Battletech weapon ranges - REAL RANGES

[Sarevok]

So how far can Battletech weapons really shoot ? I am told the board game rules are fake. And what about relative weapon ranges ? As in gauss rifle range > AC5 range > AC20 range ? Does fluff ranges mean a short range brawler/city fighter Hunchback's can now headshot a sniper mech like the Gauss rifle armed Hollander at 3000 m with a AC20 now ?

Sorry BT fans but even as someone whose first PC game was Mechwarrior 2 some of the claims about BT in online debates irk me. Versus debate Battletech is nothing like the FASA/Catalyst Labs published game I know of.

[Vejut]

Depends on who you ask. Current party line is "jamming reduces range". One of the old gray death books used that for missiles. On the other hand, until very recently, the books otherwise matched the game range wise.

[Nephtys]

It's your pick. Either figure a rationalization on why 'effective range' is so low for mechs (yet far higher for planes with the same weapons), or figure out some new rules of physics in which a 'heavy machine gun' becomes harmless to unarmored soldiers after 60 meters.

[GuppyShark]

The ranges were longer in the computer games, because the tabletop "game mechanics" ranges would not have been plausible from an in-cockpit perspective.

[Stark]

Amusingly there was not only no reason to use such ridiculous ranges originally, but little chance they'll ever change. Time to deal with 'Battletech is fucking stupid' again, I guess.

Can someone explain to me how 'torso cockpits' entail all kinds of penalties due to raditation or whatever the fuck but Mad Cats exist? :V

Aren't LRMs basically unguided anyway? The only possible limiation is propellant.

[Sarevok]

Depends on who you ask. Current party line is "jamming reduces range". One of the old gray death books used that for missiles. On the other hand, until very recently, the books otherwise matched the game range wise.

Jamming is the weakest argument because there is no need to use a fancy radar for targetting that can be jammed.

You don't need anything more than a telescope and optical rangefinder to shoot far beyond ingame ranges. WW 2 tanks could hit targets at 2000 m using the mark 1 eyeball and a periscope to aim. Even in the modern era not a single tank carries fire control radar because it is not required in ground combat ranges on Earth like planets. Modern tanks have no problem hitting other tanks at 5000+ meters with optical sighting alone.

An enemy mech is a pretty big target. I reckon with iron sights on a mech mounted autocannon I could shoot further than normally possible

It's your pick. Either figure a rationalization on why 'effective range' is so low for mechs (yet far higher for planes with the same weapons), or figure out some new rules of physics in which a 'heavy machine gun' becomes harmless to unarmored soldiers after 60 meters.

My pet theory is that the armor is really really strong. In real world tanks and battleships had a certain range after which certain weapons could no longer penetrate them. Maybe the same applies here. Perhaps a AC20 can really shoot beyond 1000 meters but at that range the shell would lose most of it's velocity and just bounce off the armor. An ER-Laser can shoot further than a few hundred meters but at multi km ranges it no longer is focused enough to burn through mech armor.

But that's just my pet theory. It's not CANNON.

[Stark]

If that were true, why are they outfitting their vehicles with half a dozen weak weapons? Is it 1920? A laser in particular will not lose any real amount of its focus over a few hundred meters, and unassisted aiming is trivial at these ranges.

Battletech is just stupid. They have actual targeting systems, but they're extra hardware. They even have missiles that actually lock onto things, but don't use them.

[eyl]

If that were true, why are they outfitting their vehicles with half a dozen weak weapons? Is it 1920? A laser in particular will not lose any real amount of its focus over a few hundred meters, and unassisted aiming is trivial at these ranges.

Battletech is just stupid. They have actual targeting systems, but they're extra hardware. They even have missiles that actually lock onto things, but don't use them.

IIRC, in the latest ieration of the rules (Total Warfare) they tossed out the rationalizations entirely and simply stated that the ranges are unrealistically short because otherwise (a) it would detract from the "feel" of the game and (b) the map size would be unwieldy

[Stark]

Yeah, pretty much everything I know about BT comes from a wiki and there's no real conflict around the low numbers except by people interested in vs.

However, I don't get the map size thing. You can say one hex is xyz without really changing the game; they're already quite large, aren't they? Large enough for LRMs to 'hit' the hex and miss the mech, anyway.

The game is clearly one where guidance and accuracy is 'expensive'.

[Nephtys]

Yeah, pretty much everything I know about BT comes from a wiki and there's no real conflict around the low numbers except by people interested in vs.

However, I don't get the map size thing. You can say one hex is xyz without really changing the game; they're already quite large, aren't they? Large enough for LRMs to 'hit' the hex and miss the mech, anyway.

The game is clearly one where guidance and accuracy is 'expensive'.

It really makes no sense. Since aerospace fighters operate on far larger maps using the same 'numbers of hexes', and worse yet, are more accurate with their allegedly 'unguided' missiles? What? Why would dumbfire rockets be one of the most accurate, most effective air-air weapons when we've got lasers and rapid-fire cannon around?

Really, there's so many damn contradictions that making any sensible model is impossible. Dozens of retcons since the 80s really make it damned difficult to figure anything out. Why is using a tree as a club more damaging than many weapons, including giant metal fists? Why are 'heads' so hard to hit when many mechs have really obvious cockpit zones? Why are machine guns literally unable to harm anything beyond 90 meters? Why are machine guns in the meanwhile, able to annihilate heavily armored battletanks an average of once in every 16 10-second bursts of fire?

[eyl]

Yeah, pretty much everything I know about BT comes from a wiki and there's no real conflict around the low numbers except by people interested in vs.

However, I don't get the map size thing. You can say one hex is xyz without really changing the game; they're already quite large, aren't they? Large enough for LRMs to 'hit' the hex and miss the mech, anyway.

The game is clearly one where guidance and accuracy is 'expensive'.

Currenty, one hex is 30 meters across; a standard mapboard is about half a kilometer long. Say the size of a hex is changed so it represents 180 meters instead, allowing a weapon with a range of 3 km to cover the board.This would cause other realism problems:

1) The "resolution" of the terrain features will be grossly reduced. A hill will become a series of steps 180m wide (there are provisions in the optional rules for multiple elevations in a hex, but AFAIK only two; more would make the rules more complex). Smaller terrain features couldn't be represented at all, which would reduce the tactics available in the game.
2) A unit's speed is defined in hexes per turn. That is translated to KPH by multiplying the # of hexes per turn by 10.8. If the speed in ehxes/turn is retained with the new hex size, you'll get units with ridiculous speeds. To avoid that, you'd either need to modify the hexes/turn speed to maintain the KPH speed - which would functionally mean that there is a very small spread of available unit speeds in the game - or else rescale the time so that each turn is longer, but then you run into the realism problem of having the units act very slowly.
3) You'll run into problems with stacking. Currently, it's difficult enought to rationalize why a hex can only be occupied by a single Mech; it becomes even more difficult with a hex six times as large.
4) Weapons which currently have a multi-hex effect (some types of artillery do this, IIRC) would either be restricted to single hex or else have a preposterous area of effect. Even weapons which currently affect a single hex would have their AOE massively increased. Likewise, it would mean that weapons which scatter (e.g. artillery or bombs) would have a massive possible miss distance.
5) Also, artillery range (which is defined in mapboards) would either be reduced in the game or become incredibly long in km (e.g. a Long Tom or Arrow could have a range of up to 90 km)

While high-altitude and space combat do use different scales, most of these aren't issues there.

[Sea Skimmer]

Jamming is the weakest argument because there is no need to use a fancy radar for targetting that can be jammed.

You don't need anything more than a telescope and optical rangefinder to shoot far beyond ingame ranges. WW 2 tanks could hit targets at 2000 m using the mark 1 eyeball and a periscope to aim. Even in the modern era not a single tank carries fire control radar because it is not required in ground combat ranges on Earth like planets. Modern tanks have no problem hitting other tanks at 5000+ meters with optical sighting alone.

You can jam optics with lasers, but you could also just block the source of the laser with smoke and create low sensitivity laser detectors which will let you smoother the laser source with counterfire. 3,500 meters is considered the effective limit of 120mm gunfire; you might hit at 5,000 meters in ideal situations but that isn't typical. Nailing a moving target that far would be hard because the movement of the target during time of flight becomes fairly high. None of that would limit the range of anything since you can always fire by map. An MLRS battalion could be a half kilometer off target and still wipe it out.

[Swindle1984]

Yeah, pretty much everything I know about BT comes from a wiki and there's no real conflict around the low numbers except by people interested in vs.

However, I don't get the map size thing. You can say one hex is xyz without really changing the game; they're already quite large, aren't they? Large enough for LRMs to 'hit' the hex and miss the mech, anyway.

The game is clearly one where guidance and accuracy is 'expensive'.

Currenty, one hex is 30 meters across; a standard mapboard is about half a kilometer long. Say the size of a hex is changed so it represents 180 meters instead, allowing a weapon with a range of 3 km to cover the board.This would cause other realism problems:

1) The "resolution" of the terrain features will be grossly reduced. A hill will become a series of steps 180m wide (there are provisions in the optional rules for multiple elevations in a hex, but AFAIK only two; more would make the rules more complex). Smaller terrain features couldn't be represented at all, which would reduce the tactics available in the game.
2) A unit's speed is defined in hexes per turn. That is translated to KPH by multiplying the # of hexes per turn by 10.8. If the speed in ehxes/turn is retained with the new hex size, you'll get units with ridiculous speeds. To avoid that, you'd either need to modify the hexes/turn speed to maintain the KPH speed - which would functionally mean that there is a very small spread of available unit speeds in the game - or else rescale the time so that each turn is longer, but then you run into the realism problem of having the units act very slowly.
3) You'll run into problems with stacking. Currently, it's difficult enought to rationalize why a hex can only be occupied by a single Mech; it becomes even more difficult with a hex six times as large.
4) Weapons which currently have a multi-hex effect (some types of artillery do this, IIRC) would either be restricted to single hex or else have a preposterous area of effect. Even weapons which currently affect a single hex would have their AOE massively increased. Likewise, it would mean that weapons which scatter (e.g. artillery or bombs) would have a massive possible miss distance.
5) Also, artillery range (which is defined in mapboards) would either be reduced in the game or become incredibly long in km (e.g. a Long Tom or Arrow could have a range of up to 90 km)

While high-altitude and space combat do use different scales, most of these aren't issues there.

Excellent explanation.

Officially, all weapons ranges have reduced for gameplay mechanics.

[Norade]

So we learn that LRM's have a kill zone of under 30m which is frankly shit for any missile, especially one with such bad accuracy. Also the fact that Long Toms, the best artillery in the game, have only a 15km range is just sad, when most modern artillery has far better range without even adding things like in spun up rocket ammunition. Then we get the missiles which have a long range of 4.5k and the sniper which has 9km and I just have to laugh. Modern MLRS batteries can have 70km+ ranges, and that's not to mention things like SCUDs which obviously go longer and are still in the scope of the game.

Of course when Mechs are your main battle system for no good reason it's hard to expect the universe to have anything good.

[Stark]

Excellent explanation.

Officially, all weapons ranges have reduced for gameplay mechanics.

Excellent explanation of what? There's no reason they couldn't have scaled stuff differently; they just don't care. Frankly the idea that anyone made a wargame with maps 500m a side is laughable; that's squad combat size.

Quote something official saying weapon ranges have been reduced for gameplay mechanics. Since all the books were BASED on gameplay mechanics for ages, I'll enjoy this. Amusingly Gundam shows how easy it is to build your setting around a desired type of combat; Battletech didn't even bother.

[GuppyShark]

I'm pretty sure it was explicitly stated in the BattleTech Master Rules, in section about converting the game to tabletop miniatures without a hex grid, but I don't have a copy anymore. Or rather, I left mine at a friends' house ten years ago and never bothered to pick it up.

[GuppyShark]

My recollection is faulty - I checked my bookshelf and found the rules, and checked the section where it makes no mention of the 'real' ranges of weapons, only that converting the hex ranges to tabletop scale will make the game unplayable (and gives adjusted ranges in cm).

[Stark]

So CBT lets you play in tabletop-measurement miniatures? I wonder why they used hexes at all.

[Gunhead]

So CBT lets you play in tabletop-measurement miniatures? I wonder why they used hexes at all.

The hex boards provided terrain with points of elevation and other LOS breaking features. Solaris 7 came with boards that simulated the various arenas with special hazards that were randomly placed there. While BT is primarily a tabletop mecha fighting game, the boards give easy to transport fighting terrain to people who played the RPG and want to have mecha fights included.

-Gunhead

[eyl]

Excellent explanation.

Officially, all weapons ranges have reduced for gameplay mechanics.

Excellent explanation of what? There's no reason they couldn't have scaled stuff differently; they just don't care. Frankly the idea that anyone made a wargame with maps 500m a side is laughable; that's squad combat size.

Quote something official saying weapon ranges have been reduced for gameplay mechanics. Since all the books were BASED on gameplay mechanics for ages, I'll enjoy this. Amusingly Gundam shows how easy it is to build your setting around a desired type of combat; Battletech didn't even bother.

A NOTE ON SCALE AND THE RULES

Classic BattleTech turns represent ten seconds of real time, while each hex on a mapsheet represents thirty meters of a battlefield (for the exception, see Aerospace Movement, p. 74). However, players should note that such “real world” terms are abstractions when applied to the board game. Classic BattleTech is a game, not
a detailed simulation. Therefore, the real world must take a back seat to game play—for simplicity, length of play, space required and simple enjoyment.
For example, while only a single ’Mech can occupy a hex, it does not actually take up the entire hex. A 30-meter-wide hex offers plenty of room for a twelve-meter-tall ’Mech to move around and avoid fire. In real-world terms, another ’Mech could easily fit in that space as well. However, for ease of play, a ’Mech tactically controls the hex it occupies even though it does not physically fill that space. Therefore, only a single ’Mech is allowed in a hex.
Weapon ranges provide another example. Players will quickly realize that the longest-range standard weapon in the game can only hit targets out to thirty hexes (900 meters) from the attacker. Real-world primary main battle tank weapons have operational targeting ranges in excess of 4,000 meters. Because ClassicBattleTech mapsheets are only seventeen hexes long, recreating real-world ranges on a table would require more than seven mapsheets laid end to end, for a playing space greater than twelve feet in length. Not many people have that type of table space, nor would it provide players with any tactical maneuvering room. Anywhere a player might move a unit on the map, an attacker could hit that unit.
Finally, the abstractions of real-world factors such as firing distance often can enhance the aesthetic of the game universe. Classic BattleTech has always been about “in-your-face” combat, which works best with closer ranges. Players are encouraged to remember such abstractions and not get bogged down

[Stark]

Oh man the CBT designers were idiots ... not that this is news. So why did all the novels use game mechanics for ages, aside from the aforementioned stupidity?

Other settings manage short range combat without just closing their eyes and saying la la la la la, but I guess before fat people tried to ANALYZE CBT it wasn't a bit deal. The claim that there's no middle ground between 'lol 100m range' and 'omg hit at 4000m' highlights how the game designers of yesteryear are the trolls of 2010.

Gunhead, the maps would STILL provide all that stuff without hexes. If the system had an option for measurement, it's strange to me that they used hexes at all. A lack of imagination, probably.

[Gunhead]

Gunhead, the maps would STILL provide all that stuff without hexes. If the system had an option for measurement, it's strange to me that they used hexes at all. A lack of imagination, probably.

The first game was hex based so I guess they just stuck with it. Option to use miniature terrain with measuring sticks came later, or so I recall. Having a hex based system is better IMO when you have a 2d map, makes for example line of sight ruling a lot simpler. It's really a question of which one is preferred, you can use a measuring stick with a hex map if that is preferable to having a more rigid hex system. Both systems have their pros and cons.

-Gunhead

[Stark]

Why? If you remove the hexgrid from the map the LOS determination is exactly the same, only it now has a better resolution. Hexes are only used for standardising measurement and movement.

[Gunhead]

Why? If you remove the hexgrid from the map the LOS determination is exactly the same, only it now has a better resolution. Hexes are only used for standardising measurement and movement.

I was thinking about elevation, with BT hexes you're on the same elevation or you're not. With true landscape you can have a situation where a vehicle is partially obscured by a hill, with hexes this an absolute, you're behind a terrain feature or you're not. I could be wrong, I don't remember the BT rules that well but I think it was you can fire on targets that are on the same elevation or lower.
Hexes vs. measuring stick is not a topic I'm going to waste my time on anyway. Both are gaming systems and both can work. BTs major failings have little to do with going with hexes or opting for something different.

-Gunhead

[Stark]

No, even if you use the exact same map (ie 2d pictures of forests and rivers etc) LOS is determined exactly the same way, only it has a higher resolution that 'in this hex y/n'.

The point is that if they weren't married to huge hexes (I guess they sold miniatures, which makes it even funnier) the game would have scaled. They just didn't care, because they make a robot pew pew game and probably never expected anyone to be fat enough to want to work out how ubber giggatons BT weapons are.