75 replies to this topic

[SodaFizz]

LordDeathStrike, on 13 April 2012 - 02:14 AM, said:

think of the possibilities that could be harrnessed with fusion power.

instead of bulky heavy armor, we could engineer mechs with 2 power plants, 1 for moving and weapons, a 2nd for charged force field armor. charged force field armor is quite simple, you take highly conductive armor plateing, it only needs to be a few molecules thick, and does not need to be very tough, gold foil would work very well. this skin as it were, is then charged with the massive power output of a fusion reactor across the various band spectrum of em fields.

the effect would be armor that can completely repel laser particle slug and missiles attacks that have less incoming energy then the armor is outputting. you would effectively need to over come the armors shield field to breach it!

honestly with fusion powered shields, i dont see normal mech mounted weaponry breaching them, it would take orbital bombardment with things like large asteroids going very fast slamming into the mech to do it!

but then that would be kind of unbalanced, just give me one of these mechs so i can punish anyone caught cheating in game

Sadly the ability to repel ballistic and energy based weapons does not work in real life as swimmingly as your ability to repel the opposite sex with your personality and hygiene. Battletech is about walking tanks and strategy and role based warfare. What you are describing sounds like robotech, and is unbalanced. Wait until reactive/Laser Reflective armor comes out that will change gameplay dramatically.

[CMDR Sunset Shimmer]

OP your idea was done once... in Mech Assault.

Which the Battletech/Mechwarrior community HATES!

[CocoaJin]

Meh, it would be easier to just polish the armor to a high gloss...it'll reflect much of the energy away for much cheaper.

Plus, Im not sure how effective magnetic fields are at disrupting the path of light. There might be something to it, the US and more so Russia(Soviets), experimented with ionic fields around aircraft as an early implementation of Stealth. Somehow the charged aura would hinder RADAR returns(I think it would absorb the radio waves)...it worked, but it was hard to be stealthy when you looked like a glowing comet streaking across the sky.

It also made it impossible for the aircraft to use its own RADAR also...or even its radios.

[Cordel Ordo]

Technoviking, on 17 April 2012 - 03:02 PM, said:

runs on bannana peels and fires scrap metal from a cannon.

I didn't know the Orks were in battletech. lol

[Dymitry]

They invented a game like this already, although you can fight as an elemental only.

It is called Halo.

[MustrumRidcully]

The coolest settings work without (energy) shields.

Exhibit 1) BattleTech
Exhibit 2) Battlestar Galactica (TNS)

The coolest space ships also have no shields.
Exhibit 1) Earth Force ships, Babylon 5
Exhibit 2) Battlestar Galactica (TNS)



Mustrum "Okay, actually I am more of a Star Trek game, but when it comes to space battles, I like my ships surviving nuke hits even without some magical shield tech" Ridcully

[Nebfer]

Well at a quick glance battletech seems to be low tech and is some ways that may be true, but a closer look Battletech is fare more advanced that current day tech, or at lest equal to it...

Medical Tech, advanced prosthetics that can fully mimic the limb it replaces are not uncommon and can be enhanced to have hidden (or not so hidden) tools and or weapons. They can replace Eyes with at lest half decent artificial ones (and likely just as good as the real deal), the same with other organs. The Clans can regrow limbs if they want to.
The average innersphere wide life expectancy is 90 years of age, the best country's today only get to about 82 (world average is 67, which per b-tech is a near back water world). With many worlds in B-tech that are well off having expectancy in into their 120s, on Terra it self it's 150, with the retirement age above 100 years and in fact it's possible (and not unheard of) for a woman to have kids in her 90s!

3d holographic media is wide spread and common and holographic gaming consoles are not unknown (one such example is the Nashan Electronics’ SpectraQuad-67 Game Sphere entertainment system), Virtual reality systems is also not unheard of. Memory capacity's for noteputers and thumb drives is in the double digit gigabyte levels (the noteputer has a capacity of up to 50 gigs, and is slimier to todays hand held computers and what naught, not bad for something written 10 to 15 years before they even existed...). While mainframes have capacity's in the petabyte level (like the 3025 era quote indicating capacity's of 100 billion books) and then theirs the yottabyte computer that was part of Terras SDS network WoB set up... Though memory capacity is not every thing...

B-tech has viable solid state lasers as battlefield weapons, small and light enough to be used as side arms and the vehicle weapons have energy out puts that are easily in the triple digit megawatts to low gigawatts! These weapons make some of the more advanced real life battlefield lasers look like toys.

They use Proton chain reactions in their fusion reactors (the same as the suns) something that is currently not on our R&D radar at this time, current fusion projects are focusing on Tritium or deuterium based fuels. On to of this their aircraft have extreme fuel effecencys with their fusion reactors & drives...

An interesting thing to note is by 2007 B-tech verse had built a space station that had orbital construction yards and a crew of 2000! Not to mention SDS capability's (it took them less than 15 years indicating a far batter orbital lift capability). They also built more Virginia class subs than we did.

So B-tech is not that low tech as it would seem.

Edited by Nebfer, 10 September 2012 - 01:32 PM.

[Monsoon]

Oh sure let's worry about lasers having colours. What I want to know is why I can't write my name with a small laser on the surface of the moon? A laser with a distance of only a few hundred metres and a difference if it's a small versus a large?

But if you're really put out by the color effects, don't worry they're all invisible, it's just the advanced HUD displays in our cockpits that colour and identity them to make our piloting lives easier. Just keep telling yourself this as you go to sleep...

[Sam Slade]

LordDeathStrike, on 13 April 2012 - 02:14 AM, said:

think of the possibilities that could be harrnessed with fusion power.

*turns on fusion powered magnetic field generator... is repelled rapidly by planets magnetic field... dies...creates first intersteller mech*

[Zakatak]

Keep in mind that the energy output of a M1A2 Abrams gun is about 30 megajoules, while the puny little Small Laser is estimated to be 150 megajoules. 1 damage = 50 megajoules, if you do the math (3 shots of PPC vaporize 2 tons of steel/boron-nitride/carbon nanotubing/ceramic armor). Basically, a Fafnir can fire 2500MJ of kinetic energy out both barrels while still keeping balance. Approximately the same yield a modern destroyer-class ship has when it fires all of its 16-inch naval cannons at the same time (which can violently rock the ship, I might add).

Battletech only looks like a used-future. Advancements in weapons, armor, power generation, and genetic technology are pretty big leaps. Oh, and the Davion's have a giant holodeck on Solaris that mechs fight inside. All the "stupid crap" like 300m engagement ranges only serve as a way to make gameplay fit on a tabletop boardgame. I have no doubt if BTech was brought to life, mechs would be nailing eachother at 10km.

Edited by Zakatak, 10 September 2012 - 06:20 PM.

[xRaal]

Helmer, on 13 April 2012 - 04:35 AM, said:

I'm guessing you don't want to hear about my idea for 'mechs with LaserSwords........





Cheers.

if oyu want a melee weapon go buld oyurself a hatchet battlemech. it comes fully equiped with, no not a laser sword,BUT A NICE GiANT METAL HATCHET! fret for crushing those pesky scout mechs heads, just turn,swing you're battlemech arm out and let inertia do the rest! Downside:it has like..one or two RANGE weapons tops.

[Justin Xang Allard]

Well first em fields require coils to work so the more fields used require more generators. Also the would interact with each other. Using sensors would be impossible. Shielding all the electronics for the computers and weapons would be a daunting task. Em fields would not stop lasers or ppcs.

[acheronlv426]

I just want a "STOP THAT!" cannon.

[Strum Wealh]

Justin Xang Allard, on 10 September 2012 - 06:29 PM, said:

Em fields would not stop lasers or ppcs.

Well, sufficiently strong EM fields will adversely affect the effectiveness of the latter.

Behold, the Blue Shield Particle Field Damper!

[Nebfer]

Zakatak, on 10 September 2012 - 06:07 PM, said:

Keep in mind that the energy output of a M1A2 Abrams gun is about 30 megajoules, while the puny little Small Laser is estimated to be 150 megajoules. 1 damage = 50 megajoules, if you do the math (3 shots of PPC vaporize 2 tons of steel/boron-nitride/carbon nanotubing/ceramic armor). Basically, a Fafnir can fire 2500MJ of kinetic energy out both barrels while still keeping balance. Approximately the same yield a modern destroyer-class ship has when it fires all of its 16-inch naval cannons at the same time (which can violently rock the ship, I might add).

Battletech only looks like a used-future. Advancements in weapons, armor, power generation, and genetic technology are pretty big leaps. Oh, and the Davion's have a giant holodeck on Solaris that mechs fight inside. All the "stupid crap" like 300m engagement ranges only serve as a way to make gameplay fit on a tabletop boardgame. I have no doubt if BTech was brought to life, mechs would be nailing eachother at 10km.

Actually that would be some what incorrect.

The M829A3 round fired by the Abrams only has a 10kg projectile (of which 3kg is the sabot and falls away after leaving the barrel), current MV is 1,555m/s, for a Ke of 12.1 Megajoules (of which only 8.47 MJ will have any real effect).

Also the energy behind a energy weapon and a kinetic one while using the same units will have different numbers and results, the values for three PPCs vaporizing nearly two tons of armor will not translate the same for kinetic weapons. For example a small laser having a yield of 150 megajoules is 50 megajoules per damage point (note to fully melt the armor to a value of a small laser would equal about 600 megajoules), however a Gauss rifle flinging it's 125kg slug at say 2500m/s will have a yield of 390 megajoules (rough value of a 16 inch naval gun) or ~26 megajoules per point, which is nearly half that for the laser.

Also their are no 16inch guns on modern ships, and the Iowas have been retired.