Battletech technical archive

[Block]

So what exactly happened during the WoB Jihad? The cannon seemed to skip from Catherine's exile to Ghost knight and the knockout of the HPG grid. Which sucked imo, since I hate the new Mechwarrior stuff.

The Jihad caused massive disruption to the Battletech community as the Blakist manipulated and armed divisive elements of each society and use WMDs. Stone unified an army with the help of Victor Steiner Davion and Stone decided to enact changes to the Inner Sphere just slightly below par with what Kerensky did to the Clans.

Also, the Jihad is the current CBT story. We don't yet know all of what exactly happened in the Jihad, because it's still being written.

I'm sorry CBT? Are they putting out classic Battletech books now?

[SAMAS]

So what exactly happened during the WoB Jihad? The cannon seemed to skip from Catherine's exile to Ghost knight and the knockout of the HPG grid. Which sucked imo, since I hate the new Mechwarrior stuff.

The Jihad caused massive disruption to the Battletech community as the Blakist manipulated and armed divisive elements of each society and use WMDs. Stone unified an army with the help of Victor Steiner Davion and Stone decided to enact changes to the Inner Sphere just slightly below par with what Kerensky did to the Clans.

Well yar I got that, but how did they manage to disrupt all 5 succesor states, not counting the FWL since my understanding is that there was some sort of alliance in place there, Com-Star, and the Clans? It just boggles the mind how they could've had that many Divisions hidden away, since the Fed Suns alone had over 50 RCTs if I remember right.

Well, as mentioned before, the WoB was more than willing to make up for any lack of numbers with the liberal application of nuclear weapons. Secondly, they also tied up the Successor States with simultaneous strikes on several important worlds in each, including their capitals. Most central commands have been either cut off or boxed in.

[SAMAS]

The Jihad caused massive disruption to the Battletech community as the Blakist manipulated and armed divisive elements of each society and use WMDs. Stone unified an army with the help of Victor Steiner Davion and Stone decided to enact changes to the Inner Sphere just slightly below par with what Kerensky did to the Clans.

Also, the Jihad is the current CBT story. We don't yet know all of what exactly happened in the Jihad, because it's still being written.

I'm sorry CBT? Are they putting out classic Battletech books now?

Novels or game books?

I don't know about the novels, but game-wise, Classic BT has more or less started it's... fourth(?) edition with the release of the Total Warfare and TechManual books, sources for the Jihad and historical campaigns, such as the War of 39, and new and upgraded Technical Readouts.

[Block]

Also, the Jihad is the current CBT story. We don't yet know all of what exactly happened in the Jihad, because it's still being written.

I'm sorry CBT? Are they putting out classic Battletech books now?

Novels or game books?

I don't know about the novels, but game-wise, Classic BT has more or less started it's... fourth(?) edition with the release of the Total Warfare and TechManual books, sources for the Jihad and historical campaigns, such as the War of 39, and new and upgraded Technical Readouts.

The novels is more what I meant. I liked the whole Fed-Lyran civil war series, found it pretty interesting, if not always well written.

[Cykeisme]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but this is one of the things that's always's piqued me is the heads.

Firstly, is there any in-universe (non game-mechanics) reason as to why the crew compartment on a massive, heavily armored machine weighing dozens upon dozens of tons is so poorly protected?
Even if it was, why is it that unlike every other part of 'Mechs, the structural strength and armor supported by the cockpit region does not increase with larger 'Mechs?

What about in-game reasons?

Those 'Mechs are real shooty, bloody stompy and dead 'ard, but I could never figure this one out.

[SAMAS]

In-game: It was deemed better to make the head a vulnerable spot. At least, that's my guess.

[consequences]

In-universe: Their reactor shielding being fairly lousy, and subject to damage even from non-penetrating hits against what should be the strongest, least pointlessly vulnerable section of the armor, makes the likelihood of pilots getting their nuts/ovaries curdled if they are any closer unacceptably high, especially since every fricking dynasty has to have its heirs be mech pilots who have served in combat at some point.

Short of accusing the engineers of being idiots, this is about as close to a workable explanation as is likely to ever present itself. For that matter, I'm pretty sure some of the rulesets had a torso cockpit option.

[Block]

In-universe: Their reactor shielding being fairly lousy, and subject to damage even from non-penetrating hits against what should be the strongest, least pointlessly vulnerable section of the armor, makes the likelihood of pilots getting their nuts/ovaries curdled if they are any closer unacceptably high, especially since every fricking dynasty has to have its heirs be mech pilots who have served in combat at some point.

Short of accusing the engineers of being idiots, this is about as close to a workable explanation as is likely to ever present itself. For that matter, I'm pretty sure some of the rulesets had a torso cockpit option.

It was the Maximum Tech rules, though it first came up in a mechwarrior adventure on Solaris. As far as the cockpit thing, the reason I always heard was because even the most heavily armored warrior is vunerable in certain spots, and they tried to make it so that even the lightest mech had a slight chance of pulling out a heroic victory.

[Deathstalker]

I'm inclined to believe consequences explanation, but the first few mechs the game was based on, namely the Valkyries and Destroids from Macross/Robotech had torso cockpits.

[PainRack]

I don't know about the novels, but game-wise, Classic BT has more or less started it's... fourth(?) edition with the release of the Total Warfare and TechManual books, sources for the Jihad and historical campaigns, such as the War of 39, and new and upgraded Technical Readouts.

5th edition. 4th edition was the last game edt released by FASA, and tied in with the 3058 setting.

In-universe: Their reactor shielding being fairly lousy, and subject to damage even from non-penetrating hits against what should be the strongest, least pointlessly vulnerable section of the armor, makes the likelihood of pilots getting their nuts/ovaries curdled if they are any closer unacceptably high, especially since every fricking dynasty has to have its heirs be mech pilots who have served in combat at some point.

I would add in heat and ballistic protection too:D

We already know from tanks that tank crewmen require significant amount of heat and ballistic protection from Battletech weapons, from rules fluff to description of their uniforms,which has a significant amount of ballistic and heat protection.
Situating the mechwarrior further away from impact and the heat generated from combat gives them better protection, but at the risk of "head" shots.

As it was, torso cockpits such as the Bushwhacker ran into problems with the engines screwing up T&T, until the FedCom reverse engineered concepts learned from the Mad Dog and redesigned the engine/torso space/shielding.

[Cykeisme]

Non-game mechanics, I can understand the need to properly separate and shield the cockpit from the reactor, but why can't the exterior of the cockpit be armored against weapon fire as well?
It really is quite illogical for such a huge and heavily armored war machine to have such poor protection for its crew.

And in terms of game mechanics, for those of you who played a lot of tabletop BattleTech, do you think the double-sixes hit location roll of doom was a good thing?

[Cykeisme]

I'm inclined to believe consequences explanation, but the first few mechs the game was based on, namely the Valkyries and Destroids from Macross/Robotech had torso cockpits.

The images were used from Japanese mecha designs, but the functionality, details and even scale of the source material is disregarded entirely.
Relevantly, the cockpit of 'Mechs like the Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Valkyrie etc were in the head.

As an aside, despite it making less sense, I do actually prefer the cockpit being in the head (rather than the torso) of a humanoid war machine, but I don't see why they can't put more armor on it..

[PainRack]

Here's a revivised calculation of Clan Wolf Omnimech replenishment rate, this time, assuming that Clan Wolf attempted to replenish all Omnimechs in all 4 Clan galaxies at the same time.

Gamma description are more vague than Alpha and Delta, with units using both Omnimechs and battlemechs. Alternatively, the 103rd Striker Cluster uses Battlemechs and Elementals in their trinaries, with no unit count. Since such a revisied calc was meant to estimate the upper limit on Clan Wolf rearmament effort, the calcs have been deliberately pitched towards counting the maximum number of battlemechs that could be potentially replaced. As such, elementals in "mixed" units have been discounted and replaced by battlemechs so as to produce an upper limit.

Such an absurdly high count reveals a potential 230 battlemechs to be replaced , added on top of the tweaked count from Alpha and Beta,that's 425 Omnimechs in less than two years.

Alpha and Beta Galaxies should be fully equipped with Omnimechs within a year,Gamma and Delta Galaxy less than a year after that. Within the year, Clan Wolf also expects to field two full Garrison Galaxies, with a third the following year.

The limited mention of Clan Wolf in the FedCom Civil war suggests that Clan Wolf has reached this target strength and increased upon her garrison component.

For those who eschew the deliberate bombastic calcs from above, there are some assumptions I made with regards to the units that can provide a lower mech count.
A more..... "realistic" approach to rearmament counts may use the typical Clan Wolf cluster as a guide to unit composition.

The Average Clan Wolf Cluster currently includes a Command Trinary of SuperNova, one Mech Trinary, one fighter Binary or Trinary and one Elemental Trinary, organized according to a variety of schemes.

The Wolf Clan also fields an abundance of aerospace units; as the Refusal War was fought primarily on the ground, aerospace assets suffered markedly fewer losses than ground units.

The 103rd Striker Cluster also includes a Trinary of Ice Hellion warriors which have been stripped of their Omnimechs, so, that suggest that at least 1 trinary of battlemechs in the cluster. Assuming parity in terms of mechs/elementals, for the remainding 4 trinaries, that's another 30 battlemechs in this cluster, to a total of 45.

The 7th Battle Cluster was formed around a surviving binary from the old cluster, and has received a Binary of Omnimechs and two mixed trinaries from the Harvest trials. While the 10 elements may comprise of battlemechs, as per the unit composition, more aerospace fighters are available, thus, these 10 elements are assumed to be non battlemech.

The 3rd Wolf Lancers has been counted as a primarily mech unit, in this case, assuming that it only consist of one Mech trinary and this mech trinary is comprised of battlemechs(not unusual since Delta galaxy is Sigmoid galaxy, a garrison unit), that give us only 15 battlemechs in this unit.

The 2nd Wolf Lancers mixed trinaries have been counted as purely battlemechs, assuming parity in elementals and battlemechs, that give us only 15 battlemechs for this unit.

The "realistic" count would thus be 120 Battlemechs from Gamma and Delta galaxy, added on top of the 45 in Alpha/beta, to yield 165 Omnimechs in less than 2 years. In lieu of the much higher battlemech count in Gamma and Delta, it appears likely that Clan Wolf was attempting to rearm all 4 of its galaxies simulatenously. Therefore, a "realistic" approach to Clan Wolf rearmament would have them being able to replace 165 Omnimechs in less than 2 years, as opposed to 45 Omnimechs in 1.

[PainRack]

Non-game mechanics, I can understand the need to properly separate and shield the cockpit from the reactor, but why can't the exterior of the cockpit be armored against weapon fire as well?
It really is quite illogical for such a huge and heavily armored war machine to have such poor protection for its crew.

And in terms of game mechanics, for those of you who played a lot of tabletop BattleTech, do you think the double-sixes hit location roll of doom was a good thing?

Because the structure couldn't accomodate more armour I suppose. There isn't any reason to discount the ingame reason, the marginal increase in size and weight for mech cockpits isn't as drastic as that for the rest of the mech.

Alternatively, adding more armour to the head would had caused more engineering problems to Btech already absurd armour protection, in which a mm of armour is expected to protect absurdly large areas. The torso cockpit was presumably an attempt to escape this engineering problem.

[eyl]

IIRC, all the Mech cockpits required big windows so that the pilot could see where the hell they were going - a system for holographic projection of the battlefield was only introduced in the MechWarrior adventure Unbound (also the source of the torso cockpit). I suppose they could have lined the cockpit with screens to show external views, but conceivably that might have been to vulnerable to damage, blinding the pilot.

Game-mechanics-wise, it should also be remembered that, according to the weapon list for the original game, IIRC no weapon could achieve a one-shot kill on the head (weapons such as the AC10 and AC20 were only introduced in the CityTech expansion, which was later folded into following editions of the core rules)

[Nephtys]

IIRC, all the Mech cockpits required big windows so that the pilot could see where the hell they were going - a system for holographic projection of the battlefield was only introduced in the MechWarrior adventure Unbound (also the source of the torso cockpit). I suppose they could have lined the cockpit with screens to show external views, but conceivably that might have been to vulnerable to damage, blinding the pilot.

Game-mechanics-wise, it should also be remembered that, according to the weapon list for the original game, IIRC no weapon could achieve a one-shot kill on the head (weapons such as the AC10 and AC20 were only introduced in the CityTech expansion, which was later folded into following editions of the core rules)

IIRC some later versions of rule supplements (I think it was MaxTech or Tac Book) detailed Mech sensors. There's the usual IR/Light Amp stuff, and weird things like short range magnetic anomoly (for fusion bottle detection) and seismic (footsteps and jumpjets from 50+ ton stuff nearby) for specialized uses. Radar was unreliable for ECM reasons, so that is possibly why one may need better visual sighting. Though why cameras can't do that is a bit silly

But yeah, originally the Head wasn't such a bad position. The only weapon that could cap it was an AC20, which only maybe four heavy or assault mechs of the 3025 era mounted. I can buy the most powerful weapon (twice as powerful by mechanics) as any other direct-fire weapon being able to do some messed up crap like that, if it hit the 'head'.

Torso cockpit probably represents a 'deeper located' head closer to the fusion plant, since most later Mechs have 'torso cockpits', but count as normal 'heads'.

[PainRack]

IIRC, all the Mech cockpits required big windows so that the pilot could see where the hell they were going - a system for holographic projection of the battlefield was only introduced in the MechWarrior adventure Unbound (also the source of the torso cockpit). I suppose they could have lined the cockpit with screens to show external views, but conceivably that might have been to vulnerable to damage, blinding the pilot.

Errr..... no. The cockpit windows aren't really that big for some light mechs, as for holographic projection, that would be blatently false considering that Star League era helmets had this capability, albeit its one the IS didn't have. Also, insofar as piloting goes, the helmet already squeezes a 360 degree view to project it on a 180 degree arc.

Game-mechanics-wise, it should also be remembered that, according to the weapon list for the original game, IIRC no weapon could achieve a one-shot kill on the head (weapons such as the AC10 and AC20 were only introduced in the CityTech expansion, which was later folded into following editions of the core rules)

???? I'm not ancient enough to have played Btech before Citytech, but the AC/20 was already present in 3rd Edition as well as "legacy" mechs such as the Atlas.

[eyl]

Errr..... no. The cockpit windows aren't really that big for some light mechs, as for holographic projection, that would be blatently false considering that Star League era helmets had this capability, albeit its one the IS didn't have. Also, insofar as piloting goes, the helmet already squeezes a 360 degree view to project it on a 180 degree arc.

Well, it's quite possible I misremembered

???? I'm not ancient enough to have played Btech before Citytech, but the AC/20 was already present in 3rd Edition as well as "legacy" mechs such as the Atlas.

This was even before the Atlas appeared (in Technical Readout 3025) - it was in the very first edition, where the only Mechs were those which would later be known as the Unseen (and no, I don't date back far enough to have played that version either).

[consequences]

Non-game mechanics, I can understand the need to properly separate and shield the cockpit from the reactor, but why can't the exterior of the cockpit be armored against weapon fire as well?
It really is quite illogical for such a huge and heavily armored war machine to have such poor protection for its crew.

And in terms of game mechanics, for those of you who played a lot of tabletop BattleTech, do you think the double-sixes hit location roll of doom was a good thing?

Me, I'd expand the torso, and put the pilot on the back of it, since if someone's behind you with significant armament you've just died anyway. Keeping the sensors in the head would make perfect sense(as long as they bothered to include some torso and hand mounted backups) if only for the virtue of not being required to expose the whole mech to fire, if only the pilot wasn't stuck up there too.

For me, it's an awesome thing. I don't think I've ever been headshotted to death, and I have three separate battles I can specifically recall details of ruining a mechwarrior's life(3025 thunderbolt large laser plus medium for a kill, Masakari ERPPC for instadeath after having already cored his gyro with a 12 crit roll following a 2 location, and Black Lanner charging straight down the throat of a Daishi Widowmaker to take its head off followed by scoring a third ER-medium hit on another hapless head). My victims probably have a different perspective. The roll a six for a headshot on the punch location rule was garbage though, as it made partial cover the worst idea in the history of mankind.


And the AC20 was definitely present as of the 2ed boxed B-tech set.

[consequences]

h

But yeah, originally the Head wasn't such a bad position. The only weapon that could cap it was an AC20, which only maybe four heavy or assault mechs of the 3025 era mounted. I can buy the most powerful weapon (twice as powerful by mechanics) as any other direct-fire weapon being able to do some messed up crap like that, if it hit the 'head'.

Don't forget our good friend the Hunchback, the joy that is Yen-Lo-Wang or any other appropriately modded platform, and the Saladin assault hovertank, and Setzer medium wheeled. On the heavy side, the Patton(or Rommel?), and most especially the glorious light of the Demolisher. Not to mention the Mechbuster fighter, and Monitor naval vessel.

The Saladin is especially relevant due to its quick strike abilitie

[Cykeisme]

Ah, Eyl must have been referring to the original 'Mechs that had their artwork taken from anime imported to the U.S. by Harmony Gold (if I remember the story right). The right to use the images has been lost, so their imagery cannot apepar anywhere in BattleTech.
The Locust, Wasp, Battlemaster, Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk, and other old favorites..

I didn't know that the AC/20 wasn't introduced till later on, and obviously the 15 damage Gauss Rifles and Clan ER PPCs which are much later down the road. In that case, 9 armor and 3 structure would have been sufficient way back then.

However, upon the introduction of hard-hitting, long-ranged weapons, the maximum structure/armor for the head (in the rules) should've been boosted..


For all the rationalization, I still can't make sense of it in-universe.

[eyl]

Ah, Eyl must have been referring to the original 'Mechs that had their artwork taken from anime imported to the U.S. by Harmony Gold (if I remember the story right). The right to use the images has been lost, so their imagery cannot apepar anywhere in BattleTech.
The Locust, Wasp, Battlemaster, Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk, and other old favorites..

Exactly.

These were later removed from the BattleTech technical readouts (e.g., you can find them in TR3025, but not in the revised edition) due to the copyright flap, and hence became known as the Unseen, until the reappeared (with new artwork) in TR Project Pheonix.

[MJ12 Commando]

I didn't find the head-crits that bad.

It wasn't terribly common to get face-cored, and golden BBs are a fact of life. What I mainly found aggravating was how easily mechs fell apart from engine crits.

Although the AC/2 golden BBs were gold.

[SAMAS]

I'm inclined to believe consequences explanation, but the first few mechs the game was based on, namely the Valkyries and Destroids from Macross/Robotech had torso cockpits.

The images were used from Japanese mecha designs, but the functionality, details and even scale of the source material is disregarded entirely.
Relevantly, the cockpit of 'Mechs like the Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Valkyrie etc were in the head.

As an aside, despite it making less sense, I do actually prefer the cockpit being in the head (rather than the torso) of a humanoid war machine, but I don't see why they can't put more armor on it..

It's just an abstraction(like counting many of those mechs as having heads in the first place), and to allow a PPC or AC/10 to shear the armor off (or an AC/20 and later Gauss Rifles, Hvy PPCs, etc...) to headcap them.

And BTW, only the Dougram mechs had head-mounted cockpits. Valkryies had their pilot seats directly under the head in Battloid mode. That's why Rick/Hikaru survived after Breetai crushed the head of his mecha.

[SAMAS]

I didn't find the head-crits that bad.

It wasn't terribly common to get face-cored, and golden BBs are a fact of life. What I mainly found aggravating was how easily mechs fell apart from engine crits.

Although the AC/2 golden BBs were gold.

Head crits aren't as bad.

The real problem is the fact that now there are about five times as many weapons capable of head-shotting a mech all at once without critical hits.