The Slammers vs. Clan Jade Falcon

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2002-10-02 07:55am

Got a B-TECH novel for free yesterday out of the trash bin of my local
"Friends of the Library" bookstore, and a few days ago, I got Yosemite
Bear's copy of the NEW Hammers' Slammers novel.

So who wins? The Slammers or Clan Jade Falcon?

My money is on the Slammers. Jade Falcon gets annihilated from
dozens of kilometres away by the Slammer's rocket assisted howitzers
firing brilliant anti-armor submunitions, and then the tanks close in on
the shocked and demoralized remnants of Jade Falcon and annihilate
them in five minutes of combat.

JF's LRMs are easily sliced out of the air by the cupola-mounted
tribarrels set to point defense mode, while the Clan's lasers and
other weapons merely bouncing off the front glacis plates of the
Slammers' tanks or blasting glowing chunks out of the armor that
don't penetrate.

Lt. Nebfer · Post by **Lt. Nebfer** » 2002-10-04 08:10pm

whats a slammer??

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2002-10-04 08:16pm

Lt. Nebfer wrote:whats a slammer??

Slammer's Hammers, the meanest bunch of mercs ever to ruin a world for pay.

They're from the Slammer's Hammers series by David Drake. A few of the older novels are in Baen's Free Library. Check 'em out.

Post by **Kuja** » 2002-10-04 08:17pm

Hammer's Slammers is a scifi univers focusing on hovertanks and such, IIRC

shocked and demoralized remnants of Jade Falcon

If anything, a fierce for only ENCOURAGES clan warriors. Besides, do you know if the howitzers can penetrate ferro-fibrous armor? And how do you know that their lasers would bounce off? What about PPCs?

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-10-04 10:15pm

Slammer's tribarrels are something on the order of 73.5 megajoules (something like 52 BTech damage if you go by the mach 2 gauss rifle) per shot.

Assuming the amount of energy in the ammo discs scales up that's 73.5 gigajoules for the main guns on their tanks.

Enforcer Talen · Post by **Enforcer Talen** » 2002-10-04 10:26pm

are warships part of the bid?

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-10-04 10:30pm

Did I mention that Slammer's main guns can fire into orbit to?

Vejut · Post by **Vejut** » 2002-10-04 10:41pm

However, they do about .007 pts. Btech damage if you go by the speed a GR shows in orbit (minimum, probably doesn't take 10 sec to cover it's range), which can't be too much greater, because it does the same damage on the ground, or fired from a fighter, with the whole ammo disc on the slammer tank worth about 30-40 Btech damage.

Besides, warships range from 600-3000+ pts of armor...you'd have to hit with more than half your shots all in one armor facing, or more if they spread, assuming they didn't lose power from going through 100 miles of atmosphere...even using the mach 2 gauss numbers.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-10-05 01:25am

Considering we have the rules for conversion it's rather easy to figure them.

10 BTech damage points = 1 Bspace armor factor... which would put the Slammer's guns at a few thousand damage.

And given the stated Gauss Rifle velocity (none of this 'it isn't as canon' stuff unless you've got a quote from FASA that gives us a clear canon heirarchy). And does it say Battlespace turns are as long as Battletech turns?

Of course we could always base the comparitive damage off the charging and DFA calcs.

Hell the way the first battlemech test was practically rigged should be a hit at how crappy they are.

SylasGaunt · Post by **SylasGaunt** » 2002-10-05 01:34am

Going by Gauss Rifle calcs a Slammer's main gun will do roughly 5250 armor factor's worth of damage

Using the Charging calcs they do about 18,846 armor factors worth of damage.

Or we could do the DFA numbers again. Lets be generous and say that despite only having to fall 12 meters a 100 ton battlemech got two seconds of acceleration out of gravity, for a speed of 19.6 m/s. That puts a BTech damage point at 640 kilojoules, with a Slammer's main gun doing some 11,484 damage to starships.

Of course some of these numbers really do make sense since apperantly in 3025 replacing the armor of a Crab with stuff we were using in WW2 was an improvement...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-05 03:07am

Also that's per shot, the Hammer's AI would get three shots in a turn for each main gun. 10sec, and we don't want to consider the Tribarrel Damage per turn (about 3d6 Tribarrel shots hitting, per turn) Considering the accurate range of the Tribarrels is >5km, and the Mainguns hit things in orbit.

Mesa think birdies is gonna die.

BTW the Btecher's are right, they would consider the Slammer's to be a "mere" hover tank company, not realizing that the lightest elements are considered High end for a B-tech Hovertank, and the heavest elements outwiegh a timberwolf almost two to one. Also Irridium is superconductive, flexible alloy, that can take railgun hit's (BTech Railgun hits) and not even disable there 30ton combat cars (Hitting one of the gunners=splat), but the car can take about half a dozen ERPPC/Railgun hits.

Let's not get into the 190 ton tanks.....

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2002-10-07 11:09am

oh, please, lets get into the 190 ton tanks, by all means.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-07 08:56pm

Ok: 190 tons Eight fans lift, can move very nimbuly, and can keep up with the Cars almost. Main gun 200mm Powergun, firing a blast of Copper plasma, The Main gun beam has controlling AI strong enough to engage targets in Orbit. the secondary weapon is a 30mmpowergun, manual or AI controled. In air defense modes can shoot down incomming missiles, artillery and any aircraft up to 5 km's away.

Both weapons are capable of very rapid fire, the main gun can fire at least once a second. however firing that often can overheat the barrel. (Which is a very bad thing), the secondary 30mm Tribarrel can fire almost continuously (Full autofire, (Meaning hundreds of rounds in a ten second period, two based on the damage calc rules of the Battle tech, the secondary weapon would do about 30 points of Btech damage, out to range of 5km, per SHOT, firing at least 100 shots in a ten second turn.....)

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-07 08:59pm

Most B-tech conversions I have seen has the main gun doing about 500 points of damage per shot, 200 shots per tank, and giring about 4-5 shots per ten second turn.

That's 2000 points in one turn per tank.

Each tank can take about 5000points of Btech damage.

starfury · Post by **starfury** » 2002-10-07 10:05pm

what about the clan hell Horse, they are the BTech, tank crazy clan

LordChaos · Post by **LordChaos** » 2002-10-08 04:35am

starfury wrote:what about the clan hell Horse, they are the BTech, tank crazy clan

They still die in droves...

the ENTIRE clan millitary force could only beat the Slammers by hoping that the Slammers run out of ammo before the Clan's run out of mechs. And, at an average of 1 shot 1 dead mech and the Clan's numbers, that's not a sure thing (vegas might give you even odds on it).

Slammers are just a little too high powered... But then again, so is my favorate game univers, Renigade Legion.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-08 02:37pm

And the only reason that RL would slaughter the Slammers is because Slammer's have no Shields.

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2002-10-10 12:08am

Slammers still wouldn't die easily against RL

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-10 01:49am

True, RL has comparable tech, and armour, the only thing they do have that the slammer's don't have are shields. RL armour is layers of Gravity Compressed Metal between layers of superconductive, ablative ceramics, and pretty much impervious to anything, The lowest ranked energy weapon in RL cover the whole battlefield while their gravity wave "gauss" weapons have much more rage then that of anything in B-Tech, (Note an RL hex is about 5 times the size of a B-tech hex, and Most weapons have a 30 hex range), actually longer but LOS and the Curvature of the earth makes it problemmatic.

LordChaos · Post by **LordChaos** » 2002-10-10 03:22am

THe Yosemite Bear wrote:True, RL has comparable tech, and armour, the only thing they do have that the slammer's don't have are shields. RL armour is layers of Gravity Compressed Metal between layers of superconductive, ablative ceramics, and pretty much impervious to anything, The lowest ranked energy weapon in RL cover the whole battlefield while their gravity wave "gauss" weapons have much more rage then that of anything in B-Tech, (Note an RL hex is about 5 times the size of a B-tech hex, and Most weapons have a 30 hex range), actually longer but LOS and the Curvature of the earth makes it problemmatic.

You forgot to mention that RL warships are capible (at least in a Battleship Squadren level, 1 BB, 1 CA, 2 DD and 3-4 FFs) of performing a BDZ style bombardment to the point of actualy stripping the atmophere off a planet..... which even the Slammer's would have a hard time survivng.

Plus one of my favorite support weapons : Thor Satalites.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-10 07:11am

Very True, LC

I also am fond of them Thor Sats.
I had a regular set of opponets for RL, 40k, and B-tech. Who absolutly learned to hate it when I brought in light units, Infantry, and perchased a few fire missions a turn. In RL I perfected it, and went Airborne Inftry even so far as naming one of my lighter, faster, almost unshielded (Except from below) APC tanks the Heuy. (And designing the weapon systems so that it worked as infantry support (Lots of TLVG's to fire as soon as the Infantry painted a target.)This combined with the annoying sets of fire missions I would order up, and one opponent that was extremly predictable made for slaughters, that would have made the Russian Army Proud.

LordChaos · Post by **LordChaos** » 2002-10-10 01:16pm

<sigh> I do miss the days of being able to find people to play against.

I wonder if the guys doing MegaMek would consider an adaptation to Renigade Leagion...

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2002-10-10 04:30pm

Tell me about it