950 replies to this topic

[Theodor Kling]

PaintedWolf, on 05 August 2012 - 11:54 PM, said:

Comstar is enormously powerful and does not use its power directly because it is outnumbered 100s or 1000s to 1. It is basically waiting for the Great Houses to destroy each other and then rush in as the religious Saviors of Humanity.

People really underestimate how resilient the Great Houses really are. If you starting looking at the numbers, it becomes apparent for that reason alone why the Clans and WoB never really had a chance. They are Intergalactic Super-States after all. The Four Succession Wars didn't destroy them.

If a simple disaster was all it took to end a Feudal State, well then France, England and Spain would not have survived the Black Plague or Byzantine invasions.

Bloodweaver, on 06 August 2012 - 12:01 AM, said:

Anyway, there's a contradiction. If the Houses are that powerful, then ComStar's power can't really be called "enormous," can it? And if it is enormously powerful, then it shouldn't have much of an issue putting the squeeze on its subjects. It can't be both one thing and its own opposite, at the same time. "Realistically" speaking, there's nothing preventing ComStar from just cutting off all communications to/from a world, inventing its own explanation, and then making it its own. I suspect the WoB was introduced to fill in this gaping hole of logic by making a splinter group of bad guys do it, so that nobody would ask why ComStar themselves hadn't done it yet.

Comstar is powefull, but it does lack numbers. Or the will to directly engange in warfae when manipulation does the trick so much cheaper. Compare it to some powerfull cooperations today. Weapons and Tobako industries come to my mind there. They are powerfull, economicly and to a certain extend politcly.. but they couldn´t fight a war on their own ( despite havign the weapons if it´s a arms manufacturer)

Felix the Cat, on 06 August 2012 - 12:46 AM, said:

Energy density I understand (I have a background in nuclear power and am currently a power plant operator, but "ceatina energy density" is a new one on me (used to seeing energy density in terms of joules per volume, the watts actually threw me for sec 1 MJ = .28 kWh AFAIK). Also, I've seen highly ionized air (ie- atmospheric plasma), all it does is shimmer or distort, similar to air coming off asphalt or sand on a really hot day, it doesn't "glow" in visible wavelengths like other plasmatic materials. Unless you're making the assumption of the possiblity of Cherenkov radiation, which I suppose might be possible with those energy outputs thru atmosphere.

However, even without strict mention in canon, every BT picture showing laser beams is in some wonderfully bright primary color. If you really wanted destructive power from a laser, it'd be either high IR/microwave or X-Ray (yes, X-Ray appears in later canon, tho even X-Ray wouldn't be as efficient in terms of physically destructive as IR/Microwave except against biological material) which wouldn't be very visible.

Sorry about the typo And although called an energy density strictly speaking it was a power density what I named, again sorry.
I´ve seen recodings of a high power pulse laser firing at night.. and it is visible, looks a bit like iron somehwere between white hot and red hot. Of course thats not a simple beam. Those high energy densities come from taking an already powerful laser and trick it into femtosecond pulses. And that one is visible because there are enough molecules/atoms ionized. The white colour is of course a side efect of so many different stuff ionized to different decrees that you get a rather broad spektrum.

Which brings me to tha lasers in space topic: Not only does the huge lag make aiming somewhat dificult ( exept for jump ships who tend to be stationary) but judging from the rest of BT technology Irealy doubt that they would be able to build lasers focused enough to be usable over several light seconds distance. In atmosphere this is not so problematic, because high enough enery deinsities make non linear optics come into play and the beam might become self focusing. But not in space.

And coming back to the Church: Painted Wolf summed it up pretty well. Both strict positions about it are an oversimplification. ( Although it was fun discussing it nevertheless)

[PlagueChampion]

Striker1980, on 31 July 2012 - 12:50 AM, said:

-In the future people forgot that fitting a longer barrel to high calibre weapons gives them longer range. (seriously someone can fit a stupidly complex gauss rifle to a Hollander and it never occurred to them to fit a 120mm high velocity cannon?)

- (hopefully) in the future the person who wrote this quote above comes up with funny jokes instead of making people from the Netherlands rediculous!

[Bloodweaver]

Yes, the medieval Church was neither a spooky secret powermongering cabal of evil, nor a beneficient paragon of virtue. Common wisdom, though, is grossly imbalanced towards portraying it as being an outright enemy of progress and knowledge - as seen in this very thread. I was speaking in context of that Naturally, everything is much more complicated than a few posts could ever go into.

Theodor Kling, on 06 August 2012 - 03:08 AM, said:

Comstar is powefull, but it does lack numbers. Or the will to directly engange in warfae when manipulation does the trick so much cheaper. Compare it to some powerfull cooperations today. Weapons and Tobako industries come to my mind there. They are powerfull, economicly and to a certain extend politcly.. but they couldn´t fight a war on their own ( despite havign the weapons if it´s a arms manufacturer)

Right, but then the question goes in the opposite direction... Seeing as the Houses are each vastly larger than ComStar, why haven't they taken control of their own HPG networks by force? Not even one of them, really? The "politically manipulative secret agents in government" type of explanation only goes so far. Especially in cases like Kurita's, whose members can't even trust each other, much less an outside entity like ComStar.

Another ridiculous point regarding lasers: they're visible in space. Even if they were the type to be visible in an atmosphere due to their effect on it, the only way a directed beam of light could be visible in a vacuum would be if it were no longer directed... and thus no longer a laser.

[Theodor Kling]

Yeah visible lasers in space and sound effects to go with it.. but BT is not alone with that

Back to Comstar: I think most houses seriously thought about grabbing the HPG network... but due to their technoligical decline they probably couln´t maintain it. I think noone liked Comstar, but they all saw it a neccesary evil. They could have taken controll ovr the network earlier on, when comstar was jsut forming, but back then they were so busy with the 1st and 2nd succesion war.. and once Comstar had istablished itself as THE means of interstellar comunication, guarding their secrets rather fircely it was to late.
It is also a logistical problem: Even assumed that a house would have been confident to be able to work the HPGs without comstar, the only way to do it without riskign total economic brakdown by interdict is to grab all of them at once. So you have to plan a coordinated strice on instalations on hundreds of planets. With couriers carrying the orders, because as soon as you use a Comstar HPG to send them, your target knows what´s coming and you get death by interdict again.

And to make things even worse: Even if you manage that, you will certainly be itnerdicted, and loose most comunication outside your own borders. So beating comstar would need a concentrated effort of all Houses.. as if that´s gonan happen.

[Shawn Man X]

Octavian Dibar, on 04 August 2012 - 05:23 AM, said:

"Article V -- Urban Warfare Restrictions
No battle shall be waged in an urban area except under extreme circumstances. If the military objective of an assault lies in a city center, attacking troops must ensure that any hostile action taken causes the least possible amount of collateral damage. No attack may be made against any civilian target, for any reason. Civilian targets shall be deemed to include such life-supporting equipment such as water and air purifiers, agricultural assets, or any other item that enables a planet's population to continue their existence."

You just reminded of something that I overlooked at the time, but I had never really looked up. In MechWarrior 2 I'd always just blow everything up that I could. There was a mission where you had to hunt down key buildings in an area and destroy them. So you'd target the buildings then identify them. My first couple times I tried to just go around blowing up all the buildings and would fail the mission, so I started identifying them, and the ones that made you fail were, you guessed it, air purifiers, life support etc.

Edited by Shawn Man X, 06 August 2012 - 03:44 AM.

[Kantoken]

Back to the facts...

- In the far future, mullets are fashionable.
- Shooting the cockpit of a 'mech will rarely result in the pilot being killed.
- The elite of the elite still get scared by the Atlas's cockpit design.

[Mad Adam]

Ezrekiel, on 03 August 2012 - 11:13 PM, said:

BattleMech Machine guns have a TT long range of 90m, and hit much worse on that distance than at 30m.

Guess the means of producing a straight gun barrel is Lostech.

Until it's used by the Rebel Forces.
Oops, wrong universe.

[Chris von Hoff]

An Abrahams tank is heavier then a atlas, nearly twice as fast, shoots further then any BT weapon(including socalled artillery) and has better aim. (and probably higher penetration)
21st century targeting systems read like sci-fi in BT universe (laserguided bombs/missles anyone?^^)

Edited by Chris von Hoff, 06 August 2012 - 04:17 AM.

[Stormwolf]

Chris von Hoff, on 06 August 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

An Abrahams tank is heavier then a atlas, nearly twice as fast, shoots further then any BT weapon(including socalled artillery) and has better aim. (and probably higher penetration)
21st century targeting systems read like sci-fi in BT universe (laserguided bombs/missles anyone?^^)

Battletech is the future of the 80's so to speak, hence the wierd fashion in some places....

[ForTheHive]

PaintedWolf, on 06 August 2012 - 12:21 AM, said:

Oh really, I thought it had a played a critical role in halting the Byzantine Invasions.



Oh I see. So if we had a Nuclear War tomorrow, our technological progression would rapidly accelerate. Maybe the radiation will cause all our computers to mutate and develop super-powers.

Actually the Byzantines didnt invade..They were considering themselves liberating lands lost to German tribe invasions.Remember that at that time, especially at the Justinian era the empire was considered ROMAN , rightful heirs of the whole Roman empire since the west was severely lost to german tribe migrations. The plagues at that era were mainly spread by commerce ,troop engagements and high population increase without the equivelant increase in sanitatory techniques..Constantinople was the new Rome having a popylation of 1 million by that era. Too many people crowed from all the corners of the world ,and boom u have an epidemic/pandemic..Many could blame the german tribal invasions bringing the epidemic to the eastern empire ,since that time had the highest influx of tribes to the Byzantine empire..remember the byzantine riots against their icreasing presence of germanics to the empire..that was the reason the empire turned hellenic and not germanic as the west..

Historians are now coming to consider that plagues were huge factors shaping even more that time states rather than pure military force invassions.


Now to our beloved BT..I cannot understand how the superpowered clans get defeated by a bunch of oppresing ruler kings of feudal based systems..Their populations wouldn't revolt against this IS medieval oppresion to join a legendary force coming to unite them under the name of the Star league?

[Elessar]

Chris von Hoff, on 06 August 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

An Abrahams tank is heavier then a atlas, nearly twice as fast, shoots further then any BT weapon(including socalled artillery) and has better aim. (and probably higher penetration)
21st century targeting systems read like sci-fi in BT universe (laserguided bombs/missles anyone?^^)

An M1A2 Battletank is, with around 70 tons, actually just the weight of a heavy mech...
most modern MBTs are in this weight range (the Leo 2 as well), which also hs something to do with their maneuverability (ability to cross bridges and so on).
It also has an offroad speed that lies within BT ranges (around 50 kph)

Edited by Elessar, 06 August 2012 - 05:20 AM.

[Skylarr]

Melcyna, on 05 August 2012 - 10:43 PM, said:

Considering many grounds on EARTH already fail to support the ground pressure of some tanks and other heavy vehicle, many of which have some of the best ground pressure distribution, the very idea that one will take a LEGGED DESIGN of which are among the WORST design in existence for distributing ground pressure and then scale it up to multi dozen ton weight and make it WALK, and then run essentially destroy any semblance of physical viability.

Melcyna I do not understand why you, and some others, are playing this game? You are constantly telling everyone why this SciFi universe set a thousand years in the future is not possible. because today's knowledge of technology and science.

[Doc Sav]

Kantoken, on 06 August 2012 - 03:52 AM, said:

Back to the facts...

- In the far future, mullets are fashionable.
- Shooting the cockpit of a 'mech will rarely result in the pilot being killed.
- The elite of the elite still get scared by the Atlas's cockpit design.

Not just mullets, but rat-tails with flat tops, long ponytails on dudes, and silver spurs on mechwarrior boots! Lol I have been reading some CBT books and some of the concepts of cool or tough looks are truly cringe-worthy.

[Dymitry]

Urbanmech costs less than 1.5 millions cbills.

Comstar charges data transmission by the kilobyte.

A holodisk full of "OMG SO MUCH data" is 300 gigabites.

[Kellochli]

Dymitry, on 06 August 2012 - 08:35 AM, said:

...Comstar charges data transmission by the kilobyte.

A holodisk full of "OMG SO MUCH data" is 300 gigabites.

Just two more examples of Comstar trying to keep the people down.

[C E Dwyer]

Comstar can send messages at the speed of light, across the galaxy, but touch phones and ipods havn't been invented, neither have crystal clear, mech cockpit HUDs apparently

Edited by Cathy, 06 August 2012 - 09:51 AM.

[Skylarr]

In Time Of War there are some items. But you need to remember the game was designed when that was not around. They are moderinzing some equipment at they go along.

[C E Dwyer]

Kyle (someone) the hero in the first battletech novel, will only scream in pain from the white light in his eye's from the stolen marauders PPC's being fired 15 feet away from the exposed cockpit, and not roasted by the ambient radiation

[Melcyna]

Chris von Hoff, on 06 August 2012 - 04:16 AM, said:

An Abrahams tank is heavier then a atlas, nearly twice as fast, shoots further then any BT weapon(including socalled artillery) and has better aim. (and probably higher penetration)
21st century targeting systems read like sci-fi in BT universe (laserguided bombs/missles anyone?^^)

IT'S ABRAMS..

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY DO AMERICANS KEEP MISSPELLING THE NAME OF THEIR OWN HISTORICAL GENERAL

A B R A M S

NOT ABRAHAMS.

sorry jokes aside... i always wanted to sound like that once,

always curious though why so many americans make the mistake on the names of their own historical figures and names.

I'd like to think that their history lesson in their school education are at least up to par with other developed nations.

Skylarr, on 06 August 2012 - 05:31 AM, said:

Melcyna I do not understand why you, and some others, are playing this game? You are constantly telling everyone why this SciFi universe set a thousand years in the future is not possible. because today's knowledge of technology and science.

That's because unlike some ppl i do not mix up between fun and business, i am well aware of what's plausible and what's non sensical.

But i don't let that get in the way of my enjoyment.

why do i play BT at all? because BLOWING UP STUFF is FUN.

BT MADE NO SENSE? OF COURSE IT MADE NO SENSE, it's A GAME, a soft SCI FI game... not even HARD SCI FI where the author made painstaking research to ensure partial physical plausibility.

What? did you think i expected BT to come up to the level of Heinlein or other hard sci fi writer? of course not...

And you are mistaken, i did not say it's impossible because of today's tech and science..

i POINTED OUT that it's impossible because IT IS ILLOGICAL as they fail to make sense even within their own setting by simply using their own available parameter. But this is to be expected as the writers and maker of the game and lore have to ensure gameplay playability first, and physical viability is hardly a concern (they are not exactly physics major Science department university graduate if i am to take a guess)... it's not like most ppl are educated enough or even care to think deeply enough to realize it made no sense anyhow.

Edited by Melcyna, 06 August 2012 - 10:30 AM.

[C E Dwyer]

The Abrahams tank, was named after the poor fool, Aka Father Abrahams, famous ermm infamous for singing the lyric's of the smurf song

The U.S Marine corp, also has a ground to air point defence system called the Smurfette