ghostrider
09/27/15 03:33 AM
98.150.102.177
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Thought I would start another thread with a few questions as the one threat is getting cluttered.
I asked about the mechs from star league era and how the units would been with the upgraded tech from the star league.
Most said that only the elite units had the tech, but that sounds too conceived or restricted. We know the 2750 mechs had upgraded tech, but I find it unlikely that those are the ONLY units the elites used.
We see some tanks, fighters and such, but not the standard ones the innersphere has been using since the fall of the league. Not even ecm or heatsinks that would be used in any unit in existence. And the fact all the mechs were the same in all the states that made it until they finally started with variants. The fact that all units manufactured in each state did not reflect that states lack of certain resources, IE ppcs in the FWL.
But then again, I have not seen how the dropships were set up for the higher tech. Did the overlords have gauss rifles on them before the IS lost the ability to make them?
Why are they the same in all the houses? The FWL should not have ppcs on any thing they make. Given the flutt for davion, why don't they use more ac's on them?
That should also bleed over the ammunition weapons in the confederation. Costs and lack of manufacturing should dictate them using cheaper weapons and such, with the thought of energy weapons since munitions supplies should be unreliable.
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Karagin
09/27/15 11:44 AM
72.176.176.175
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You bring up a good point, a lot of the higher tech weapons were made by the Houses during the Star League era for their own forces, so the idea that they were all wiped out is a bit far fetched.
Now things like certain ores or types of manufacturing could have been lost access to and thus stops certain things from being made like Endo Steel or Ferro Armor.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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ghostrider
09/27/15 01:08 PM
98.150.102.177
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The loss of endo steel would mean weapon loads and equipment would have had to change as you gained weight from the structure. You could have a locust with a large laser or even erll in the league as a standard weapon, but lose it with the decline in tech.
The basic mechs in the original game were supposed to be hold overs from the league.
I would like to see how they were set up with the higher tech. Simple things like a river being dammed up, might reveal several lost mechs that were lost in that river in the leagues time.
And now the kicker. Why would the clans have the same basic weapons package for their league era mechs?
They had no contact with the innerspher during the decline of tech there, yet they seemed to keep a weapons package similar to the IS. The Phoenix Hawk seems to be the one major exception.
As it was pointed out, none of thier omnis have normal weapons, all are upgrade that have upgrades. Mgs seem to be the main thing that comes to mind, yet they are the lighter versions.
And another thought. Electronics. Would the locust use an ml with 2 mgs if it had ecm? Tag? I could understand an erml to the normal one, but did it carry a mpl? I seriously doubt some of the later units from the league were designed with the low tech equipment.
Now to really screw with the story line. Cranston Snord daughter Rhonda stated in that scenario pack that is very cannon, said they were collecting the caches they knew about, and had star league tech in them. They could not use it until the IS had advanced to it. They said some of them were raided, while others were missed.
I got a feeling it is due to the fact the developers didn't have a clue that they would need to deal with the past when they first made the game. But I hate this crap developers do about making everything possible for the enemy, yet when you get it, nothing works. Or isn't the bad **** weapons it was in their hands.
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Karagin
09/28/15 12:08 AM
72.176.176.175
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I don't disagree with your statement at all, they had stuff there, lots to work with. You bring up some good points.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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ghostrider
09/28/15 02:45 AM
98.150.102.177
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Dumb thought came to mind.
Some of the mechs that used the advanced materials ended when the things like endosteel ran out. The thorn is a good example. Why did they not just remove the endo steel and the case/half ton armor to keep a mech I think is better armed then the stinger or wasp. Lrm 5 and 2 mls. No jets but 4 tons of armor even with half ton removed, but still.
Even just adding the lrm to one of the 2 would make sense.
And lets face it. What caused the issues with the Rifleman? I can understand if it had double heat sinks, but when they were not available, they didn't redesign the weapons package? And yet they kept using it?
I would think logic failed.
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Karagin
09/28/15 06:15 AM
72.176.176.175
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The issue with the Rifleman is the weapon load out and it's role, it is an anti-aircraft mech/fire support, and it has the wrong setup for that.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Akirapryde2006
09/29/15 10:19 AM
71.100.132.249
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I don't see the Rifleman as a bad design when you look at what it's role is. The mech is a great design for keeping the skies clear of enemy fighters. Sure it is a bad design in terms of mech on mech combat, but that is not what it was designed for. The design actually reflected a whole battlefield thinking from the original authors of the game. The kind of thinking that is often overlooked within the game.
The thing I don't understand about the Battletech universe is how there is not differences in ammo and weapon systems. A Auto-Cannon round from the Federated Suns would fit in a Auto-Cannon from the Lyran Commonwealth. This defies all logic in weapon designs among. Often Ghostrider brings up this point very well. You can't have hundreds of factories from different factions pumping out the same item and they all have the same characteristics when these factories are not in contact with each other (opposing states). The Leo factories might actually have a different manufacturing style than the Federated Suns.
Plus there is a reason why you don't want your weapons being able to fire enemy rounds. This would make your supply bases the supply bases of your enemy once they get their hands on those supply bases.
I mean I understand why the game designers wanted to keep things uniform. But it just doesn't make sense if you apply military thinking/design to it.
Also, why are the unit structures the same. A mech company in the Combine is the same as in the FWL? As has been mentioned in multiple books and novels, each faction within the Inner Sphere has a different style of combat. This style would reflect a difference in how their units would be made up. When the Clans were introduced, I was so pleased to see that they had a different unit structure. It was actually refreshing to see this.
Its like there is only one standard in military thinking across the Inner Sphere. I understand that the game is call Battletech and the King of the battlefield is the Battlemech. But Armor, Infantry as well as other units play a critical role in capturing a world. Yet, there are very few heroic units that don't use Battlemechs.
There was a bet in our group that a Battlemech unit could defeat any other unit. In my arrogance, I thought the Battlemech would outclass any other unit up to twice my size. But to my surprise my company was defeated by infantry and armor units in three of the six battles.
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ghostrider
09/29/15 12:17 PM
98.150.102.177
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The Rifleman is not a good design, even for anti air. I believe you are forgetting that in a real battle, it isn't a single pair of fighters making strafing runs on the unit. Anti air units don't fire once every other round or so. They may be required to keep up sustained fire every round. The over heating issue should have been looked into long before the 3025 version.
The issue of part made elsewhere has been in several novels and even fluff of units. The ppc of a Battlemaster does not have the brackets needed to stick it in the arm of a warhammer. It needs to be jury rigged to do so. And the reason of the enemy being able to use your ammo. Think of the first succession war. How far would the combine been able to penetrate the federated suns had they not been able to use the fedsuns ammo dumps.
I might be able to offer a little insight to the military structure issue, beside the standard, too complicated to have everyone running their own formations. History. The military kept the same structure as they did since before the great houses were formed. Star league used them and others learned that style of combat. The clans and Comstar/WOB were the ones that moved away from the lance/company ideas. I agree having different unit structures would have been helpful, but in some ways, may have prevented proper use from a standard trained person. Good question. It would be interesting to see ideas on this.
A lot of the battles I have been in had terrain and crits determine a lot of outcomes. Now with your bet, the infantry combats would have been a lot different if it wasn't one point of damage for energy weapons. With it, you can see where history would be far different then it is now. How much damage would have been done to factories had the infantry survived the laser boats not wiping them out in a single turn? And awesome would be a good point of that. 30 points of damage from the ppcs, yet only kill 3 troopers. The building would have been destroyed before wiping out one company of infantry. Not even saying the mech itself would probably have fallen trying to dig them out in close combat.
And as it says in a few places. Mech get the glory, but infantry take the worlds. You can NOT take or hold a world without them. They provide security and such, since you would not trust the enemies local police to do it.
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Akirapryde2006
09/29/15 04:28 PM
71.100.132.249
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We were forced to over come this draw back of the Rifleman during our operations during the 3039 War.
In a alternate time line, our unit was tasked with taking and holding Dieron. When the campaigns went south our unit was trapped behind enemy lines. Our Jumpships never arrived to pick us up. So we had to hold the lines or be captured by the Combine's growing numbers. We had three lances of Rifleman in our ranks. We positioned them around our Landing Zone and forward rearming camps to protect what supplies we had left. Along their positions we stationed Cooling Trucks and Ammo Carriers. These Riflemen helped keep the skies over our heads clear from those nasty Drac fighters. Once the Combine Artillery moved in to range, that was a different story.
In long campaigns a lot of mechs take on much more defined roles.
As for the rules under our bet. We used the old rules, each point of damage by a weapon killed a single infantry soldier. If the soldier was in a building or something than the damage was taken to the building instead. Machine Guns and flamers were 2D6.
It was a brutal match and taught me a valuable lesson lol.
Akira
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Shadrak
10/01/15 07:25 PM
64.233.172.250
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The idea is that the houses had limited access to advanced tech during star league era...they have more access post 3050 than they did post 2780...we can assume that most Star League scientific research and development capability left with kerensky...
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Akirapryde2006
10/01/15 08:58 PM
71.100.132.249
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Quote:
Shadrak writes:
we can assume that most Star League scientific research and development capability left with kerensky...
Actually the Star League Source Book contradicts this argument as does the Clan Source Books. In several places within the Clan Source Books, the Clans were faced with a short fall of technical and scientific personal during the very early years. This is the reason why Nickolas created the caste system and only allowed the very best to remain as warriors. This is the reason why the Clans survived and became the force that they are during the 3050's.
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ghostrider
10/01/15 10:34 PM
98.150.102.177
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I do remember seeing that they stopped alot of projects the scientists were doing to put all that knowledge down on paper to keep it from being lost due to accidents or conflicts.
Ok. Now if the premise that about the tech being the issue for the size of normal missiles, why hasn't the punch or the other standard stats of them been changed?
Once you found a way to drop the size and weight of ammunition from things like missiles, you would want to do that to allow your units to stay in the field longer.
And the same should be said about ac ammunition as well. And there are no variants of the missile launchers like there is with say the ac's or gauss rifles.
Why is that?
As well as just 3 different number of srms fired, and 4 number of lrms fired. No size difference, just the number of tubes.
Ac ammo is different from the ac 2 up to the 20. It isn't like the number of shots fired changes much.
The thunderbolt missile is the one exception I can think of other then capital missiles.
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Shadrak
10/02/15 11:16 AM
64.233.172.250
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It's a game. ..question answered...solution to your problem: retcon
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Shadrak
10/02/15 11:19 AM
64.233.172.242
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Why do planets with a population of 10 billion only field a dozen regiments of troops for protection in a highly dangerous environment when G DP and production would allow for fielding vast armies? Any 0lanet with a large population should easily field thousands of Po and Vedette-like vehicles
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Karagin
10/02/15 11:21 AM
72.176.176.175
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The issue is when the retcons are poorly done or make no sense.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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ghostrider
10/02/15 11:34 AM
98.150.102.177
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Affording large armies and fielding them is different if you do not hire mercs. How many of that 10 billion actually want to be in the army? I think that is a key to it.
So a few thousand want to be army personnel, so they stick with that. Granted something like a militia with reservists and such are the better way to go with that.
But I am sure if they were being invaded, you would see alot more people using those very vehicles.
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ghostrider
10/02/15 11:42 AM
98.150.102.177
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Guess this is as good of a spot to put this in.
The question of the large army made me wonder about the sds defenses and why there is not such thing for automated tanks, and other vehicles. I don't see why there isn't a bunch of drone tanks guarding facilities. The would eliminate alot of issue with said vehicles, and create a more uniformed response with at least defending tanks.
No need for large standing armies, No need for large scale drills. Each unit would be in position doing what it is supposed to without question. Laser comms would be able to get around ecms, with relays going on between the tanks so physically blocking a unit would not remove it from a network.
One person in a bunker could well run a unit of 4 tanks with minimal help. If done right, and entire company of units could be handled that way.
Even just bombs strapped on Savanha masters would work. Take out the dropships and base with the enemy in it.
Yes, long range missiles would do the same thing, though it would be interesting to see what the costs would be during the 3000's. Several million for such a missile now.
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ghostrider
10/18/15 12:45 PM
98.150.102.177
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Since they did it with the Fortress dropship, are there any rules for using a smaller engine in dropships?
It would actually be the way to go, as you overdrive a smaller engine, but with the less weight, you should be able to cover it with more heat sinks.
This might be better to asked in a different thread.
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Maurer
10/18/15 05:15 PM
45.48.53.140
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Quote:
The thing I don't understand about the Battletech universe is how there is not differences in ammo and weapon systems. A Auto-Cannon round from the Federated Suns would fit in a Auto-Cannon from the Lyran Commonwealth. This defies all logic in weapon designs among. Often Ghostrider brings up this point very well. You can't have hundreds of factories from different factions pumping out the same item and they all have the same characteristics when these factories are not in contact with each other (opposing states). The Leo factories might actually have a different manufacturing style than the Federated Suns.
The reason why you can put ammo from any place in the Inner Sphere into a mech is because the it is the manufacturer factories who make the ammo, not the factions. The manufacturer's are not faction specific, often having facilities on different planets. Those planets have changed hands, but not how the ammo is built. Plus, most manufacturer's are not loyal to one specific House, as selling arms to both sides are far more profitable.
"Captain! We're completely surrounded on all sides." - Kiff, Futurama
..."Excellent, then we may attack in any direction." - Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
"A fool fights a war on two fronts; only an idiot defends on one." - Fusilier
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ghostrider
10/18/15 07:45 PM
98.150.102.177
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There is some flaws in that thinking. Where as SOME manufacturers have facilities and sales in all the states, alot don't. Do you think the combine would allow a manufacturer to build Jenners or panthers outside their borders, as well as sell them?
I would think they would execute the entire board of the company.
Also, why would you design weapons to use the same ammunition as the local gun shop could make? That would prevent exclusive sales for your company. Though it would make sense to make ammunition to fit others weapons and sell it. A few of the canon books says alot of manufacturers are ordered not to sell to other nations and even some have been denied to sell to mercs. The scenario pack of the MAC set up a raid on Defiance because a sales rep took their money and didn't deliver.
This is Lyran Commonwealth before the fedcom merger and with a merc unit with ties to the capellan confederation.
Units made outside the state you are working in, have to be custom made, since most parts are not sold to others.
This is an issue with jumpship and dropship manufacturers as well, unless they changed that. Dropships not as much as jumpships, but the Hannicar is one that is forbidden to be sold to other states.
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Maurer
10/18/15 10:20 PM
45.48.53.140
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Profits, patriotism, loyalty, fear. Pick one or some. I am sure they will answer the question of what a company does with its products in one form or another. But not all manufacturers are bound by their House to sell outside the borders.
"Captain! We're completely surrounded on all sides." - Kiff, Futurama
..."Excellent, then we may attack in any direction." - Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
"A fool fights a war on two fronts; only an idiot defends on one." - Fusilier
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ghostrider
10/18/15 11:58 PM
98.150.102.177
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As I said, some companies deal with all states, like Holly missile launchers. They work all the IS and periphery.
But why is it the clans ammo works with IS weapons and vis versa?
The IS stuff is supposed to be downgraded things for the star league. Even with their civil war, the clans never lost the tech, so why would they go backwards on the designs?
And this is even more true with the advanced weapons, both launchers and ballistics.
In canon sources, the ac 20 has labeled 2 different sizes for the ammunition for the IS.
I understand ease of record keeping come to mind with most of this. But being told the IS can not make advanced weapons from cost, but some how can make weapons that use all sizes of munitions sounds stupid. Only a few say they are different, but really. They made capital missile launchers that would use any of the missiles available.
I have yet to see them list things like 30 ton actuators and myomers. Both are used in an urbanmech and a spider, but there is no way both are interchangeable. Manufacturers would not use heavy duty items in a light duty unit. And this isn't including the different ones used for jumping/non jumping units.
This is not accounting for actual differences in the limb sizes either.
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Maurer
10/26/15 10:25 PM
45.48.53.140
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Quote:
But being told the IS can not make advanced weapons from cost, but some how can make weapons that use all sizes of munitions sounds stupid.
Honestly, the answer is because. It's silly to look too deep into of who, what, where, when, why, and how. Can Inner Sphere munitions fit into clan weapons or vice versa? The answer is yes, as it is simply left open (baring certain ones like speciality AC or missile ammo) so the players can decide, adding a little more depth to their game.
As to why the Inner Sphere can not make advanced weapons that match the Clans is pretty much standard cannon. When the Star League left, the Inner Sphere Houses pummeled each other so bad, destroying factories and research buildings, they simply lost the knowledge base to produce more advanced weapons and could barely produce standard weapon weapons. By 3025 and prior to 3050 when the Helm Memory Core was found, the inner Sphere was not only trying to understand the new tech, but the manufacturing practices to produce the new weapons. At lot was going on just before the Clan Invasion, probably unfocusing specific research into producing smaller calibers of ER lasers over companies just trying to produce what ever they could to stay float against compatition. Then the Invasion happened, pretty much throwing the Inner Sphere into chaos. And everyone pretty much knows the rest of history as the inner Sphere finally manages to make their own copies of clan weapons.
"Captain! We're completely surrounded on all sides." - Kiff, Futurama
..."Excellent, then we may attack in any direction." - Zapp Brannigan, Futurama
"A fool fights a war on two fronts; only an idiot defends on one." - Fusilier
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ghostrider
12/03/15 01:49 AM
98.150.102.177
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This is the thread we were discussing how the different weapons systems seemed to use the same ammo.
I understand it is easier to keep records of what is used, but it would also mean capturing an ammo dump would not help an attacker like it would be needed in things like the 1st war where the combine pushed deep into suns territory. The ammunition supplies alone would strip almost all the transports just to keep up with the use.
Their weapons would probably NOT use the same fire concepts as the suns. And that isn't including all the manufacturers and such.
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ghostrider
12/03/15 02:04 AM
98.150.102.177
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finally found where they say in the books about different cannon sizes for weapons. The ac 20 in the hertzer says it's 150 mm cannon, while the demolisher uses the 185 mm cannon.
This is in the 3026 tro.
Then the thought of the srm/lrm systems using the same exact ammo is bugging me. I know I brought up the clans would standardize the ammo for all clans.
And I will ask again, how they manage to use the SAME ammo the innersphere does for the standard launchers the stone age innersphere does?
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