Battletech Clan Invasion of UC Gundam Earth

[Connor MacLeod]

First of all, could you not do that? I have a massive aversion to people needlessly (and it is almost always needless) splitting posts into little chunks.

Too bad. Not my fault if you're a tl;dr type Seriously though, are you saying it owuld have been better if it were one solid chunk of paragraphs? I personally find that harder to read through, especially when you have to cross-link points from a lengthy reply.

And honestly, you're reading so much into this that it's mindblowing. I'm not even vaguely surprised that you mentioned Aina standing above the beam cannon and thus making the allusion that it's some sort of funky technobabble weapon which we can't conclude anything off, but what exactly is the problem with taking it at face value? A big laser beam blew up a mountain, and exhibited more or less appropriate side effects. I mean, yes, there are some funky things going on there, but why do you care? We could spend all day talking about things like waste heat and radiation and recoil and how a couple of Doms somehow managed to produce that much energy, but I don't see the point. What matters is that we can come to a reasonable conclusion which fits into the context of the setting, not one which comes up with an endless array of silly 'justifications'.

I'm guessing you didn't read all of my reply.

1.) I never said it HAS to be a funky technobabble beam weapon that we cannot conclude anything off of. I said that the complications in analysis make it HARD to calculate and it probably would be far simpler just to say "technobabble." There is a difference.

2.) How are we taking it "at face value?" I was taking it at face value, and that's the start of the problem. What you're saying is "why can't we just ignore the specifics and go with the intent?" Which is fine if you don't want to derive calculations from it, because otherwise this is like saying you can calculate phaser firepower from visuals because the NDF part doesn't matter Can't have it both ways, dude. At least not without working for it. (Analysis being difficult? OMGWHATASHOCK! )

3.) You want a relatively "simpler" approach? Go with the earlier non-mountain bits. Melting through or slicing holes through Gundams. The beam looks to be quite wide, it looks like it would have melted a sizable volume. Hell, you could calc the beam based on a rough estimate of how much ground it melted.

EX: eyeballing it with the chick above the beam emitter, it lokos to be say, 20 meters or so (could be alot larger, or could be smaller.. I'm not up on the mecha scalings in these things and I'm too lazy to bother with the "official" stats right now) If we assume the beam vaporizies a 20 m diameter cylinder to a dpeth of say, 5 meters.. it would take 7 TJ to melt that much (using Mike's "1 hour, one meter" BDZ variables from the SW firepower page) from a single shot, or nearly 2 kt minimum. There would still be issues, but far less, and it could go higher (beam diameter could be greater, or less, the beam could cut deeper into the ground, etc.) A single or double digit Kt/sec beam will also be no problem recoil wise, since looking at the official stats those things probably mass several thousand tons easily or may float on antigrav (I suppose you could argue the levitation device also acts as an anchor to counter momentum)

[Balrog]

Then you're a blatantly dishonest moron with an axe to grind. The frame of reference is the MS and the ships themselves, they are easily moving the body length of those ships in a single frame. A pre-refit (which these are since it's the Battle of Loum and they don't have the later launch catapults) is 288m long by 68.5m wide, and 61.3m tall.

At 0:34 we see Char traverse the distance between a Salamis and a Magellan (assuming the length of a Salamis, it's not it's more like 1.5-2 times that) in under a second going from a complete stop, that's almost 30G in and of itself. It is self-evident that the 'Official Stats' are wrong, much like when Mark Simmons (the guy they

Actually, no. At 0:32 we see Char, having spun around and slightly drifted away from the destroyed Salamis, activate his rockets and accelerate towards the Magellan. At 0:34 we see him spin around again and fire his weapon at the ship. Around 0:36-7 we see him land on the Magellan, then boost away as it blows up. So it was hardly "under a second," never mind that there were cuts in between each scene. Now, if you want to determine the actual distance between his starting and stopping point, rather than make up a number you think sounds nice, in order to prove your point, I can wait.

At 0:03 an MS-06C fires two rounds from a 280mm Bazooka, at 0:04 those rounds impact the dorsal mega particle cannon at the fore of the ship and the port dorsal twin AA guns ahead of the main bridge structure. Not destroyed.

0:10 an MS-06C maneuvers in close to set off the weapons magazine of a six tube missile launcher with 120mm fire at point blank range, at 0:13 the warheads cook off and an explosion occurs which obscures our line of sight. Inconclusive.

At 0:25 Char fires his 120mm MG directly into the bridge section of a Salamis at point blank range and then maneuvers away as an explosion that originates fore of the bridge section, an area he didn't touch. Inconclusive. It's possible Quattro sensed danger with his burgeoning Newtype powers and avoided stick around as allies destroyed the Salamis.

At 0:36 Casval fires what appears to either be a Panzer or Sturmfaust. The weapon penetrates the turret of a twin barreled MPC at the mid-dorsal section of a Magellan-class. It appears to penetrate all the way down into the reactor as the ship touches off soon after. Destroyed by a dedicated anti-ship weapon.

Rather than argue about each point, I'll concede and return to the main argument, that the Zakus were damaging/destroying the ships with weapons that simply do not compare to capital-scale BT weapons. A 120mm machine gun is something you'd more likely find on 'Mechs themselves, making Gundam ships rather vulnerable to BT fighters and DropShips.

That is what is required for a normal-sized MS to create a jamming effect. Simply shooting MPCs is not going to get it done. The reason you have to do this is you need to find a way to safely disperse the Minovsky Particles without also letting out dangerous levels of radiation from the MS' fusion reactor.

Very well. So Gundam is going to give up using Minovsky particles for jamming...just because? After all, the best they can do is 2000km for the big-ass space gun (300km under jamming conditions). It's not like they'll suddenly be fighting at light-second ranges with Gundam ships picking off the Clans like snipers. Which is what would really be needed to make a difference, considering BT ships (who already fight at ranges of hundreds of km) are traveling fast enough that they can close the gap quite quickly.

[PainRack]

Shouldn't the real issue be Clan logistics as well as massively inferior numbers?

Do the Clans suffer from the months of travel from Clan space required to ship in supplies and reinforcements?

The Clans are MASSIVELY outnumbered here. They have to start tossing in mechs to make any form of difference numbers wise. Come on, 50 odd warships and a count of several hundred fighters aren't going to make any difference here. Or are we no longer limiting forces to the Invading Clans bid?

I'm really too lazy to do a serious count of the potential forces assigned, but seriously, does anyone here believes the Clans aren't facing such crazy odds?

[Commander 598]

At 0:34 we see Char traverse the distance between a Salamis and a Magellan (assuming the length of a Salamis, it's not it's more like 1.5-2 times that) in under a second going from a complete stop, that's almost 30G in and of itself. It is self-evident that the 'Official Stats' are wrong, much like when Mark Simmons (the guy they

While I'm not going to argue that Schatten saying the official stats are bullshit is wrong, I will say that MS IGLOO is full of contradictory bullshit.

[Dark Hellion]

IGLOO is no worse than the rest of UC when it comes to goofy stuff. Zeta gundam has a ton of retardedly fast accelerations because the animators didn't realize the shear scale of an O'Neal colony. Double Zeta is arguably worse with Judau and the ZZ Gundam jumping something like 10-20km in just a few seconds, in atmosphere.

The "Official Stats" are total bullshit though because they are contradicted repeatedly by visuals, dialogue, and plot elements throughout UC. Simple examples include firing beyond maximum sensor ranges in ZZ, accelerations throughout the series, the power level of beam weaponry throughout the series, etc.

As Painrack states though (again, I am agreeing with Painrack on something, the apocalypse is near) this isn't very fair for the clans. Even if they get to go all out there are massive logistics issues posed by distance, there is the whole Minovsky effect thing shutting down their sensors at range and shutting off their ships electrical systems up close, the cheating nature of mega particle beam weaponry and the general loose nature of gundam physics.

For people who doubt the actual power of beam weaponry, watch Gundam Unicorn. While taking place in a later UC date it clearly demonstrates that beam weaponry puts out obscene amounts of energy for the tech level involved.

[Commander 598]

What I meant was that IGLOO Loum is directly contradictory to basically every other depiction of it...there's also the tank kicking in IGLOO 2...that was fucking terrible.

[PainRack]

As Painrack states though (again, I am agreeing with Painrack on something, the apocalypse is near) this isn't very fair for the clans. Even if they get to go all out there are massive logistics issues posed by distance, there is the whole Minovsky effect thing shutting down their sensors at range and shutting off their ships electrical systems up close, the cheating nature of mega particle beam weaponry and the general loose nature of gundam physics.

For people who doubt the actual power of beam weaponry, watch Gundam Unicorn. While taking place in a later UC date it clearly demonstrates that beam weaponry puts out obscene amounts of energy for the tech level involved.

Frankly, Minovsky particles must interact with reality in some form or other. There isn't any reason to assume why general shielding won't work just as well to protect against magic particle of the week.

Given that Clan Warships have no problem working with PPCs and etc, they really shouldn't be a major problem. As it is, tanks and even civilian vehicles have no problem working with a MHD fusion reactor, suggesting that Btech shielding is significantly compact effective.

The sensors are going to become bullshit, but given btech abilities with sneak suits and stealth armour, the Spector and Exterminator, this probably isn't going to be as much a problem on the ground as some has suggested. Space on the other hand......

We COULD also point out that exotic weaponery such as Magnetic Pulse warheads could seriously screw up Gundam fusion reactor, making insta boom.......

[Dark Hellion]

While they should be able to rig up shielding eventually, normal EMP hardening does not work against minovsky interference. IIRC a lot of civilian deaths in the OYW come about because Minovsky interference has totally devastated the power grids of Earth. So, while the electronics damaging effect is probably a one trick pony, its a damn good one because it will burn out the power supplies of the first clan wave completely and force them to rebuild and refit their entire armed forced, which is probably as good as a victory.

The sensor thing is a much bigger issue. Minovsky interference will cause the visual haze present during things like the Battle of Loum or Operation Maelstrom and mean that both sides have to get into the 100km slugging matches that UC ships and suits are designed to fight at. This takes away pretty much any range advantage of Btech.

The thing is that it will be a bloody war of annihilation and frankly UC gundam is just better at it than the Clans.

I think a more interesting match-up would be to have small squads or task forces attempting to complete operations against other universe defenders and vice versa. This would probably make for much more dynamic and fair interactions.

[Norade]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way? I mean haze or not, you'll know where things are, you can also aim for the spots where radar returns are the worst and try to track ships that way.

[Ford Prefect]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way?

No, you can't. It comes up quite frequently that Minovsky particles can reach such densities that they screw up more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum, creating situations where you can't even tell what something is by looking at it. A particularly tense moment in The 08th MS Team involves Karen Joshua and 'Shinigami' Sanders attempting to snipe some Zakus at ten kilometres. Minovsky interference with their sensors has totally smeared the image, meaning they can't actually be certain they're going to hit the Zekes without hitting their reactors. The interaction of mega-particle beam weapons and Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors is a nuclear explosion, and the Zakus are standing in the middle of a civilian village.

Minovsky particles can create an environment where even your eyes cannot be trusted. This is reason for such short range battles in the UC timelime. We've actually seen battleships and higher end mobile suits open fire at thousands of kilometres, on screen (well not actually on screen, if you follow) when Minovsky interference isn't so much an issue.

[Norade]

On visual haze, are you trying to say that you can't just sit back with a large enough telescope and aim that way?

No, you can't. It comes up quite frequently that Minovsky particles can reach such densities that they screw up more and more of the electromagnetic spectrum, creating situations where you can't even tell what something is by looking at it. A particularly tense moment in The 08th MS Team involves Karen Joshua and 'Shinigami' Sanders attempting to snipe some Zakus at ten kilometres. Minovsky interference with their sensors has totally smeared the image, meaning they can't actually be certain they're going to hit the Zekes without hitting their reactors. The interaction of mega-particle beam weapons and Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors is a nuclear explosion, and the Zakus are standing in the middle of a civilian village.

Minovsky particles can create an environment where even your eyes cannot be trusted. This is reason for such short range battles in the UC timelime. We've actually seen battleships and higher end mobile suits open fire at thousands of kilometres, on screen (well not actually on screen, if you follow) when Minovsky interference isn't so much an issue.

If your aim is to kill whatever is in that blob then does a poor resolution matter? For example if a battle is fought over an area of 100 miles and you're sitting back at around a light second looking in. They can't see you at all, but you can see them or at least the general haze of the area they're fighting in. My first question, what if any information can you gather about what's going on inside that bubble?

Next, what's stopping you from sending in weapons with either A a wide AoE and a preset non-electrical trigger mechanism, or B just spamming dumb weapons over a wide area and hoping for hits. Either way their sitting ducks so a low hit rate doesn't matter much to you. Or better yet, sit a probe as close as you can with it still being able to send information back, say using particles instead of laser pulses, and use its better resolution images to target with your main fleet sitting further away.

In the end I just don't see Minovsky particles as being much of an issue.

[Stark]

If all you can see is a smear that you can't even accurately range, spamming fire is statistically unlikely to achieve anything.

[Ford Prefect]

They're still left with needing to actually win a shooting match against an enemy that has better range, greater numbers and can actually see their targets. Even if we assumed identical weapons performance, we just cannot escape the fact that Clans will need to kill ten or twenty enemy ships for every single loss of their own, which is just implausible in a situation where both sides are fragile as all get out. Attrition strongly favours the Earth Sphere.

[Norade]

If all you can see is a smear that you can't even accurately range, spamming fire is statistically unlikely to achieve anything.

That's why I was asking what you can see of that smear at that range. As for spamming fire, you just need to know what the smallest target you need to hit to win is. Say that your goal is to ensure that the enemy carriers all die and you know that, they are 500m long x 150m tall x 100m wide. If their side is facing you they take up an area of 75,000m2. If from experience you know that ships will tend to be at each end of this bubble trading shots while suits melee in the middle you can narrow down your target area a lot more to say a pair of 160km by 10km strips at each end. You still need 100,000 projectiles fired in a perfect pattern to deal damage, but that is more than what the enemy can do back.

They're still left with needing to actually win a shooting match against an enemy that has better range, greater numbers and can actually see their targets. Even if we assumed identical weapons performance, we just cannot escape the fact that Clans will need to kill ten or twenty enemy ships for every single loss of their own, which is just implausible in a situation where both sides are fragile as all get out. Attrition strongly favours the Earth Sphere.

My example was less clans versus Gundam, and more of a general thing.

[Stark]

That's why I was asking what you can see of that smear at that range. As for spamming fire, you just need to know what the smallest target you need to hit to win is. Say that your goal is to ensure that the enemy carriers all die and you know that, they are 500m long x 150m tall x 100m wide. If their side is facing you they take up an area of 75,000m2. If from experience you know that ships will tend to be at each end of this bubble trading shots while suits melee in the middle you can narrow down your target area a lot more to say a pair of 160km by 10km strips at each end. You still need 100,000 projectiles fired in a perfect pattern to deal damage, but that is more than what the enemy can do back.

If they're smeared over three times that visible area and cannot be accurately ranged to within a few kilometers, the odds of hitting them randomly are very small. At light-second ranges they may be more likely blurred over a magnitude greater volume, with correspondingly tiny probabilities.

Of course, you can just use closer spotters, but the Clans won't know that.

[Norade]

That's why I was asking what you can see of that smear at that range. As for spamming fire, you just need to know what the smallest target you need to hit to win is. Say that your goal is to ensure that the enemy carriers all die and you know that, they are 500m long x 150m tall x 100m wide. If their side is facing you they take up an area of 75,000m2. If from experience you know that ships will tend to be at each end of this bubble trading shots while suits melee in the middle you can narrow down your target area a lot more to say a pair of 160km by 10km strips at each end. You still need 100,000 projectiles fired in a perfect pattern to deal damage, but that is more than what the enemy can do back.

If they're smeared over three times that visible area and cannot be accurately ranged to within a few kilometers, the odds of hitting them randomly are very small. At light-second ranges they may be more likely blurred over a magnitude greater volume, with correspondingly tiny probabilities.

Of course, you can just use closer spotters, but the Clans won't know that.

They might if they were smart and sent a small wave to start and any of those guys survived.

I also mentioned the spotter idea earlier as well.

[PainRack]

While they should be able to rig up shielding eventually, normal EMP hardening does not work against minovsky interference. IIRC a lot of civilian deaths in the OYW come about because Minovsky interference has totally devastated the power grids of Earth. So, while the electronics damaging effect is probably a one trick pony, its a damn good one because it will burn out the power supplies of the first clan wave completely and force them to rebuild and refit their entire armed forced, which is probably as good as a victory.

Based on the average technology of Gundam Earth, not the shielding of Battletech. And frankly, one that's EXTREMELY difficult to believe given the fact that their shielding seems to rely on just basics.

Again, Battletech uses MHD equipped tanks and can run delicate radar and communications equipment relatively close to the fusion plant. Their shielding is NOT 20th century level. It gets worse if one consider that civilian vehicles uses fusion reactors, with their attendant plasma/heat issues, although Btech fusion apparently runs at much "cooler" temperatures than in real life.

The sensor thing is a much bigger issue. Minovsky interference will cause the visual haze present during things like the Battle of Loum or Operation Maelstrom and mean that both sides have to get into the 100km slugging matches that UC ships and suits are designed to fight at. This takes away pretty much any range advantage of Btech.

Their ground forces already have relatively little problems engaging Purifier, Infiltrator and Stealth armour, much less the Spector/Exterminator mechs. The Spector/Exterminator stealth capabilities are probably most appropriate, as they combine visual stealth with radar and infra stealth capabilities.

A workaround also exists around Minovsky, by simply examining the level of interference, one can extrapolate the locations of their heavy warships. Difficult, but then again, it is possible to locate Jumpships via the emergence of radiation when they exit jumpspace. Targeting can then be resolved via telescopic missiles such as the Killer Whales.

[SAMAS]

That's why I was asking what you can see of that smear at that range. As for spamming fire, you just need to know what the smallest target you need to hit to win is. Say that your goal is to ensure that the enemy carriers all die and you know that, they are 500m long x 150m tall x 100m wide. If their side is facing you they take up an area of 75,000m2. If from experience you know that ships will tend to be at each end of this bubble trading shots while suits melee in the middle you can narrow down your target area a lot more to say a pair of 160km by 10km strips at each end. You still need 100,000 projectiles fired in a perfect pattern to deal damage, but that is more than what the enemy can do back.

If they're smeared over three times that visible area and cannot be accurately ranged to within a few kilometers, the odds of hitting them randomly are very small. At light-second ranges they may be more likely blurred over a magnitude greater volume, with correspondingly tiny probabilities.

Of course, you can just use closer spotters, but the Clans won't know that.

They might if they were smart and sent a small wave to start and any of those guys survived.

I also mentioned the spotter idea earlier as well.

Yeah, but like he said: The Clans.

Remember, this isn't what you would do in this situation, but what they would do.

[PainRack]

Yeah, but like he said: The Clans.

Remember, this isn't what you would do in this situation, but what they would do.

You're kidding, right? The Clans limited warfare attitude literally forces them to adopt such practices such as sending in small numbers to "test" the ground before a larger "bid" overruns the enemy. If said commander refuses to up the bid, then what happens is the Clan reorganise for another go with newer players and said players aren't dumb enough that they don't do a threat assessment and bid accordingly. You COULD argue that politics forces warriors to underbid but that's assuming that the Clans don't know how to play such political games.

Trying to find a warship under heavy Minovsky particle density is like trying to find the sun by looking at where the blue is in the sky.

And they already do something similar. Cue Radiation from Jumpship emergence.

Battletech do not have FTL sensors. What they have are standard sensors, well, technically, 1980s/90s level space sensors updated with their computing capabilities. As a workaround in the scenario, it would be pointless due to the sheer number disparity but as a one on one contest.....

[Stark]

I don't think you understand. Entry radiation is predictable and radiates from a point source; this effect dramatically reduces the resolution of sensor information. It isn't just a matter of 'lol look for denser jamming and shoot there' and its not comparable to backtracking a consistent giveaway flash.

[SAMAS]

Yeah, but like he said: The Clans.

Remember, this isn't what you would do in this situation, but what they would do.

You're kidding, right?

Kinda. Note the smiley. But I was referring to the whole spotters thing, anyway.

[lord Martiya]

I don't think you understand. Entry radiation is predictable and radiates from a point source; this effect dramatically reduces the resolution of sensor information. It isn't just a matter of 'lol look for denser jamming and shoot there' and its not comparable to backtracking a consistent giveaway flash.

There are two little problems with that.
1)Minovsky particle are used to jam by being disseminated in an area and stay there for an unspecified but extremely long period of time. A ship can just saturate an area with Minovsky particle, and your sensors will just relevate an area where they are useless (in the series there was an incident where the White Base on Earth did just that: having to travel in an area filled with canyons and knowing they had Zeon military hunting for them, the crew entered the canyon area and released Minovsky particles until all the canyons were saturated enough to stop radar).
2)Minovsky particles can be actually stored in missiles and sent away. Evidence of this is the Battle of Solomon: Public-class gunboats were used to launch heavy missiles filled with enough Minovsky particles to stop fire from Solomon's beam guns.

[Stark]

What are you talking about?

[lord Martiya]

Of how Minovsky jamming was used in the series: it's not a normal jamming where you emit an overload of signal, it's a saturation effect similar to filling a room with dirt or dust. I'm not sure it's compatible with modern scientifical theories, but that's exactly how Minovsky particles jamming was used in the original anime.

[Stark]

I'm not really seeing how the mechanism is relevant to it making spam fire ineffective at 300,000km. But... Ok?