23 replies to this topic

[Cola]

In the World of tomorrow the far off 3049 when we want to shoot a guy at long range we use this:
Alone this 11ish pound missile can score a pothole in a dirt road at a range of 1 kilometer. Good thing you get 180 per ton.




Today and over 15 years ago when we want to shoot a guy at long range. we use this:


This distant cousin of the "modern" LRM can level a city block or two at over 1500 kilometers. And you only need one.

Where did we go wrong?

Edited by arden, 24 October 2012 - 01:26 PM.

[Arctic Fox]

No, in the 31st if you want to kill someone from that sort of long range you use one of these. Or sometimes one of these. Depending on your technological capabilities...

[zer0imh]

we didn't go wrong...

this is battletech, where all big freakin robots come true!

[Name48928]

An LRM is not equivalent to a cruise missile.

Tomahawks cost US$569,000 and weigh 2,900 lb each.

If anything, LRMs are equivalent to an MLRS.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLRS

[Xaxius Colnier]

appereantly it was when nuclear proliferation from orbit was the name of the game i mean if you nuked say... America and hit every square inch of it with an actual nuclear blast im sure that youd stop seeing products pop up that were only made in america like ford and dogde cars

so when there are a few planets that promote education and have massive libraries of technical data stored on them including the only copies of backups for the schematics and developmental data for major tecnological components and those planets get turned into Giant ash-piles yeah things happen

Edited by Xaxius Colnier, 24 October 2012 - 01:35 PM.

[Phelan Ward-Kell]

And if we really want to get technical, Battletech was a tabletop board game long before that tomahawk was public knowledge.
Therefore, conceptually the only limitation was their imaginations.

All things considered, they gave us giant friggin robots, so I'll suspend the disbelief of some weapon choices because of that.

[dal10]

actually if you read the sarna articles for LRMs, they say that ECM is extremely prevalent on the battlefield, so likely the more primitive guidance systems (computer tech is weaker in BT than it should be for that time period, by a lot) would not be able to compensate.

[Ruaken DiIlutar]

I thinks its a balance issue- assuming armor and explosives techs advanced at reasonably similar rates, you could take down an Atlas with one or two solid hits from a 31st-century equivalent of the Hellfire. Realistic combat would be fast, bloody and ultimately unsatisfying as a multiplayer game. I however, would thoroughly enjoy seeing a rehash of the LRM/MRM/SRM system whereby an LRM 20, for example, had 20 missiles... PERIOD. HIGH DAMAGE, LONG RANGE, DECENT TRACKING, but TWENTY. none of this nonsense of carrying 1000 missiles in your mech's foot to be launched from its shoulder.

[Zakatak]

The tabletop rules are simply to make the game playable for tabletop, and shouldn't be considered an accurate account of how the Battletech universe would really look like. As for LRM's, let's keep in mind they are under 10kg, and don't hold much fuel, although I'm sure they could still beat 1km. There is laser point defenses in the future that shoot down missiles, so the one you posted wouldn't be viable in 3049.

Once we take physics into the equation, anyone who says that Battletech would lose to the modern military is flat out wrong. I managed to work out the power of Battletech weaponry, and other bored geeks agree with these numbers: 20MJ per point of damage (kinetic), 30MJ per point of damage (missile), 40MJ per point of damage (energy). A gauss rifle is travelling at 2200m/s and has 25 times the power of the gun on an M1 Abrams. In the real world, a battlemech could blow up a tank from 10km away. Autocannons have ridiculously powerful explosives packed in them, nearly bomb-like in comparison to our guns.

Infantry weaponry is stupid powerful in BTech too. 100KJ laser pistol blows up a guys head in one book, thats over 100 times more powerful then an average 9mm. Supposedly .50 cal snipers are hypersonic in the future too, which was stated in another novel. 4 times more powerful then a current .50 cal.

Battletech stomps reality, pun intended.

[Adrienne Vorton]

Arctic Fox, on 24 October 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:

No, in the 31st if you want to kill someone from that sort of long range you use one of these. Or sometimes one of these. Depending on your technological capabilities...

120dmg? okay, how can i stuff that into my lrmlauncher? ^^ don´t tell me i can´t ... i want to... won´t take a no...

hm...can i just fix it on top of a jenner and ram someone? would THAT work? ...

Edited by Adrienne Vorton, 24 October 2012 - 02:08 PM.

[Deathsiege]

Somebodies got their tinfoil hat on too tight lol

[Spheroid]

Zakatak, on 24 October 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

Once we take physics into the equation, anyone who says that Battletech would lose to the modern military is flat out wrong. I managed to work out the power of Battletech weaponry, and other bored geeks agree with these numbers: 20MJ per point of damage (kinetic), 30MJ per point of damage (missile), 40MJ per point of damage (energy). A gauss rifle is travelling at 2200m/s and has 25 times the power of the gun on an M1 Abrams. In the real world, a battlemech could blow up a tank from 10km away. Autocannons have ridiculously powerful explosives packed in them, nearly bomb-like in comparison to our guns.

One must be very careful when making physics based battletech arguments. Kinetic damage of a gauss slug is no different from the damage incurred during melee combat or falls and those are pretty low energy affairs. During a fall a mech suffers one point of damage per ten tons mech weight times the number of elevation levels(6m) fallen.

[Greers]

A 120mm Gun weights about 3 Tons. A 105mm Gu from 1956 weights 1.3 Tons and our MGs in MWO weight 1 Ton. So we basically chainfire a 105mm Gun at our enemies which don't do much damage. So I think most modern tanks wouldn't stand a chance against even a Commando

[Melcyna]

The weight comparison is screwed since BT weight system is COMPLETELY bonkers and screwed... aside of the mech themselves being incredibly underweight for their size.

The weight is especially FUBAR because they often make depiction of mech performing collision with arms or legs that somehow destroy another mech at the point of impact...

But when you use their weight value and their maximum speed possible for known variant, it quickly became clear that there is no way such light (light for the size of the mech anyway) mech even at the top of it's speed can produce sufficient force to do such catastrophic damage depicted in the images of BT publications since the rest of their weapons are supposed to be doing damage SEVERAL DOZEN TIMES more powerful and yet their armor shrug it off.

So yeah, BT numbers? quite bonkers... about as bonker as Star Wars figure (which changes all the time as they get retconned again and again, AND AGAIN)

[Melcyna]

Similarly the weight of the battlemech in BT (which allows us to calculate how much force it should experience when it falls) causes further anomaly when considering that they somehow take damage from falling over heights that shouldn't produce anything near the amount that would damage them otherwise considering their weapons value.

Some BT fans then desperately try to justify it by saying that the armor resist high velocity impact but not a low velocity force very well...

In which case we have a nice little warhead we haven't gotten the chance to use for quite some time in our inventory called HESH, which happens to be QUITE good at producing that kind of shock on the target.

or alternatively...

we could just dig a deep hole... and put a cover on top of it that is thermal proof that can withstand the ground pressure of a tank, and NOTHING more... and guess what will be GUARANTEED to fall into it... yep a certain design resembling a giant humanoid with their legs that produce ginormous ground pressure.

voila... a 21st century PERFECTLY SAFE trap that is guaranteed to disable any mech that steps on it, estimated cost? 20 dollars manpower wage per hole depending on what kind of labor you choose, EU labor laws tend to be quite difficult to squeeze so u'll have to pay extra, and another 20 dollar for the thermal blanket and another 20 for the cover material.

Still have to deal with the ones who has jumpjet and managed to engage it in time before it smacked itself on the floor of the pit of course... but don't worry, we got PLENTTTTYYYYY of arsenal to choose from, to say nothing of the more extreme kind of arsenals.

Spoiler

Zakatak, on 24 October 2012 - 01:50 PM, said:

The tabletop rules are simply to make the game playable for tabletop, and shouldn't be considered an accurate account of how the Battletech universe would really look like. As for LRM's, let's keep in mind they are under 10kg, and don't hold much fuel, although I'm sure they could still beat 1km. There is laser point defenses in the future that shoot down missiles, so the one you posted wouldn't be viable in 3049.

Once we take physics into the equation, anyone who says that Battletech would lose to the modern military is flat out wrong. I managed to work out the power of Battletech weaponry, and other bored geeks agree with these numbers: 20MJ per point of damage (kinetic), 30MJ per point of damage (missile), 40MJ per point of damage (energy). A gauss rifle is travelling at 2200m/s and has 25 times the power of the gun on an M1 Abrams. In the real world, a battlemech could blow up a tank from 10km away. Autocannons have ridiculously powerful explosives packed in them, nearly bomb-like in comparison to our guns.

Infantry weaponry is stupid powerful in BTech too. 100KJ laser pistol blows up a guys head in one book, thats over 100 times more powerful then an average 9mm. Supposedly .50 cal snipers are hypersonic in the future too, which was stated in another novel. 4 times more powerful then a current .50 cal.

Battletech stomps reality, pun intended.

Battletech also fall FLAT on reality, no pun intended...

see the problem is that when they assigned the numbers for all the stuff they kinda forgot of what the numbers side effect are like.

To put an example, a gauss slug does 15 damage, assuming 20MJ per damage point we have 300MJ when the slug was fired... and of course this slug for SOME REASON bleeds out so much energy into the air that it loses enormous amount of energy every meter beyond it's effective range (which is HILLARIOUSLY short for something that's supposed to be carrying 300MJ)...

ehem, sorry sidetracked there... anyway...

The funny thing of course is that when this gauss rifle slug slam into the earth like when they missed and what not... or when the mech takes cover behind terrain, we get what's equivalent to a 19th century cannonball...

WAIT WHAT? 300MJ energy in a kinetic projectile just slammed into the ground and that's all it did????
?????

a kinetic projectile slug with as much energy as a bunker buster slammed into the earth or what not and ... that's all the impact it does?

20MJ in our tank APFSDS round goes RIGHT THROUGH earth berm like butter (and killed a tank on the other side of the 3 meter long berm by skewering it) but for some reason the gauss slug with 300MJ of energy does the equivalent of a dynamite?? with non existent penetration?

What? does the slug loses so much energy from going through 'EARTH' that it can't damage a battlemech afterwards? wow... that's some magical earth capable of absorbing multi hundred MJ of energy like a boss...

Screw FF armor, they need to make an armor out of these earth, magical sandbags and strap them to the mech and tanks.

Edited by Melcyna, 25 October 2012 - 06:36 AM.

[Gies]

lets face it battletech is pretty unrealistic, combat ranges are laughable, the mechs are offerring a far to big target and they are far too slow and cumberson for the future of warfare, but it has to be that way in order to be playable in this kind of style as its intended. And dont get me wrong i like battletech but the only real future technology is the fusionreactor

a more realistic scenario would be the macross franchise and even some gundam shows especially Gundam Unicorn.
Some may ask themselves WHY ?? ill explain
its the reason that both franchises are replacing more or less fighterjets and tanks with these Machines a universal weapon if you want


As far as i can tell the only viable Giant Robot i can think of would have the following specifiations:
-about 5-7 meters high and has a humanly shape, it shouldnt be taller so it can see whats up above and also whats below in the first and 2nd floor of a building without being to big of a target on open ground and being able to see onto most rooftops,
-it would have a very well protected cokcpit without windows located inside the torso or the head, many cameras and backup cameras so visibility is ensured,
-it would be really agile probabely would have a controlsystem thats either controlled by your brainwaves or via a suit the pilot is wearing attached to strings or poles that give the pilot feedback of the touchsensors located on the armor and ballancing, also giving him full control over the machine which then really becomes an extension of his body which is a better option than stiff motions the programmers have to program into the controls and that for every new kind of Robot they build anew....
-it would be very well suited for every kind of heavy terrain like mountains and the city with some sort of cushions under his soles to be able to walk in rocky terrain or rubble which also helps softening the ride and distribute the groundpressure more evenly
- human like hands to be able to carry a great variety of weapons mounted onto grip like structures
-anti missile/rpg systems (i cant remember the name for this system but its already in test/use for tanks but its extremely dangerous for surrounding infantry since its like a surround shotgun shooting steel balls in the direction of the incoming projectile)
-nightfighting capabilities.
-a fusion reactor or a diesel generator or something similar to ensure long missions and atleast being able to be refuled easily.
-since its tall it should also use angled shapes for stealth and the IR camo system i cant remember the firm which produced this system but its consisting of little hexagonal plates that can change their IR radiation output which can also give it a adifferent shape like a car or a man

its a weapon for heavy terrain and urban warfare not the open field a tank would probabely still beat it there

[jbhewitt]

To be honest I'm not sure how in 1000 years in the future we'll be needing to sit in anything that fires lasers.

The future of warfare will be remote and telepresence. I'm not sure how Battletech lore justifies it.

[Melcyna]

They justify it by somehow gathering all the knowledge and blueprints in localized areas and planets and then summarily burning them down.. during succession war.

apparently despite the fact that they have FTL travel and communication, they PREFER TO gather everything including the knowledge into the same basket, and for some reason they don't have any backup of said information even at their central government...

god forbid how their government lunatics work like to do incomprehensible things like that... though technically that sort of makes sense for Liao since they might as well be totally insane in varying degree.

And god knows how they store their information... and for that matter their personnel that are supposed to handle, and deal with the matter are either incapable of making logical deduction and to reverse engineer things in their inventory in the event of the absolute worst case scenario of information loss (that makes no sense).

So the mantra is... Lostech

Common sense? Lostech.. too

[CheeseThief]

The boardgame has rules for modern day weapons or equivilents in the Rifle class weapon. It basically palms it off as being crap and saddles it with -3 damage to anything relevent.


Basically fancy techno future armour has come ahead of weapons tech in the battletech universe, and because fancy future techno armour is so far ahead of the weapons then the military doctrine of the day shifted from survivability to being able to land the most firepower on target as possible and overwhelm the armour. Hence why giant easily targetable robots bristling with guns is apparantly viable in this setting. Basically assume that a AMG-65 Maverick missile which blows modern day tanks to kingdom come to be equivilent to a single LRM which pretty much bounces off things and needs to be fired in bulk, because the writters said so.


Also the Ares Convention forms the basis of the rules of war in the BT universe so military doctrine seems to be actively avoiding weapons which cause excessive collateral damage, at least untill the clans turn up and change the rules. Pre-Invasion there aren't many indiscriminate weapons like ArrowIV's and Swarm LRMs.

Edited by CheeseThief, 25 October 2012 - 10:35 PM.

[Melcyna]

Which technically makes no sense as anything they use to construct the armor is a knowledge that in turn will allow the weapon to defeat the armor itself, and since EVERYONE knows the armor, it logically entailed that the weapons tech that everyone knows would've been able to cope with the armor as well, pound per pound.

This is why exact armor composition and formula for materials are often classified information in the military.

BT's logical fallacy in this then manifested itself in the form of melee and other type of collision between mech where we're given a showcase of mech somehow destroying another mech by ramming them with their fist, leg, etc or melee instruments, all these despite the fact that when calculated based on the mass of the mech or the limb or the weapon, we quickly find out that based on the theoretical energy the armor is supposed to be capable of withstanding, it shouldn't have been damaged much at all by said collision.