New weapon ideas for Star League

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DavidG
06/29/15 07:25 PM
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Hello, I'm new here, but I have played BT since it changed its name from Battledroids. I have been thinking lately about the Star League and how they in proved their weapons. Example being upgrading the PPC into a better weapon the ER-PPC. All the upgrades to weapons seem to just increase firepower, accuracy, or range. Has anyone thought about improving a weapon by just miniaturizing and Compacting the design. The Clans did this with most of their weapons while increasing range and firepower. My thought is what about the Star League doing something similar but just making weapon systems lighter and more compact without changing the range or damage or heat buildup. I thought about this for quite a while and these are the design ideas I have come up with. Also, as a note, I use fractional accounting.

Improved PPC - 6.00 tons, 2 crits, No Minimum.
Improved Lg Laser - 4.00 tons, 1 crit.
Improved Med Laser - 0.75 tons, 1 crit.
Improved Sm Laser - 0.25 tons, 1 crit.
Improved AC/2 - 5.00 tons, 1 crit.
Improved AC/5 - 7.00 tons, 3 crits.
Improved AC/10 - 11.00 tons, 6 crits.
Improved AC/20 - 13.00 tons, 9 crits.
Improved LRM 5 - 1.50 tons, 1 crit., Minimum 3
Improved LRM 10 - 3.75 tons, 1 crit., Minimum 3
Improved LRM 15 - 5.25 tons, 2 crits., Minimum 3
Improved LRM 20 - 7.50 tons, 4 crits., Minimum 3

As you can see, most of the designs lose 25% mass and one critical space. The improved PPC's weight wasn't decreased as much to compensate for the refined focus which removed the range minimum. The improved small laser by far got the best miniaturization.
The idea behind this is that in the closing days of the Star League Era some manufactures tried to improve on existing designs but these came during the collapse of the Star League with only a few examples of each of the weapons making it to any units. Most of the designs were lost during the fighting to take back the Terran Hegemony. A few factories in the Rim Worlds Alliance had also geared up to produce the new weapons but this was not meant to be as the SLDF destroyed the industrial base. But these designs laid the seeds that the Clans built upon when improving their own designs.


Ok, tell me what you think. All ideas are welcome. Thanks.
ghostrider
06/29/15 11:24 PM
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The tro 3050 original printing had the clans improve the weapons by one crit with the minimum being one. It was removed in later printings. I believe they did that with weight as well, but its been a while since I seen the original printing.

I do see you did not add in the other weapons that the star league used such as the gauss rifle, streaks, narcs and such.
There were a few ideas about ac's and their weight making them hard to deal with when coupled with the limited amounts of shots. Most energy weapons seem to be preferred as they don't run out of shots. No ammo explosions either.

I could see something like this helping them upgrading weapons, though they have er lasers in the league. The clans made them better in the 300 years they were around before invading.
Maurer
06/30/15 02:51 AM
45.48.53.140

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The problem with reducing the weight and critical is that is removes the usefulness of the standard weapons and pushes mechs more into the land of weapon boats with the additional free tonnage. I would say if the penalty for a lighter weapon is more heat a(while removing part of the loader system and some heat reduction material to make the LRM-20 25% lighter resulted in a more tightly compacted design - the new loading system is so close to the missiles that when launched, part of the waste heat is directed back into launcher mechanism.)
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DavidG
06/30/15 09:35 PM
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The idea for any new weapons is to replace the weapons that preceded them. These weapons were designed to represent a different approach to weapon design. The back story was to limit when these weapons were available and in use, which is also limited to only a handful of mechs. These weapon ideas were to represent how the Clans were able to make their weapons smaller and include the increases in damage and range. As ghostrider said, they had about 300 years to combine the best of both thought on weapon development. Thanks for you comments though as I do see your point also.

I also forgot to include some other equipment that I was including with these weapon designs.

Improved MG - 0.25 tons, 1 crit.
Improved CASE - 0.25 tons, 1 crit.

I was also thinking about electronic equipment too.

Improved ECM - 1 ton, 1 crit., otherwise same as std. ECM.
Improved Active Probe - 1 ton, 1 crit., otherwise same as BAP.
Targeting Computer - 1 ton/1 crit. per 3 tons of weapons.

The idea behind these weapons is that by 3050 or later they are becoming out dated in their own right. Yes, you can put a few more weapons on a standard mech, but this will not really offset the Clans advantage.
ghostrider
06/30/15 11:42 PM
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I would think that having some advanced equipment for specific mechs would be the mech had the ecm/improved ecm as part of the actual mech electronics, and not some add on. Same thing with a probe.

Maybe something like the erppc that did 11 or 12 points of damage, but only had say 30 built for testing. They didn't make it into anything other then the testing range brackets.
Might have like 2 less range to it.

I could see them having the beginings of the alloy that allows the missile launchers to be maybe 3/4th the weight instead of half. Say a pair of lrm carriers that were testing it.

Maybe they did find a way to decrease the weight of the ac's but the prototypes were destroyed when the test area was nuked. The formula was thought lost in the rebellion that destroy the star league, and gave birth to the clans. Might be the data vault they were in was finally found intact.
DavidG
07/01/15 12:22 AM
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Ghostrider, that is what I was thinking about. I have been toying with a idea for a campaign where the characters follow clues to a planet of the old Rim World Republic where some of these weapons were being developed. There I would have them find a world that had be destroyed by having it's air purification plants bombed out by the SLDF. Basically, the star ports were nuked and the small population was left to die. They would find a lot of mechs and vehicles that have been left out to deteriorate in the hostile climate and weather. No plant or animal life is left on the planet. In the remains of the factory complex would be a small group of prototype mechs with the new tech in cocoons waiting for a dropship that never came. I was thinking 10 to 12 cocoons with random rolls to see if the mechs and vehicles inside are still salvageable. This could also have been an assembly area and have details where the factories that originally produced the items were.
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/01/15 07:24 AM
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Its very costly to travel to a dead world and by 3025 one would assume that any planet was picked clean long ago. There would have to be some really credible source of information that there is something there and there is some reason it had not been picked clean in the last 300 years to be willing to pay the expense to travel there.

One possible idea is that they jumped into a dead solar system that is not visited often at all to recharge like once every few years. Wail there there was a malfunction in the jumpdrive and during the long wait someone happen to detect a very week signal that only lasted a moment do to the signal not broadcasting very often for some reason. No one investigated the source of the signal before do to the solar system is visited very rarely and the signal is broadcasted very rarely. And on the extremely rare times that someone just happen to be in system when the signal was broadcasted and someone happen to hear it the jump ship crew where to busy to jump to the next system to bother with it. Since your players heard it and happen to have the time to investigate do to the jumpship will take a long time to fix they do so.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
ghostrider
07/01/15 11:45 AM
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Natural disasters on a planet would help as well, such as an earthquake brought down part of a mountainside that was sensor baffled. Or an ecm unit finally shut down as a fusioin reactor powering ran out of fuel.

Another could be the lake it was in breached its banks and drained allowing someone to finally find it.

Another is a research asteroid that was blown out of it's orbit finally showing up close enough to a jump ship to spot it.

There are a few ways to get it going. As for ever planet being picked clean, Helm, Clinton, Galtor and a few others the developers had seen fit to make hidden caches on that no one found until the grey death legion, crastons irregulars and the galtor campaign were done.
Places in the free worlds league have 'secret' bases being made by the factions the government doesn't know about. If those that built it died with the initial attacks, you may not know just how large the base is, or even if it was destroyed.
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/01/15 06:42 PM
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I dont know about the others but the Grey Death Legion one was really far fetched and not all that believable.

I mean really, the base commander hollowed out an entire mountain which should have taken years if not decades and not a single person left the planet that knew of the works before the bombing!?! Thousands if not tens of thousands of troops that rotated off the planet before the bombing should have known of the hollowing out of the mountain.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
ghostrider
07/01/15 07:56 PM
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It could have been part of a larger base, and no one knew about that part. Yeah it sound a bit far fetched, but then again remember the base we are talking about.

Cranston was part of wolf's dragoon, which as anyone that has an idea of the game comes from clan wolf. They were securing bases in their records that the innersphere didn't know about. Their stronghold on Clinton was one of those bases.
The galtor campaign was set up as a planet the fed suns and combine were fighting over as a border world. Davion used rumors to get house Kurita to attack it. Only during the attack they found an untouched base on the world.

And this isn't even suggesting a moon or asteroid base having the intel, since the nukes may have destroyed any chance of the base personnel of getting a message out and died there.
Without all the free media and movies, there are a couple of bases in the united states that people would not know of otherwise. It is not unreasonable for anyone that knows the location of it going up together in a nuke explosion. The fact that someone might have found the base could have already been news worthy, but they could have missed a satillite base.
Yeah, it is stretching it some. But go back to the fact they have comps that can shoot a missile out of the air, but not a 12 meter tall 6 meter wide mountain of metal that is standing still with a large degree of accuracy.
DavidG
07/02/15 10:27 PM
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From the storyline for Battle Tech, there are remains of Star League bases everywhere, but like the U.S. government, they hid bases everywhere. In the fluff, they were indeed hidden under lakes, in mountains, in hollowed out asteroids, etc. Government are able to build bases, and installations and keep them secret. Just remember that even with all the spying going on during WWII, all sides were able to keep massive projects secret to the point that today we're still finding out about secret project and places that have been almost lost to time, and that was only 70 years ago on this planet. Heck, the history channel had a program on what may have been a Japanese A-Bomb developed in the closing days of WWII. The program indicated the they may even have detonated a prototype on Aug. 12th, 1945, in Korea and the home Island didn't even know it had worked. So the Star League having lost bases and installations spread among the star isn't very far fetched.

Also, the weapons I listed really aren't that great since modifying existing mechs wouldn't greatly improve them. Example, if the weapons were exchanged on a Wasp or Stinger, the best thing that they would get would probably be a half ton of armor. Now if you go up in tonnage to say a Warhammer, you save 4.25 tons, which I would put into 3 heat sinks, the new case and 1 ton more armor. Not a real game changer. Yes a slightly more efficient mech, but not a massive change.

Now, if you redesign a mech from the ground up and include the DHS, XL engines, etc., you can get a good increase in firepower or efficiency. An example is the Flashman. With the new weapons, you save 4.25 tons. Which gives you 4.5 tons, since the Flashman was 0.25 tons light. What I would do is add 4 more forward firing improved medium lasers, 2 improved small lasers to the rear and 1 ton more AMS ammo. These mods would require shutting down an assembly line to incorporate which probably wouldn't be done until the weapons proved them selves in battle. But according to the background I wrote, this never came to pass.

Anyway these were ideas that I had for a campaign I am thinking of running. The ideas was for the character to find some of this lost tech, and use if to upgrade some of their mechs since they wouldn't start out with any of the recovered tech from the 3050 era. As the 3050 tech becomes more available the side step in technology will lose it's importance. Any way I only plan on having them find enough equipment to refit 3 to 4 mechs depending on what mechs they have and how many parts they keep as spares.
ghostrider
07/03/15 02:27 AM
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Nice way to get the characters to use it would simply be, you lose a weapon, and this is the only thing available at the time.
If you want to really push it, have the dropship malfuncion on the way down, forcing a hot drop. Maybe the mechs get damaged and have to replace a laser or some such thing. The ship lands ok with some minor damage. One possible scenario might have a drop ship in a hidden cavern, but the nuke or even an early bomb, possibly sabotague or poison gas, killed the flight crew before they could get to it.
Even a leak in the fuel lines might have prevented it from powering up. That could give you the means to insert some of the weapons on a dropship, though you might be nasty enough to give them penalties with firing them the first few times. Such as not being used to the quirks.
Evil grin.
DavidG
07/03/15 02:25 PM
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I had a game I ran about 20 years ago that I did something similar but with more advanced tech (ie, ER PPC does 12 dam., ER LL does 10 dam., ER Medium goes to 12 hexes and does 6 dam, etc.) They didn't know it at the time, but they were a cover for an advanced group checking out the Inner Sphere similar to Wolfs Dragoons. To help with their cover, they found old Star League bases that had some Lost Tech. What they didn't know was that it was planted for them to find, so if anyone asked any questions, they would say it was found in an abandoned SLDF base and no one would be suspicious about the equipment. They played for almost 3 years before figuring out who they were really working for. The big clue was when they saw a dropship that no one had ever seen before that had a spinal mount naval PPC.
His_Most_Royal_Highass_Donkey
07/04/15 12:58 PM
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Just because the general public dose not know about stuff that does not mean that a good number of government or military people dont know all about it. When you have high level government people grabbing for power I doubt that things will stay hidden from one side or the other for long. Someone will be willing to sell the information for either money and or power for them self's.

A lieutenant can find his self on the fast track to general just because he served as a work crew supervisor on this out of the way base some years ago that had a catch of weapons.
Why argue if the glass is half full or half empty, when you know someone is going to knock it over and spill it anyways.

I was a Major *pain* before
But I got a promotion.
I am now a General *pain*
Yay for promotions!!!
ghostrider
07/04/15 03:49 PM
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You are correct in that donkey, but are thinking to chivalrous. We are talking about societies that aren't above having the entire construction team aboard a drop ship heading for a party when it explodes, or maybe a weapons malfunction killing them all.

And if remote enough, trying to get out to release that information might be extremely difficult. Though it can still happen.

I would think false reports saying construction was shut down because of a fault line or cave it might cause the whole project to be scrapped, yet someone with their own crews would continue knowing the information is wrong. Something simple like a reactor leak would contaminate the entire area for generations to come, yet it was only enough to set off the alarms. A little pyrotechnics would make those fleeing think the whole thing is sealed off.
But I help keep moving this from designs to ideas outside of this thread and topic forums.
RockJock
07/11/15 03:12 AM
12.180.248.172

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David,

I for one like the improved weapons idea. Most of the 2750/3050 Star League weapons are more compromises then improvements, with some exceptions. For example the LB10X is an improvement with no drawback like increased heat. I could see these being either late SLDF or transitional weapons toward the Clan standards.

One slightly different idea I like is to make Improved versions of only some weapons, mainly classes that did not have a 2750/3050 upgrade (SL, ML, AC/2, AC/20, maybe one SRM and one LRM class).
ghostrider
07/11/15 11:49 AM
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hmmm. Maybe a heavy lrm munition. Does 2 points of damage or possible penetrator round (ie could crit on normal hits), but is harder to hit with, and can only be used in the 5 pack. Any more fired and they run the risk of hitting each other detonating at that point. 20 pack always detonates before it gets to a target, with the 15 pack detonates on a 4+ while the 10 does it on a 6+ (just for an example). Maybe launcher is specialize, so it uses this ammunition only. No others can be used, even normal lrms.
Not sure if it should weight a little more like a streak does.

The small laser could be the start of the heavy laser, ie does 5 points of damage for 3 heat, but only has range of 3 max. Cut the damage and heat by one if it is too powerful the first way, ie 4 damage with 2 heat.
Just thought of it, but the small laser is a heavy laser for damage. Normally does 1 heat for 3 damage.. but that's another problem.
DavidG
07/11/15 08:50 PM
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Another thought I had was for what I called rapid pulse lasers. These weapons shoot a very rapid fire pulses of laser at the target. I had two versions of the weapons. The larger one weighed 6 tons and took up 2 criticals. The smaller one weighed 2 tons and took up 1 critical slot.The damage was based upon the roll to hit. For the larger weapon it did 2 points of damage plus 2 for every number the shot hit by. Example: if the base target number is 7, then if the gunner rolls a 7 the weapon would do 2 points of damage. If the gunner rolls a 10, then the weapon would do a base 2, plus 6 ( the weapon hit by 3 points, 3 X 2 is 6), for a total of 8 points of damage. The smaller weapon does a base 1 point of damage and 1 for every point it hits by. These weapons have a potential of a large amount of damage. Max for the large weapon is a base to hit of 2 with a roll of 12. This would net a damage of 20( base 2, hit by 10, 2 X 10 is 20). Max for the small weapon is 10( base 1, hit by 10, 1 X 10). The heat generated by the weapons are 8 for the large weapon and 4 for the small weapon. The ranges of the weapons are 15 for the large and 9 for the small. The major flaw in the design is that at long range the weapons will usually do minimum damage if they hit. If target numbers are 12, then max damage is 2 for the large and 1 for the smaller weapon. These are weapons that do poorly in the hands of below average mechwarriors, but do great in the hands of experts.
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