to be having trouble with lithium-ion batteries blowing up... i don't think they can handle Deuterium without major property damage.

Fusion reactors seem to be in progress, but not by GM.

...whomp whomp...

Edited by gavilatius, 11 October 2012 - 06:53 PM.