Zeon as a power in the Battletech Universe

[RhoOmicronMu]

Sorry about the delay in replying. My water heater went tits up and leaked water all over the place. I'll try to get to anything that hasn't been covered in the interim.

A 125kg gauss rifle slug travels 360Km in space within at least 60s low end 5*125kg*6000m/s^2=2,250mj. The lowest possible calc would be using the bear minimum hypersonic quotes from a few sources.

Mind giving a source for 6km/s? How about explaining what these range squares mean if we're using game mechanics.

Sure, for at least the last two editions of the space rules each turn is 60 seconds long. That means that at bare minimum weapons that hit the turn they fire have to be able to hit their targets within 60 seconds. The gauss rifle has an effective range of 360km. That means that the gauss rifle has to reach 360km in 60s or 360km/60s=6km/s. That's very much a low end because it wouldn't actually be effective if it was that slow. Even a slow heavy fighter that can only accelerate at 4gs or so would have changed it's location and heading to much at that range to ever expect a hit.

If you want it in game mechanics: a space hex is 18km long and a gauss rifle has an effective range of 20 hexes. 20*18km=360km

If Minovsky reactors can fit in a Junior Mobile Suit then they can scale down to about the same size as Battletech fusion reactors.

Your friends calcs leave out a few things that need to be mentioned for reactor calcs

Of course they do. As I pointed out there low end calcs for laser damage, not reactor calcs.

and I can not agree that that all the damage is being done over only a millisecond. Everything I have seen indicates that the damage would be done over a quarter of a second not a millisecond. which would bring it down to around to ~360-400 megawatt discharge. Not to mention that the power is coming from the CAPACITOR not the reactor directly. If the reactor was powering it directly at that power level then you could auto fire the weapon constantly.(within heat tolerances) This means that the charge must be built up to rather than judged from the discharge alone. This means it is pulling over several seconds reducing the demands on the reactor. We divide the output by the 3-4 seconds needed to get output means that the reactor is pushing in the 100 megawatt range to power the weapons.

Yes and no. Any non-fusion powered vehicle/mech, etc has to carry extra capacitors to use energy weapons and anything fusion powered does not. They're may be some charging, but a lot of it should be heat problems and aiming. The old Solaris VII dueling rules would give you a better less abstracted picture of actual firing rates.

Errr.... No. That's the ACCEPTED timeframe. The min time frame is 10 minutes, not 1.

The problems with BattleSpace calcs have been pointed out before. Its literally impossible to reconcile all the range possible. Remember, the NAC is a MT level weapon, yet, the nukes don't scale properly. And that's ignoring the nuke crit, which screws up all plausible scaling.

None of that has been true since FASA published Aerotech 2 in 2000. Turns last 60 seconds and NACs are low kiloton weapons.

Any one of the IS powers outnumbers them easily; IIRC the Lyrian Commonwealth had one of the smaller militaries before becoming part of FedCom, and they still had 60 Mech regiments.

They had 75 line and mercenary mech regiments in 3025.

That's nearly seven thousand Mechs alone, never mind several times that number in armor, artillery, AeroSpace, etc. Even if Zeon started out with tens of thousands of Zakus, they simply don't have the means to transport them anywhere.

The FedCom has something like 236 regiments and 8 battalions of line and mercenary mechs. The FWL has something like 72 regiments and 2 battalions of line and merc mechs. On that side of the Inner Sphere the local periphery powers have about 3 regiments and 2 battalions of line mech units. Numbers of line conventional and aerospace units are almost completely unknown.

Call it something like at company of mechs per Inner Sphere world as militia/corporate security/noble forces. 15 conventional regiments per world seems to be about average with provincial capitols having something like 30-40 regiments and 80 regiments being the highest known example (3028 Tikinov).

And you're saying in a battle where BT mechs will be being destroyed, saturation fire will somehow win them battles? Is this saturation with 1-damage point LRMs?

That is silly. Long range mech weapons can hit out to line of sight (Tactical Operations) or target out to a max of 18km (Aerotech 2R, Strategic Operations), granted you have to stop dodging and brace an arm to have a chance to hit at that range. Most of the long range shots I've seen on the ground in Gundam have required the Mobile Suit to do the same.

I'm just glad all these threads exist so we can talk about how rubbish BT is. Less mechs than a colony society built in a decade? Apalling.

In this time period the various nations are recovering from an almost post-apocalyptic setting. You expect them to have huge armies?

Before that, the Star League and it's member states had a decent level of militarization for a state that hadn't been at war for almost 200 years.

[Swindle1984]

Except they won't; even the compact K-F drive used on WarShips takes up a whopping 45% of the ship's mass (standard drives take up 95% but cost 100 times less). The lightest you can possibly get a K-F drive down to is 2500 tons. So we won't be seeing any Musai with strapped-on K-F drives anytime soon, because Zeon is going to be busy retooling their shipyards to start producing FTL ships while their main fleet sits around and hopes no one decides to invade.

Ahem. Did I SAY they would be fitting a K-F drive to a Musai? No. I said they'd be fitting it to their new warship designs. I pointed out that their slower-than-light warships, namely Musai cruisers, would be local system defense; a fairly decent one too, given the numbers they can produce.

Meanwhile, spurred on by the Clan invasion (and probably, in this scenario, also the sudden appearance of another foreign human faction), the IS is going to have shipyards up in running in the next few years capable of building true WarShips. So both Zeon and IS are going to start off with budding WarShip fleets, and the IS is already starting with a pretty big territory, military and population advantage.

The IS does have a massive advantage in territory, military, population, and resources. But they didn't start producing warships until after Comstar lent them a hand and they had captured several Clan warships to take apart and study. There's a reason nobody built warships in nearly 300 years of constant war in the Inner Sphere, and it wasn't a lack of resources.

Meanwhile, in 3067, the IS does have warships... very limited numbers of them. The Fox class corvette is noted as being one of the most numerous warship designs in the Inner Sphere, and between the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth they've produced less than thirty of them. Zeon, with only a fraction of the resources available to the Solar system, produced a shitload of warships. Someone else will have to inform me as to how many, I don't have that information. If Zeon can produce that many slower-than-light warships, I'm sure they can produce a significant (though not gigantic) number of K-F Drive-equipped warships as well.

Their primary weapon is a 120mm machine gun; the equivalent of an AC20 if we want to be generous. The same weapon is good enough to kill Zakus, so they'll certainly be vulnerable to BTech weapons. They're larger in size and weigh more than most any other BattleMech, and are comparably more maneuverable. So they might be harder to hit, especially if they abuse M-particle jamming, but if BTech side can pin them down in a fight they can kill them.

I look up the Zaku II at mahq.net and it describes the Zaku II as being 17.5 meters in height and weighing 73.3 metric tons when fully loaded and equipped. That puts it in the height and weight range of a heavy mech. The Zaku is certainly much more agile than any similarly-sized battlemech. I'll also point out that BT ECM doesn't affect targeting, only C3 computers and reducing the range on sensors (such as negating the Beagle Active Probe's advantage), whereas M-particle spam would fuck up their targeting severely, probably on par with taking a hit to the sensors or getting tagged with a haywire pod. Considering the weapon ranges and shitty gunnery skills of Inner Sphere pilots, especially in 3050 before targeting computers and other goodies became widespread, most battlemech pilots are going to be fucked going up against Mobile Suits.

Yes, their primary weapon is a 120mm machine gun. If we're being generous, it would be the equivelent of an AC20 but with greater range. My personal opinion is that it would probably be closer to an AC10 in damage. Autocannon in the BT-verse also fire in bursts rather than full-auto (though one or two novels take liberties with this), meaning the Mobile Suit has an advantage in range. But Zakus and Zaku II's also have a 280mm bazooka, a heat hawk (considering how nasty a hatchet is as a close-quarters weapon in Battletech and the fact that a heat hawk isn't just a hatchet, but a hatchet with a super-heated edge, I'm guessing this is going to be a pretty effective close-quarters weapon against battlemechs, especially considering the superior mobility of an MS.), and giant friggin' hand grenades. I don't think they're going to be at a real disadvantage against battlemechs armed with shitty weaponry from the 3025-2050 era.

[Swindle1984]

Ergh, one sec guys...

Minovsky interferance only affects radio signals. So wire-guided missiles still work fine in a Minovsky envionment (see 08th MS Team). However, the BIG problem is that Minovsky interferance is persistent. It doesn't just go away if you want it to. Once you scatter the particles they persist in any major gravity well (i.e. the Earth) for a long time.

Minovsky particles don't just affect radio signals (unless you count infrared as radio signals; they fuck up a large amount of the electromagnetic spectrum, leaving visible light the only effective means of long-range detection and targeting in the UC-verse.), they also affect electronic devices. Mobile Suits and ships have to be heavily shielded or else the M-particle will fuck them up like a constant EMP.

So I guess that explains why they mess up the targeting on wire-guided missiles; the missiles and launchers were experiencing heavy EM interference and shorting out.



Now, I could be wrong about this. I got this fact second-hand, not from an official source. Someone else will have to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Swindle1984]

So... what? Hell, Minovsky 'interference' can mess with the inputs on a wire-guided missile... somehow. The idea that BT is going to find it easy to hit MS seems baseless.

What being contended is your argument of Btech accuracy.

Seriously. You seem to have utterly ignored my work in this area, regarding how Btech accuracy is low as a result of their armour technology and the way they optimised their weapons in this area. Granted, a huge portion of the work is now outdated due to Techmanual and the need to incorporate new datapoints but unless one simply throws out a whole chunk of the Btech universe, the model "works"....(conceptually. The science is..... lolcat)

Hence, my initial statement on why I felt this thread was almost a necro topic. You and Bats have been raising issues which we have debated and discussed before. If you wish to simply throw away my model, fine. Then STOP blasting Btech for being slow lumbering mechs that will be sitting ducks and address how they can dodge lasers and missile attacks and ultrasonic rounds. Oh wait, I'm sorry. FanPro just updated the info. Its HYPERSONIC now.

Clearly, rather than the mechs simply being more agile than their opponents targeting systems or the pilot's aim, battlemechs must be capable of exceeding C and simply stepping out of the path of a laser that has already been fired at them. Which makes one question what they need the K-F Drive for if this is the case. I mean, surely if a man can dodge gunfire this means he's faster than ultrasonic bullets.

Battlemechs, particularly light mechs, aren't slow, moving targets (well, maybe some of the assault mechs are.), no. But Mobile Suits are still ridiculously agile in comparison. Battlemechs will be easier to hit than Mobile Suits, and the shitty targeting systems (and pilot gunnery skills) of IS mechs and their pilots will make hitting Mobile Suits difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. This doesn't even factor in M-particle interference.

[Commander 598]

Yes, their primary weapon is a 120mm machine gun. If we're being generous, it would be the equivelent of an AC20 but with greater range. My personal opinion is that it would probably be closer to an AC10 in damage. Autocannon in the BT-verse also fire in bursts rather than full-auto (though one or two novels take liberties with this), meaning the Mobile Suit has an advantage in range. But Zakus and Zaku II's also have a 280mm bazooka, a heat hawk (considering how nasty a hatchet is as a close-quarters weapon in Battletech and the fact that a heat hawk isn't just a hatchet, but a hatchet with a super-heated edge, I'm guessing this is going to be a pretty effective close-quarters weapon against battlemechs, especially considering the superior mobility of an MS.), and giant friggin' hand grenades. I don't think they're going to be at a real disadvantage against battlemechs armed with shitty weaponry from the 3025-2050 era.

You forgot the Sturm Faust, the 175mm Magella cannon, proxy rounds for it's MG, as well as it's own optional LRM pods. And who could forget it's close range infantry countermeasure system?

[VF5SS]

Those flechette grenades were crazy strong. Didn't they strike with enough force to bounce a jeep off the ground?

[Ritterin Sophia]

Anti-beam coating has already been discussed. Most Mobile Suit hand-held shields are anti-beam coated.

Not until the Gryps War, seven years after the OYW.

Finally, there's also Luna Titanium armor - which armors the Gundam and quite a few other wartime Mobile Suits. It is an extremely light yet durable armor that can withstand any conventional munition up to a 175mm dedicated anti-tank round. I dunno about Btech conventional weapons, but I don't think most of their mechs will have conventional rounds that can penetrate a Luna Titanium armored MS.

The number of MS in the OYW with Gundarium Alpha are around one-hundred or so, with the majority being either one of a kind test-beds or the RX/RGM-79[G] series MS of which there were only twenty of the former and forty of the latter.

The biggest problem, however, being most if not all were Federation MS developed in the last third of the War, there are to my knowledge no Zeon MS in the OYW that have luna titanium armor. I could be wrong, but I'll keep looking. Either way they're still the extreme minority.

[Ritterin Sophia]

Considering MS numbers have apparently been downgraded, I find that claim laughable. Any one of the IS powers outnumbers them easily; IIRC the Lyrian Commonwealth had one of the smaller militaries before becoming part of FedCom, and they still had 60 Mech regiments. That's nearly seven thousand Mechs alone, never mind several times that number in armor, artillery, AeroSpace, etc. Even if Zeon started out with tens of thousands of Zakus, they simply don't have the means to transport them anywhere.

Mind giving a source rather than hearsay?

[PainRack]

Errr.... No. That's the ACCEPTED timeframe. The min time frame is 10 minutes, not 1.

The problems with BattleSpace calcs have been pointed out before. Its literally impossible to reconcile all the range possible. Remember, the NAC is a MT level weapon, yet, the nukes don't scale properly. And that's ignoring the nuke crit, which screws up all plausible scaling.

None of that has been true since FASA published Aerotech 2 in 2000. Turns last 60 seconds and NACs are low kiloton weapons.

Try actually calcing the NAC Ke energy instead of using the Nuke rules. You get high hundred KT to low MT damage.

As for AT2 vs Battlespace, shrugs.

Call it something like at company of mechs per Inner Sphere world as militia/corporate security/noble forces. 15 conventional regiments per world seems to be about average with provincial capitols having something like 30-40 regiments and 80 regiments being the highest known example (3028 Tikinov).

Not every world has mech militia.

Before that, the Star League and it's member states had a decent level of militarization for a state that hadn't been at war for almost 200 years.

Not really. Given known mech production numbers, the SLDF apparently retains large numbers of "old" designs to simply outfit her mech forces and sporadic production. Similarly, 12 corps to cover the entire Sphere becomes a VERY small number indeed, even if we argue that these were merely TH forces meant to keep the Great Houses in line.

Battlemechs, particularly light mechs, aren't slow, moving targets (well, maybe some of the assault mechs are.), no. But Mobile Suits are still ridiculously agile in comparison. Battlemechs will be easier to hit than Mobile Suits, and the shitty targeting systems (and pilot gunnery skills) of IS mechs and their pilots will make hitting Mobile Suits difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. This doesn't even factor in M-particle interference.

The counter-argument here however is that the poor accuracy of Battlemechs is due entirely to the armour system and their weapons system. To compromise, Btech systems have opted for sheer weight of fire/spamming to get in damage. Frankly, its the ONLY way one can rationalise LRM systems and how they inflict damage via game mechanics.

I don't really want to go into the whole boondoggle again but the evidence is that Btech armour system is both ablative and defensive in nature, negating weapons fire. Failure to do so results in the secondary protective mechanism in which the armour physically ablates, protecting critical components inside. The hypothesis is that Btech has thus adapted their weapons system in an attempt to overwhelm this defensive feature, relying on failure of the armour to inflict ablative damage rather than using sheer firepower.

[PainRack]

The IS does have a massive advantage in territory, military, population, and resources. But they didn't start producing warships until after Comstar lent them a hand and they had captured several Clan warships to take apart and study. There's a reason nobody built warships in nearly 300 years of constant war in the Inner Sphere, and it wasn't a lack of resources.

The Fox corvette prototype was first startedin 3048, it was the Clan invasion which diverted resources aimed at the warship program. Successive attempts to restart the warship programme was delayed due to various other crisis, including Comstar refusal to sell the engines. There was no "capture" of Clan warships to assist their warship program.
The FedCom was supposed to be able to rennovate Camelot and produce warships from there in a few years. We never did learn why the FedCom ultimately failed to do so or the abandonment of Camelot by Snord Irregulars.

[Ford Prefect]

The biggest problem, however, being most if not all were Federation MS developed in the last third of the War, there are to my knowledge no Zeon MS in the OYW that have luna titanium armor. I could be wrong, but I'll keep looking. Either way they're still the extreme minority.

I don't think even Gelgoogs have ever been specified as being built with luna titanium, though in that particular case it doens't really matter. It's probably because of pure bulk, but Gelgoogs are as tough, and arguably tougher, than the RX-78. Also, Gelgoogs did have anti-beam coating on their shields, as did the Alex.

[Ritterin Sophia]

I don't think even Gelgoogs have ever been specified as being built with luna titanium, though in that particular case it doens't really matter. It's probably because of pure bulk, but Gelgoogs are as tough, and arguably tougher, than the RX-78. Also, Gelgoogs did have anti-beam coating on their shields, as did the Alex.

Apparently I'm wrong. Eh, oh well. It still doesn't help Zeon since the Gelgoog had a very short run and they're technologically starting out at the kickoff of the OYW.

As for Luna Titanium the only construction materials I could find were for the Marine/Marine Commander, Jager, and the ReGelg.* For the F/Fs-Type it was 'Super-Hard Steel Alloy', for the Jg-Type it was 'Titanium/Ceramic Composite', and for the J-Type it was 'Titanium Alloy Composite'. The latter two are quite likely the same thing, at least to me, with the newer statistics for the Jager being the most precise. It could be argued that by Titanium-Ceramic Composite they're just using the Zeon name for Luna Titanium, but I think we can agree that's quite unlikely.

*Unless of course we include the Gelgoog RF.

[RhoOmicronMu]

I look up the Zaku II at mahq.net and it describes the Zaku II as being 17.5 meters in height

That's considerably taller than any mech.

I'll also point out that BT ECM doesn't affect targeting, only C3 computers and reducing the range on sensors (such as negating the Beagle Active Probe's advantage), whereas M-particle spam would fuck up their targeting severely, probably on par with taking a hit to the sensors or getting tagged with a haywire pod. Considering the weapon ranges and shitty gunnery skills of Inner Sphere pilots, especially in 3050 before targeting computers and other goodies became widespread, most battlemech pilots are going to be fucked going up against Mobile Suits.

Warship and dropship based built in ECM not only fucks up targeting it stacks and is an integral part of any space combat. Active probes help reduce the targeting penalty of enemy ECM. I'm not up on the latest ground ECM and ECCM. I do know it's changed at least somewhat and they finally did something with all those old mechs with generic electronic warfare/communications equipment.

Yes, their primary weapon is a 120mm machine gun. If we're being generous, it would be the equivelent of an AC20 but with greater range. My personal opinion is that it would probably be closer to an AC10 in damage. Autocannon in the BT-verse also fire in bursts rather than full-auto (though one or two novels take liberties with this), meaning the Mobile Suit has an advantage in range.

That seems to be the exact oppisate of what happens in reality. It seems like your saying AKs firing on full auto are more accurate at range or hit at farther ranges than when firing 3 round bursts. If true, that's the craziest thing I've heard all day. Please tell me you meant something else.

At any rate, mechs can hit targets on the ground within line of sight with their longer range autocannon. Call it 12km or so.

and giant friggin' hand grenades.

Just for comedies sake, did you know that there are two Battletech sources that discuss the use of nuclear hand grenades? The early House Liao book and the brand new Jihad Hot Spots:Terra both talk about them.

Clearly, rather than the mechs simply being more agile than their opponents targeting systems or the pilot's aim, battlemechs must be capable of exceeding C and simply stepping out of the path of a laser that has already been fired at them.

I don't agree with Painrack on this exactly. I'm more inclined to believe targeting computers optimized for ground combat, ECM, and compression of the basic game for playability have a part to play as well. There is a quote that says something to the effect that gameplay ranges in the basic game are compressed for playability in Total Warfare.

Battlemechs, particularly light mechs, aren't slow, moving targets (well, maybe some of the assault mechs are.), no. But Mobile Suits are still ridiculously agile in comparison. Battlemechs will be easier to hit than Mobile Suits,

Mechs aren't that bad. A variety super sized versions of regular sports are played in mechs for example.

and the shitty targeting systems (and pilot gunnery skills) of IS mechs and their pilots will make hitting Mobile Suits difficult. Not impossible, just difficult. This doesn't even factor in M-particle interference.

I'd think they should be a tad easier to hit than a VTOL given their much larger size and similar speed and maneuverability.

[Sinanju]

On the topic of mobile suit agility, here's a short clip from MS IGLOO 2 (a trailer, maybe?) showing a Zaku being attacked by a Type 61 tank with its two 150mm cannons (skip to 1:16 if you want to see the incident in question). The Zaku is able to dodge both shells cleanly.

As an aside, am I the only one who thinks that either this or the original thread (Clans invade Earth) would be an awesome fanfic? Makes me wish I remember where my Clan Invasion-era books got to....

[RhoOmicronMu]

Try actually calcing the NAC Ke energy instead of using the Nuke rules. You get high hundred KT to low MT damage.

As for AT2 vs Battlespace, shrugs.

Ok, I just did the calc. As I suspected, because it's an effective range the number came up as considerably less than a kiloton for a low end NAC-35 calc. Nuke hits, cratering damage, and realistic effective velocities at those ranges all line up in the low or fractional kiloton range.

Not every world has mech militia.

Even crapsack periphery worlds can muster a mech or two. They're probably 300 years old, but there still mechs. The high end is about a regiment of mechs for corporate security/noble/militia/random guy who owns a family mech.

Not really. Given known mech production numbers, the SLDF apparently retains large numbers of "old" designs to simply outfit her mech forces and sporadic production. Similarly, 12 corps to cover the entire Sphere becomes a VERY small number indeed

It helps that a Star League Division has more than 26 regiments counting all of the component parts. A single Star League Division is the size of a large Corps or small Army level formation.

, even if we argue that these were merely TH forces meant to keep the Great Houses in line.

The SLDF are the Federal Army. Not just or necessarily all TH forces. The Houses of course had decent sized ground forces themselves.

We know the TH had sizable militia forces when the Houses invaded after Kerensky bugged out because there's an example presented as typical of a large high tech TH mech militia force getting nuked.

[Swindle1984]

I look up the Zaku II at mahq.net and it describes the Zaku II as being 17.5 meters in height

That's considerably taller than any mech.

I'll have to get back to you on that one. Right now the only source I can find that describes mechs as having similar height is the Mechwarrior 3 manual, and I'd like to find something a tad higher in canon.

Warship and dropship based built in ECM not only fucks up targeting it stacks and is an integral part of any space combat. Active probes help reduce the targeting penalty of enemy ECM. I'm not up on the latest ground ECM and ECCM. I do know it's changed at least somewhat and they finally did something with all those old mechs with generic electronic warfare/communications equipment.

I haven't played since the Total Warfare rules first came out (and most of my playing group immediately declared them to be heresy, though they later grudgingly admitted that some of the changes were for the better.), but here's the rules from the master rule book, revised edition:

Active Probe: An active probe allows the unit it's mounted on to detect hidden 'Mechs, battle armor and vehicles within its range that the unit has LoS to. It does not work underwater, and has no effect unless the scenario is being played with hidden units or some versions of the Level 3 double-blind rules.

Beagle Active Probe range: 4 hexes, Clan Active Probe range: 5 hexes, Clan Light Active Probe: 3 hexes

Electronic CounterMeasure Suite: ECM blocks certain types of enemy electronic equipment in a radius of six hexes. Artemis IV, Narc missile beacons and C3 networks can be disrupted by ECM. Missile launchers using Artemis or Narc can still be fired through an ECM bubble or at a target inside one, but they lose their missile hit bonuses. C3 is disrupted if the C3-equipped unit is within the ECM bubble's range or if the bubble blocks LoS to its master computer. In the case of C3i, all other members of the network must be blocked by the bubble in order to cut off the unit.

I seem to recall something about ECM making a hidden unit undetectable even with Active Probes, but it's not in the online rules I found. My actual book is packed away somewhere. But other than removing the bonuses for Artemis IV, Narc, and C3 networks, it doesn't affect weapons targeting at all.

That seems to be the exact oppisate of what happens in reality. It seems like your saying AKs firing on full auto are more accurate at range or hit at farther ranges than when firing 3 round bursts. If true, that's the craziest thing I've heard all day. Please tell me you meant something else.

Um... yes, I meant something quite different. I'm probably the closest we have to a firearms expert here, barring members who are in the military, so I can confirm that yes, an AK on full-auto is less accurate.

That paragraph was two different ideas, which I didn't separate into different paragraphs because they were related in my mind. Sorry for the confusion, I should have just split them.

We've seen Zakus make hits with their 120mm gun at ranges much greater than any demonstrated by AC20's, which is what we had decided to generously use as the baseline for damage. I then pointed out that the Zaku's 120mm machine gun is capable of firing on full-auto, whereas autocannon in the BT-verse only fire in bursts, which would be another advantage for the Zaku as few things quite manage to say "fuck you" like dumping a 100-round magazine of 120mm goodness in someone's face at point-blank range.

At any rate, mechs can hit targets on the ground within line of sight with their longer range autocannon. Call it 12km or so.

Oh, certainly. LB-X AC2 are great if you have a mech with a bunch of them stacked onboard. Just park that sucker on a hill with a really good gunner and peck the enemy to death before he can close the range. Not too many mechs like that on the field though.

I love the Vanquisher because its light gauss rifles have the same range, but more damage. Add in the C3i and you have a very nice sniper.

Just for comedies sake, did you know that there are two Battletech sources that discuss the use of nuclear hand grenades? The early House Liao book and the brand new Jihad Hot Spots:Terra both talk about them.

I'm sorry, I blanked out for a moment. I think some brain cells might have spontaneously killed themselves. What did you say?

I don't agree with Painrack on this exactly. I'm more inclined to believe targeting computers optimized for ground combat, ECM, and compression of the basic game for playability have a part to play as well. There is a quote that says something to the effect that gameplay ranges in the basic game are compressed for playability in Total Warfare.

Yes, ranges in the game are greatly compressed for playability. If someone played the table top game with realistic ranges, there wouldn't be a table large enough to play on except at a convention somewhere. I suppose you could make a map large enough in megamek, assuming the computer doesn't fossilize between turns.

Mechs aren't that bad. A variety super sized versions of regular sports are played in mechs for example.

I'm not saying they're slow, lumbering beasts. Especially not the light mechs and some medium mechs, particularly ones with jump jets. I'm just saying that in comparison to what I've seen Mobile Suits do, battlemechs are much less agile. MS are going to be a tough target, on par with the faster mechs. I don't think the hardened steel on a Zaku is up to Battletech standards for mechs though.

I'd think they should be a tad easier to hit than a VTOL given their much larger size and similar speed and maneuverability.

Well, the only real factors in making a VTOL difficult to hit in the game are speed and range. They're not very difficult to hit, at least if you're close enough. Ridiculously easy to swat down with one hit, but that doesn't factor in to the difficulty of hitting them in the first place. In real life, they'd not only be fast, but pulling off crazy maneuvers and presenting a much smaller target than most battlemechs. A Zaku would certainly be much easier to hit than a helicopter (assuming it doesn't take cover behind something). Again, I'm just saying, that IS pilots with their crappy piloting skills (they're 4/5 for pete's sake) would have a hard time hitting something as agile as a Zaku, particularly with M-particle interference. Since they make it impossible to use guided weapons in the Gundam verse and radar is all but useless in a battle (along with thermal), I'm going to guess that the targeting systems on a mech are going to shit themselves trying to provide a targeting solution. In other words, you'd add the same difficulty as attaching a haywire pod or getting a critical hit on the sensors. Not impossible by any means, but frustratingly difficult.

[lord Martiya]

As an aside, am I the only one who thinks that either this or the original thread (Clans invade Earth) would be an awesome fanfic? Makes me wish I remember where my Clan Invasion-era books got to....

I would do that, if I only had adequate knowledge of the Clans... Interested in the BattleTech Wiki?

[Ritterin Sophia]

I would do that, if I only had adequate knowledge of the Clans... Interested in the BattleTech Wiki?

Do you actually know enough about the OYW, it's technology, and it's mover and shakers?

[lord Martiya]

Do you actually know enough about the OYW, it's technology, and it's mover and shakers?

Actually, yes. I'm not the greatest expert, but I know enough to write a OYW fanfic without totally embarassing myself. My actual problem would be avoiding too much scenes with Dozle and his daughter or Char and Lalah...

[Sinanju]

I would do that, if I only had adequate knowledge of the Clans... Interested in the BattleTech Wiki?

I'm a really big Gundam fan (was the screen name a clue? ), but I haven't read BattleTech in a loooong time and the wiki is pretty sparse on details. Like, I remember the process of a batchall was described fairly decently in the novels and the Sarna.net wiki has three sentences on it. Not the kind of thing I'd want to base a 'fic on. I'd have to go dig out my novels.

Aaaanyway, to keep from getting too OT, I was curious if there was any more concrete info on BattleTech warships than trying to cook the game's numbers to make NACs into mini-nukes. Because otherwise...well, on top of their numerical advantage and their willingness to use nuclear bazookas, I think the Zeon space navy could carry the day with their 15 kiloton or so beam cannons.

[Commander 598]

On the topic of mobile suit agility, here's a short clip from MS IGLOO 2 (a trailer, maybe?) showing a Zaku being attacked by a Type 61 tank with its two 150mm cannons (skip to 1:16 if you want to see the incident in question). The Zaku is able to dodge both shells cleanly.

If you want to talk about MS agility, shouldn't you be posting a Gouf Custom clip?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ubiNqkTMIU

[Sinanju]

If you want to talk about MS agility, shouldn't you be posting a Gouf Custom clip?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ubiNqkTMIU

Well, yes. But the Gouf Custom isn't a Zaku (no Zaku!), and its pilot was supposed to be hot shit, so I figured the shot of Joe Zeke in a bog-standard machine might be a better baseline.

Your video is pretty good as an example of what a skilled pilot can do, though.

[Ford Prefect]

The IGLOO clip is probably more useful because the pilot is just some grunt, as opposed to a 100+ confirmed kills ace like Norris Packard. It is kind of fun in the sense that it turns the usual scenario on its head - despite all having Gundams, Shiro and crew get totally dominated.

[Norade]

On the topic of mobile suit agility, here's a short clip from MS IGLOO 2 (a trailer, maybe?) showing a Zaku being attacked by a Type 61 tank with its two 150mm cannons (skip to 1:16 if you want to see the incident in question). The Zaku is able to dodge both shells cleanly.

If you want to talk about MS agility, shouldn't you be posting a Gouf Custom clip?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ubiNqkTMIU

I'd say that clip more showed how bad MS pilots are at aiming. We see a lot of shots miss when he's standing still the majority of shots fired are taken at what I'd estimate to be under 100m range. Karen's shot might be at longer range, but she still misses her shot badly with a vastly sub-c beam weapon. We also see that Gundams sensors are so bad they can't even see through dust and that Gundam pilots are so stupid they'll stand still scanning the dust while the enemy sneaks up on them, I don't think that is a problem limited to Federation pilots either. Later on we see a rocket that moves slower than a modern RPG-7 round (That assuming that the distance it traveled was about 200m and that it took 2 seconds, I think the distance is much shorter than that). The Guntank has issues leading its target either due to being unable to traverse fast enough, or because the pilot is of little skill. Right after that we do see an impressive scene showing the GOUF lifting a section of raised highway and pushing it over.

I'm not going to bother going through the video though as that should be enough to show that it doesn't move as fast as it is claimed to.

[Ford Prefect]

We also see that Gundams sensors are so bad they can't even see through dust

Are you kidding me? Have you missed all the mentions of the Minovsky effect and how it renders basically all sensors useless? That's like a base premise of Mobile Suit Gundam.