40k Imperial Knight vs BT BattleMech

[Balrog]

A Knight Paladin fights an Atlas 'Mech in a battle to the death. The contest takes place in Central Park - the Atlas starts on 110th St, the Knight on 59th St - and they are restricted to moving only within the confines of the park. Standard model for both, no added weapons/equipment or variants. Who wins?

[Sgt_Artyom]

What would you consider the standard armament of an Imperial Knight to be? I've seen great variation and had considered that armament was entirely up to the operator.

[Eternal_Freedom]

He specified a Paladin, which is the rapid-fire Battle Cannon, two heavy stubbers (basically .50 BMG machine guns) and a Reaper Chainsword, plus maybe a missile pod on it's back.

[Tribble]

While I'm a fan of the BattleTech series (well, Mechwarrior at any rate) and the Atlas is one of my fav Mechs, my impression of the 40k universe is that everything is cranked up to 11, so I'm guessing the Imperial Knight would win this. Don't 40k vehicles usually come with shields in addition to heavy armour? And ridiculous weapons?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Imperial Knights have an Ion Shield that gives it a 4+ invulnerable save on the tabletop (inn other words, 50% of ranged attacks bounce off the shield with no damage), though it only works on one facing.

As for the weapons, the Battle Cannon is the Imperial Guard's standard tank gun, able to cripple several tanks at once if you're lucky and wipe out whole squads. This version has twice the rate of fire of the standard one. As for the Chainsword, well, that's a chainsaw the size of a tank.

[Tribble]

Imperial Knights have an Ion Shield that gives it a 4+ invulnerable save on the tabletop (inn other words, 50% of ranged attacks bounce off the shield with no damage), though it only works on one facing.

As for the weapons, the Battle Cannon is the Imperial Guard's standard tank gun, able to cripple several tanks at once if you're lucky and wipe out whole squads. This version has twice the rate of fire of the standard one. As for the Chainsword, well, that's a chainsaw the size of a tank.

Like I said, ridiculous. IMO a standard Atlas isn't going to last long against that.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I don't know any actual estimates for BT or 40K ranges, but the battle cannon is treated as a long-range weapon, so it is possible that the Knight may be able to stay at range and shoot the Atlas to pieces.

[Elheru Aran]

Apart from energy weapons and vague future-tech... BT isn't *that* much advanced over modern tech, isn't it? I'd give the contest to the Knight fairly easily.

[Purple]

Depending on the make and ammo the battle cannon probably isn't that massively far off modern MBT cannons. And that's broadly compatible with the higher powered BT autocannons isn't it?

[Eternal_Freedom]

The Vanquisher cannon is the 40K equivalent of a MBT cannon - it's designed purely to punch through armour and nothing else. The Battle Cannon is more of a general-purpose gun and when mounted on Leman Russ "tanks" it's more of a self-propelled howitzer, it's stronger than tank guns but less effective at punshing through armour, but has a much larger lethal damage radius (in game terms, it's a Large Blast weapon so it hits anything under a 5" diameter template).

[Balrog]

He specified a Paladin, which is the rapid-fire Battle Cannon, two heavy stubbers (basically .50 BMG machine guns) and a Reaper Chainsword, plus maybe a missile pod on it's back.

No missile pod, that's one of the extra weapons you can add on, but the rest is correct.

Depending on the make and ammo the battle cannon probably isn't that massively far off modern MBT cannons. And that's broadly compatible with the higher powered BT autocannons isn't it?

BT autocannons fire bursts of armor-piercing high explosive shells per 'turn' (though apparently some like the one on the MechBuster fire hyper-velocity DU rounds). They have a separate category for more traditional tank cannons called Rifles which only fire one shell per turn; in game terms they do reduced damage against standard armor plating.

[matterbeam]

As far as I know, the ion shields of the Imperial knight are directional, so they might be bypassed by a simulataneous attack by direct fire and arcing fire.

The Atlas can have an AC20, which is basically a naval cannon. Its lasers might not be able to go through the Imperial knight's shields, but I see the Atlas as having two advantages over the Imperial Knight: Range and Time.

The Atlas can snipe with its lasers from pretty far away. It can also do so for prolonged periods of time. If we go by Tabletop rules, the Imperial knight will always win because it gets a continuous shield. In the Warhammer 40K lore, shields are gradually depleted as they take damage, so an Atlas might theoretically grind it down from long range, then move in for a kill.

[Q99]

Apart from energy weapons and vague future-tech... BT isn't *that* much advanced over modern tech, isn't it? I'd give the contest to the Knight fairly easily.

Their armor is pretty darn good too, they can take repeated hits from very strong weapons. As mentioned, their ACs are rapid-fire tank cannons, and they can take hits from bursts of those with just some ablation.

There are areas where Btech *definitely* has the edge. Elemental Armor blows Space Marine armor away in firepower and protection and mobility (though Elementals tend to be the point where Btech's sense of scale intersects most favorably with other stuff, that and aerospace fighters).


For the Knight specifically- the stubbers are near-useless, the repeat-fire Battlecannon and the chainsword are the threats- but I think many Mechs will be faster and avoid the latter, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong and also that may not be true if we're using an assault mech. The Ion shield is something without an equivalent and is a nice defensive advantage.

[Cykeisme]

I think the fact has come up many times on this forum, that BattleTech armor works very strangely, both in the tabletop game and the written fiction (which follows the game mechanics quite closely).
BattleTech armor can allow a 'Mech to sustain pretty significant weapon impacts, but every single hit (even minor ones) linearly ablate armor mass.

So if we take all that at face value, we'd need to figure out ranges, rates of fire, and penetration/ablation effects of the two participants ranged weapons. To further complicate matters, the very specific range values given in BattleTech are sometimes claimedto be game mechanics, with actual ranges being longer.

So, considering the game systems both sides either heavily abstract these properties or, in the case of Btech, also behave unusually, I don't think it's actually possible to figure this out.

Normally as an alternative, we look at the damage effects on surrounding terrain, foliage, structures of known construction methods, etc, but even those are a bit lacking in both canons,, and inconsistent where present.

I'd say we don't have enough data to determine a winner here; it's so fuzzy that it could easily go either way.

[Q99]

I think the fact has come up many times on this forum, that BattleTech armor works very strangely, both in the tabletop game and the written fiction (which follows the game mechanics quite closely).
BattleTech armor can allow a 'Mech to sustain pretty significant weapon impacts, but every single hit (even minor ones) linearly ablate armor mass.

Yea. Ironically, they're thus proportionally better against stronger weapons than weaker ones.

Still, weaker weapons do, like, 1-2 damage, tactically fairly irrelevant unless used in large number. Like, flights of 40 small missiles are a thing.

So, considering the game systems both sides either heavily abstract these properties or, in the case of Btech, also behave unusually, I don't think it's actually possible to figure this out.

Flipside, Btech's armor properties, while odd, do work pretty consistently against the types of weapons Knights are gonna have. Big energy weapons, tank cannon esque things? We know what that does against Btech armor, and vice-versa we know what they do in 40k.


Though I do agree with your conclusion that it could go either way- I think both sides are quite capable of inflicting serious damage on each other.

Depends a bit on the mech too.

[Cykeisme]

Certainly, there are a few different types of Knights and configurations thereof, and when it comes to BattleTech, I don't need to say that 'Mechs can vary quite a bit. The OP does state it's a standard Atlas, so I'm assuming an AS7-D. There's no "standard" Knight, however.


Anyway, due to the way Btech armor works (linear ablation, impact angle irrelevant, etc), it's rather important in determining precisely how powerful the tank cannon-esque and energy weapons are.. because the 'Mech's survival time is, with oddly low amounts of variance, inversely proportional to that power.
There isn't any similar situation in reality where this is the case, because unpredictable variables can fuzz out the differences between roughly similar weapon systems when it comes to penetration of armor plate.

As an aside, I wouldn't completely discount weaker weapons completely either, due to the chance of scoring critical hits on 'Mech torso sections even before the armor is fully ablated.

Meanwhile, extensive analysis by Connor on this forum would demonstrate that 40k's baseline weapons are more effective than their modern equivalents, but with effects not always described consistently.. so we're left with ballpark figures. Ballpark figures that are rather difficult to translate into Btech "damage" terms.. which correlate with reality anyway.

Hence, taking all this into account, I wouldn't even give too much thought to this versus, despite being a huge fan of both fictional settings!

[Venator]

Meanwhile, extensive analysis by Connor on this forum would demonstrate that 40k's baseline weapons are more effective than their modern equivalents, but with effects not always described consistently.. so we're left with ballpark figures. Ballpark figures that are rather difficult to translate into Btech "damage" terms.. which correlate with reality anyway.

Inconsistency is a big issue for 40k, where as BTech seems to be (to my knowledge) lock-step consistent since it's heavily tied to game rules.

For example, the Gaunt's Ghosts books describe Imperial and even second-rate Chaos vehicles as firing hypervelocity rounds; one description has a Leman Russ hit by a 40mm hypervelocity sabot round which moves the entire vehicle several meters sideways over snowy ground but fails to penetrate or even inflict spalling damage. Other descriptions of Imperial Guard firepower don't indicate that type of resilience or projectile velocity.

At the high end of novel-based estimation, a Leman Russ or a small platoon thereof could smash an Atlas to pieces at extreme range while moving at high speed to avoid return fire, retaining near-perfect accuracy due to superb inertial dampeners and target locks. Using lesser examples it would be a fair fight at best for the 40k Knight.