Battletech 2: I am not clever enough for these title shenanigans.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Seeing as I wants to talk me some Battletech and the old thread is well, old, I started a new one.

The main thing I wanted to talk about is I actually got to play a physical game of Battletech for the first time in about five years. My brother in law, who has fallen in love the German style boardgames wanted to check it out after i've been rambling about the game for years.

In the first match we just played the standard quick start Hunchie(Him) vs Enforcer(Me). I made him chase me a bit, but he landed box cars with that damned AC/20, and that was that. We played again right after that, this time it was Clint CLNT-2-3U (Me) vs Cicada CDA-3M (Him). I tried to warn him about that XL engine and in the end he learned that if a mech can move 8/12 it should try to as much as possible and that PPCs are awesome!

The next day we tried a 2v2 he went with his lucky Hunchie and a Zues against my Assassin and Banshee 3S. This match was good one, I managed to keep his Hunchback and Zues off balance with the Assassin alternating harrasing his Zues when it set up to hammer the Banshee and then getting in the way of the Hunchback when it tried to brawl with the Banshee. The Banshee spent the match just hounding the Zues, and when the Hunchback tried to flank me I landed several PPCs to his LT and set off the AC/20 Ammo. The Zues eventually fell from the Banshee's mid-range fire.

I am working on a present for him. A vaguely Comstar schemed Ostscout. Still working on it.
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5919/54873410151864163555045.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/256/54873410151864163555045.jpg/)

I know I'm no Swordguy (grumble, grumble, Kell Hounds, grumble) or the like, but I like it so far. I'll keep updating as it progresses.

[psilontech]

Okay, I'm thinking of finally getting into Battletech after playing through MW4: Mercs and the MW2 games when my interest was rekindled by the previews for Mechwarrior Online.

I have a few questions:
1) Is it sort of like WH40k in that you have to glue the pieces together, or do they come whole?
2) If they come whole, do they come prepainted? Is there an option to have the models already painted if not so I don't have to ruin several models getting the look right?
3) Generally, how large are fights, numerically?
4) How much does it cost to get into to a fair degree?
5) Clan mechs and weapons: Do you generally HAVE to go this way to not be completely outmatched, or do they have some sort of limiter like being worth more 'points'?
6) Speaking of points, how is a 'fair' fight determined? Does it work well?

[tyckspoon]

I'm not terribly familiar with the models- I usually play either with somebody else's collection or MegaMek- but for the gameplay questions:

The game scales to pretty much as large or as small as you want it to. For experienced players (who don't take too long to do the math and don't usually have to stop and look up relevant rules) you can play 3-4 mechs to a side in pretty good time (coincidentally, the standard in-universe deployment for Inner Sphere is a 4-mech Lance, while Clans typically operate in a 5-mech Star.) It can be expanded with other unit types if desired- infantry operates fairly simply and will usually not make a game take overly longer, so they're good for bulking out to a larger game, while vehicles (especially aerospace) use some different rules to mechs and can add complication and game length.

There are a few different ways to set the units involved; C-bill cost, weight, numbers/class, and Battle Value are the common ones. C-Bills are the in-universe justification for how rare/valuable a mech is- it's the actual cost to manufacture/purchase one, so that's more often used in roleplay-based continuous campaigns or scenarios. Raw tonnage is the simplest way to allocate forces, but it's pretty terrible for balancing competitive sides. Limits per weight class (ie 'choose 1 Light, 2 Medium, 1 Heavy and 1 Assault') is basically like tonnage, but slightly more balanced. Battle Value is Battletech's Points Value method, that attempts to actually balance mechs taking into account things like their movement, armor, damage output, effective range, and heat management. This is where Clan and Inner Sphere tech gets balanced, as much as it can be- the Clan version of equipment will have a higher Battle Value to reflect its better stats, so in a near-equal BV fight an Inner Sphere player will typically have more/better armored/higher firepower mechs than a Clan player. It's not perfect- there are still weapons and designs that are more effective than their BV reflects, as well as ones that cost far too much BV for what they actually do- but it's better balanced than any of the easy ways.

(Battle Value is an obnoxiously complicated calculation; if you get into custom designing or just modifying canon mechs, you'll want to get one of the three or four decent mech-lab programs that can handle those calculations for you.)

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Well Swordguy will show up sooner or later and he is a true expert on this subject, but I can give you some answers for now.

1.) Depends on the 'Mech, for example the Ostscout I posted came in four pieces, legs and torso where one solid piece, each arm was a seperate piece and the jump jet pack was it's own piece. Super easy to put together, super glued together easy peasy. Although some are quite complicated, Reseen (http://camospecs.com/Miniature.asp?ID=6105) Thunderbolt (http://camospecs.com/Miniature.asp?ID=128) I am looking at you, but the trade off is that it's incrediblely poseable. Whilst the Hunchback for example is one solid peice.

2.)Nope, unpainted, but certain box sets have a ton of plastic mini's that are good for practice and metal mini's are pretty easy to strip with nail polish remover and a old tooth brush. Also there are some amazing guys out there that do excellent commission work.

3.) 1-4 vs-1-4 is all i've ever ran myself, you can go bigger, much bigger, if you have the time, but in a single night more that 4/5 would be pushing it. Four is the standard unit formation, it's called a Lance, five clan 'Mechs is a Star.

4.) Well, the principal book is about forty, the basic box set is around the same. Mini's run from 8ish-to-12ish a piece, generally mo' metal mo' money. But the beauty of the game is you can play with little more than a few bottle caps a hex map and some d6s.

Edit: Link a-palooza!
Quick-Start Rules (http://bg.battletech.com/?page_id=27)
Camospecs (http://camospecs.com/)
Ironwind Metals (http://ironwindmetals.com/d/)

[Gnoman]

1) If you use models, you will have to glue and paint them. They are generally only one or two pieces. Models are, however, completely optional, as the standard rules do not expect them.
2) Large amounts of them are often availiable second-hand, but they are not sold premade.
3) The system bogs down with more than six units on a side in physical play.
4) It's not particularly expensive. <100 will allow you to play with all the rules.
5) Clantech is more powerful, but has significanlty higher BV, so clan units tend to actually fight at a disadvantage. The reasons for this are too complex to explain here, however.
6) Every unit has a "Battle Value". It's extremely accurate for armies of roughly the same number, especially if you use spread rules, which keep all units in a lance to be similar in value.


As always, I'd like to suggest that you, after reading the rulebooks, try out the online version of the game. These players are extremely skilled, in general, and you learn the nuances of the game extremely easily.

[tyckspoon]

4.) Well, the principal book is about forty, the basic box set is around the same. Mini's run from 8ish-to-12ish a piece, generally mo' metal mo' money. But the beauty of the game is you can play with little more than a few bottle caps a hex map and some d6s.

This, btw. Battletech lends itself to proxying very well when you're playing with the hex-map version of the rules; the physical characteristics of the models themselves are basically meaningless. Everything you need to know to play with a particular unit is either defined in the rules (ie, all mechs are 2 height-units tall, which is nice because the models aren't really in any unified scale) or it's on the record sheet for the mech. As long as you have those the playing pieces themselves can be any kind of markers that you can reasonably tell apart.

(It is helpful to have some of the official mapsheets for ease of use, at least.)

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Update on the Ostscout, now with more black!
http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/9049/55256010151864616440045.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/705/55256010151864616440045.jpg/)

I am thinking of adding either a little Copper or Bronze, just to pop a little. Although it will make it look more like KotIS rather that Comstar...

[mangosta71]

I thought that ComStar's color scheme was white with blue trim.

It's been 10+ years since I played a physical game of BettleTech, so I'm not up-to-date on the rules or tech. And even when I played occasionally, I used to go through technical readouts and redesign Mechs one at a time to make them not terrible more than I actually played.

[Mo_the_Hawked]

Com Guards are either White or terrain appropiate camo.

I went a psuedo Com Guards scheme. I don't generally have the skills for true canon schemes.

[Impnemo]

Okay, I'm thinking of finally getting into Battletech after playing through MW4: Mercs and the MW2 games when my interest was rekindled by the previews for Mechwarrior Online.



If you're looking for more, might I suggest MechWarrior Living Legends? (http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/)

Fan trailer. (http://youtu.be/70yNAwUUsc0?)

[Provengreil]

Okay, I'm thinking of finally getting into Battletech after playing through MW4: Mercs and the MW2 games when my interest was rekindled by the previews for Mechwarrior Online.

I have a few questions:
1) Is it sort of like WH40k in that you have to glue the pieces together, or do they come whole?
2) If they come whole, do they come prepainted? Is there an option to have the models already painted if not so I don't have to ruin several models getting the look right?
3) Generally, how large are fights, numerically?
4) How much does it cost to get into to a fair degree?
5) Clan mechs and weapons: Do you generally HAVE to go this way to not be completely outmatched, or do they have some sort of limiter like being worth more 'points'?
6) Speaking of points, how is a 'fair' fight determined? Does it work well?

A Battletech thead! squee!

OK.

1)pieces, but only a couple. painting necessary.
2)some do come whole and prepainted, but they aren't for the same ruleset. models are much larger(about the size of a 40k dreadnought), but if all models are the same you could try upscaling the measurements. probably better to get the right ones.
3)entirely your choice. recommend games over 8 units/side to be played on megamek, the game will thoroughly bog down otherwise.
4)Ebay is your friend here. nothing wrong with playing an outdated ruleset if you only paid in $5 (I believe total warfare is the most recent). megamek is also scott free, but does not give a physical board.
5)a battle value system and certain forced tactics are the canonical limits for full-clan mechs. extended campaigns can land you individual clantech bits, a laser here or an autocannon there. check with other players beforehand. personally I prefer all IS tech, and you can easily win with such if you use good strategy and have a little luck.
6)Battle value can be gamed pretty hard, but most rulesets only allow for limited customization, and even then, often as not, it's in the form of piecing together whatever you scraped off the last battlefield and filling the holes of your current but damaged mechs with it. Mechs were designed in universe, with consideration to what was available or seemed good at the time to the people on the ground. the result is that while a few mechs are still really good for their BV, the only rules given credence at creation were whether the design was mechanically legal.

[Rockphed]

How do unpainted models look?

[Kislath]

Unpainted, they look like either like unicolor plastic or pewter. The detail level is quite good, though. They are very easy to paint.

[iyaerP]

So a couple questions that aren't exactly specific to the tabletop, but should carry over. What is a good heatsink to medium lasers ratio? How much of my mass should be armour? The mech I am having the most trouble with heat on is the hunchback, mostly with the laser heavy loadouts, but also with default AC20 builds.

Tactics wise, my only question is how do you get close to a catapult when he has clear LoS and there is no cover between you?

[Gnoman]

A cat only has two LRM launchers. If you can get a 3 or 4 move mod, it's pretty easy. As long as you're not shooting, you can evade. If you have a couple ac/5s or PPCs, you can handle one pretty easy at range too.

[9mm]

Tactics wise, my only question is how do you get close to a catapult when he has clear LoS and there is no cover between you?

Either run really fast and hope you make it, or die trying. Well ok, if you have missile launchers as well you could hope to have some smoke missiles loaded in an ammo bin to make cover on your way in. But that's a cata's best case scenario. Only other hope is for you to have a similar range profile and you can duel at range.

[Erloas]

So a couple questions that aren't exactly specific to the tabletop, but should carry over. What is a good heatsink to medium lasers ratio? How much of my mass should be armour? The mech I am having the most trouble with heat on is the hunchback, mostly with the laser heavy loadouts, but also with default AC20 builds.

Tactics wise, my only question is how do you get close to a catapult when he has clear LoS and there is no cover between you?

It really all comes down to balance and personal preference. Some people are more then willing to build up heat for a good alpha-strike while others will tend away from it. If your alpha strike is going to put you from no heat to potential shutdown then you've got too many weapons for your heat dissipation and should switch some out, but if your alpha is only 2-3 point build up then you are not too bad. Also thinks like jump jets and how often you are going to use them will come in, because jumping creates a lot of heat.

Some of this will also have to do with what era you are playing. You have far fewer options in Succession Era 'Mechs then post clan era 'Mechs.

Mass of armor also has to do with era because you can get more armor for the same weight with newer technologies. But in general the amount of armor mostly depends on the role of the 'Mech. If its a long range support 'Mech you'll probably have less armor because you expect the 'Mech to go down if the enemies start targeting it with much anyway. If it is a brawler you'll probably want close to max armor.
Is your primary defense speed, range or armor? Range and speed defense you can get away with fairly light armor, and will probably be required to if you want a large engine and/or many weapons.
And last is a bit of playing the numbers. Most of your primary weapons deal damage in groups or multiples of 5, so if you have 14 armor in a location that 3rd hit is going to go internal, but a 15 or 16 and it will clean it off and not go internal. Its less of an issue with Heavy and Assault level 'Mechs because by the time they get through your armor they will probably have hit a few odd sized hits as well, but it can be vital on lights and mediums where just 1 or 2 hits of even medium sized guns can start to go internal.

edit: as for the Catapult, or most other long range support 'Mechs, especially those with IS missiles, is to get close as fast as you can. A light 'Mech, even in Succession Era builds, can get from out of range to under minimum range in 2 rounds on the run, you just have to get lucky on the one good round of shooting it has, and that shouldn't be too hard with a +3 or so movement mod. Once under the LRM's minimum range you can just wear it down and only have to worry about a couple MLs from most stock catapult builds. If you've got something like a 4/6 Assault 'Mech though you just need a few big guns of your own, like LRMs and PPCs and take damage while you shoot it down.

second edit: One other trick someone told me (who does a lot of playtesting of Battletech actually, even has his name in a few of the books for playtesting) is go ahead and stick ammo in your head. It seems stupid at first... but think about it, the head is the least likely to hit part of a 'Mech. It also only has 3 internal structure, so almost anything that hits the head is either going to just hit armor or take the head clean off anyway. In the unlikely even of a crit to the head... well you've already got a 60% chance of outright death anyway (unless you have a non-rerollable crit to put there like a ML, in which case its 50%) and the ammo just increases that that to 66% chance of death. And an ammo hit in any other location is a death sentence for most 'Mechs anyway, even with CASE few 'Mechs are worth much after an ammo hit.

Also for light 'Mechs especially its not a bad idea to put your weapons in your torso and leave the arms empty. You can take a bit more hits before you loose effectiveness because the loss of an arm doesn't do anything. And you are fast enough that very few things will get behind you or even to the side enough where a torso-twist + arm movement is necessary.

[iyaerP]

Well, Thank you all for the help, I certainly appreciate it. Especially the number crunching. That should assist my min/maxxing a good deal.

[RandomLunatic]

So a couple questions that aren't exactly specific to the tabletop, but should carry over. What is a good heatsink to medium lasers ratio? How much of my mass should be armour? The mech I am having the most trouble with heat on is the hunchback, mostly with the laser heavy loadouts, but also with default AC20 builds.As the others said, it depends on your playstyle, and how you intend to use the 'Mech. 'Mechs with jumpjets can afford to run hotter than land-bound ones, since they can jump away to cool. Since you mention medium laser batteries and Hunchbacks in the same sentence, I assume you are looking at the HBK-4P "Swayback", which is slow and ground-bound. Which means that if you overheat it to the point of uselessness, you are stuck with it.

I find armor useful enough that I seldom fail to max it, or at least be within a half-ton of maxing, which is going to run about 20% of your total mass, using standard plate.


Tactics wise, my only question is how do you get close to a catapult when he has clear LoS and there is no cover between you?
Well, you can either get a 'Mech that does long range better than the Catapult, like an Archer or Awesome, or you lower your head, grit your teeth, and charge it.

A trickier option, requiring the right 'Mech, is to try and exhaust the CPLT-C1's very limited ammo. To do this, you need a decently quick 'Mech with the ability to sustain long-range firepower. I recommend the Griffin, Grand Dragon, or even a regular Dragon if you have lots of time to spare. All you have to do is run back and forth at long range to make yourself as difficult a target as possible. The C1 only gets 16 shots total, and then he is down to his medium lasers. At which point, your superior range and speed basically hand you victory on a silver platter.

[Swordguy]

Tactics wise, my only question is how do you get close to a catapult when he has clear LoS and there is no cover between you?

Why are you worried about a single Catapult? I'm assuming, of course, we're discussing the 4/6/4, x2LRM-15/x4ML version (ie, the standard one). If we're talking about the -K2 (the variant with twin PPCs), this'll change.

In any case, a Catapult isn't an especially good long-range Mech. It gives up tonnage for Jump Jets and useable close-range firepower (ie, the MLs), which keeps it fro being truly scary. Assume, for a moment, we're talking about Regular pilots - 4 Gunnery, 5 Piloting.

Assuming you have a 4/6/0 Mech (since we're talking about low-end heavies here, I'll assume you've got a Thunderbolt), you're going to spend about 5 turns getting "close" to him - allowing him some time to keep backing up to keep the range open, but not allowing the theoretical "infinite mapsheet" that many people talk about when discussing this sort of scenario. On average, you're going to spend 2 of those turns at long range, 2 at medium range, and 1 at short range before he drops his LRMs and starts using Medium lasers.

Turn 1&2
He hits you on 10's (4 gunnery, 4 range, 2 for your running forward movement; and we'll even discount any movement HE makes). He should only hit you 1 time with those 4 shots. An LRM does 9 damage on average, in a group of 5 and a group of 4 points.

Turns 3&4.
He hits you on 8's (4 gunnery, 2 range, 2 for your running forward movement discounting his own movement). He should hit you about 2 times out of those 4 shots. That's another 18 total damage, in 2 groups of 5 and 2 groups of 4.

Turn 5
He hits you on 6's (4 gunnery, 0 range, 2 for your running forward movement and discounting his own movement -and also ignoring the possibility of your entering LRM minimum range). He hits with both racks. Say he gets lucky and each one hits for 12 damage (4 groups of 5 and 2 groups of 2).

You've taken a grand total of 51 points of damage, spread across your entire Mech in small lots. The Thunderbolt starts with 208 points to the Catapult's 160 points. With the 51 damage you've taken, all that the 'Cat has done is even out the difference in armor (you're now at 157 points - so basically even). Moreover, we've ignored the Catapult's movement (so his actual hit rate should be lower, which lowers the damage output) AND we've ignored any damage you've done on the way toward him! So even with the math here being weighted in FAVOR of the Catapult*, it's still an even fight between the two Mechs at this point at best(same armor, he's got better maneuverability, you've got way better close-in firepower).

Basically, a Catapult can't kill an equal-weight Mech at long range before that Mech gets to the 'Cat. Trust in your armor; it's there to be used.



*To be totally fair, we've also ignored the possibility of most of his damage clumping into a single or pair of locations on your Mech. But that's down to dice luck. You could just as easily land all 15 missiles out of your T-bolt's LRM into is head on Turn 1 and win that way. So, *dice luck aside*, this is a reasonable determination of how the scenario you outlined would go down.

[Swordguy]

I know I'm no Swordguy (grumble, grumble, Kell Hounds, grumble) or the like, but I like it so far. I'll keep updating as it progresses.

Hey, what's your new favorite unit? We're looking for somebody to nuke at GenCon this year and I could use the inspiration. :smalltongue:

[Rockphed]

Hey, what's your new favorite unit? We're looking for somebody to nuke at GenCon this year and I could use the inspiration. :smalltongue:

House Kurita Capital Guards.:smallcool:

[snoopy13a]

Why are you worried about a single Catapult? I'm assuming, of course, we're discussing the 4/6/4, x2LRM-15/x4ML version (ie, the standard one). If we're talking about the -K2 (the variant with twin PPCs), this'll change.

In any case, a Catapult isn't an especially good long-range Mech. It gives up tonnage for Jump Jets and useable close-range firepower (ie, the MLs), which keeps it fro being truly scary. Assume, for a moment, we're talking about Regular pilots - 4 Gunnery, 5 Piloting.

Assuming you have a 4/6/0 Mech (since we're talking about low-end heavies here, I'll assume you've got a Thunderbolt), you're going to spend about 5 turns getting "close" to him - allowing him some time to keep backing up to keep the range open, but not allowing the theoretical "infinite mapsheet" that many people talk about when discussing this sort of scenario. On average, you're going to spend 2 of those turns at long range, 2 at medium range, and 1 at short range before he drops his LRMs and starts using Medium lasers.

Turn 1&2
He hits you on 10's (4 gunnery, 4 range, 2 for your running forward movement; and we'll even discount any movement HE makes). He should only hit you 1 time with those 4 shots. An LRM does 9 damage on average, in a group of 5 and a group of 4 points.

Turns 3&4.
He hits you on 8's (4 gunnery, 2 range, 2 for your running forward movement discounting his own movement). He should hit you about 2 times out of those 4 shots. That's another 18 total damage, in 2 groups of 5 and 2 groups of 4.

Turn 5
He hits you on 6's (4 gunnery, 0 range, 2 for your running forward movement and discounting his own movement -and also ignoring the possibility of your entering LRM minimum range). He hits with both racks. Say he gets lucky and each one hits for 12 damage (4 groups of 5 and 2 groups of 2).

You've taken a grand total of 51 points of damage, spread across your entire Mech in small lots. The Thunderbolt starts with 208 points to the Catapult's 160 points. With the 51 damage you've taken, all that the 'Cat has done is even out the difference in armor (you're now at 157 points - so basically even). Moreover, we've ignored the Catapult's movement (so his actual hit rate should be lower, which lowers the damage output) AND we've ignored any damage you've done on the way toward him! So even with the math here being weighted in FAVOR of the Catapult*, it's still an even fight between the two Mechs at this point at best(same armor, he's got better maneuverability, you've got way better close-in firepower).

Basically, a Catapult can't kill an equal-weight Mech at long range before that Mech gets to the 'Cat. Trust in your armor; it's there to be used.



*To be totally fair, we've also ignored the possibility of most of his damage clumping into a single or pair of locations on your Mech. But that's down to dice luck. You could just as easily land all 15 missiles out of your T-bolt's LRM into is head on Turn 1 and win that way. So, *dice luck aside*, this is a reasonable determination of how the scenario you outlined would go down.

Yeah, long range 'mechs aren't great for single-combat. They are supposed to be used in lance v. lance/star v. star or, if you have lots of time on your hands, binary v. binary/company v. company/trinary v. trinary. The idea is they sit back and launch missles while the other 'mechs fight up close.

I haven't played battletech in years, and when I played it was, for all intents and purposes, the pre-Internet era so my tactics aren't up to speed. Also what technology-levels are we talking about? Do we have anti-missle systems? Gauss rifles? Pulse weapons? XL engines?

Whether or not you're using veteran or even elite pilots obviously makes a huge difference as well. Put an elite pilot in the above scenario and he's walking backwards four hexes a turn and shooting at a 9 at long range.

[Gnoman]

Even in lance-on-lance combat, LRM boats have problems. In my experience, an AC/2 unit usually outperforms an lrm/5 or /10.

[snoopy13a]

Even in lance-on-lance combat, LRM boats have problems. In my experience, an AC/2 unit usually outperforms an lrm/5 or /10.

Interesting. What are the stats on the AC/2 compared to those two? I seem to recall that the AC/2 has a range longer than the AC/5 and around that of the LRMs (and possibly longer??).

What do you think of SRMs in general? Do you think the heightened chance of a 2 or 12 on the damage roll outweighes the damage spread?

[Gnoman]

LRM is 7-14-21 6

AC/2 is 8-16-24 min 4

The rage increase is substantial, and the lower minimum range makes it less cumbersom when closing. This means that an ac/2 is slightly more likely to hit in more situations.

The AC is far heavier than the LRM/5, and weighs slightly more that the /10, though it takes up more slots. The advantage comes into play that the AC is static damage, while the LRM is variable. THere's also prescision ammunition (in games where that is an option) that makes moving targets far easier to hit.

SRMs are excellent sandblasters and crit-seekers. They tend to do more damage than a ML, and a pair of SRM06s will strip most mechs of armor in a hurry. Low ammo and scattered damage are the only thing that makes them not be a god-weapon.

[Provengreil]

While I'm pretty sure the AC/2 is the longest range weapon in the game short of experimental tech I've not heard of, I just never find that its damage to drawback(in this case, weight and a practically inexhaustible ammo bin of 50 that'll be deadly the whole match if critted). AC/5 and 10s are fine, but the 2 just doesn't do it.

[snoopy13a]

While I'm pretty sure the AC/2 is the longest range weapon in the game short of experimental tech I've not heard of, I just never find that its damage to drawback(in this case, weight and a practically inexhaustible ammo bin of 50 that'll be deadly the whole match if critted). AC/5 and 10s are fine, but the 2 just doesn't do it.

I'd have to double-check the mechanics, but I think it could be useful on a fast 'mech--especially if you're playing with XL engines (not to mention the Ultra AC/2s or LBX-2 options for omni-mechs). One could nickel and dime (well, penny and penny :smalltongue:) a slower 'mech to death.

[Alex Knight]

Just remember. real men pilot a Blackjack.

If you're lucky, you might even get a BJ-3. :smallbiggrin:

[Provengreil]

I'd have to double-check the mechanics, but I think it could be useful on a fast 'mech--especially if you're playing with XL engines (not to mention the Ultra AC/2s or LBX-2 options for omni-mechs). One could nickel and dime (well, penny and penny :smalltongue:) a slower 'mech to death.

I admit that ultras, LBXs, and precision or armor piercing ammunition all change the game in favor the AC/2, especially AP IMO. I thought we were talking about just the basic one.

[Erloas]

Well just to check the LB 2-X AC is longer range, 4(min)/9/18/27
and the Ultra AC/2 is 3(min)/8/17/25, so both a bit longer then the normal AC/2.
I was going to say the RAC/2 would be a good option, but the range is reduced quite a bit, being *just* 6/12/18.
The Light Gauss Rifle also matching the UAC/2 for range.

Although I think in most cases if I were going to go AC for range I would still go with the /5s, you loose a bit of range but its 2.5x more damage per shot for not a lot more weight or crit spots.

[tyckspoon]

SRMs are excellent sandblasters and crit-seekers. They tend to do more damage than a ML, and a pair of SRM06s will strip most mechs of armor in a hurry. Low ammo and scattered damage are the only thing that makes them not be a god-weapon.

And then they invent the Streak, and suddenly low ammo doesn't matter and scattered damage is just fine, because you're rolling so dang many hit locations that you get a kind of scary rate of 2s/12s/crit attempts on opened locations. Streak SRM6s are pretty terrifying close-in. (Cheesiest higher-tech weapons system, IMO, and that's a close-run fight against Pulse lasers.)

[RandomLunatic]

I admit that ultras, LBXs, and precision or armor piercing ammunition all change the game in favor the AC/2, especially AP IMO. I thought we were talking about just the basic one.

AP ammo is terrible for AC/2s. If you are using them right, you are firing from long range, so that +1 penalty halves your hit rate, in exchange for a 1/36 chance of a crit. You are better off loading up Precision ammo, hitting about ten times as often, and hoping one of those extra hits comes up snake-eyes.

Assuming, of course, the AC/2 is good, which is is not. The crudtacular damage output just kills it. There is no point in being able to hit the opponent from outside weapon range if you cannot make him care, and a 2-point plink every turn or three just will not cut it. About the only successful use of it is the Warrior H-7 VTOL, and even that is only if rolling mapsheets are in use, or they will just get jammed up against a map edge and annihilated.

And then Clan Coyote came along and invented the ATM, which finally put the AC/2 out of its misery. Loaded with ER rounds, they have the same long range ability, only with something resembling an acceptable damage output. Not to mention the ability to switch to more potent missiles should you need to get closer. Just look at the Turkina D (quad ATM-12) versus a Bane (ten Ultra AC/2)-the range is the same, but the Turkey has better average and max damage, and no chance of its guns breaking down.

[Gnoman]

It may be the particular combination of settings, but the server I play on finds AC/2s to be quite successful, especially on the BJ-1 and Vulcan. There's even been complaints that the warrior H-7 is overpowered because of it's ac/2.

[Erloas]

And then Clan Coyote came along and invented the ATM, which finally put the AC/2 out of its misery. Loaded with ER rounds, they have the same long range ability, only with something resembling an acceptable damage output. Not to mention the ability to switch to more potent missiles should you need to get closer. Just look at the Turkina D (quad ATM-12) versus a Bane (ten Ultra AC/2)-the range is the same, but the Turkey has better average and max damage, and no chance of its guns breaking down.

Well it is kind of disingenuous to compare Clan tech to IS on a simple weapon damage and range basis. Because Clan tech has always had better range and damage then IS weapons. There are a lot of other long range weapons to start comparing with too, they just aren't quite the extreme of the (x)AC/2s but they are still outside of LRM range, things like HAGs, Light Gauss, clan ER PPCs and ERLL.

The ATM's generate a fair amount more heat for their damage. They cost more C-bills and have a significantly higher BV and a fairly limited amount of shots.

Lets take the two examples you gave, the Turkina D and Bane, similar speed, size and armor. The Turkina is 1200 BV more, more then 50% higher the the Bane, its also 25% more expensive. The bane has 9 rounds of shooting full out before it runs out of ammo, the Turkina has just under 4*. The Bane can take 2 engine hits before it has to worry about overheating, the Turkina isn't even energy neutral at long range (with just the ATMs) if it even walks. So yeah... the Turkina should have a higher average damage, its only to be expected. But also given the way damage works, having more groups of 2 damage can work out better then fewer groups of 5 damage, especially for a support 'Mech rather then an brawler.

*Given if you switch all the Turkina's ammo to ER it would have 12.5 rounds, but the versatility of the ATM kind of requires it to take more different types of ammo.

I haven't been playing enough so I only vaguely remember some of the less common rules... but I also think ACs work much better against VTOLs and other flyers, as well as infantry and Elementals. Then there is the already mentioned special rounds for ACs which can make them significantly more effective against fast units and they can't be countered by anti-missile systems. And the very low minimum range for ACs make them less of a liability against small fast units then many other long range weapons.

Which isn't to say that overall the ATM isn't a better weapon with its versatility, but the AC/2 still has its place and is probably the better choice for an extreme range weapon.

[tyckspoon]

It may be the particular combination of settings, but the server I play on finds AC/2s to be quite successful, especially on the BJ-1 and Vulcan. There's even been complaints that the warrior H-7 is overpowered because of it's ac/2.

hmm.. do you run with floating crits (ie, re-rolling for the actual location hit when you get a through armor?) Not using that could explain a lot of it; one of the things AC/2s are reasonably good at is fishing for through-armor crits from beyond a range where you can return fire, and when you use the older rule for those all of this crits hit in the torsos.. you can get a discomforting number of Magic BB kills that way.

Or perhaps you use a lot of vehicle support instead of/in addition to mechs; the damage charts for that include a possibility of suffering critical damage regardless of whether or not you've penetrated armor, so getting pinged down by AC/2s can leave a vehicle crippled quite rapidly without actually having been hit by any meaningful damage.

[Provengreil]

hmm.. do you run with floating crits (ie, re-rolling for the actual location hit when you get a through armor?) Not using that could explain a lot of it; one of the things AC/2s are reasonably good at is fishing for through-armor crits from beyond a range where you can return fire, and when you use the older rule for those all of this crits hit in the torsos.. you can get a discomforting number of Magic BB kills that way.


wait, what? I thought criticals were only supposed to move away from the damaged spot if there was nothing left to hit(ie, a torso full of ferro fibrous and endo steel slots).

[snoopy13a]

hmm.. do you run with floating crits (ie, re-rolling for the actual location hit when you get a through armor?) Not using that could explain a lot of it; one of the things AC/2s are reasonably good at is fishing for through-armor crits from beyond a range where you can return fire, and when you use the older rule for those all of this crits hit in the torsos.. you can get a discomforting number of Magic BB kills that way.

Or perhaps you use a lot of vehicle support instead of/in addition to mechs; the damage charts for that include a possibility of suffering critical damage regardless of whether or not you've penetrated armor, so getting pinged down by AC/2s can leave a vehicle crippled quite rapidly without actually having been hit by any meaningful damage.

I believe under the old rule, a 2 is a critical hit chance in the torso (center if forward or rear, left torso if left arc, right torso if right arc) and a 12 is a hit in the head. I think any hit to the head is a potential critical hit (can't remember) so a magic BB could also hit the cockpit--the most unpleasant way to lose :smalltongue:

[tyckspoon]

wait, what? I thought criticals were only supposed to move away from the damaged spot if there was nothing left to hit(ie, a torso full of ferro fibrous and endo steel slots).

I'm talking about the crit chance you get when you roll a 2 on the hit-location chart, not when you've actually worn down the armor and are hitting internal damage; it's not actually moving the crit, it's just doing another roll to find out where the hit and associated crit check are actually going to be. If you aren't using floating crits on that, it defaults to the local torso instead (so if you're firing from the left side you hit Left Torso, Right hits RT, center/back hit Center.)


I think any hit to the head is a potential critical hit (can't remember) so a magic BB could also hit the cockpit--the most unpleasant way to lose

Not a crit, but it does cause a point of pilot damage and force a pilot consciousness roll. Failing that is almost as unpleasant, since an immobilized mech practically has a giant strobing target on it.

[Drasius]

The AC/2 has a place, though it's a niche one (Outrangeing virtually everything else, best AA weapon available even without accounting for flak rounds, cheap, long range means you are at short while the ubiquitous medium laser still at long, deep bins mean precision ammo is not a horrible choice), it's the AC/5 that is usually regarded as the worst weapon available. Its list of flaws are many, to name just a few;

-Ammo based, can explode
-Ammo based, can run out of ammo
-Half the damage of a PPC for the same weight equivalent
-Not as long a range as AC/2 or LRM's so struggles to play the outranging game
-Damage is sub-par for weight investment
-10 rounds of precision ammo not quite enough to be free with your shots

Those are the main ones with the only positve being that it is cheap, but not as cheap as an AC/2, so there really is no role for an AC/5. 5 points is never going to be a threat against anything heavier than a light and you can crit just as well with an AC/2 at longer range.

Forcing a piloting roll on aircraft will work just as well for 2 points of damage as 5, not to mention you will still shoot the rotor off a VTOL with an AC/2 and do it futher out.

The lighter AC/s are terrible weapons, but at least the AC/2 can succeed, if not excell, but the /5 is trash. The RAC 5 on the otherhand ...

[Provengreil]

I'm talking about the crit chance you get when you roll a 2 on the hit-location chart, not when you've actually worn down the armor and are hitting internal damage; it's not actually moving the crit, it's just doing another roll to find out where the hit and associated crit check are actually going to be. If you aren't using floating crits on that, it defaults to the local torso instead (so if you're firing from the left side you hit Left Torso, Right hits RT, center/back hit Center.)

Oh, i see. I thought you meant you rolled a two, did the damage, and then rolled the location of the critical damage separately so you could hit an arm and crit a leg somehow.

[snoopy13a]

The AC/2 has a place, though it's a niche one (Outrangeing virtually everything else, best AA weapon available even without accounting for flak rounds, cheap, long range means you are at short while the ubiquitous medium laser still at long, deep bins mean precision ammo is not a horrible choice), it's the AC/5 that is usually regarded as the worst weapon available. Its list of flaws are many, to name just a few;

-Ammo based, can explode
-Ammo based, can run out of ammo
-Half the damage of a PPC for the same weight equivalent
-Not as long a range as AC/2 or LRM's so struggles to play the outranging game
-Damage is sub-par for weight investment
-10 rounds of precision ammo not quite enough to be free with your shots

Those are the main ones with the only positve being that it is cheap, but not as cheap as an AC/2, so there really is no role for an AC/5. 5 points is never going to be a threat against anything heavier than a light and you can crit just as well with an AC/2 at longer range.



Low heat was the big advantage of the AC/5. If you're playing in a 3026 setting--that is, without double heat sinks--you can't entirely load up on PPCs and large lasers without worrying about overheating; that's why the old Marauder has two PPCs and an AC/5 instead of three PPCs. If you're playing in a 3052 setting, PPCs/lasers that take advantage of double heat sinks or the availablity of the heavier, but much more effective, Gauss Rifle would probably win out.

Also, I'm pretty sure that in the original release, the AC/5 was the only autocannon--so it can be seen as a bit of an artifact. The others were added in later releases (e.g., Citytech*) and sourcebooks.

*Citytech introduced the Urbanmech--the walking autocannon :smallsmile:

[tyckspoon]

*Citytech introduced the Urbanmech--the walking autocannon :smallsmile:

Tangentially, I kinda want to design a tower defense map. Urbanmechs are pretty natural turrets.

[RandomLunatic]

Well it is kind of disingenuous to compare Clan tech to IS on a simple weapon damage and range basis. Because Clan tech has always had better range and damage then IS weapons.True. Which is why I was comparing two Clan 'Mechs. On the rim side of the Truce line, you get the Light Gauss, which is better than the AC/2s with a similar range profile, but only boosts your damage output from Abysmal to Poor.


There are a lot of other long range weapons to start comparing with too, they just aren't quite the extreme of the (x)AC/2s but they are still outside of LRM range, things like HAGs, Light Gauss, clan ER PPCs and ERLL.

The ATM's generate a fair amount more heat for their damage. They cost more C-bills and have a significantly higher BV and a fairly limited amount of shots.ATMs have a far better damage-to-weight ratios than autocannon, so you can plow that weight savings into ammo and heat sinks. And of course they have higher BVs-they are more effective.

The Clan are not really worried about cost, and even if they were, weapon selection has a surprisingly small impact on the final price tag. Look at the Dire Wolf-the price tag ranges from 28.3 million C-bills for the A variant to 29.5 million for the C.


Lets take the two examples you gave, the Turkina D and Bane, similar speed, size and armor. The Turkina is 1200 BV more, more then 50% higher the the Bane, its also 25% more expensive. The bane has 9 rounds of shooting full out before it runs out of ammo, the Turkina has just under 4*. The Bane can take 2 engine hits before it has to worry about overheating, the Turkina isn't even energy neutral at long range (with just the ATMs) if it even walks. So yeah... the Turkina should have a higher average damage, its only to be expected. But also given the way damage works, having more groups of 2 damage can work out better then fewer groups of 5 damage, especially for a support 'Mech rather then an brawler.

*Given if you switch all the Turkina's ammo to ER it would have 12.5 rounds, but the versatility of the ATM kind of requires it to take more different types of ammo.The Bane is heat-neutral if firing the autocannon double-taps while standing still, which it will have to do in order to have any prayer of staying even in this contest. This fire rate will also exhaust your ammo in 4 and a half turns. The higher price tag is neatly explained by the 25% markup all OmniMechs take, and again, the higher BV means it is more effective, which nicely proves my point.

Damage grouping is a bit of a wash-bigger groups will crush armor and structure faster, while smaller groups are more likely to crit, either with snake-eyes or landing on exposed internals. Of course, if your 100-ton Clan assault 'Mech so utterly reliant on the golden BB principle in order to kill enemies, you may want to go back and rethink it.


I haven't been playing enough so I only vaguely remember some of the less common rules... but I also think ACs work much better against VTOLs and other flyers, as well as infantry and Elementals. Then there is the already mentioned special rounds for ACs which can make them significantly more effective against fast units and they can't be countered by anti-missile systems. And the very low minimum range for ACs make them less of a liability against small fast units then many other long range weapons.Autocannon are not any more effect against aircraft or infantry than they are anything else, which for light ACs, is not very. You may be thinking of LB-X cluster ammo, which is rather good at killing vehicles and excellent for downing VTOLs. Special ammo is only available for standard AC/2s, and it does not really help them all that much-the old saying about polishing turds definitely applies here. And class-2 autocannon have worse minimum range than anything except Inner Sphere LRMs and Heavy Gauss Rifles,


Which isn't to say that overall the ATM isn't a better weapon with its versatility, but the AC/2 still has its place and is probably the better choice for an extreme range weapon.No, the ATM pretty much beats the pants off the AC/2 at its own game, not to mention it can do other things besides.


Low heat was the big advantage of the AC/5. If you're playing in a 3026 setting--that is, without double heat sinks--you can't entirely load up on PPCs and large lasers without worrying about overheating; that's why the old Marauder has two PPCs and an AC/5 instead of three PPCs. If you're playing in a 3052 setting, PPCs/lasers that take advantage of double heat sinks or the availablity of the heavier, but much more effective, Gauss Rifle would probably win out.In 3025-era play, 'Mechs came in two categories-overheating or undergunned. As a personal preference, I find the former easier to deal with.


Also, I'm pretty sure that in the original release, the AC/5 was the only autocannon--so it can be seen as a bit of an artifact. The others were added in later releases (e.g., Citytech*) and sourcebooks.

*Citytech introduced the Urbanmech--the walking autocannon :smallsmile:
That is true. If you have some of the older sheets, like the ones that came with the 3rd edition box set, the weapon is simply listed as "Autocannon". That did not make it suck any less.

[Gnoman]

hmm.. do you run with floating crits (ie, re-rolling for the actual location hit when you get a through armor?) Not using that could explain a lot of it; one of the things AC/2s are reasonably good at is fishing for through-armor crits from beyond a range where you can return fire, and when you use the older rule for those all of this crits hit in the torsos.. you can get a discomforting number of Magic BB kills that way.

Or perhaps you use a lot of vehicle support instead of/in addition to mechs; the damage charts for that include a possibility of suffering critical damage regardless of whether or not you've penetrated armor, so getting pinged down by AC/2s can leave a vehicle crippled quite rapidly without actually having been hit by any meaningful damage.

I'm not entirely sure how the criticals are set up. IIRC, they use the "bigger guns = worse crits" rule, but I haven't looked into the exact settings. It's a semi-3025 setting that uses both vees and mechs. Ac/2 units are highly effective (at least, at lower bvs) primarily because they can be parked safely behind the screening force and still hit at reasonable rates. Sometimes, AC/2s are the only weapon that hits for the first three or four turns.

[Philistine]

I admit that ultras, LBXs, and precision or armor piercing ammunition all change the game in favor the AC/2, especially AP IMO. I thought we were talking about just the basic one.

The missile hits table isn't kind to the LBX version of the AC/2, though: you'll only hit with both fragments roughly 42% of the time, so that even with the extra hit chance it's usually just a damage nerf. Yes, larger AC also do less damage with cluster rounds, but at least they usually (AC/5) or always (AC/10 and AC/20) get to fish for extra crit locations in exchange. And of course the AC/10 and AC/20, at least, were probably going to be packing multiple ammo bins anyway, so they're more likely to sport both cluster and slug ammo.

Ultra ACs OTOH are pretty much always a trap, though somewhat less so for the AC/2 with its low heat generation and Giant Bins of Ammo. The missile hits table still doesn't like two-shots, though, so most of the time you'll end up burning through twice the ammo, building up twice the heat, and risking a weapons malfunction in exchange for zero added damage. And for this you pay extra in weight and crit spaces! The interesting bit that's specific to the AC/2 version is that between the long range, the low heat, and the big ammo bins, you're likely to start shooting early, and always at double-rate - so you're going to see jams more often on a per-fight basis, even though the per-shot odds are the same. Ultra ACs are the opposite end of the spectrum from Streak SRMs and Clan Pulse Lasers.

[snoopy13a]

What do people think about Death from Aboves? I used to like them from a juvenile perspective, but I'm curious about how practical (I wasn't very practical back in my playing days) they are.

[Deadmeat.GW]

If you are desperate use it, if you have team mates and you could cripple a big guy on opposing team use it.

Otherwise stay well clear since your mechs legs will probably also be wasted.

It does give a good chance at taking out a mech with a head shot.

EDIT:

Keep in mind that you also need a good enough pilot that you actually get to hit the enemy instead of landing at his feet...

[Erloas]

True. Which is why I was comparing two Clan 'Mechs. On the rim side of the Truce line, you get the Light Gauss, which is better than the AC/2s with a similar range profile, but only boosts your damage output from Abysmal to Poor.You were compare clan 'Mechs but still comparing a Clan tech weapon with a really old weapon design, as the AC/2 is one of the oldest weapons and used throughout the Succession Wars. Of course the UAC/2 is newer, which is actually what was on the Bane. But it depends if we want to talk about every type of AC/2 all together as if it was one single gun, which it clearly isn't with AC/2, Light AC/2, RAC/2, UAC/2, and LB-2X all with different profiles, weights, ranges, ammo types, and the later two with both Clan and IS designs that are different.
The Light Gauss Rifle has very reasonable damage, though maybe not for its weight.


ATMs have a far better damage-to-weight ratios than autocannon, so you can plow that weight savings into ammo and heat sinks. And of course they have higher BVs-they are more effective.At which point your savings are lost. Lets take the ATM-6 compared to the UAC/2, both clan varieties. The ATM-6 averages 4 damage (with ER) and the ATM-3 averages 2 damage, while the UAC/2 averages 2.83 damage, so just picking the ATM-6, as its about half way between. UAC/2 is 5 tons, 2 crits, 1heat/shot and 45 shots per ton of ammo, the ATM-6 is 3.5 tons, 3 crits, 4 heat, and 10 shots per ton.
It uses twice the heat, which is still fairly low but almost meaningless without some context. Some will have the engines to take a lot of heat-sinks, some will eat up crit locations in a hurry, some have the weight for extra heatsinks, some don't. The extra heatsink to make up for the 2 extra heat makes it only 0.5 tons less in effective weight savings. But it also only has 10 shots to the UAC/2's 22.5 shots, if we give it an extra ton of ammo to put it up to 20 shots then its 0.5 tons heavier. Is the extra weight or heat going to be an issue? Well are you putting these on in mass or just one? Are you putting it on a light/medium mobile 'Mech, or a slow heavy/assault 'Mech? Do you have other weapon systems that burn a lot of heat (like every clan energy weapon)?


The Clan are not really worried about cost, and even if they were, weapon selection has a surprisingly small impact on the final price tag. Look at the Dire Wolf-the price tag ranges from 28.3 million C-bills for the A variant to 29.5 million for the C.When you are looking at assault 'Mechs the different is going to be less, but in some of the smaller 'Mechs the price difference for one configuration to another could be as much as 35% (with a quick glance, not sure how much of that was due simply to weapon systems though). And yes, in most games no one even looks at C-Bills, but if you're playing a campaign, especially one set in more desperate times rather then times of plenty, the availability of ammo and the cost could add up to a lot. For instance, 1 ton of ATM-6 ammo is 75k C-Bills, 1 ton of AC/2 ammo (most types) is 1k, even the precession ammo is only 6k, and thats twice as many shots for 1/75 the cost.
Which is of course one of the lost advantages of AC's of all sized, they were really cheap to re-supply and the ammunition was easily found almost anywhere. Even an AC/20 only costs 10k to resupply 1 ton of ammo, and an LRM is 30k. If you're just playing one-off games then a lot of those considerations are meaningless, but it does mean in Universe there are plenty of reasons to worry about stuff like that. A one-off supply of expensive ammo isn't anything even a small mercenary company would have a problem with, but multiply that extra cost by a few dozen 'Mechs over the course of a year or two of conflict and you're paying for a couple assault 'Mechs worth of ammunition. Seeing as how 100 tons of ATM-6 would cost 7.4M C-Bills more then 100 tons of AC/2 ammo, and at least for the IS that will buy 'Mechs into the Assault range (there are in fact 9 Warhammer variations that cost less then that)


The Bane is heat-neutral if firing the autocannon double-taps while standing still, which it will have to do in order to have any prayer of staying even in this contest. This fire rate will also exhaust your ammo in 4 and a half turns. The higher price tag is neatly explained by the 25% markup all OmniMechs take, and again, the higher BV means it is more effective, which nicely proves my point.I haven't ran the actual numbers, but is the damage 50% better then the Bane because thats what you are paying for it, at least if you are playing a game balanced by BV (which is what most people use as its the best option available that doesn't get too complicated)? It might be a better weapon, but is it that much better? It also shows the situations where the AC/2 has a big advantage, in a system where you have some constraints and can't just build whatever you want and call it a day. As a long range fire support 'Mech the Turkina D isn't as good of an option, though as a general 'Mech where you can use all 3 of the missile types its a better option. So again, it comes down to context and use. I'm not even trying to say the AC is better, I'm just saying that the AC's have their place, and in a BV base game where I want a long range fire support 'Mech I would rather have the Bane then the Turkina D, but in a smaller engagement where having the 'Mech do more then just fire support the Turkina D would be a good choice. But even then, I think the Bane + some decent mid-range medium/heavy 'Mech would be a better choice for the same cost and BV.

Also, the Bane has 180 rounds for the UAC/2, and at 20 shots per turn thats 9 turns of full shooting.

And of course you're just looking at Clan 'Mechs and technology. What is your option for IS 'Mechs? Even Clan Invasion era IS, they have a lot more AC options, but they don't have nearly as many missile options and their energy weapons are all much shorter range.

Ultra ACs OTOH are pretty much always a trap, though somewhat less so for the AC/2 with its low heat generation and Giant Bins of Ammo. The missile hits table still doesn't like two-shots, though, so most of the time you'll end up burning through twice the ammo, building up twice the heat, and risking a weapons malfunction in exchange for zero added damage. And for this you pay extra in weight and crit spaces! The interesting bit that's specific to the AC/2 version is that between the long range, the low heat, and the big ammo bins, you're likely to start shooting early, and always at double-rate - so you're going to see jams more often on a per-fight basis, even though the per-shot odds are the same.Well if crit locations isn't an issue, the UAC/2 is better off then the AC in terms of weight. Its 1 ton more, for the UAC/2 compared to the normal AC/2, which is 16% heavier, but you have a 42% chance of doing twice as much damage. The average damage (as stated earlier) for the UAC/2 is 2.8 damage per hit, and with something like the UAC/2 you have the rounds to not have to worry much about wasting ammo. With something like the UAC/20 the 1 ton weight increase isn't much, but the very limited ammo supply becomes a lot more of an issue.

As for jamming... yeah, that will happen once in 36 shots, so with something like the Bane you'll see one every 3.5 rounds, but they can be cleared relatively easily and with the many shot approach, just loosing one or two isn't going to be a huge problem. But if you are looking at some of the smaller 'Mechs that only have 2-4 UAC/2s you won't see jams very often. They are not like the RACs in terms of jamming.

[Gnoman]

What do people think about Death from Aboves? I used to like them from a juvenile perspective, but I'm curious about how practical (I wasn't very practical back in my playing days) they are.

They're a desperation-only maneuver. You have a quite-high chance of wrecking your legs. which is almost invariably a mission-kill, and every unit on the field will concentrate fire on the attacker with fairly good chances of hitting. Best use for it is using a already-wrecked mech to draw fire for a turn.

[Philistine]

Well if crit locations isn't an issue, the UAC/2 is better off then the AC in terms of weight. Its 1 ton more, for the UAC/2 compared to the normal AC/2, which is 16% heavier, but you have a 42% chance of doing twice as much damage. The average damage (as stated earlier) for the UAC/2 is 2.8 damage per hit, and with something like the UAC/2 you have the rounds to not have to worry much about wasting ammo. With something like the UAC/20 the 1 ton weight increase isn't much, but the very limited ammo supply becomes a lot more of an issue.

As for jamming... yeah, that will happen once in 36 shots, so with something like the Bane you'll see one every 3.5 rounds, but they can be cleared relatively easily and with the many shot approach, just loosing one or two isn't going to be a huge problem. But if you are looking at some of the smaller 'Mechs that only have 2-4 UAC/2s you won't see jams very often. They are not like the RACs in terms of jamming.

So your position is that the UAC/2 is marginally less terrible than a normal light autocannon? That's still a long way from good. :smallamused: Also, the only times I'd ever use an AC/2 would be for a dedicated flak vehicle (they really are excellent in this niche role, though of course a unit this specialized ought to be on a tank chassis rather than a Mech), or to when I have a whole bunch of free tonnage and very, very little free space - in which case the extra crit slot basically negates the reason I was going to use the AC.

And here's a funny thing. Last time I looked at them, I remember it being RACs that had rules to allow a MechWarrior to easily clear a jam on the fly, while jammed UACs were just done until a wrench jockey had a chance to climb aboard after the fight and hammer the thing back into shape.

Also. IMO you have the impacted Mechs backward. A ten-gun Bane will, on average, lose its third gun to jamming about the time it loses all of them to ammunition exhaustion anyway. OTOH, a Light or Medium that's depending on a pair of UAC/2s for the bulk of its offense loses half its firepower (which is already below par) when one of them jams - and that happens roughly once per 1.5 tons of ammo, which probably means "at least every second engagement."

The funny thing is, it wouldn't require many or large changes to make UACs much more viable. Just rolling each shot as a separate attack instead of checking the missile hits table would do wonders. (To keep that from being strictly better than buying two separate guns, you could up the jam chance - but give the UAC a jam-clearance method such as the RAC has. Or have double-rate fire generate 25-50% extra heat. Or cut the range - for the gun overall, or for rapid fire - by, say, 10%. Or give it -1 to hit due to recoil. Lots of possible ways to do this, since almost anything would be better than rolling on the missile hits table.) As-is, though, the amount of love the things get, with people talking them up as if they were some kind of uber-godly dteath weapon o'doom (especially the UAC/20!), is kind of bizarre - like if people were talking about how OP the Monk class is in D&D3E.

[Provengreil]

So your position is that the UAC/2 is marginally less terrible than a normal light autocannon? That's still a long way from good. :smallamused: Also, the only times I'd ever use an AC/2 would be for a dedicated flak vehicle (they really are excellent in this niche role, though of course a unit this specialized ought to be on a tank chassis rather than a Mech), or to when I have a whole bunch of free tonnage and very, very little free space - in which case the extra crit slot basically negates the reason I was going to use the AC.

And here's a funny thing. Last time I looked at them, I remember it being RACs that had rules to allow a MechWarrior to easily clear a jam on the fly, while jammed UACs were just done until a wrench jockey had a chance to climb aboard after the fight and hammer the thing back into shape.

Also. IMO you have the impacted Mechs backward. A ten-gun Bane will, on average, lose its third gun to jamming about the time it loses all of them to ammunition exhaustion anyway. OTOH, a Light or Medium that's depending on a pair of UAC/2s for the bulk of its offense loses half its firepower (which is already below par) when one of them jams - and that happens roughly once per 1.5 tons of ammo, which probably means "at least every second engagement."

The funny thing is, it wouldn't require many or large changes to make UACs much more viable. Just rolling each shot as a separate attack instead of checking the missile hits table would do wonders. (To keep that from being strictly better than buying two separate guns, you could up the jam chance - but give the UAC a jam-clearance method such as the RAC has. Or have double-rate fire generate 25-50% extra heat. Or cut the range - for the gun overall, or for rapid fire - by, say, 10%. Or give it -1 to hit due to recoil. Lots of possible ways to do this, since almost anything would be better than rolling on the missile hits table.) As-is, though, the amount of love the things get, with people talking them up as if they were some kind of uber-godly dteath weapon o'doom (especially the UAC/20!), is kind of bizarre - like if people were talking about how OP the Monk class is in D&D3E.

To be fair, if both shots of a UAC/20 hit, you may well be done right there, especially if they hit the same location. 40 points of damage in 1 round by 1 weapon is significant.

[Erloas]

And here's a funny thing. Last time I looked at them, I remember it being RACs that had rules to allow a MechWarrior to easily clear a jam on the fly, while jammed UACs were just done until a wrench jockey had a chance to climb aboard after the fight and hammer the thing back into shape. You might be right about that, been a while since I looked it over and can't remember for sure.


The funny thing is, it wouldn't require many or large changes to make UACs much more viable. Just rolling each shot as a separate attack instead of checking the missile hits table would do wonders. (To keep that from being strictly better than buying two separate guns, you could up the jam chance - but give the UAC a jam-clearance method such as the RAC has. Or have double-rate fire generate 25-50% extra heat. Or cut the range - for the gun overall, or for rapid fire - by, say, 10%. Or give it -1 to hit due to recoil. Lots of possible ways to do this, since almost anything would be better than rolling on the missile hits table.) As-is, though, the amount of love the things get, with people talking them up as if they were some kind of uber-godly dteath weapon o'doom (especially the UAC/20!), is kind of bizarre - like if people were talking about how OP the Monk class is in D&D3E.I think most people accept that ACs just aren't as good as many other options. I think most people want them to be better though and, like most things, they have their places where they really shine. Its just that those times are much more limited then lasers and PPCs. In general I just don't really like missile systems and avoid them for the most part. The ACs are a lot better in the Succession Wars era because of the lack of double heatsinks and all the long range clan tech. But unfortunately ACs didn't scale up as well as the energy weapons did with the technology advancements.
As for reducing the range on UACs, they actually have longer range then their normal counterparts (not by much, but a little bit), and the range on the RACs is not all that great because by the time they are available (era) you're well within range of too many big energy weapons. And jamming on a 4-6 becomes very problematic.
The (U)AC/20 is scarry though, it is the largest weapon in the game, with the exception of the HAG and MRM 40s, both of which hit in clusters, and the Heavy Guass whose damage is range dependent. It forces a PSR in a single hit and will go internal on almost any location on a 'Mech up until the mid-sized heavies and even 100ton assault 'Mechs aren't going to take many shots from them. Its a given they loose out in the open "turret" warfare that so many clan 'Mechs like to engage in, but in broken fields and ambush situations it is great. Especially considering that a 2 shot firing UAC/20 is almost the same heat as a single ER PPC. More then a few 'Mechs can almost unavoidably shut themselves down in a single alpha-strike with energy weapons.

[RandomLunatic]

You were compare clan 'Mechs but still comparing a Clan tech weapon with a really old weapon design, as the AC/2 is one of the oldest weapons and used throughout the Succession Wars. Of course the UAC/2 is newer, which is actually what was on the Bane. But it depends if we want to talk about every type of AC/2 all together as if it was one single gun, which it clearly isn't with AC/2, Light AC/2, RAC/2, UAC/2, and LB-2X all with different profiles, weights, ranges, ammo types, and the later two with both Clan and IS designs that are different.
The Light Gauss Rifle has very reasonable damage, though maybe not for its weight. When I said AC/2, I meant the entire family of class 2 autocannon taken as a whole, not just the vanilla AC/2. Because you are right, finding a Clan something that beats an Inner Sphere something is not exactly an earth-shattering revelation.

The Light Guass's damage is not great, but it still beats the ever-loving snot out of the AC/2.


At which point your savings are lost. Lets take the ATM-6 compared to the UAC/2, both clan varieties. The ATM-6 averages 4 damage (with ER) and the ATM-3 averages 2 damage, while the UAC/2 averages 2.83 damage, so just picking the ATM-6, as its about half way between. UAC/2 is 5 tons, 2 crits, 1heat/shot and 45 shots per ton of ammo, the ATM-6 is 3.5 tons, 3 crits, 4 heat, and 10 shots per ton.
It uses twice the heat, which is still fairly low but almost meaningless without some context. Some will have the engines to take a lot of heat-sinks, some will eat up crit locations in a hurry, some have the weight for extra heatsinks, some don't. The extra heatsink to make up for the 2 extra heat makes it only 0.5 tons less in effective weight savings. But it also only has 10 shots to the UAC/2's 22.5 shots, if we give it an extra ton of ammo to put it up to 20 shots then its 0.5 tons heavier. Is the extra weight or heat going to be an issue? Well are you putting these on in mass or just one? Are you putting it on a light/medium mobile 'Mech, or a slow heavy/assault 'Mech? Do you have other weapon systems that burn a lot of heat (like every clan energy weapon)?

With two ton of ammo, you get 20 shots, versus 22.5 with a UAC and one ton of ammo-close enough for government work. And it may weigh .5 tons more, if your engine heat sinks do not manage to take care of it, but it deals almost twice as much damage (it lands 5 missile on an average roll). That sounds like a great bargain to me.


When you are looking at assault 'Mechs the different is going to be less, but in some of the smaller 'Mechs the price difference for one configuration to another could be as much as 35% (with a quick glance, not sure how much of that was due simply to weapon systems though). And yes, in most games no one even looks at C-Bills, but if you're playing a campaign, especially one set in more desperate times rather then times of plenty, the availability of ammo and the cost could add up to a lot. For instance, 1 ton of ATM-6 ammo is 75k C-Bills, 1 ton of AC/2 ammo (most types) is 1k, even the precession ammo is only 6k, and thats twice as many shots for 1/75 the cost.I am willing to pay the premium if it means I can kill my enemy sometime before the heat death of the universe.

Which is of course one of the lost advantages of AC's of all sized, they were really cheap to re-supply and the ammunition was easily found almost anywhere. Even an AC/20 only costs 10k to resupply 1 ton of ammo, and an LRM is 30k. If you're just playing one-off games then a lot of those considerations are meaningless, but it does mean in Universe there are plenty of reasons to worry about stuff like that. A one-off supply of expensive ammo isn't anything even a small mercenary company would have a problem with, but multiply that extra cost by a few dozen 'Mechs over the course of a year or two of conflict and you're paying for a couple assault 'Mechs worth of ammunition. Seeing as how 100 tons of ATM-6 would cost 7.4M C-Bills more then 100 tons of AC/2 ammo, and at least for the IS that will buy 'Mechs into the Assault range (there are in fact 9 Warhammer variations that cost less then that)Let us just face it-mercs are not going to be using ATMs because they have no reliable way to keep them in supply.


I haven't ran the actual numbers, but is the damage 50% better then the Bane because thats what you are paying for it, at least if you are playing a game balanced by BV (which is what most people use as its the best option available that doesn't get too complicated)? It might be a better weapon, but is it that much better? It also shows the situations where the AC/2 has a big advantage, in a system where you have some constraints and can't just build whatever you want and call it a day. As a long range fire support 'Mech the Turkina D isn't as good of an option, though as a general 'Mech where you can use all 3 of the missile types its a better option. So again, it comes down to context and use. I'm not even trying to say the AC is better, I'm just saying that the AC's have their place, and in a BV base game where I want a long range fire support 'Mech I would rather have the Bane then the Turkina D, but in a smaller engagement where having the 'Mech do more then just fire support the Turkina D would be a good choice. But even then, I think the Bane + some decent mid-range medium/heavy 'Mech would be a better choice for the same cost and BV.

Also, the Bane has 180 rounds for the UAC/2, and at 20 shots per turn thats 9 turns of full shooting.Well, the UAC/2 averages 2.83 when double-tapped. Calculating the average takes a bit more math than I am really willing to do right now, but average rolls for an ATM-12 lands 10 missiles per rack. ECM reduces that to 8, and an AMS knocks another 5 or 4 off, respectively. The Bane, therefore, averages 28.3 damage. In order for the Bane to outperform the Turkey, the target has to be protected by ECM and at least two AMSes, and the only canon unit I know of that mounts more than 1 AMS in a single fire arc is the Mist Lynx A. And it lacks an ECM suite.

In ideal circumstances, the Turkey deals 41% more damage, but we have to remember ATMs do not break down, so after the inevitable jam on turn 3 or 4, the Turkey does in fact hit the 50% mark.

For 800 BV, you could only get some sort of cruddy small 'Mech like a Fire Moth or Mist Lynx that the Turkina would smash in two or three salvos.



And of course you're just looking at Clan 'Mechs and technology. What is your option for IS 'Mechs? Even Clan Invasion era IS, they have a lot more AC options, but they don't have nearly as many missile options and their energy weapons are all much shorter range.ER PPC or Light Gauss, depending on the era.

[Swordguy]

and the only canon unit I know of that mounts more than 1 AMS in a single fire arc is the Mist Lynx A. And it lacks an ECM suite.

KIM-2 -series Komodo. It's a medium laser boat from TRO 3055. It's got the ECM suite too.

That's about it, though. And it's not like that disproves your point, given than it's exactly 1 Mech out of the 3000-ish variants currently extant.


To be totally clear, if you care at all about min-maxing in BattleTech, you don't use standard ACs. Or UACs. Or, in fact, about 80% of the weapons that actually exist in BattleTech. That's because the designers don't really care about min-maxing, other than to "not do it most of the time" (the existence of the Hellstar, Osteon, and Annihilator C/Gausszilla does not constitute 'most of the time', for reference). It's up to your local metagame and/or tournament organizer to hammer out the style in which it wants to play.

[Erloas]

The Light Guass's damage is not great, but it still beats the ever-loving snot out of the AC/2.I was saying the light gauss was pretty good, someone else had said how poor its damage was.


Well, the UAC/2 averages 2.83 when double-tapped. Calculating the average takes a bit more math than I am really willing to do right now, but average rolls for an ATM-12 lands 10 missiles per rack. ECM reduces that to 8, and an AMS knocks another 5 or 4 off, respectively. The Bane, therefore, averages 28.3 damage. In order for the Bane to outperform the Turkey, the target has to be protected by ECM and at least two AMSes, and the only canon unit I know of that mounts more than 1 AMS in a single fire arc is the Mist Lynx A. And it lacks an ECM suite.Since I saved my excel file from before it was trivial to plug in the numbers for the ATM-12. It averages 8.14 missiles per hit, so 8.14 damage with ER ammo loaded. For the sake of completion, the ATM-9 averages 5.47 missiles per hit.

So 4x ATM-12s is 32.56 damage, and for 10x UAC/2s is 28.3 damage, so a 13% increase for the AMT-12. Which isn't all that much. And from what I've found is more shots works out better then large shots, at least at long ranges when your to-hit numbers aren't great.

But of course a comparison between two canon 'Mechs that happen to use the weapons as their primary isn't a complete comparison between them. How well does each fair when scaled down in numbers and put on lighter 'Mechs? How does the IS AC/2 variations compare to the other extreme range weapons available to the IS?

[Alex Knight]

The AC/2 is actually one of the best anti-aircraft weapons available to the Inner Sphere.

What's that? Blasphemy, you say? Allow me to explain.

First, range. The AC/2 outranges everything but the following weapons:
LBX-2
Ultra-2
Light Gauss Rifle
Extended LRMs
HyperVelocity AC-2 and AC-5

Flak ammo, available to standard Autocannons, provides a -2 to-hit bonus when targeting VTOLs and aerospace units. This allows the AC/2 to shine above the LBX and Ultra-2s. The gun itself is lighter and doesn't explode, so that makes it better than the LGR and Hypervelocity guns. And the Extended LRMs are both less accurate and weigh SO MUCH MORE.

But what about damage, you cry? Ah, my young padawans, this is where you fail. You see, it doesn't MATTER how much damage I do to that Jenghiz bearing down on me. As long as I hit and actually do even one point of damage, he has to make a control roll.

Why is this important? Because if he fails a control roll, he loses 1d6 levels of altitude. Almost all air-to-ground attacks occur at level 5 or lower. And the ground causes a lot more damage than any weapon I can mount on my 'Mech. :smallbiggrin:

[Swordguy]

Why is this important? Because if he fails a control roll, he loses 1d6 levels of altitude. Almost all air-to-ground attacks occur at level 5 or lower. And the ground causes a lot more damage than any weapon I can mount on my 'Mech. :smallbiggrin:

That control roll is at a +2 penalty for operating in an atmosphere. So a regular 4/5 pilot has to roll a 7 or better to pass that Piloting check. Meaning taking even 1 point of damage in an atmosphere results in a failed control roll about 40% of the time.

Dem's good odds, given BattleTech math. Parking an AC/2 carrier (or a Rifleman with flak ammo) on Hex 0909 of a map is about the meanest thing you can do to an ASF player short of airburst nukes or hurricane-force winds.

Light ACs are niche weapons. Bad for min-maxing, but pretty good-to-great in their (albeit limited) niche.

[RandomLunatic]

I was saying the light gauss was pretty good, someone else had said how poor its damage was.

Since I saved my excel file from before it was trivial to plug in the numbers for the ATM-12. It averages 8.14 missiles per hit, so 8.14 damage with ER ammo loaded. For the sake of completion, the ATM-9 averages 5.47 missiles per hit.

So 4x ATM-12s is 32.56 damage, and for 10x UAC/2s is 28.3 damage, so a 13% increase for the AMT-12. Which isn't all that much. And from what I've found is more shots works out better then large shots, at least at long ranges when your to-hit numbers aren't great. Are you including the ATM's built-in Artemis IV? Because your numbers are very close to mine for firing at ECM-shielded targets.


But of course a comparison between two canon 'Mechs that happen to use the weapons as their primary isn't a complete comparison between them. How well does each fair when scaled down in numbers and put on lighter 'Mechs? How does the IS AC/2 variations compare to the other extreme range weapons available to the IS?Very poorly. Especially since Ballistic weapons are chiefly for upper-end heavy and assault 'Mechs, which are the ones that start running out of critical slots before mass.

Consider Ice Ferret Prime (ER PPC, MPL, ERSL, SSRM-2) versus Ice Ferret A (LB-2X, 2 ERML, AMS). Or Koshi D (UAC/2, ERML, ERSL)versus Fire Falcon B (2x ERLL + TarComp). A BJ1 Blackjack (2x AC/2, 4x ML) versus a WTH-1 Whitworth (2x LRM-10, 3xML). Or the MAL-C Mauler (2x ERLL, 2x LRM-15, 4x AC/2, C3) versus a VQR-2A Vanquisher (2x ERLL, 2x LGR, 3x ERML, C3). Or a JM6-DD JaegerMech (2x UAC/5, 2x AC/2, 2x MPL, no hope in hell) against anything (better than a friggin' JaegerMech).

[RandomLunatic]

I was saying the light gauss was pretty good, someone else had said how poor its damage was.

Since I saved my excel file from before it was trivial to plug in the numbers for the ATM-12. It averages 8.14 missiles per hit, so 8.14 damage with ER ammo loaded. For the sake of completion, the ATM-9 averages 5.47 missiles per hit.

So 4x ATM-12s is 32.56 damage, and for 10x UAC/2s is 28.3 damage, so a 13% increase for the AMT-12. Which isn't all that much. And from what I've found is more shots works out better then large shots, at least at long ranges when your to-hit numbers aren't great. Are you including the ATM's built-in Artemis IV? Because your numbers are very close to mine for firing at ECM-shielded targets.


But of course a comparison between two canon 'Mechs that happen to use the weapons as their primary isn't a complete comparison between them. How well does each fair when scaled down in numbers and put on lighter 'Mechs? How does the IS AC/2 variations compare to the other extreme range weapons available to the IS?Very poorly. Especially since Ballistic weapons are chiefly for upper-end heavy and assault 'Mechs, which are the ones that start running out of critical slots before mass.

Consider Ice Ferret Prime (ER PPC, MPL, ERSL, SSRM-2) versus Ice Ferret A (LB-2X, 2 ERML, AMS). Or Koshi D (UAC/2, ERML, ERSL)versus Fire Falcon B (2x ERLL + TarComp). A BJ1 Blackjack (2x AC/2, 4x ML) versus a WTH-1 Whitworth (2x LRM-10, 3xML). Or the MAL-C Mauler (2x ERLL, 2x LRM-15, 4x AC/2, C3) versus a VQR-2A Vanquisher (2x ERLL, 2x LGR, 3x ERML, C3). Or a JM6-DD JaegerMech (2x UAC/5, 2x AC/2, 2x MPL, no hope in hell) against anything (better than a friggin' JaegerMech).

[RandomLunatic]

I was saying the light gauss was pretty good, someone else had said how poor its damage was.

Since I saved my excel file from before it was trivial to plug in the numbers for the ATM-12. It averages 8.14 missiles per hit, so 8.14 damage with ER ammo loaded. For the sake of completion, the ATM-9 averages 5.47 missiles per hit.

So 4x ATM-12s is 32.56 damage, and for 10x UAC/2s is 28.3 damage, so a 13% increase for the AMT-12. Which isn't all that much. And from what I've found is more shots works out better then large shots, at least at long ranges when your to-hit numbers aren't great. Are you including the ATM's built-in Artemis IV? Because your numbers are very close to mine for firing at ECM-shielded targets.


But of course a comparison between two canon 'Mechs that happen to use the weapons as their primary isn't a complete comparison between them. How well does each fair when scaled down in numbers and put on lighter 'Mechs? How does the IS AC/2 variations compare to the other extreme range weapons available to the IS?Very poorly. Especially since Ballistic weapons are chiefly for upper-end heavy and assault 'Mechs, which are the ones that start running out of critical slots before mass.

Consider Ice Ferret Prime (ER PPC, MPL, ERSL, SSRM-2) versus Ice Ferret A (LB-2X, 2 ERML, AMS). Or Koshi D (UAC/2, ERML, ERSL)versus Fire Falcon B (2x ERLL + TarComp). A BJ1 Blackjack (2x AC/2, 4x ML) versus a WTH-1 Whitworth (2x LRM-10, 3xML). Or the MAL-C Mauler (2x ERLL, 2x LRM-15, 4x AC/2, C3) versus a VQR-2A Vanquisher (2x ERLL, 2x LGR, 3x ERML, C3). Or a JM6-DD JaegerMech (2x UAC/5, 2x AC/2, 2x MPL, no hope in hell) against anything (better than a friggin' JaegerMech).

[RandomLunatic]

I was saying the light gauss was pretty good, someone else had said how poor its damage was.

Since I saved my excel file from before it was trivial to plug in the numbers for the ATM-12. It averages 8.14 missiles per hit, so 8.14 damage with ER ammo loaded. For the sake of completion, the ATM-9 averages 5.47 missiles per hit.

So 4x ATM-12s is 32.56 damage, and for 10x UAC/2s is 28.3 damage, so a 13% increase for the AMT-12. Which isn't all that much. And from what I've found is more shots works out better then large shots, at least at long ranges when your to-hit numbers aren't great. Are you including the ATM's built-in Artemis IV? Because your numbers are very close to mine for firing at ECM-shielded targets.


But of course a comparison between two canon 'Mechs that happen to use the weapons as their primary isn't a complete comparison between them. How well does each fair when scaled down in numbers and put on lighter 'Mechs? How does the IS AC/2 variations compare to the other extreme range weapons available to the IS?Very poorly. Especially since Ballistic weapons are chiefly for upper-end heavy and assault 'Mechs, which are the ones that start running out of critical slots before mass.

Consider Ice Ferret Prime (ER PPC, MPL, ERSL, SSRM-2) versus Ice Ferret A (LB-2X, 2 ERML, AMS). Or Koshi D (UAC/2, ERML, ERSL)versus Fire Falcon B (2x ERLL + TarComp). A BJ1 Blackjack (2x AC/2, 4x ML) versus a WTH-1 Whitworth (2x LRM-10, 3xML). Or the MAL-C Mauler (2x ERLL, 2x LRM-15, 4x AC/2, C3) versus a VQR-2A Vanquisher (2x ERLL, 2x LGR, 3x ERML, C3). Or a JM6-DD JaegerMech (2x UAC/5, 2x AC/2, 2x MPL, no hope in hell) against anything (better than a friggin' JaegerMech).

[snoopy13a]

To be totally clear, if you care at all about min-maxing in BattleTech, you don't use standard ACs. Or UACs. Or, in fact, about 80% of the weapons that actually exist in BattleTech. That's because the designers don't really care about min-maxing, other than to "not do it most of the time" (the existence of the Hellstar, Osteon, and Annihilator C/Gausszilla does not constitute 'most of the time', for reference). It's up to your local metagame and/or tournament organizer to hammer out the style in which it wants to play.

The problem with min-maxing in BattleTech is what you're min-maxing to. Are you trying to maximize tonnage? Combat Value? C-Bill cost? XL engines, for example, drastically improve combat abilities and are great for maximizing tonnage but are extremely expensive. In some cases, you could purchase three 3025 'Mechs for their 3052 upgrade. Of course, that would be three times the maintanance, three times the cost of piloting training, etc.

Inefficient 'Mechs do make sense based on the BattleTech fluff. In theory, it may be more efficient to put in a different weapons platform but a 'Mech manufacturer may not do so because of cost concerns or impractiablity (if you have one factory in your entire nation that produces a weapon, not every 'Mech is going to be able to carry that weapon. Or perhaps because of sweetheart deals or kickbacks.

It may also be for strategic reasons. Energy weapons have the advantage of not having to worry about amno supply (something Comstar taught the Jade Falcons the hard way). This is even more pronounced in raiding situations where quick movement is key. A 'Mech with little energy weapons could be fine in its first skirmish but will need resupply for an extended campaign, and in a raid situation this may be impossible.

Additionally, unit utility depends on the situation. Conventional infantry (i.e., normal dudes, not Elementals/Power Suits) are horrible in an open field but can be useful in a city--plus they are dirt cheap. Tanks can be great in defense but aren't as mobile as 'Mechs (both on the battlefield and getting to the battlefied).

Finally, I think that Aerospace and conventional (airplanes not VTOLs) fighters can carry bombs. So, armies probably wouldn't risk their Heavy Aerospace fighters for Air to Ground--saving them instead for air superiority and anti-Dropship actions. Rather, they'd use Light Aerospace fighters and if they are the defenders, conventional fighters.

[Storm Bringer]

for those of a slightly less mathamatical inclination, a more general question:

what era do you most like to play in, and why?

I've only really played a few 3025 era games, and was wondering what people though about the other eras.

[Erloas]

Are you including the ATM's built-in Artemis IV? Because your numbers are very close to mine for firing at ECM-shielded targets.
I didn't. I did not realize it had Artemis IV built in. The quick reference sheets I have available to me right now and SSW make no mention of it at all.


As for your 'Mech lists... I really have no idea what you are trying to say.

There is also the fact that extreme range weapons like the AC/2 is generally for fire support designs, not one-on-one designs. Much like the missile heavy 'Mechs like the Catapult, Trebuchet, and Archer aren't going to fair too well on their own either. The AC/2 and AC/5s tend to be more on support 'Mechs where they add firepower to a situation at range and primarily stay out of engagement zones.

My belief has always been (with many different game systems as well) that if you can't find a use for a weapon or a unit then you're trying to make it fit what you want rather then working with what its advantages are. If you play straight up brawls with a 60T 'Mech being as close to a scout as you have, no infantry/BA or vehicles or VTOLs, no urban encounters and lots of open spaces then your going to find a lot of units aren't as good as a limited few. That doesn't mean they are bad, just that your missing a big part of the universe/game that makes those other units viable.
They've got entire books on running campaigns where repair times and costs become an actual issue, where there isn't a 'Mech-a-mart on every world where you can pick up every possible thing you could want whenever you need it. That ERPPC might seem great until you realize it takes forever to repair once its damaged and no one can ship a new one to you in less then 3 months, but the simplicity of an AC means they are easy to find throughout the galaxy, they are quick to repair and easy to resupply.

[snoopy13a]

for those of a slightly less mathamatical inclination, a more general question:

what era do you most like to play in, and why?

I've only really played a few 3025 era games, and was wondering what people though about the other eras.

I always liked Solaris VII-based games the best. One-on-one dueling with specialized rules.

[Gnoman]

XL engines, for example, drastically improve combat abilities and are great for maximizing tonnage but are extremely expensive.

XL engines are a trap. Adding side torso engine crits drastically increases the chances of the engine getting taken out, especially if you get backshot.

[Mando Knight]

XL engines are a trap. Adding side torso engine crits drastically increases the chances of the engine getting taken out, especially if you get backshot.

XL engines are usually a trap. Lightweight and Support 'Mechs that don't expect to see or survive much direct fire anyway can get some more use out of them, and Clan XLs aren't nearly as bad as IS ones due to losing one side torso not being a guaranteed kill... that and they have the tech base to beef up the machine's protection in other ways.

But using them solely because you can get an extra couple tons for weapons? Bad idea. Putting anything that can explode next to XLs that you can't expend in a couple turns? Also a bad idea. Piloting an AS7-K? Your funeral.

[snoopy13a]

XL engines are a trap. Adding side torso engine crits drastically increases the chances of the engine getting taken out, especially if you get backshot.

The potential increase in speed and tonnage, in my view, outweighes the damage suspectability.

[mangosta71]

For anti-aircraft, I'd rather park a Rifleman IIC in the center hex. Nearly the same effective range, more chances to hit, and actually a useful combatant even if there are no air units in need of suppression. I'm still sad about pulse lasers not working with targeting computers any more.

I'm not a fan of ballistic weapons unless I'm designing a vehicle. And if I use missiles, it's either a Streak launcher or an LRM rack with Artemis. Of course, if I'm equipping a 'Mech so that its primary armament is SRMs, I prefer 4s to 6s due to better crit slot efficiency and damage per ton of ammo. I had a 50 ton 'Mech (Clan tech) loaded up with 6 Streak SRM-4 launchers with max armor and 6/9/6 mobility. Capable of taking on an entire scouting lance of 3025-3050 IS 'Mechs by itself. Vicious little infighter. Or, to quote Falconer Joanna, "A beautiful killing machine."

[Erloas]

XL engines are a trap. Adding side torso engine crits drastically increases the chances of the engine getting taken out, especially if you get backshot.
Eh, its not all that bad. For one, any ammo explosion is likely to effectively kill a 'Mech regardless. Even with CASE and a normal engine you will most likely have lost half your firepower and chances are high that at that point you've already taken a fair amount of damage to other locations as well and stacking all the damage from the left side to the center just means the center is going to be gone in a hurry anyway. And that is often the case even without ammo explosions. Baring bad/good luck you never have one location stripped of armor before others are heavily damaged (AC/20, Gauss, and Clan PPCs are a bit of an exception to that). You gain at most a couple rounds of really reduced effectiveness by not having an XL engine.
There is also the fact that in non-one-off games most pilots will start to fall back and disengage once their armor is almost gone on the torso and definitely do if they take engine hits or go internal on the torsos.

Also on assault and heavy 'Mechs XL engines are the only way to get reasonable speed out of them. You aren't just saving a bit of weight, you're adding a decent amount of mobility. I know its a bit of a error in the math, but for an 80t 'Mech the weight difference between an XL and regular engine is 10T at 4/6 but its 36T at 5/8. Even at 75T, the difference is 19T, and on the low end of heavies its 9.5T difference, thats upwards of 25% of the free weight of the 'Mech. Given it doesn't make sense for slower 'Mechs, as you save very little weight on a slow for its weight 'Mech.


what era do you most like to play in, and why?

I've only really played a few 3025 era games, and was wondering what people though about the other eras.
It sort of depends. 3025 is great for teaching new players and to keep the game going quickly. Because of that its a better era for larger games too. The early Clan era is pretty good too when you start to get a lot more versatility and power out of 'Mechs but you aren't yet to a lot of the really advanced tech that slows stuff down and makes many other options almost obsolete. I have found in general that all tech advances work pretty well when you leave them to canon designs. When you start getting customized 'Mechs or cherry picking just a few of the most effective canon designs, that the game looses a lot of its fun.
Jump jetting TC clan pulse laser boats come to mind, as well as many of the C3 network setups. There is no doubt that TAG and indirect fire is effective but its not really fun.

[snoopy13a]

It sort of depends. 3025 is great for teaching new players and to keep the game going quickly. Because of that its a better era for larger games too. The early Clan era is pretty good too when you start to get a lot more versatility and power out of 'Mechs but you aren't yet to a lot of the really advanced tech that slows stuff down and makes many other options almost obsolete. I have found in general that all tech advances work pretty well when you leave them to canon designs. When you start getting customized 'Mechs or cherry picking just a few of the most effective canon designs, that the game looses a lot of its fun.
Jump jetting TC clan pulse laser boats come to mind, as well as many of the C3 network setups. There is no doubt that TAG and indirect fire is effective but its not really fun.

Unfortunately with Omnimechs, customizing weapons and equipment, as long as you stay within the pod space requirements is canon. Still, unless you have high command authority, you'd probably not be able to go outside of the usual variants. So, it would be justified to restrict variants in a game under that theory.

Don't like the Mad Cat's weapons? Take them all out and put in what you want :smallsmile:

[mangosta71]

Even freeborns (unless it's their initial Trial of Position) are allowed to customize the weapons loadouts of their Omnis in canon, and they're only allowed to serve in garrison units. I stopped reading before IS Omnis got popular, so I can't speak as to how much authority you'd need to pimp your ride in the Successor States.

[Swordguy]

Even freeborns (unless it's their initial Trial of Position) are allowed to customize the weapons loadouts of their Omnis in canon, and they're only allowed to serve in garrison units. I stopped reading before IS Omnis got popular, so I can't speak as to how much authority you'd need to pimp your ride in the Successor States.

ON THE METAGAME OF ALLOWING CUSTOMS...

As always, it's dependent upon what kind of game is being run.

-In an RPG -ish gamemastered campaign, of course there's going to be the ability to run with customized Omni loadouts. There's a neutral 3rd party there to ensure that everyone is having a good time, and if one person's config is too much, he can have that player dial it back a bit.

-In a "blind" tournament game (such as an event at GenCon, not necessarily a "tournament" where there's a bracket and 1 winner), then players need to not have access to custom loadouts, because it's very often the case that the better player won't win - the guy who is better at designing configs will win - and that's not really the point of the exercise.

Then there are the games that fall in between these two points. The "default" version in the rules is that Omnis are limited to only their canon configurations. The longer one plays, generally, the more one appreciates this. After the 200th time you've seen a Mech with as many Clan Pulse Lasers as possible, max jumping capacity, and a Targeting Computer, it starts to wear thin. At that point, a lot of the enjoyment becomes learning to win with what you have, not by how well one can manipulate the Mech creation rules. Since there really are "best" loadouts and weight distributions for Mechs, the game becomes "cookie cutter" very fast unless the group has a discussion on how they want to handle it.

Unfortunately, that discussion tends to be dominated by the extreme views. Both extreme views - "I should get as many customs as I want", and "No customs, ever" - are bad, because neither makes allowances for anybody else but themselves. Try one customized unit in a lance/star, for example. Actually talking with other players, instead of just screaming that there's only One True Way of BattleTech, is the correct option. Never take it as your "divine right" that you should be able to use customs, but having a custom Mech or two in a moderately-sized force isn't munchkinism either.

I have never understood why otherwise mostly-rational adults have such a problem grasping this (citation: the Classic BattleTech forums).

[mangosta71]

I was talking fluff canon. I would expect tournament rules to be different. (Though it always struck me as odd that the people who live and work with these machines every day for their entire lives can't seem to grasp the concept that some weapons/designs are completely awful.) But even only allowing stock designs and configurations, I'm willing to bet that you see a lot of the top-level players fielding very similar forces. Given two Mechs of equivalent BV/cost/whatever metric is being used to select forces, one is always clearly better.

On another note, I would think that designing configurations is an integral and crucial part of the game. Your configurations determine what types of strategies and tactics are suitable for your force. Just being good at designing configs doesn't mean you're capable of using said configs to win a battle.

[snoopy13a]

ON THE METAGAME OF ALLOWING CUSTOMS...

As always, it's dependent upon what kind of game is being run.

-In an RPG -ish gamemastered campaign, of course there's going to be the ability to run with customized Omni loadouts. There's a neutral 3rd party there to ensure that everyone is having a good time, and if one person's config is too much, he can have that player dial it back a bit.

-In a "blind" tournament game (such as an event at GenCon, not necessarily a "tournament" where there's a bracket and 1 winner), then players need to not have access to custom loadouts, because it's very often the case that the better player won't win - the guy who is better at designing configs will win - and that's not really the point of the exercise.

Then there are the games that fall in between these two points. The "default" version in the rules is that Omnis are limited to only their canon configurations. The longer one plays, generally, the more one appreciates this. After the 200th time you've seen a Mech with as many Clan Pulse Lasers as possible, max jumping capacity, and a Targeting Computer, it starts to wear thin. At that point, a lot of the enjoyment becomes learning to win with what you have, not by how well one can manipulate the Mech creation rules. Since there really are "best" loadouts and weight distributions for Mechs, the game becomes "cookie cutter" very fast unless the group has a discussion on how they want to handle it.

Unfortunately, that discussion tends to be dominated by the extreme views. Both extreme views - "I should get as many customs as I want", and "No customs, ever" - are bad, because neither makes allowances for anybody else but themselves. Try one customized unit in a lance/star, for example. Actually talking with other players, instead of just screaming that there's only One True Way of BattleTech, is the correct option. Never take it as your "divine right" that you should be able to use customs, but having a custom Mech or two in a moderately-sized force isn't munchkinism either.

I have never understood why otherwise mostly-rational adults have such a problem grasping this (citation: the Classic BattleTech forums).

Out of curiousity, how do they usually balance a clan v. IS battle? Star v. Lance is a bit unfair unless the Clan mechs are significantly lighter (and then they could always retreat). A company v. binary might be fair but that is a lot of 'Mechs to handle. Two lances v. a Star?

Also, are Clan players expected to obey their rules of engagement unless the other side breaks it?

[Swordguy]

Out of curiousity, how do they usually balance a clan v. IS battle? Star v. Lance is a bit unfair unless the Clan mechs are significantly lighter (and then they could always retreat). A company v. binary might be fair but that is a lot of 'Mechs to handle. Two lances v. a Star?

Also, are Clan players expected to obey their rules of engagement unless the other side breaks it?


It's complicated. ;)

In 3025-era play (ie, when the IS Mechs have single heat sinks and basic weapons), the "classic" balance point is 1 Star vs 1 Company (with 1 Light, 1 Medium, and 1 Heavy Lance for the IS forces).

In 3060+ -era play (ie, when the IS Mechs all have DHS, tComps, RACs, C3 nets, and so forth), the balance point is about 1 Binary per Company, but can go down even to a 1-to-1 matchup depending on how the IS force is set up and if they're Manei Domini pilots or something.


If Clan players are using their rules of engagement (zellbringen, or just "zell"), it can get really complicated. Different Clans use different interpretations of zell at different historical time periods. A Jade Falcon unit in 3049 will use zell and won't abandon it, period. The same CJF unit in 3052 will use zell until the other guy breaks it, and then crush them in a grand melee. The same unit in 3067 wouldn't even bother offering zell against an IS unit, but they'd use it against another Clan unit until that Clan unit broke zell first. A Wolf Clan unit in 3049 might not use zell whatsoeverunless fighting especially zell-fanatic Clan forces. Neither would use zell against pirates during any time period, unless the Clan commander was trying to make a point or something.

As a general rule, though if the Clan player is using "traditional" zell (that is, 1 unit* on 1 unit duelling with no physical attacks and with aggressive action required by both parties - no hiding tactics), he may not break zell until the other guy has broken it first. He ALSO gets a 1-point bonus (outside of BV scores) to both Piloting and Gunnery of all units that are using zell. This bonus helps make up for the fact that the game will basically come down to a waiting game until the IS player breaks zell to his maximum advantage.

There's a LOT more to zell, but that's the fastest and easiest way to use it. The more involved writeup is here: http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Zellbrigen


*Note that a "unit" is a single Point of force. 2 Vehicles count as a unit. As does a point of Elementals, or a pair of ASFs.

[Erloas]

I was talking fluff canon. I would expect tournament rules to be different. (Though it always struck me as odd that the people who live and work with these machines every day for their entire lives can't seem to grasp the concept that some weapons/designs are completely awful.) From a canon standpoint... well a lot of that has to do with when you are talking about. The production capabilities of many houses was limited during the Succession Wars, mostly because destroying them was a key priority for enemy raids. Also some groups had a lot more capabilities then others and they all had their preferred designs. A Davion soldier wouldn't choose a Kurita design even if it was a better choice.
Also I've read maybe a dozen Battletech books and the manufacturing and distribution comes up a fair amount. It takes weeks or months to move stuff between worlds, and in some cases it was simply much better off with a design that all the parts can be sourced locally rather then having it shipped from far off, especially with relatively high levels of espionage and piracy, the less you move products the less chance your enemies have of finding out about it or stealing it.

And a main reason is the weapons aren't so clearly defined in the universe. A smaller AC doesn't do 5 damage and a medium laser doesn't do 5 damage because those are abstractions. Same with the ranges and to-hit modifiers. And if you get into all the advanced rules and older rules that were removed or changed... they decided that a lot of rules made the game almost unplayable slow so they changed them to optional rules. I know criticals were one of those things. There is also a much higher use of conventional combat, such as tanks and infantry and air support, then is generally seen in BT games. And as a general rule I think most people push their in-game units much harder then would really happen in-universe too, they make the heat seem like a much bigger issue in-universe then it really comes across as in-game, so energy heavy designs wouldn't be as loved by the actual pilots.

There is also the fact that anything other then minor changes to anything other then an omni-mech took a long time. You wouldn't want to have your 'Mech out of commission for 6 months while they switch an AC/10 for a PPC and there were a lot of situations where you didn't know what you would be doing from week to week so you couldn't switch from a good urban fit to a good open field fit to a good woods fit between missions. Even with Omnis that would be time consuming since the techs are already spending so much of their time simply repairing the 'Mechs between battles and you don't have an infinite supply of everything available all the time.


On another note, I would think that designing configurations is an integral and crucial part of the game. Your configurations determine what types of strategies and tactics are suitable for your force. Just being good at designing configs doesn't mean you're capable of using said configs to win a battle.
To some extent... but designing a 'Mech may or may not be any part of the game. But even so, there are known quirks with how various things are calculated that certain 'Mech weights are ideal for certain designs. And you get shenanigans where someone will want to play turrettech and get a great gunner with really poor piloting skill to tweak down the BV knowing how they play they will not have to take many PSRs. And a lot of it will depend on if you know what the scenario is going in or not. If you can build for a scenario it becomes a lot easier then if you are building a force for a random and every changing game and don't know what you'll be doing until you get to the table. And then there is the golden-bb approach where you know statistically that you are throwing out enough minor shots that you will take out the head or armor-bypassing crits to the torso where you are playing the game mechanics and statistics to win rather then actually outplaying your opponent.

[Mando Knight]

It's complicated. ;)

In 3025-era play (ie, when the IS Mechs have single heat sinks and basic weapons), the "classic" balance point is 1 Star vs 1 Company (with 1 Light, 1 Medium, and 1 Heavy Lance for the IS forces).

In 3060+ -era play (ie, when the IS Mechs all have DHS, tComps, RACs, C3 nets, and so forth), the balance point is about 1 Binary per Company, but can go down even to a 1-to-1 matchup depending on how the IS force is set up and if they're Manei Domini pilots or something.

I'd also use BV as a guideline, since mass matchup would be terrible against the Clans in general, especially before the IS catches up with their tech recovery and reverse-engineering (and any help from the Warden clans, etc.). BV has its flaws, to be sure, but it keeps you from thinking a scout Binary is a match for an elite Company.

[mangosta71]

From a canon standpoint... well a lot of that has to do with when you are talking about. The production capabilities of many houses was limited during the Succession Wars, mostly because destroying them was a key priority for enemy raids. Also some groups had a lot more capabilities then others and they all had their preferred designs. A Davion soldier wouldn't choose a Kurita design even if it was a better choice.
Also I've read maybe a dozen Battletech books and the manufacturing and distribution comes up a fair amount. It takes weeks or months to move stuff between worlds, and in some cases it was simply much better off with a design that all the parts can be sourced locally rather then having it shipped from far off, especially with relatively high levels of espionage and piracy, the less you move products the less chance your enemies have of finding out about it or stealing it.
It's not like they're trying to replicate lostech weapons. These are the things that, even after a couple centuries of war, they still know how to make. It's never explained to my satisfaction why they can't simply build more factories. The BT universe is as bad as Star Wars in that regard - a whole bunch of small planets, each with a single climate zone and one population center, no apparent attempts to have any sort of industrial development.

And a main reason is the weapons aren't so clearly defined in the universe. A smaller AC doesn't do 5 damage and a medium laser doesn't do 5 damage because those are abstractions. Same with the ranges and to-hit modifiers. And if you get into all the advanced rules and older rules that were removed or changed... they decided that a lot of rules made the game almost unplayable slow so they changed them to optional rules. I know criticals were one of those things. There is also a much higher use of conventional combat, such as tanks and infantry and air support, then is generally seen in BT games. And as a general rule I think most people push their in-game units much harder then would really happen in-universe too, they make the heat seem like a much bigger issue in-universe then it really comes across as in-game, so energy heavy designs wouldn't be as loved by the actual pilots.
Even without the abstraction of clearly quantified damage in the rules, pilots in universe would recognize that it takes a significantly longer time to wear down a target with a machine gun than it does to obliterate the same target with a PPC. By the fluff, a machine gun is supposed to be really good at anti-infantry, but by the rules you'll wipe out that platoon a lot quicker by, again, using a PPC.

Of course, consider how much effort companies in our world put into showing how much better their products are than their competitors'. Can you imagine that there wouldn't be clearly quantified data tables showing exactly how much armor each classification of weapon destroys per shot?

There is also the fact that anything other then minor changes to anything other then an omni-mech took a long time. You wouldn't want to have your 'Mech out of commission for 6 months while they switch an AC/10 for a PPC and there were a lot of situations where you didn't know what you would be doing from week to week so you couldn't switch from a good urban fit to a good open field fit to a good woods fit between missions. Even with Omnis that would be time consuming since the techs are already spending so much of their time simply repairing the 'Mechs between battles and you don't have an infinite supply of everything available all the time.
Yes, but if they built some factories (as I mentioned above) focusing on the weapons that are known to be more effective (judging by those theoretical tables that don't exist but should), there would be much larger supplies of said effective weapons. More designs would incorporate those effective weapons to begin with. I imagine that fewer pilots would feel the need to customize their 'Mechs.

To some extent... but designing a 'Mech may or may not be any part of the game. But even so, there are known quirks with how various things are calculated that certain 'Mech weights are ideal for certain designs. And you get shenanigans where someone will want to play turrettech and get a great gunner with really poor piloting skill to tweak down the BV knowing how they play they will not have to take many PSRs. And a lot of it will depend on if you know what the scenario is going in or not. If you can build for a scenario it becomes a lot easier then if you are building a force for a random and every changing game and don't know what you'll be doing until you get to the table. And then there is the golden-bb approach where you know statistically that you are throwing out enough minor shots that you will take out the head or armor-bypassing crits to the torso where you are playing the game mechanics and statistics to win rather then actually outplaying your opponent.
The mechanics and statistics are part of the game. I could argue that stacking them in your favor is a valid method of outplaying an opponent. Besides, there's nothing stopping him from doing the same to you. Yes, it would quickly become boring if everyone always did the same thing and games all boiled down to whichever player got luckier with the dice. And yes, it's kind of a cheap trick, but it's not cheating.

[Mando Knight]

Even without the abstraction of clearly quantified damage in the rules, pilots in universe would recognize that it takes a significantly longer time to wear down a target with a machine gun than it does to obliterate the same target with a PPC. By the fluff, a machine gun is supposed to be really good at anti-infantry, but by the rules you'll wipe out that platoon a lot quicker by, again, using a PPC.
Not really a fair comparison. A Flamer vs a machine gun would be a better example, since they're much closer to each other on the relevant scales and purposes. The machine gun is pretty much an in-game representation of machine guns like on the Abrams tank, while the PPC is closer in power to its main cannon.

[Reverent-One]

Hmm, this debate seems somehow familar...

Still, I do have one point to make.



Even without the abstraction of clearly quantified damage in the rules, pilots in universe would recognize that it takes a significantly longer time to wear down a target with a machine gun than it does to obliterate the same target with a PPC. By the fluff, a machine gun is supposed to be really good at anti-infantry, but by the rules you'll wipe out that platoon a lot quicker by, again, using a PPC.

You realize that you're undermining your own point by mentioning this, right? Once we allow the possibility that the game mechanics can be outright wrong when it comes to representing the world, any conclusions we can draw from X weapon being better than Y weapon in the game become unreliable. At that point, we could theorize that they do know the effectiveness of the various weapons in universe and are designing based off of that knowledge, and those designs only become ineffective when translated imperfectly over to an abstracted game board in our world.

[Erloas]

It's not like they're trying to replicate lostech weapons. These are the things that, even after a couple centuries of war, they still know how to make. It's never explained to my satisfaction why they can't simply build more factories. The BT universe is as bad as Star Wars in that regard - a whole bunch of small planets, each with a single climate zone and one population center, no apparent attempts to have any sort of industrial development.There is a lot that goes into manufacturing weapons. One issue could simply be the cost of getting the right materials to the right places. It doesn't make sense to build a 150k C-bill gun on a planet where the shipping costs to get the right materials there is going to cost 100k, not counter the material itself or the time to transform it. Which is what you would get with a lot of the less populated planets with fewer transports running to them.
There are also a *lot* of planets with very little on them. There are a lot of mostly empty planets, where there is only a few population centers because there aren't enough people to justify spreading out over the whole planet. One of the books I read was based on a planet that a lot of people moved to "to get away from it all" and most where substance farmer types and they wanted the planet to stay that way. The group that settled the planet even put restrictions into place to keep it from being industrialized.

Even on planets where that isn't the case, not all planets would have the same resources available. Planets without long histories of vegetation wouldn't have things like coal and oil, which is still a cheaper and easier energy source then nuclear and fusion power in the setting.
Then look at the sub-industries required to support a final product industry. Lets take real world chip manufacturing, you need mining to get the silicon, you need refineries to process it and another company to build ingots out of it. Then you need clean rooms to manufacture it, which is a dozen different industries just in building that clean room. Then you need companies making lithography equipment, companies making 2-3 dozen different chemicals used in processing the silicone to chips. You're looking at maybe 50-100 companies (or at least plants) to allow one company to make a final high-tech product. That is a lot of infrastructure to build on 1000 different planets, assuming the planet even has all of the resources required to make it all. If you have to import even a small percentage of the raw materials or sub components that can have a huge impact in the production cost. You wouldn't even think about building a manufacturing center on a planet unless it can be profitable and there is too many steps for that to happen on all but a few highly industrialized planets.

Its also why, when they are building stuff in secret, is at extreme cost and time and/or hidden on very busy planets so the shipping of goods doesn't stand out much.

As for favorite weapons... everyone is going to have their own personal favorite. You could probably boil down each car being manufactured right now and come up with a statistically "best" one but that doesn't mean everyone would agree on that. We've got 20 different cars competing in 6 only slightly different categories and they all sell because in the real world any given number you could assign to them isn't the primary factor for everyone.
In some cases someone might prefer an AC to a ML simply because the AC "feels better" to them.

Also why does the real world militaries around the world use the same rifles since they all have effectively the same capabilities to build them?

The mechanics and statistics are part of the game. I could argue that stacking them in your favor is a valid method of outplaying an opponent. Besides, there's nothing stopping him from doing the same to you. Yes, it would quickly become boring if everyone always did the same thing and games all boiled down to whichever player got luckier with the dice. And yes, it's kind of a cheap trick, but it's not cheating.
It is, but in some cases you are almost playing a different game. Do you want to play Battletech or do you want to play META Battletech? Just like a game of Magic is a game of Magic, but a pauper game, a legacy game, a modern game, and a draft; are all different and play a lot different and all have their advantages and disadvantages. For me when the method of beating an opponent is META gaming them and building specifically to counter what they have then most of the fun of the game is lost. Its fine once in a while but its not a method for keeping the game interesting and its a horrible way to try and get new people interested in the game.

[Shishnarfne]

Even without the abstraction of clearly quantified damage in the rules, pilots in universe would recognize that it takes a significantly longer time to wear down a target with a machine gun than it does to obliterate the same target with a PPC. By the fluff, a machine gun is supposed to be really good at anti-infantry, but by the rules you'll wipe out that platoon a lot quicker by, again, using a PPC.


Well, sometimes, when the rules don't represent what they're supposed to, the rules change. Basically, when TW came out with the revised rules, damage to infantry was drastically changed. Now that PPC blast takes out one or two troopers, while the MG shreds infantry by the squad.


This doesn't change that House Davion seems to have an unhealthy obsession with a subpar weapon.

Again, I think that there's a statement in the TW rulebook to the effect that the rules are meant to provide a consistent basis for a fun experience, so if the rules ever end up making it "not fun" for your group, your group should change them (at least, for your group).

I think that it helps to see the rules as an abstraction of the fictionalized universe to make for good gameplay.

I'll also just quickly point out that building specifically to counter the tendencies of a historically hostile faction tends to have some precedent in warfare. (Of course 3055 and later era Lyran and Kuritan 'mechs are more likely to have certain elements designed to take on the Clans more effectively, while older variants were most oriented towards each other's weaknesses... In universe, factions try to deal with what they see has threats.) So, don't consider it meta-gaming... consider it the result of useful intelligence gathering about your adversary's tendencies! :smallwink:

[Erloas]

I missed part of this...

Even without the abstraction of clearly quantified damage in the rules, pilots in universe would recognize that it takes a significantly longer time to wear down a target with a machine gun than it does to obliterate the same target with a PPC. By the fluff, a machine gun is supposed to be really good at anti-infantry, but by the rules you'll wipe out that platoon a lot quicker by, again, using a PPC.
Keep this IS for sake of simplicity. Well yes, there is obviously some difference between weapons and they are known well through the universe. As you've said, a PPC and a Machine gun wouldn't really be comparable at all, but an AC/10 and a PPC would be. Similar damage, similar range, the AC having the advantage of 1/5 the heat generation and no minimum range and the PPC having the advantage of no ammo and takes up less space and weight on a 'Mech. It is actually a very reasonable trade-off. Of course in the later era's the energy weapons get a huge boost while ballistic weapons are just minor boosts, but even then the UAC/10 hasn't gained much in range but it could do twice as much damage.

As for the machine gun... a PPC will kill exactly 1 troop, a machine gun will kill 2d6 troops. It is very good at Anti-infantry, with only the flamer being better and the micro/small pulse lasers and AP gauss being the same. Of course even a UAC/2 will kill 2 or 4 infantry (not sure how the rounding is done atm) a shot, so a lot more then a PPC.

edit: and I missed the other point I was meaning. In that even the same weapon isn't likely to do exactly the same damage every hit. The same AC/10 might actually do 8.6 damage the first shot and 11.3 the next and 12.2 after that. But obviously the best they can do is average it out. Maybe the AC/10 does closer to 11 or 12, but they put it at 10 because they like even numbers (there is exactly 1 weapon that does more then 10 damage that does anything but a multiple of 5, being the clan HLL). Even 5-10 there are only a couple between those two even values. Those even numbers make it nice and handy in terms of remembering and marking it off, so its probably a gameplay consideration more then anything.

And in the novels there always seems to be more knock-back and adjustment needed after taking rounds from an AC over a laser, but probably not enough to cause a PSR because it isn't likely to knock the 'Mech over, just make the next shot be off a little bit. But the game is complex enough without adding in modifiers for to-hit roles based on certain hits the turn before and it also tended to vary based on the size of the 'Mech and gun in question. There are additional in-universe things like that which are simply too complex or cumbersome to add to a game which might make any given weapon better or worse.

[Gnoman]

Eh, its not all that bad. For one, any ammo explosion is likely to effectively kill a 'Mech regardless. Even with CASE and a normal engine you will most likely have lost half your firepower and chances are high that at that point you've already taken a fair amount of damage to other locations as well and stacking all the damage from the left side to the center just means the center is going to be gone in a hurry anyway. And that is often the case even without ammo explosions. Baring bad/good luck you never have one location stripped of armor before others are heavily damaged (AC/20, Gauss, and Clan PPCs are a bit of an exception to that). You gain at most a couple rounds of really reduced effectiveness by not having an XL engine.
There is also the fact that in non-one-off games most pilots will start to fall back and disengage once their armor is almost gone on the torso and definitely do if they take engine hits or go internal on the torsos.


If you have an XL engine, than a single SRM back-stab (which is far from rare, especially if you have a Pegasus or Jenner on the other side) can destroy a mech of almost any size. With a normal engine, if a side torso is destroyed, you lose a small portion of your firepower, and that's all. In an XL, you lose the mech. For that matter, even assaults can't take many PPC shots before armor is penetrated, and crits, including TACs, are extra deadly.

[snoopy13a]

If you have an XL engine, than a single SRM back-stab (which is far from rare, especially if you have a Pegasus or Jenner on the other side) can destroy a mech of almost any size. With a normal engine, if a side torso is destroyed, you lose a small portion of your firepower, and that's all. In an XL, you lose the mech. For that matter, even assaults can't take many PPC shots before armor is penetrated, and crits, including TACs, are extra deadly.

A torso twist--which every mech is allowed to do after movement--might be able to get a mech out of the rear firing arc.

[Erloas]

If you have an XL engine, than a single SRM back-stab (which is far from rare, especially if you have a Pegasus or Jenner on the other side) can destroy a mech of almost any size. With a normal engine, if a side torso is destroyed, you lose a small portion of your firepower, and that's all. In an XL, you lose the mech. For that matter, even assaults can't take many PPC shots before armor is penetrated, and crits, including TACs, are extra deadly.

An SRM isn't likely to go internal on even a light 'Mech in the back. Everything (that I saw with a quick check) has at least 2 rear armor, meaning you have to hit at least 2 missiles in the same location and roll a crit, have that crit be a large one, and hit the engine every time. Sure, it can happen, but it isn't likely. Your probably more likely to head-shot a 'Mech or center torso armor-by-pass crit then you are to do all of that. And of course for anything heavy or assault they can pretty much take 10 before going internal on the rear. But again, taking a fair amount of damage to the rear of the 'Mech is likely to end badly very quickly even without the XL engine.

Sure, you are more vulnerable, but its often a good trade-off. You will probably make use of that extra 1-2 movement (3-4 for medium/lights) almost every turn of every game and that extra 20-40% of weight you have to work with will probably come in handy just about every turn and definitely every game. But the chance of loosing the 'Mech completely to an lucky shot way earlier then would likely happen otherwise might only happen once in 10 games.

[Gnoman]

A torso twist--which every mech is allowed to do after movement--might be able to get a mech out of the rear firing arc.

Torso twists don't change the hit table.



@Erloas

Consider, as an example, the Pegasus Scout Hover Tank. It mounts two SRM-6 launchers. That's 1-12 2-point hits.

Units of similar BV tend to have 4-6-4 rear armor. Hits have a tendency to hit torso locations anyway, and damage transfer means that if one arm is destroyed, those hits go to the matching side torso.

The odds of *not* getting at least one side torso holed (assuming a decent TN) is pretty low. While the CT is not only more heavily armored, but usually has a full set of crit slots, most units at lower BVs have fairly little equipment in the side torsos in the first place. Even one such crit will be devestating to a unit without DHS.

[Mando Knight]

The odds of *not* getting at least one side torso holed (assuming a decent TN) is pretty low. While the CT is not only more heavily armored, but usually has a full set of crit slots, most units at lower BVs have fairly little equipment in the side torsos in the first place. Even one such crit will be devestating to a unit without DHS.
If it's a low BV unit without stuff in the side torsos, it'll likely have it in the arms instead, and it probably won't have enough internal structure to weather much in the side torsos, so ripping out one of those means a 50% loss in combat effectiveness anyway. Even with only single heat sinks, I'd rather take a single engine hit than lose half my armament...

[Erloas]

Consider, as an example, the Pegasus Scout Hover Tank. It mounts two SRM-6 launchers. That's 1-12 2-point hits.

Units of similar BV tend to have 4-6-4 rear armor. Hits have a tendency to hit torso locations anyway, and damage transfer means that if one arm is destroyed, those hits go to the matching side torso.

The odds of *not* getting at least one side torso holed (assuming a decent TN) is pretty low. While the CT is not only more heavily armored, but usually has a full set of crit slots, most units at lower BVs have fairly little equipment in the side torsos in the first place. Even one such crit will be devestating to a unit without DHS.
Pegasus Scout Hover tank has a movement of 8/12... which is about as fast as any light 'Mech with a XL engine, so its going to have a hard time getting into the rear of the 'Mech in the first place. You're only likely to get into the rear of a 'Mech that is much slower and incidentally much more heavily armored. And ignoring for a minute the fact that you'll probably be looking at a +4/5 just in movement modifiers for both combatants and probably won't even hit with both... that is 8 missile hits on average. We'll also make the assumption that they haven't lost an arm or leg yet, because if they have the 'Mech is probably close to dead anyway and you're just putting off the inevitable for maybe 1 more turn and even then it doesn't increase the odds that much but it increases the math work a lot. And chances are if they have lost an arm the rest of the front armor is probably already bruised up and there might very well be more armor left on the rear then the front.

At a 13.9% chance of hitting a side torso, that is a 15.4% chance of hitting the same side torso location twice with 8 shots, which is 30.8% chance between the two sides. Which if they only have 2/3 rear side armor, if they have 4/5 then its a 4.3% chance. Then factor in the <3% chance of getting 3 critical hits, even 2 critical hits is only a 16.7% chance, the chance of hitting the engine after that comes down to how much they have in that torso location. So with a very light 2 or 3 rear armor and 2+ crits between both locations you are looking at a 5% chance. If they have a 4/5 rear armor that chance is 0.4%.

And that is ignoring the fact that even a good gunner (2/3) in short range (1-3) is only likely to hit with both SRMs 40% of the time. And just a single engine hit... well if they have an XL engine then having double heatsinks is almost a given and these light of 'Mechs are very unlikely to be close to their heat limits. And on top of that, most of these 'Mechs also have rear center torso armor that is pretty much the same and is almost as likely to go internal on the same number of hits... and in these cases a gyro hit is more of a death sentence then an engine hit.

[Maugan Ra]

Just figured I'd poke a head in here to ask if anyone knows an easy way to track down possible other battle tech gamers etc in a particular area. A convenient register of groups would be ideal. I ask mostly because I relatively recently finished up a battletech RPG campaign with my local gaming group, which ended up as a hybrid of the full mech scale game and a traditional RPG, and I found myself really enjoying the mech battles.

On a related note, if you're not expecting them... Clans? Terrifying people. Our campaign ran us as a merc company right up into the start of the Clan invasion, and by GM-sneakiness we were right on the very edge of the Combine when the invasion started. Investigating a mysteriously silent listening post, when suddenly, Clan Elementals from nowhere. Most of the group was fairly new to the setting as well, so we had no idea what the hell this thing was.

We eventually counted it as a victory when we all got out alive. By running away. With our whole team, from the solitary elemental. Who hadn't even been trying that hard to kill us. And that required creative use of a truck, a fire suppression system, a few well placed taunts and a vibrokatana. Possibly more high explosives than was generally safe... We never did get the full story out of the CO.

[Rockphed]

Just figured I'd poke a head in here to ask if anyone knows an easy way to track down possible other battle tech gamers etc in a particular area. A convenient register of groups would be ideal. I ask mostly because I relatively recently finished up a battletech RPG campaign with my local gaming group, which ended up as a hybrid of the full mech scale game and a traditional RPG, and I found myself really enjoying the mech battles.

On a related note, if you're not expecting them... Clans? Terrifying people. Our campaign ran us as a merc company right up into the start of the Clan invasion, and by GM-sneakiness we were right on the very edge of the Combine when the invasion started. Investigating a mysteriously silent listening post, when suddenly, Clan Elementals from nowhere. Most of the group was fairly new to the setting as well, so we had no idea what the hell this thing was.

We eventually counted it as a victory when we all got out alive. By running away. With our whole team, from the solitary elemental. Who hadn't even been trying that hard to kill us. And that required creative use of a truck, a fire suppression system, a few well placed taunts and a vibrokatana. Possibly more high explosives than was generally safe... We never did get the full story out of the CO.

Were you running from the elemental with or without mechs? Either way this is an epic tale.

[Alex Knight]

To be honest, I see more critical hits occurring from front/side shots than I do rear shots anyway. Granted, this is due to the majority of damage being done to the front/sides, but being attacked from the rear is rarely an automatic death sentence.

[Maugan Ra]

Were you running from the elemental with or without mechs? Either way this is an epic tale.

Oh, without. We had full body armour, proper enviro-sealed stuff with heads up displays and everything. We were armed with fancy assault rifles and grenade launchers, with everyone carrying demolition packs just in case. And in my character's case, I even had the aforementioned Vibrokatana and Wakizashi. And we just could not touch this thing.

In the end, my character stayed behind to hold off said Elemental by engaging it in a sword fight (our first taste of Clan honor was that it willingly engaged me, rather than just blasting me to death) while everyone else ran for the trucks. They then rammed said truck into the Elemental, which I had managed to lure outside, crushing it between the truck and the concrete wall, before reversing and fleeing. I tried jumping dramatically aboard as it went, and took a support laser hit to the back and fell over stunned and rather badly hurt.

So the CO decided to set a trap, jumping off the truck and getting said Elemental to leave me alone by insulting it's mother and honor, before running back inside the outpost. The elemental, rather angry, followed. I'm not sure what happened inside, but the commander managed to seal down the outpost with it inside, coming back and patching up my wounds. Then we had to hide in a pond when the other four Elementals showed up and let their comrade out, before taking off in pursuit of the truck.

So yeah. Our first encounter with them was appropriately scary. As was every fight afterwards as well, come to think of it, even once we started getting battle armour of our own and stealing their tech. My character ended up in hospital so many times, it became a running joke. I think by the end of the war, he had three and a half cybernetic limbs, half a dozen replacement organs and somewhere in the region of fifty bullet scars. Oh, and one pulse laser scar - mech scale.

[Provengreil]

To be honest, I see more critical hits occurring from front/side shots than I do rear shots anyway. Granted, this is due to the majority of damage being done to the front/sides, but being attacked from the rear is rarely an automatic death sentence.

I have one word for you, sir: Saladins.

[mangosta71]

Weapons doing differing amounts of damage to infantry units is a change in the rules that occurred after I stopped playing and keeping up, so I wasn't aware of that. The original rules left a machine gun killing 2 troops, while a PPC (IS) mowed down 10 (which was the point I was making with my comparison). It's cool that they gave machine guns and flamers some sort of in-game viability.

A change I'd like to see made to the BT core rules has to do with range modifiers. It doesn't make sense that it's harder for the targeting computer to lock on to an object at 150 meters with a medium laser than it is with a large laser. I like the way they're handled in BattleSpace. Instead of having different range increments on every weapon, all weapons share the same modifiers for any given range.

[Mando Knight]

A change I'd like to see made to the BT core rules has to do with range modifiers. It doesn't make sense that it's harder for the targeting computer to lock on to an object at 150 meters with a medium laser than it is with a large laser. I like the way they're handled in BattleSpace. Instead of having different range increments on every weapon, all weapons share the same modifiers for any given range.

It's that the laser power dissipates much more quickly with a medium or small laser, so it takes more pinpoint accuracy to ensure actual damage is dealt.

That, and I get the feeling that Battletech computers are a bit Retro-Futuristic...

[The Glyphstone]

Isn't it a mortal insult to a Clansman to even imply he has a mother, without even needing to comment about her?

[Erloas]

Weapons doing differing amounts of damage to infantry units is a change in the rules that occurred after I stopped playing and keeping up, so I wasn't aware of that. The original rules left a machine gun killing 2 troops, while a PPC (IS) mowed down 10 (which was the point I was making with my comparison). It's cool that they gave machine guns and flamers some sort of in-game viability.Well that is understandable. But it does bring up the issue of how much can you really discus the balance of the game and weapons if you aren't using the newest rules. The "new" rules are 6+ years old at this point.
I don't think they changed the construction rules or weapon stats much, but I know the BV system was heavily overhauled.

As an aside, I hadn't checked on SSW in quite a while and I see it has been updated a lot. They now have the ability to build vehicles, which is really nice because I had no good way of generating the sheets for them so I never used them. Even with the TROs they don't have copyable sheets, not that I have a lot of access to copiers anyway.

It's that the laser power dissipates much more quickly with a medium or small laser, so it takes more pinpoint accuracy to ensure actual damage is dealt.

That, and I get the feeling that Battletech computers are a bit Retro-Futuristic...
Yeah, reading the books made their computer tech seem very... disjuncted. They had some things that seems very advanced, displays especially, but other things seems rather lacking.

As for range... yeah, everyone admits that AC ranges are exactly opposite of what they should be, but they said that they pretty much had to keep it the way it was for balance reasons. They also talk a fair amount about how the ranges of the weapons compared to what they really would be don't make any sense either but no one would want to play a game where you're playing with 15 maps either.

In terms of projectile weapons though, accuracy at range would have a lot to do with rifling which is directly related to the length of the barrel compared to the diameter of the shell. So it would be more difficult to have an accurate large gun without having a potentially prohibitively long barrel. Not sure about lasers... without weaponised lasers to go off of now its hard to say how they would really work.

Isn't it a mortal insult to a Clansman to even imply he has a mother, without even needing to comment about her?
Yes, especially for Elementals. They tend to be even worse about that sort of thing because they are much more physically involved in what they do. I'm actually not sure if it is even possible to have free-birthed elementals since they are so heavily genetically engineered. I guess maybe if you got a couple elementals to breed... but that seems like a hard prospect. But disparaging their lineage would work just as well.

[Provengreil]

Well that is understandable. But it does bring up the issue of how much can you really discus the balance of the game and weapons if you aren't using the newest rules. The "new" rules are 6+ years old at this point.
I don't think they changed the construction rules or weapon stats much, but I know the BV system was heavily overhauled.

As an aside, I hadn't checked on SSW in quite a while and I see it has been updated a lot. They now have the ability to build vehicles, which is really nice because I had no good way of generating the sheets for them so I never used them. Even with the TROs they don't have copyable sheets, not that I have a lot of access to copiers anyway.

Yeah, reading the books made their computer tech seem very... disjuncted. They had some things that seems very advanced, displays especially, but other things seems rather lacking.

As for range... yeah, everyone admits that AC ranges are exactly opposite of what they should be, but they said that they pretty much had to keep it the way it was for balance reasons. They also talk a fair amount about how the ranges of the weapons compared to what they really would be don't make any sense either but no one would want to play a game where you're playing with 15 maps either.

In terms of projectile weapons though, accuracy at range would have a lot to do with rifling which is directly related to the length of the barrel compared to the diameter of the shell. So it would be more difficult to have an accurate large gun without having a potentially prohibitively long barrel. Not sure about lasers... without weaponised lasers to go off of now its hard to say how they would really work.


The computers are easily explained by the time period of the inception of battletech and what computers were like then. Plenty futuristic for the time, but they would now lose to one of our cell phones. If you watch Jurassic Park again, you notice that the tension of one of the scenes is built almost entirely out of the worst designed file system ever, but it went right by most people's eyes at the time.

The barrel length/width for any given weapon changes a LOT in battletech depending on who the artist was. Compare the ER Large lasers on a Ninja - To (http://www.solaris7.com/TRO/HTMLBattleMech/BattlemechInfo.asp?ID=3707) to that of a Lao Hu (http://goodsects.gotdns.com/bte/details.aspx?ID=3908), and those are pictures from the same book.

Also, lasers have been conceptualized as weapons, it just has yet to pan out owing to power and size restrictions: It takes huge amounts of power and the entire cargo area of a 747 to mount the best ones they've got, and the firepower is still short ranged and weak, all while costing a few billion dollars (this would be after the research cost it took to get them there). As such, they never made it out of the labs on account of simply being too inferior to existing tech. here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

[snoopy13a]

The rule that machine guns do extra damage to infantry is old. It was in the Battletech Compendium, which was published in the early 90s.

That also explains the oddness of the tech. Most of the fluff was written over 15 years ago.

[mangosta71]

Huh. I have that book, but never noticed that rule before. Still, it states that "infantry units take damage equal to the Damage Value of the weapon" for anything but a machine gun. 2d6 averages as 7 damage. A PPC is still 10, which means it kills them faster, and from a much longer range. The Compendium also makes no note of flamers doing anything special to infantry.

[Philistine]

Also, lasers have been conceptualized as weapons, it just has yet to pan out owing to power and size restrictions: It takes huge amounts of power and the entire cargo area of a 747 to mount the best ones they've got, and the firepower is still short ranged and weak, all while costing a few billion dollars (this would be after the research cost it took to get them there). As such, they never made it out of the labs on account of simply being too inferior to existing tech. here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1

Did you read the article you linked to? Three hundred kilometers (against solid-fueled missiles, the toughest targets; six hundred km against liquid-fueled missiles) is only "short ranged" by the standards of strategic systems that are expected to engage targets deep inside a hostile nation's territory. ABL is also relatively old tech, for the field. Directed-energy weapons aren't ready for prime time yet, but there's every reason to expect that they will be. See THEL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser) and its successors.

[Maugan Ra]

Isn't it a mortal insult to a Clansman to even imply he has a mother, without even needing to comment about her?

Yup. As we found out later. Hence why the Elemental stopped murdering me and went for the CO, all weapons blazing.

[Erloas]

Huh. I have that book, but never noticed that rule before. Still, it states that "infantry units take damage equal to the Damage Value of the weapon" for anything but a machine gun. 2d6 averages as 7 damage. A PPC is still 10, which means it kills them faster, and from a much longer range. The Compendium also makes no note of flamers doing anything special to infantry.
From the TW quick reference guide posted on the web site (as my book is at the game shop, but its openly available rules so ok to post here)
{table]Weapon Type*| Number of Conventional Troopers Hit†
Direct Fire (Ballistic or Energy)| Damage Value / 10
Cluster (Ballistic) |Damage Value / 10 + 1
Pulse** |Damage Value / 10 + 2
Cluster (Missile)| Damage Value / 5
Area-Effect (AE) |Damage Value / .5
Burst-Fire |See Burst-Fire Weapons above
Heat-Effect Weapons |See Heat-Effect Weapons‡[/table]

I forget on the rounding, if it is rounded up or down or 0.5 rounding. So a IS PPC is 1, a Clan PPC is 1 or 2 depending on rounding. Original ACs are not cluster weapons, all the newer variations are, but I'm not sure if something like a RAC or UAC would roll on the hit-table and each round would do damage/10+1 or if you would total the damage and then figure it out, I'm sure the book would say more.
I also forget how Battle Armor compares to conventional infantry in terms of damage.
As for Anti-infantry specific weapons we have
{table]Weapon Damage |vs. Conventional Infantry
AP Gauss Rifle |2D6
Light Machine Gun |1D6
Machine Gun |2D6
Heavy Machine Gun| 3D6
Small/Micro Pulse Laser| 2D6
Flamer| 4D6[/table]
So the flamer is the best option by far, the machine gun can do a lot too though.

I really should start using more infantry... but first I need to get some consistent players so I can start expanding on the basic rules without bogging down the game too much. Its been too long since I've got to play much. Infantry can do pretty good damage when you get a lot of them (20 can do around 10 damage, 30 does in the 13-17 range) and they are fairly hard to kill with the normal 'Mech centric builds a lot of people take. Give them some building to hide in and they will last a long time if someone doesn't have specific ant-infantry weapons.
I'm pretty sure infantry had the most changes with TW and I think vehicles and aerospace where changed a fair amount too. But I didn't play much, if any, with the old rules.

[Alex Knight]

I have one word for you, sir: Saladins.

I have a response for you, sir. You get one roll.

I didn't say armor penetration, I said critical hits.

Every internal hit scores a critical on an 8+. For those of you doing the math, that's roughly a 42% chance to score a critical.

That's why you see more criticals from the fronts and sides. With more damage being dealt from them, there are more shots that damage the internal structure, and thus more chances to score a critical. Rear attacks are lovely, but they're not the "game over" occurrence that Gnoman seems to believe they are. Especially since each individual shot only has a 56% of hitting a rear torso, instead of the arms or legs.

[tyckspoon]

I also forget how Battle Armor compares to conventional infantry in terms of damage.


Like Mechs, basically, with ablative armor and one point of 'internal structure' representing the pilot. You fire at the squad and roll hit location to see which soldier you hit.

[RandomLunatic]

I have a response for you, sir. You get one roll.

I didn't say armor penetration, I said critical hits.

Every internal hit scores a critical on an 8+. For those of you doing the math, that's roughly a 42% chance to score a critical.

That's why you see more criticals from the fronts and sides. With more damage being dealt from them, there are more shots that damage the internal structure, and thus more chances to score a critical. Rear attacks are lovely, but they're not the "game over" occurrence that Gnoman seems to believe they are. Especially since each individual shot only has a 56% of hitting a rear torso, instead of the arms or legs.

I think his point is that taking an AC/20 to a side rear torso will core out all but the heaviest of 'Mechs, leaving about a 30% chance of killing an IS XL engined 'Mech in one hit, rather than a much smaller chance of landing multiple shots on the same location and then scoring three critical hits.

The counter, of course, is that it is not called the "suicide sled" for nothing.

[Provengreil]

I think his point is that taking an AC/20 to a side rear torso will core out all but the heaviest of 'Mechs, leaving about a 30% chance of killing an IS XL engined 'Mech in one hit, rather than a much smaller chance of landing multiple shots on the same location and then scoring three critical hits.

The counter, of course, is that it is not called the "suicide sled" for nothing.

That's exactly what I was saying. I don't care about some 42% chance to knock out one crit slot when I can take a 30% chance to take them all and the arm they hold up.

[Alex Knight]

That's fine, but that's an entirely point than what the first poster was talking about. He was talking about death by Pegasus.

I was addressing critical hits, not loss of internal structure.

[Erloas]

That's exactly what I was saying. I don't care about some 42% chance to knock out one crit slot when I can take a 30% chance to take them all and the arm they hold up.

Yes, but the question isn't "can your 'Mech be destroyed" but how much of a difference does it make to have an XL over a normal engine. Taking AC/20 shots is going to hurt any 'Mech no matter what. But I don't think there are any AC/20 toting 'Mechs that have a reasonable chance at getting shots into your rear in the first place. And if you have an high firepower 'Mech in your rear there is a good chance you're going down quickly even without an XL engine.
And a small fast 'Mech that can get into your rear arc how likely are they to strip the armor and cause the critical hits into your side torso to destroy your engine? For one, most rear side torso armor is within 1-2 points of the center, so anything that has a good chance of going through a side torso also has a chance of going through in the center torso, and you've got a higher likelyhood of hitting the center torso multiple times then either side.

And in general combat you are likely to have a 'Mech really damaged before you're going into structure on any given location. So there is a good chance if your side torso is in structure your center torso is probably no more then 1-2 hits behind it. So you get your 'Mech side taken out 1-2 turns earlier with an XL engine... without that XL engine your 'Mech will be up those 1-2 turns but you're going to be at half firepower or less at that point anyway. So is that 1-2 turns at half firepower worth giving up 1-2 movement (which will likely increase your survivability as well as making you more dangerous) and/or an increase of upwards of 20% firepower with the extra weight you've got for the XL engine?

And yes, there are going to be those occasions where one lucky shot hits and takes out a 'Mech that would have survived a lot longer, but thats going to happen no matter what type of engine you have and an XL engine isn't going to change that much.

[Provengreil]

OK. Here is the full post from before:
---------------------------------------------

To be honest, I see more critical hits occurring from front/side shots than I do rear shots anyway. Granted, this is due to the majority of damage being done to the front/sides, but being attacked from the rear is rarely an automatic death sentence.

I have one word for you, sir: Saladins.
---------------------------------------------

Note that I was responding to rear shots being death sentences: a saladin is fast enough to get behind a mech with a little luck, and one AC/20 hit to a torso rear will take out that torso in quite a number of mechs. I was making no statements about XL engines, and the only statements I made about critical hits was that, given a choice between the two, I'd rather take all of the slots out at once and the arm next to them rather than some of them, and leave them operational.

On the subject of XL engines, I find that that they are disproportionately good on lighter mechs that are often mission kills if they lose a torso anyway, whereas the heaviest mechs can stand up to so many shots that it significantly increases the chance of something getting a through armor crit to the engine and reducing their effectiveness for a much greater total effect, not to mention it comes out to a lot less damage you have to do to kill it. A gauss rifle can take out both the side and center torso of the lightest mechs while only hocking off half the armor of a side torso of the heaviest ones, so the heavies have the most to lose from the extra slots. so yes, they make a huge difference.

[Rockphed]

On the subject of XL engines, I find that that they are disproportionately good on lighter mechs that are often mission kills if they lose a torso anyway, whereas the heaviest mechs can stand up to so many shots that it significantly increases the chance of something getting a through armor crit to the engine and reducing their effectiveness for a much greater total effect, not to mention it comes out to a lot less damage you have to do to kill it. A gauss rifle can take out both the side and center torso of the lightest mechs while only hocking off half the armor of a side torso of the heaviest ones, so the heavies have the most to lose from the extra slots. so yes, they make a huge difference.

So you are suggesting that XL engines are most useful on things that can double or triple their weapon weight by switching over and least useful on things that only get a third more weapons from the switch?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Most weapons have their uses, although there are some which are... marginal.

AC/2 is one of those marginal weapons. It's only speaking point is the range. But the damage is so low that it doesn't even matter unless you happen to hit an unarmored location. It's a fairly poor anti-air weapon, due to lack of damage and accuracy. And there's enough ammo that getting hit in your bins is going to really hurt.

AC/5 can seem to be worse most times, however it does have its uses. Specifically, wheras AC/2 has trouble with AA, an AC/5 is pretty good at it, particularly LBX/5, which has the same range as an LRM. Granted, it's still niche, but it's at least good at it. The other thing is the RAC/5 which can have the damage output, on average, of an LRM/20, at far longer range. Eats up the ammo, though, and has a jamming problem.

AC/10 is... often seen as a poor comparison to a PPC, which weighs less and takes up less space for the same damage at a shorter range. But, at least the heat is less. LBX gives this a lot back, being a good sandblaster at a decent range, and a crit-fisher if your opponent's armor has a breach or two. Ultra version is 'An AC/20 with longer range'.

AC/20 has a lot of hype as the best damage output in a single shot. And, to a certain extent, this is fairly formidable. It can take a chunk of armor off of anything, and an arm shot will strip the armor even off of an Atlas. However, the range is low enough that mounting quad Medium Lasers can provide better overall average damage output, with higher crit chance, if the heat is supported. LBX/20 is not bad for a sandblaster, but it's effectively a short-ranged version of the LRM/20. The Ultra version can also be made to be worth it if it is in conjunction with a Targeting Computer if you allow the custom rule of both shots hitting same hit location with a TC. This is the only headcapping ballistic weapon, and it is feared appropriately.

Machine Gun. Never use this. Ever. No, not even then. If you MUST, equip a Small Laser for anti-infantry. Same weight (with ammo thrown in), same damage, negligible heat buildup, no risk of blowing up your mech.

Gauss Weapon. Good head-capper with good range, good heat, the only ballistic weapon whose ammo doesn't explode, good everything. Mount this instead of any AC, since you get the best of all worlds. Assuming you're playing post-clan invasion.

Small Laser. Not a bad anti-personnel weapon, although the Flamer is much better at the job. Lighter than the Flamer, though, so the tradeoff is viable. Much better than the Machine Gun, at least, since it won't explode.

Flamer. Same damage, same range as Small Laser, at twice the weight and more heat output. Sounds like a sucker's bet, right? Well... maybe not. If the Firestarting rules. Fire auto-kills infantry (except Salamander elemental suits), and smoke blocks LoS, making it invaluable for stealing the Clan's range advantage away. However, this weapons main advantage is tactical and utility.

Medium Laser. 5 heat, 3 damage, 9 range. One of the most OP weapons in the game. This is why fewer people like AC/20's... since you can mount quad ML's. Clan makes these even more sick. IS Pulse is a sucker's bet, but Clan Pulse isn't bad. IS ER ML isn't too bad, 5 heat, 5 damage, 12 range. If you have the heat compensation, it can be nice. It doesn't have the headcapping ability that bigger weapons have, but it should be respected.

Large Laser. Not a common choice, because it doesn't have the damage output as a PPC, or the range, but it's a little bit smaller, less bulky, and the range is still nice. Again, Clan pimps this out. Clan Pulse LL's are sick, yo. Headcapper at a decent range with a good attack neg.

PPC. The most famous energy weapon. 10 damage is enough to blow through the head armor and risk a head crit in one shot. Good range, good punching power, and a 1:1 heat to damage ratio. Really nice on the tonnage and crits as well. Clan makes these stupid sick, 15 heat for 10 damage at a slightly longer range than an LRM. Cheesomatic.

SRM/2. Lots of ammo capacity, good anti-elemental weapon, and if you play with Infernos, it can be very vicious.

SRM/4. Basically, it's an SRM/6 on a budget. Almost exclusively mounted on Light mechs who don't have the tonnage to be able to put an SRM/6 on, but want some kind of weapon with some speaking power. It's good for sandblasting with a decent ammo capacity. Often seen in tandem with a Medium Laser, which is used to weaken a light mech's armor, then this baby finds some crit slots.

SRM/6. Crit-fisher. Walk up firing your big guns, then use these babies to tag already opened crit locations and see what blows up. Very useful to mount as 'up close' weapons when paired with longer-ranged weapons like PPC, Gauss Rifle, or LRM's. Also goes well with medium lasers for medium to close range damage output.

LRM/5. Not really enough bang for your buck, in my opinion. Too heavy, too bulky, not enough damage output. Mount an AC/5 instead for more consistent damage output.

LRM/10. As above, but starting to get more worthwhile.

LRM/15. I personally don't like 'em, but I happen to like LRM/20's a *LOT*, so YMMV.

LRM/20. Personally, the only LRM system I would ever mount. They can be a bit marginalized, but if you build to them (C3 + TAG + Semi-guided), they can be very nice.

On the subject of XL Engines... they are a trade-off. On some mechs, they can be worth it. On other mechs... not so much.

Here's the thing. If the mech is already one which shouldn't be seeing a whole lot of stuff winging their way, like say a missile boat in a squad, it can free up some weight that can be used for significant advantage. On the other hand, a wing is a kill if you mount one. Light engines are a trade-off. On the one hand, they are a lot safer, on the other hand, they aren't as light. Clan mechs, of course, don't need to make that decision.

So XL on an assault? Probably not. You've got enough tonnage that you can afford to devote some to your engine, and you want the survivability. But for a scout? Can free up the two tons that can spell the difference between success and failure. Besides, with a light mech, if you're taking shoulder crits... you've got bigger problems. Imagine switching the Hussar's engine for an XL and upgrading the LL to a PPC, putting the rest of the tonnage saved into armor. Still a glass cannon, but at least a more formidable and more heavily armored one.

Jump Jets. Maneuverability = win. I love these little guys, particularly on maps with a lot of broken terrain, woods, and other hassles. This goes double for any scout mech. Given a choice between mounting anything larger than a Light Laser and mounting jump jets, I'd go for jump jets every time. If nothing else, I can always evade pursuit. Putting them on assaults can be mass-intensive, but I have two words for you: Highlander Burial. An assault mech with jump jets is a mech that absolutely no one wishes to get too close with. Ever. Of course, I'd always be a stinker and jump behind them rather than on them and fire into their rear arc...

[Mando Knight]

OK. Here is the full post from before:
---------------------------------------------


I have one word for you, sir: Saladins.
---------------------------------------------

Note that I was responding to rear shots being death sentences: a saladin is fast enough to get behind a mech with a little luck, and one AC/20 hit to a torso rear will take out that torso in quite a number of mechs.
Saladin isn't a god unit by any means. Yes, it's a good skirmisher in that it has high speed and a painfully powerful main weapon, but it's using one of the most fragile vehicle propulsion systems (so a Pulse Laser can utterly ruin its ability to outflank the opponent), and every time it's using flank speed, it needs to make Driver checks to prevent sideslipping, which can be rather dangerous in a field with terrain (and most maps will have at least some terrain to deal with).

So you are suggesting that XL engines are most useful on things that can double or triple their weapon weight by switching over and least useful on things that only get a third more weapons from the switch?
Well, yes.

[tyckspoon]

Gauss Weapon. Good head-capper with good range, good heat, the only ballistic weapon whose ammo doesn't explode, good everything. Mount this instead of any AC, since you get the best of all worlds. Assuming you're playing post-clan invasion.


..with the unfortunate side effect that the *weapon itself* will blow up if hit, which is (IMO) a rather more likely happening than most ammo hits, considering the much larger number of critical spaces occupied by a gauss rifle and their more exposed placement (if you're customizing mech layouts, even at the basic level of shuffling location of ammo/weapons, I like to stick ammo in the legs. High armor percentage, lots of other crit locations to buffer the chances of suffering that ammo hit, and chances are if you're taking leg hits your mech is about to become a functional casualty via delegging regardless of whether or not the ammo goes up anyway.)

[Provengreil]

So you are suggesting that XL engines are most useful on things that can double or triple their weapon weight by switching over and least useful on things that only get a third more weapons from the switch?

Something wrong with that idea?

[Winterwind]

On the subject of XL engines, I find that that they are disproportionately good on lighter mechs that are often mission kills if they lose a torso anyway, whereas the heaviest mechs can stand up to so many shots that it significantly increases the chance of something getting a through armor crit to the engine and reducing their effectiveness for a much greater total effect, not to mention it comes out to a lot less damage you have to do to kill it. A gauss rifle can take out both the side and center torso of the lightest mechs while only hocking off half the armor of a side torso of the heaviest ones, so the heavies have the most to lose from the extra slots. so yes, they make a huge difference.They would be much better on lighter 'Mechs even all survivability concerns aside, simply because weight is the primary limiting quality on light 'Mechs anyway, and anything that reduces weight is thus extra beneficial, whereas on heavy 'Mechs, the primary limiter is crit slots and weight is a secondary. It's not just XL engines - it extends to endosteel versus standard for inner structure, ferro fibrous versus standard for armour, energy weapons plus double heat sinks versus ballistic weapons, etc., where you'll almost always prefer the former choice for a light 'Mech, but often the latter choice for a heavy.

[Mando Knight]

They would be much better on lighter 'Mechs even all survivability concerns aside, simply because weight is the primary limiting quality on light 'Mechs anyway, and anything that reduces weight is thus extra beneficial, whereas on heavy 'Mechs, the primary limiter is crit slots and weight is a secondary. It's not just XL engines - it extends to endosteel versus standard for inner structure, ferro fibrous versus standard for armour, energy weapons plus double heat sinks versus ballistic weapons, etc., where you'll almost always prefer the former choice for a light 'Mech, but often the latter choice for a heavy.

With how many crit slots are locked out with ferrofibrous and endosteel, it's a tough call to run either one on most IS 'Mechs. With the Clan's smaller components, it's often easier to run the weight-saving tech on them, to the point that many of the iconic Omnis run all three.

To me, one of the big benefits from running XL engines in large 'Mechs isn't so much for more firepower, but letting you run a bigger engine so you can get 5/7 move on a 75-ton 'Mech (for example) without sacrificing as much firepower.

[Sir Ebonwolf]

When I look at the prescripted Mechs its just hilarious. They seem to not have put much thought into their creation unless they made the Mechs bad on purpose. The choice of tonnage and engines are just ridiculous sometimes. I recently bought the 25th anniversary edition and I'm liking it so far but I miss the old cardboard figures, FULL ART YEAH!
That's the version my dad played.

Anyone have any ideas about how I could verse someone on this forum?

[tyckspoon]

Anyone have any ideas about how I could verse someone on this forum?

MegaMek (http://megamek.info/about) is your best bet there; it's a Java-based recreation of the game that supports direct network connections to play against other people. You can either sign up to a server that supports it and set up your games that way (good way to find other people to play with, too, as well as getting into psuedo-RP/campaign type games where your mech hanger and pilots have continuity between games) or just connect to each other directly. Depending on how your respective networks are set up you may also need a tunneling/virtual network program such as Hamachi to help work around obstructive firewall settings.

[Gnoman]

There's also the Mekwars campaign software that allows for campaign matckmaking.

[snoopy13a]

With how many crit slots are locked out with ferrofibrous and endosteel, it's a tough call to run either one on most IS 'Mechs. With the Clan's smaller components, it's often easier to run the weight-saving tech on them, to the point that many of the iconic Omnis run all three.

To me, one of the big benefits from running XL engines in large 'Mechs isn't so much for more firepower, but letting you run a bigger engine so you can get 5/7 move on a 75-ton 'Mech (for example) without sacrificing as much firepower.

Another aspect of speed, which doesn't usually come up in games, is its tactical importance. In an objective raid, faster 'Mechs are more useful. Atlases are great in slug-fests but when your mission depends on hitting the target ASAP, speed is important, and a force is only as fast as its slowest member.

Also, in judging 'Mechs, their tactical importance varies on the situation. The old 3025 Phoenix Hawk, for example, seems to be at its best as a superior scouting 'Mech. A Wasp or a Stinger on a scouting trip would not want to run into that. But if the Phoenix Hawk runs into a Griffin or a Wolverine, it can just run away.

But then there is the old Charger--a 80 ton 'Mech with the biggest possible engine in the game. If ever there was a white elephant in the Battletech world, that was it.

I figure that most games are four-on-four to the death matches so oftentimes, a 'Mech's utility isn't that useful in a game situation.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Another aspect of speed, which doesn't usually come up in games, is its tactical importance. In an objective raid, faster 'Mechs are more useful. Atlases are great in slug-fests but when your mission depends on hitting the target ASAP, speed is important, and a force is only as fast as its slowest member.

Also, in judging 'Mechs, their tactical importance varies on the situation. The old 3025 Phoenix Hawk, for example, seems to be at its best as a superior scouting 'Mech. A Wasp or a Stinger on a scouting trip would not want to run into that. But if the Phoenix Hawk runs into a Griffin or a Wolverine, it can just run away.

But then there is the old Charger--a 80 ton 'Mech with the biggest possible engine in the game. If ever there was a white elephant in the Battletech world, that was it.

I figure that most games are four-on-four to the death matches so oftentimes, a 'Mech's utility isn't that useful in a game situation.

Agreed. Unless there are campaign objectives, utility is strictly limited in usefulness.

Having said that, there is a certain tactical utility in a nimble mech, assuming he has something more than light lasers equipped (*cough* Charger *cough*). I was running in a scout mech which was an 8/12/8 and 2x SRM/6. I got jumped by a Hunchback at close range. Instead of running, I let him close to maximum range for that AC/20... then I jumped over him, landed behind, and gave him both SRM/6's to the rear arc. While it didn't penetrate anything, SRM's being sandblasters rather than holepunchers, it certainly shook the fellow up. Then I retreated to a safe distance, and did it to him again. He literally couldn't hit me, since my jump was nearly the entire range of his primary weapon. I got an ammo crit on him before I ran out of ammo myself, and that was all she wrote.

[Swordguy]

When I look at the prescripted Mechs its just hilarious. They seem to not have put much thought into their creation unless they made the Mechs bad on purpose.

They are, actually, made bad on purpose much of the time. There are several reasons for this, but they boil down to two main one:

1) It's so easy to min-max Mech designs, if they didn't actually design bad ones, we'd have about 50 total Mechs instead of 1400.

2) In-universe reasons that take more into account than JUST the tabletop game. The most famous two examples of this are the Double Heat Sink shortage in the Draconis Combine during the Clan Invasion (which is why most of their upgrades don't get DHS even though it's incredibly useful), and the general suckitude of the TRO3050 Mechs. In the latter case, it was very deliberately done because when the TRO was written, the Successor States had JUST gotten advanced technology working again and were shoving it onto every Mech they could produce or refit without much thought for "how effective" it was. They were panicing, and thus produced a bunch of upgraded, but usually crappy, Mech designs. Thus, an in-universe rationale.

Under modern design theorums, we see more min-maxed designs than we used to. A large portion of this is the fact that CGL inherited a bunch of min-maxed designs from WizKids and the Dark Age clicktech game, and they had to bring them over into the "Classic" BattleTech game. The Hellstar and Annihilator C (nee Gausszilla, aka "Never to be canonized EVER" - Bryan Nystul) are good examples of this. Incredibly min-maxed, and were brought into BattleTech canon via Wizkids. Now CGL has to honor that. And Lo! Munchkins get to use a 5-Gauss-Rifle Mech design. :smallyuk:

[ShneekeyTheLost]

They are, actually, made bad on purpose much of the time. There are several reasons for this, but they boil down to two main one:

1) It's so easy to min-max Mech designs, if they didn't actually design bad ones, we'd have about 50 total Mechs instead of 1400.

2) In-universe reasons that take more into account than JUST the tabletop game. The most famous two examples of this are the Double Heat Sink shortage in the Draconis Combine during the Clan Invasion (which is why most of their upgrades don't get DHS even though it's incredibly useful), and the general suckitude of the TRO3050 Mechs. In the latter case, it was very deliberately done because when the TRO was written, the Successor States had JUST gotten advanced technology working again and were shoving it onto every Mech they could produce or refit without much thought for "how effective" it was. They were panicing, and thus produced a bunch of upgraded, but usually crappy, Mech designs. Thus, an in-universe rationale.

Under modern design theorums, we see more min-maxed designs than we used to. A large portion of this is the fact that CGL inherited a bunch of min-maxed designs from WizKids and the Dark Age clicktech game, and they had to bring them over into the "Classic" BattleTech game. The Hellstar and Annihilator C (nee Gausszilla, aka "Never to be canonized EVER" - Bryan Nystul) are good examples of this. Incredibly min-maxed, and were brought into BattleTech canon via Wizkids. Now CGL has to honor that. And Lo! Munchkins get to use a 5-Gauss-Rifle Mech design. :smallyuk:

One of the more amusing concepts is to play a 'what if' scenario, wherin you have 3025 mechs, it's around 3050ish, you've got new tech... now what? Can you do better than your compatriots in incorporating the new tech in a somewhat more efficient fashion?

Examples may include:

Catapult: Replace engine with XL, upgrade LRM to 20's, extra ammo bin per missile system, install C3 system.

Reasoning: It's a missile boat, getting hit is a bad idea anyways, so the XL engine simply allows you to upgrade your missiles to LRM/20's, some extra ammo, and enough tonnage left over for a C3. Installing Semiguided missiles when your allies also have C3 and TAG can be more efective than Artemis, due to overall increase in target hits. If such is not available, use Artemis.

Hunchback: Replace AC/20 with Gauss.

Alternate: Install Light Engine. Use freed up tonnage to install jump jets, C3, flamer, and TAG.

Reasoning: Switching out an AC/20 for a Gauss is a no-brainer. The alternate configuration is if you like playing with C3 and TAG, plus gives it some maneuverability. Light engine is bad if you get hit, and a Hunchback expects punishment as a price of doing business, but it is better than a full XL engine. It's a trade-off, and a fairly risky one, but may be worth the risk if you have missile boats with semi-guided missiles and C3.

Rifleman: Replace engine with XL. Replace AC/2's with LBX/5. Double heat sinks. Optional C3 and TAG gear. Remainder of weight saved into armor.

Reasoning: Rifleman has always been a deathtrap, the extra armor makes the XL engine something less of a problem, but on the whole, about the same level of fragility. LBX/5 is a solid pepper weapon at a good range, and an excellent Anti-Air weapon. The temptation to upgrade LL to PLL's is there, but it's nothing but a trap for IS. You have effectively identical to-hit numbers, since medium range becoming long range effectively negates the to-hit modifier, at reduced range. Bad deal. DHS to avoid overheating issues.

[mangosta71]

They are, actually, made bad on purpose much of the time. There are several reasons for this, but they boil down to two main one:

1) It's so easy to min-max Mech designs, if they didn't actually design bad ones, we'd have about 50 total Mechs instead of 1400.
I honestly don't see a problem with that. Fewer designs overall makes sense economically (vastly reduced costs associated with development) and strategically (fewer different designs means the same size stockpiles have more of the parts you need for the 'Mechs that are taking damage). How much cheaper would OmniMechs be if everyone just stopped building all the other designs that Omnis made obsolete?

2) In-universe reasons that take more into account than JUST the tabletop game. The most famous two examples of this are the Double Heat Sink shortage in the Draconis Combine during the Clan Invasion (which is why most of their upgrades don't get DHS even though it's incredibly useful), and the general suckitude of the TRO3050 Mechs. In the latter case, it was very deliberately done because when the TRO was written, the Successor States had JUST gotten advanced technology working again and were shoving it onto every Mech they could produce or refit without much thought for "how effective" it was. They were panicing, and thus produced a bunch of upgraded, but usually crappy, Mech designs. Thus, an in-universe rationale.
Even in a blind panic, it boggles my mind that anyone ever thought that mounting a pair of UAC/5s on a chassis that only carried a single ton of ammunition was a good idea. Ammo bins are dry after 5 rounds. Of course, the 'Mech in question only had enough armor to survive one or two rounds of combat at most...

The fact that there were so many crappy designs compounded the problem. Instead of a small handful of capable designs to use as testbeds for the newly rediscovered tech, there were hundreds. And the factories for each different design had to be reoutfitted in a different manner to produce the updated design. Coming up with 20 new layouts and implementing them in 500 factories is a lot cheaper and faster than coming up with 500 new layouts.

Under modern design theorums, we see more min-maxed designs than we used to. A large portion of this is the fact that CGL inherited a bunch of min-maxed designs from WizKids and the Dark Age clicktech game, and they had to bring them over into the "Classic" BattleTech game. The Hellstar and Annihilator C (nee Gausszilla, aka "Never to be canonized EVER" - Bryan Nystul) are good examples of this. Incredibly min-maxed, and were brought into BattleTech canon via Wizkids. Now CGL has to honor that. And Lo! Munchkins get to use a 5-Gauss-Rifle Mech design. :smallyuk:
Again, not seeing a downside here. It's much more realistic to have players selecting from a smaller pool of designs. It's more realistic to only produce optimized Mechs - the things are expensive, after all, so nobody's gonna pony up the dough for a machine that's not gonna last long enough to yield a decent return on the investment. In the real world, something like the Charger would never be mass produced - the Phoenix Hawk is both faster and better-armed, making it superior in both scouting and combat, while being much less expensive (and looking cooler). There's no reason to build a Locust once the Mercury comes around, and no reason to build either when the Mongoose is available (which design also eliminates the need for other jump-capable light scouts such as the Stinger and Wasp). The Rifleman is such an appallingly bad design that its only saving grace is the Rifleman IIC - the only thing I would ever use any of the IS variants for is a target dummy.

[Philistine]

AFAIK, Light engines and IS LB5-X ACs weren't in the picture in 3050, or for several years after that.

Also, the base Rifleman doesn't have AC/2s. It would be a far better AA 'Mech if it did, since the function of AA in BT isn't to blow through an ASFs armor but to force as many PSRs as possible (on the theory that getting hit by a planet is going to do more damage than any weapon you could mount). And because it only takes 1 damage to force a PSR, tonnage spent increasing the size of those hits is essentially wasted; what's needed for AA work is raw numbers of hits, so long range and big ammo bins are the keys in periods when LB-X isn't in the picture. Once the LB10-X enters the picture, Cluster rounds become a vicious medium-to-close range defense; engagement range is still a bit short for a dedicated AAA unit (It also falls short in ammo/t - especially since, unlike the AC/2, the LB10-X is effective against 'Mechs as well as ASFs.), but sprinkling a few across your Heavy/Assault formations gives them a strong, organic deterrent to strafing ASFs. And by an interesting and possibly useful coincidence, the 4t weight difference between this and a Gauss matches the 4t difference between a C3 Master and a C3 Slave.

[Swordguy]

To be blindingly blunt about it, the downside is that if that happened, there'd be less TROs and minis to sell. And less new art. Since those are what tend to bring in players...

[Reverent-One]

Under modern design theorums, we see more min-maxed designs than we used to. A large portion of this is the fact that CGL inherited a bunch of min-maxed designs from WizKids and the Dark Age clicktech game, and they had to bring them over into the "Classic" BattleTech game. The Hellstar and Annihilator C (nee Gausszilla, aka "Never to be canonized EVER" - Bryan Nystul) are good examples of this. Incredibly min-maxed, and were brought into BattleTech canon via Wizkids. Now CGL has to honor that. And Lo! Munchkins get to use a 5-Gauss-Rifle Mech design. :smallyuk:

The Dark Age game didn't really specify weapon loadouts though, so where did the design specs come from?

[Erloas]

But thats not how things work in the real world. Lets take the closest real world equivalent: tanks. At this point there are fewer more well defined designs, but we're also not really at war and haven't been in a long time (at least in terms of needing to ramp up and innovate tank production), but in WW1 and WW2 when they were being designed and produced in big numbers. Just going off of World Of Tanks (because they have nice lists of tanks, all real world tanks, though some didn't get past prototyping) there are just over 200 tanks from 4 countries.
Some where not very good, some were much better. Some where designed by the country and some where designed by individual companies and some where designed by the country with parts already manufactured by a company there.

The thing with Battletech is that there are a lot of different manufacturers of various weapons, and Company A's medium laser is not exactly the same as Company C's medium laser, but in game terms they are all averaged to the same power/heat usage and range and damage even though there would be some real world differences.
Well maybe Company B makes 4 sizes of ACs, some smaller styles of lasers and has a good relationship with LRM manufacturer H... well when they go to build their newest 'Mech they are going to use what they make, they aren't going to use PPCs because they don't manufacture them, and they aren't going to use the large laser made by company D because they are their primary competitor.

So you have a dozen different manufacturers making and testing designs and selling them to various Houses. Some designs are available to every House, some are proprietary. One company might take a relatively common design and put their favorite guns on them.
Some of those designs might never really be intended for front line duty. Medium 'Mech X with very little ammo is designed as a guard or patrol 'Mech in an area that is likely to never see heavy combat, but it is cheap and fast to manufacture and they can get you 5 of them in the time it would take to build a much better 'Mech. You use it to garrison a lot of smaller worlds where you might see light pirate activity and where there is a good chance you'll only ever be facing infantry and vehicles rather then other 'Mechs. Because in the fluff a 'Mech of any size is generally only seen in fairly important battles and a lot of skirmishes are between infantry and vehicles. And those Heavy 'Mechs are only called out when they think a few mediums and lights won't be enough or they want to send out a message.

And those light 'Mechs with flamers and machine guns might not be of much use in large 'Mech combats but they work really well for dealing with infantry and in a lot of policing and anti-piracy areas you might see a lot more infantry then you ever see other 'Mechs.

Of course that changes as you get into the Clan Invasion era and the tech of the Clan 'Mechs makes the IS houses ramp up their larger 'Mech production. But even then, sometimes more small 'Mechs is faster to produce and cheaper then doing a few bigger ones.

And you're not going to manufacturer your cutting edge and most valuable 'Mechs on the boarder worlds, but you still need 'Mech production out there so you produce cheaper 'Mechs that won't be as big of a deal if you loose the facility and your enemies will have a harder time finding out about your newest technology.

You probably also won't send too many 'Mechs with energy weapons and Flamers into your heavily foliaged worlds where the chance of fire is very high. And the collateral damage might be too high to send them to defend large urban areas. An AC round might destroy a building but it is less likely to catch half the city on fire. There are a few very cold planets where energy weapons are going to be much more effective, but some of the hotter worlds would cause your heat limited designs to be even worse then they already where.

But if you're looking at it from a 4 on 4 Solaris style match then there are a lot fewer options. There are also designs that work really well on Solaris that don't transfer to the battlefields nearly as well.

[mangosta71]

But the Houses are the ones buying the (vast majority of) 'Mechs. Your real world tanks example falls flat when you realize that each of those 4 countries was only building a couple of those designs at a time - the US currently has the Abrams, so there's no reason to keep building Shermans. Technological innovation means that older obsolete designs go out of service. There's no reason to expect that to change.

Real world military aircraft are the same. Take the fighters that USAAF pilots commonly flew during WWII - at the start of the war, they were in P-39s and P-40s. By mid-1942, the P-38 came into service and the P-39 was pretty much no longer in production. Then the P-47 and -51 came into play, and P-40s were phased out (yes, I'm aware that certain late-model P-40s continued to see service until the end of the war, but they were no longer the workhorse of the USAAF). And yes, the Navy and Marines had different requirements and thus went through different developments, but I still can't think of a time when they were producing more than 3 different models of fighters at a time.

The way the real world works is: different companies bid on contracts and build prototypes, then the government evaluates those prototypes, looks at the bids on the contracts, and chooses one of those designs to go into production (see: YF-22 vs YF-23). You don't have companies that just start designing and selling stuff willy-nilly - without an assured buyer, they'd go bankrupt (and without an initial investment, they couldn't afford to mass produce 'Mechs in the first place). Weapons systems are going to be basically equivalent because a handful of companies are mandated to produce them to particular specifications for the House militaries. Between espionage and battlefield capture (reverse-engineering), no House is going to keep any new development to itself for long.

[RandomLunatic]

Also bear in mind the in-universe engineers building these things do not have handy, concise tables all the weapons and equipment they can put into 'Mechs. The guys a Defiance have no idea what a "critical slot" is.

I mean, just look at some of the dogs real-life defense establishments have come up with:

-The Vasa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_%28ship%29). A gunship with too much gun and not enough ship. Bonus points for taking "being a dog" literally by rolling over and playing dead.

-McDonnel's F3H Demon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F3H_Demon). The first batch of these jet fighters could not even fly. Even after they swapped in new engines, they remained horribly underpowered and unpopular.

-BREDA Modello 30 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breda_30). Jam-prone, maintenance-heavy, and featuring a slow fire rate only aggravated by small magazines and an involved reload procedure. And the little 6.5mm bullets sorely lacked in ballistic performance. Arguably the worst machine gun of WWII.

-The Saint-Chamond. Because clearly crossing the rough, broken ground between the trenches of WWI's western front calls for a vehicle with no ground clearance and a huge nose that will irretrievably bury itself in the ground every time it hits a pothole.

Say what you will about some of the stock 'Mechs, but at least they work.

As long as you are not counting the stuff Quickcell makes.:smalltongue:

[Gnoman]

There's another side of the coin. There was massive technological degradation in the Inner Sphere. Imagine, for example, if the technology to build jet engines was lost. You could keep existing F-15s and MiG-29s in play for a long time, but you would have to either put the P-51 or P-38 back in production or design a new piston-engined fighter for general use, as any airplane's better than no airplane at all.

That's the basic situation the Inner Sphere was in. Not only did general tech go down greatly, the capabilities of individual worlds varied greatly. This is the fluff reason for a number of subpar designs. They simply weren't able to ship good weapons in sufficient quantity to be effective, and a BattleMech with subpar weapons trumps no BattleMech at all.

Add in that every House favored different design philosophies, there are actual tradeoffs in the various weapon technologies available, and a distinct focus on specialized designs, it makes perfect sense that units are not min/maxed to a perfect degree. To use a further WWII analogy, the USAAC had four front-line fighters (P-38, P-51, P-47, P-39/400) in service at the same time, not counting different models of the same aircraft design, as each had a distinct role. (P-47s were robust with very heavy firepower, making them excellent interceptors and tactical bombers, -51s were ideal escort planes due to range and agility, -38s had good range while the two engines provided some redundancy for over-water flights. The -39/400s had good short-field charactaristics, a big gun. and were available in large numbers, making them highly useful for close-air-support.) The same story existed for tanks and other ground vehicles.

[Erloas]

That 200+ tanks was for the time between late WW1 and just a little bit after WW2, so thats 200+ tanks over the course of maybe 20 years with the vast majority of them coming in about a 10 year span. There is no way to do that without having a lot of tanks overlapping in production and use.
With fire support tanks, light tanks, heavy tanks, medium tanks and tank destroyers, even if they only had a single tank for each designation at a given time thats still 5 tanks per nation for a total of 20 tanks in concurrent production. Which isn't even counting the countries that didn't have enough designs to make it into the game or weren't part of the war.
And its not like there was huge technological advances in that time either to make one tank significantly better then the last, so a lot of the design advancements in that short period of time was mostly a case of trial and error, of what did and didn't work on the battlefield. They couldn't just calculate up the perfect design and be done with it.

And back to Battletech... yes, it doesn't take long to reverse engineer advances made by the enemy. But take for instance the Victor, a very Davion (Steiner too?) design, so while the Draconis Combine might salvage one, if they reverse engineer anything of use out of it they aren't going to build more Victors, they are instead going to build a brand new Combine 'Mech with those advances as part of it.

And while a House might make the majority of the purchases, there are a lot of minor houses, peripheral states, and mercenary groups out there that will be buying 'Mechs too. And they will probably have different requirements for their 'Mechs the the main houses and they will be much more price conscious. And the 'Mech manufacturers would have to design and build a 'Mech without a contract from a major house, they would have to front the cost because without that design and prototype they could never sell it in the first place. And if the design isn't that good, well you've still got a lot invested in it as a company and you might sell them at a reduced price or sell them to some other group(s) who won't work with certain manufacturers based on location or past history. So you make them and sell them to who you can, even if they aren't the absolute best designs.

And there might be a dozen different worlds with manufacturing on them, while some are going to be very big and quickly transitioned over to a new 'Mech design there are others that might take months or years to get all the parts to switch over and might be low enough in production numbers that it simply isn't economically viable to have it stop producing an old design and start producing a new one. So it continues to make the old design knowing that a sub-par 'Mech now is better then a better 'Mech and some unknown time in the future. Especially when you can buy 100 of the old design for just the cost of switching the plant over to the new design. (look at how much Intel spends on upgrading their fabs for a real world example). And if that remote manufacturing location happens to be in a border world that you might loose you especially don't want to spend the money to have it produce the most advanced 'Mechs.

Then there is the fact that as players we're looking at 'Mech designs that are spanning hundreds of years, whereas in universe they do transition much, though probably not all, of production from older designs to new designs as they go.
They aren't going to be making many Warhammer-6Ls in 3070 for instance. But that doesn't mean there aren't going to be Warhammer-6Ls still seeing duty at that point. Many will have probably been repaired and salvaged multiple times by that point but they will still be there.

And there is the general material availability too. The hatchet wasn't designed because they thought close combat weapons were a good counter to PPCs. They were designed because it was more practical and lasted longer then picking up a broken arm off the ground and hitting someone with it because your lasers were melted down and your ACs and LRMs were out of ammo and may have been for several encounters.

[Mando Knight]

In the latter case, it was very deliberately done because when the TRO was written, the Successor States had JUST gotten advanced technology working again and were shoving it onto every Mech they could produce or refit without much thought for "how effective" it was. They were panicing, and thus produced a bunch of upgraded, but usually crappy, Mech designs. Thus, an in-universe rationale.

Like the Atlas AS7-K. A right torso crit has a better than 50% chance of ruining the entire 'Mech by detonating the Gauss Rifle, taking the rest of the side's inner structure and its XL engine with it. The only use its CASE has is to prevent the thing from being completely unsalvageable in a campaign if its LRM ammo goes up while it still has several shots left.

[snoopy13a]

AFAIK, Light engines and IS LB5-X ACs weren't in the picture in 3050, or for several years after that.

Also, the base Rifleman doesn't have AC/2s. It would be a far better AA 'Mech if it did, since the function of AA in BT isn't to blow through an ASFs armor but to force as many PSRs as possible (on the theory that getting hit by a planet is going to do more damage than any weapon you could mount). And because it only takes 1 damage to force a PSR, tonnage spent increasing the size of those hits is essentially wasted; what's needed for AA work is raw numbers of hits, so long range and big ammo bins are the keys in periods when LB-X isn't in the picture. Once the LB10-X enters the picture, Cluster rounds become a vicious medium-to-close range defense; engagement range is still a bit short for a dedicated AAA unit (It also falls short in ammo/t - especially since, unlike the AC/2, the LB10-X is effective against 'Mechs as well as ASFs.), but sprinkling a few across your Heavy/Assault formations gives them a strong, organic deterrent to strafing ASFs. And by an interesting and possibly useful coincidence, the 4t weight difference between this and a Gauss matches the 4t difference between a C3 Master and a C3 Slave.

Yep, I believe the base Rifleman had an AC/5 and Large Laser in each arm. Although, I think there might have been house variants with the AC/2. To be fair, I'm not sure if the base Rifleman had to worry about ASFs as Aerotech hadn't been released yet :smallbiggrin:

A more obscure 'Mech is the "Clan Rifleman"--a scary 90ish ton 'Mech. It's one of the second-line Clan Battlemech that their garrison units have--the Clan garrisons use updated mechs patterned after old designs--and it isn't an Omnimech.

As for Star League-era mechs, I was always partial to the Black Knight.

And finally, what about Quads? Goliaths for everyone :smalltongue:

[mangosta71]

A more obscure 'Mech is the "Clan Rifleman"--a scary 90ish ton 'Mech. It's one of the second-line Clan Battlemech that their garrison units have--the Clan garrisons use updated mechs patterned after old designs--and it isn't an Omnimech.
Not familiar with that one. The Rifleman IIC is a 65 ton 'Mech with 4 large pulse lasers. 3/5/3 and 19 double heat sinks, just about maximum armor. What is this "Clan Rifleman" of which you speak?

[snoopy13a]

Not familiar with that one. The Rifleman IIC is a 65 ton 'Mech with 4 large pulse lasers. 3/5/3 and 19 double heat sinks, just about maximum armor. What is this "Clan Rifleman" of which you speak?

Honestly, that's probably what I meant. Believed that it was the clan variant of the Rifleman that got the huge mass boost.

[Swordguy]

Not familiar with that one. The Rifleman IIC is a 65 ton 'Mech with 4 large pulse lasers. 3/5/3 and 19 double heat sinks, just about maximum armor. What is this "Clan Rifleman" of which you speak?

He's probably thinking of the Rifleman II (aka, Royal Rifleman, aka Rifleman RFL-3N-2). It adds 20 tons to the Mech's overall mass, Endo and an XL engine. Weapons are upgraded to an LB-10X over a Large Pulse Laser in each arm, 14 DHS and a Beagle Probe.

Rumors have it that this is the Mech Gray Noton piloted when we dominated Solaris VII in a "Rifleman". The rumors are objectively wrong - Justin Allard piloted the same Rifleman Noton used, and it was a stock -3N. It's still a pretty good upgrade for a Mech designed to sit in Hex 0909 and shoot down any ASFs that come on the board.

[Erloas]

I'm not familiar with the Rifleman II either. It doesn't show up in SSW's master list of 'Mechs*, but I do see it listed on Sarna.net. There are a couple things on the internet which seem to imply that it is a non-canon design. The Sarna.net site referenced TRO 3075, but I can't tell if that is for the Rifleman II or just the statement that the rifleman is good at anti-aircraft. I won't be home for a while to check the TRO myself to see.

Speaking of SSW, I see they have everything for all of the vehicles now. Have I missed it or do they not have the information for infantry/BA creation in yet? Been wanting to run some but without a good way of printing the record sheets and getting BVs it is too much of a pain to run infantry. I don't think they are that hard to build by hand, so I might have to do that instead.

*Here at work I only have an old edition of SSW though. Can't download the newest one but I did get it at home recently.

I like the quad-designs, though the models tend to be fairly hard to find. I did eventually pick up the majority of them but haven't actually ran most of them yet. I want to give the Great Turtle a try at some point just to see.

[mangosta71]

Honestly, that's probably what I meant. Believed that it was the clan variant of the Rifleman that got the huge mass boost.
It's the Phoenix Hawk IIC that's almost twice the size of the original. 80 tons, looks sexy as hell, but I'm not that big a fan of its standard loadout. I do like variant 3, though.

He's probably thinking of the Rifleman II (aka, Royal Rifleman, aka Rifleman RFL-3N-2). It adds 20 tons to the Mech's overall mass, Endo and an XL engine. Weapons are upgraded to an LB-10X over a Large Pulse Laser in each arm, 14 DHS and a Beagle Probe.

Rumors have it that this is the Mech Gray Noton piloted when we dominated Solaris VII in a "Rifleman". The rumors are objectively wrong - Justin Allard piloted the same Rifleman Noton used, and it was a stock -3N. It's still a pretty good upgrade for a Mech designed to sit in Hex 0909 and shoot down any ASFs that come on the board.
Ah, this one. Makes more sense, now. I don't recall the exact stats, but if they added 20 tons overall I can at least hope that they gave it adequate armor protection (the BT wiki doesn't specify). However, I strongly dislike IS-tech XL engines in anything larger than a medium, so this is another variant I would choose to not field.

And yeah, I've read the Warrior trilogy. I know that Justin had a suicidal streak wide enough to pilot a stock Rifleman. The BT wiki actually has a picture of a Rifleman on the firing range (if it was actually in combat, as the caption suggests, it would be exploding). Worst. 'Mech. Ever.

[Gnoman]

Yep, I believe the base Rifleman had an AC/5 and Large Laser in each arm. Although, I think there might have been house variants with the AC/2.[/I].


Are you perhaps thinking of the Jagermech? It's a 2xAC/5 2xAC/2 boat that was developed in-universe from the Rifleman

[Shishnarfne]

And yeah, I've read the Warrior trilogy. I know that Justin had a suicidal streak wide enough to pilot a stock Rifleman. The BT wiki actually has a picture of a Rifleman on the firing range (if it was actually in combat, as the caption suggests, it would be exploding). Worst. 'Mech. Ever.

Come now, surely you're exaggerating a little... We've got the Charger 1A1 (and 1L, come to think of it).

The Rifleman II was mentioned in TRO 3075 as a "Royal Regiment" SLDF upgrade for the original. The Royal upgrades to SLDF mechs are (based on more recent Catalyst fluff) those variants that the original Star League developed late in its history (immediately prior to the Amaris Coup and Exodus) for their most loyal regiments and planetary militias. The former left with Kerensky (and got mauled in the early years of the Clan Wars, most likely), and the latter got obliterated (sometimes literally nuked!) in the early Succession Wars, to justify their non-appearance in previous work.

Basically, they're the "optimized" versions of the TRO 2750 SLDF mechs, with more ideal configurations based on the weapons and components available at the time. Another example: KGC-000b (King Crab), goes for 12 DHS (instead of more singles), allowing it to double the AC 20 ammo that it stocks and add Artemis to the LRM launcher.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Come now, surely you're exaggerating a little... We've got the Charger 1A1 (and 1L, come to think of it).

Rifleman has a reputation for being a death trap. It doesn't have near the heat dissipation it needs for the pair of large lasers it sports, and its armor is notoriously weak for a Heavy mech.

The Charger, like the Urbanmech, is a failed concept from the outset, and there isn't enough credits in the Sphere to pay a decent pilot to get in one.

[snoopy13a]

Rifleman has a reputation for being a death trap. It doesn't have near the heat dissipation it needs for the pair of large lasers it sports, and its armor is notoriously weak for a Heavy mech.

The Charger, like the Urbanmech, is a failed concept from the outset, and there isn't enough credits in the Sphere to pay a decent pilot to get in one.

The Urbanmech isn't really a failed concept. Granted, it'd probably be more cost-effective to use a tank for its primary role as a urban fighter but you stick an Urbanmech in an alley. When an unsuspecting 'Mech walks down the street, that 'Mech gets blasted at short range.

A cheap general could also put the Urbanmech in an assault force where you have regiments just pounding on each other at relatively short range. An Urbanmech wouldn't last too long, but it could inflict some damage before going down. Think of it as a baby brother to your Battlemasters, Zeuses, etc.

No one is disputing that the Charger is worthless though. :smalltongue:

[RandomLunatic]

The Urbanmech isn't really a failed concept.Yes it is. It is too slow to be useful for mobile warfare and too fragile and expensive to be a gun emplacement.

The RFL-3N is hardly the worst 'Mech out there. Sure, it has its flaws, but if you stand it in the back and alternate laser/ACs and just ACs, or just sustain 1 LL/2 AC, it makes a competent fire-support unit.

Now, if you want death traps, try the Rifleman's derivative, the JM6-S JaegerMech. Leave it to Davion ingenuity to take a Rifleman, add 5 tons, and somehow make it worse.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The Urbanmech isn't really a failed concept. Granted, it'd probably be more cost-effective to use a tank for its primary role as a urban fighter but you stick an Urbanmech in an alley. When an unsuspecting 'Mech walks down the street, that 'Mech gets blasted at short range.The Panther, a.k.a. the Alleycat, is a *MUCH* better mech for urban combat. The Urbanmech doesn't have the move, and doesn't have the range, to do its intended job.


A cheap general could also put the Urbanmech in an assault force where you have regiments just pounding on each other at relatively short range. An Urbanmech wouldn't last too long, but it could inflict some damage before going down. Think of it as a baby brother to your Battlemasters, Zeuses, etc.There is no such thing as a cheap mech. Throwing away mechs like that is never cost effective.


No one is disputing that the Charger is worthless though. :smalltongue:

[Provengreil]

Yes it is. It is too slow to be useful for mobile warfare and too fragile and expensive to be a gun emplacement.

The RFL-3N is hardly the worst 'Mech out there. Sure, it has its flaws, but if you stand it in the back and alternate laser/ACs and just ACs, or just sustain 1 LL/2 AC, it makes a competent fire-support unit.

Now, if you want death traps, try the Rifleman's derivative, the JM6-S JaegerMech. Leave it to Davion ingenuity to take a Rifleman, add 5 tons, and somehow make it worse.

In my (Limited) experience, speedy non-jumping mechs in a city have an alarming tendency to end up inside buildings, and the faster they are the worse this problem is. Not saying the trash cans are good, but wouldn't high speed be a potential liability in urban combat, so it's better to reduce engine size and use the free weight elsewhere? Or are me and my opponents just doing it wrong?

[Mando Knight]

The trash can is worthless enough that when the Clans reworked it, rather than giving it a full makeover, they just put in their new tech and called it a day. This when they were still in the first generation of Omni designs...

[tyckspoon]

In my (Limited) experience, speedy non-jumping mechs in a city have an alarming tendency to end up inside buildings, and the faster they are the worse this problem is. Not saying the trash cans are good, but wouldn't high speed be a potential liability in urban combat, so it's better to reduce engine size and use the free weight elsewhere? Or are me and my opponents just doing it wrong?

You're doing it wrong. Maneuverability remains king, and even if you're not willing to risk the PSRs for running on roads you can still safely use up to your walk rating, which still gives a faster mech an advantage over a slower one (of course ideally you'd have jumpjets on everything, and it probably would be worth it to drop a movement band if the saved weight gave you space to install jump instead.)

[Mando Knight]

You're doing it wrong. Maneuverability remains king, and even if you're not willing to risk the PSRs for running on roads you can still safely use up to your walk rating, which still gives a faster mech an advantage over a slower one (of course ideally you'd have jumpjets on everything, and it probably would be worth it to drop a movement band if the saved weight gave you space to install jump instead.)

This is why my custom Timberwolf has jump jets. Well, that, and the game I designed it for had a houserule that let one guy essentially guarantee that we had initiative, so being able to jump over the enemy and getting back shots with a Heavy is just plain sweet. (Sadly, the only mission where I got to use it limited the effectiveness of the build's maneuverability, though the PPC claimed a face on its second shot in the fight)

Before I got the Timberwolf, I used a Shadow Cat Prime and then a Nova custom (because the Cat got melted due to a batchall between our exiled Falcon über-sniper and my Wolf-in-Exile pilot...), which were both fairly jumpy and head-cappy.

[RandomLunatic]

In my (Limited) experience, speedy non-jumping mechs in a city have an alarming tendency to end up inside buildings, and the faster they are the worse this problem is. Not saying the trash cans are good, but wouldn't high speed be a potential liability in urban combat, so it's better to reduce engine size and use the free weight elsewhere? Or are me and my opponents just doing it wrong?

Well... sort of.

While it is true that the faster you go, the worse a penalty you take on your skidding checks, skidding only happens when you run. Faster units can obviously go further by just walking, so it tends to be the slower ones that run most of the time and make the most skid checks, and by extension failing and skidding more often. And note anything that does not have "Annihilator" in its name can move at least as fast as an Urbie's run speed while walking.

Skidding also requires you to confine yourself to the roads, and when controlling light, fast units in urban areas, I tend to eschew roads and run through or on the buildings instead.

[Gnoman]

You're doing it wrong. Maneuverability remains king, and even if you're not willing to risk the PSRs for running on roads you can still safely use up to your walk rating, which still gives a faster mech an advantage over a slower one (of course ideally you'd have jumpjets on everything, and it probably would be worth it to drop a movement band if the saved weight gave you space to install jump instead.)

Not always. If you're playing double-blind (a real pain in tabletop, easy as pie in MegaMek), then ambushing becomes an extremely powerful tactic. Granted, most things are better at it than an Urbie, but it's a different paradigm. (Hetzers, on the other hand, are gods in such a situation, due to the low profile allowing them to hide behind level 1 buildings. HBK-4Gs really come into their own here too, as TNs will almost always be relatively low on pavement.

[Mando Knight]

And note anything that does not have "Annihilator" in its name can move at least as fast as an Urbie's run speed while walking.
This includes the oft-maligned 3025 Atlas. Which will then eat the Urbie for breakfast because it's one of the few things that can't just run away from the AC/20.

Skidding also requires you to confine yourself to the roads, and when controlling light, fast units in urban areas, I tend to eschew roads and run through or on the buildings instead.
...Doesn't running through buildings present its own hazardous consequences? Jumping them when possible is the best idea, IMO... if you have a competent jumper that doesn't bake itself when it tries to fire its alpha strike afterward.

[RandomLunatic]

...Doesn't running through buildings present its own hazardous consequences? Jumping them when possible is the best idea, IMO... if you have a competent jumper that doesn't bake itself when it tries to fire its alpha strike afterward.
Yes, but the heavy ones that are both hard to pass through safely and tend to inflict significant damage when you fail are also the ones that have enough CF to support you running over them. And if I have to sacrifice a bit of armor to totally outflank an enemy, it is a price I am willing to pay.

And yes, jumpers are the best way to navigate urban areas. You just do not always get them.

[mangosta71]

This includes the oft-maligned 3025 Atlas. Which will then eat the Urbie for breakfast because it's one of the few things that can't just run away from the AC/20.

I'd rather field the 3025 Atlas than the 3050 version. XL engine right next to a Gauss Rifle = death sentence.

[Philistine]

As far as the history of tanks is concerned, it's important to keep in mind that the period of great diversity in configurations lasted barely a quarter of a century, from the original coneception of the idea during WWI (to be fair, it hadn't been possible much beofre that - like flight, it really required the superior power-to-weight ratio of the internal combustion engine) to a year or so into WWII, which was the first conflict where all the major powers employed them in significant numbers. For most of that time, everyone was still trying to figure out what did and didn't work both in operation and design terms. And there were a lot of competing theories! But from about 1940 on, pretty much all tanks (as distinct from things like armored cars, assault guns, self-propelled artillery and/or SPAA, and even tank destroyers) followed the same pattern: one big gun, beefy enough to reliably OHKO your expected opponents at expected battle ranges, enough frontal armor to defeat own-caliber shells at the same ranges, and as much mobility as you could squeeze in after the above, because Mobility Is The Entire Point Of The Exercise. (Which is why I dislike Assault 'Mechs in principle, even if the game rules do make them very strong.)

Now, there remained some diversity in the exact details of how that pattern was followed - just for starters, light tanks (which sometimes cross-pollinated with armored cars) stuck around largely for scouting and infantry-support roles, while bigger tanks with more firepower were wanted for dealing with enemy armor (or, more often in US practice, for blasting dug-in infantry out of fortified positions with direct fire); at the same time the Soviets and even moreso the Germans also operated heavy tanks with even bigger guns and thicker armor (but with rather limited mobility, which is why the entire category basically vanished post-war - modern MBTs are descended from the mediums). And sometimes it took a while for new models to supersede the old in the field. And especially in Germany, you saw a real grab-bag of types as the war went on, mostly due to the inherent inefficiencies of their industry (seriously, this is a rant unto itself) but also in part due to not having the resources to convert production lines to manufacture the latest models.

And at this point you may be saying, "Of course! And this is why the BT fluff is so realistic!" But really, this is precisely where the fluff fails hardest, because there's apparently no grasp of scale. Nazi Germany was (insanely inefficiently) exploiting the resources of a small fraction of one planet, and working on a timescale of weeks and months. In BT, most entire planets apparently have less industrial infrastructure than some medium-sized towns in the modern world. And the Succession Wars unfold over years and decades, shading up toward centuries. Even before the fall of the Star League, the setting has a couple of hundred years to work out the kinks in the whole 'Mech concept, during which time they're not crippled by "lostech" (another basic setting conceit that simply doesn't make a great deal of sense on this scale - but that's yet another rant). So no, it doesn't particularly make sense that terribad designs should remain in production for four or five centuries (the Rifleman is canonically one of the very earliest 'Mechs to be built), because that's more than enough time to realize you've got a lemon on your hands and buy, beg, borrow, or steal the plans to something better - with or without a license. If the components you need aren't produced locally, START! Build a factory! You've got an entire planet to use if need be, and it'll more than pay for itself over the next couple of centuries! (Possibly much sooner, given how slow, unreliable, and downright dangerous interstellar shipping is in-setting.)

So there's that. As for some of the specific 'Mechs discussed, oh my goodness gracious the Rifleman is terrible and no mistake. It's not even good at the limited, niche job it's supposedly designed for, as it lacks the ammo endurance to use the ACs freely and the heat sinks to blaze away with the lasers. The Jaegermech is a far better AA platform, and isn't really worse if pressed into general service, having about the same sustained firepower (the RFL has a bigger alpha strike, but it runs a serious risk of BBQing itself if it tries). Is the Rifleman the worst 'Mech ever, though? It can still flip the arms and run away from a Hunchback as fast as the HBK can chase, popping off the LLs from beyond the Hunchie's maximum range until the Hunchie gives up and goes home. Granted that "just surviving" against a baseline Hunchback isn't impressive, nor is it any sort of Win, but it's slightly better than nothing. And "nothing" is pretty much what the UrbanMech brings to the table. A big enough gun to make even Heavy and Assaults take notice, but not nearly tough enough to survive attracting the attention of 'Mechs six times its own size. And on top of that, it's too slow to chase down targets, or to evade pursuit… or to ratchet up opponents' to-hit numbers to avoid taking those big hits. The thing it's best at, rather sadly, is being an early focus-fire target, so that opponents can remove a big gun from its side of the board very quickly. It's like someone looked at the HBK and asked, "Okay, now how can we make this design even worse? Make it an object of pure derision for its foes, and unmitigated despair for its friends? Can we make this more useless? Can we make it even smaller - and even slower? We can? And just to add insult to injury, have the Art department draw it as a walking trash can. Mwahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa!" But seriously - its niche is even more limited than the dedicated AA platforms', and even more dangerous, and the Urbie is even less able to take a beating in its turn. Yay, Urbie. :smallamused:

[9mm]

how to understand BT fluff...

It's medieval Europe in space with laser beams, and the economy revolves around digging holes.

I keep expecting CGL to put a lore snippet saying that Comstar just noticed a publishing error that dropped several 0s over the various field guides it's beamed over the years, probably due to Blakist manipulation.

edit: everyone is forgetting the main reason the urbie survived, it's pricetag.

[Gnoman]

If you're referring to weapon ranges, the latest rules make it blatantly official that the "real" in-universe ranges were vastly shortened for the sake of playability.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

how to understand BT fluff...

It's medieval Europe in space with laser beams, and the economy revolves around digging holes.

I keep expecting CGL to put a lore snippet saying that Comstar just noticed a publishing error that dropped several 0s over the various field guides it's beamed over the years, probably due to Blakist manipulation.

edit: everyone is forgetting the main reason the urbie survived, it's pricetag.

Urbie's pricetag is still miles beyond a tank with the same weapon, which would have the same mobility and durability.

You forget, the pricetag of the engine itself is the purchase price of a couple of ICE-based tanks.

[9mm]

If you're referring to weapon ranges, the latest rules make it blatantly official that the "real" in-universe ranges were vastly shortened for the sake of playability.

I refer to EVERYTHING. Ranges, speeds, numbers of mechs available, all of it. Though this does things to the tabletop game, and not all of it good. Which is why it'll probably never happen.



Urbie's pricetag is still miles beyond a tank with the same weapon, which would have the same mobility and durability.

You forget, the pricetag of the engine itself is the purchase price of a couple of ICE-based tanks.

Note the reason why the Argus isn't a omni-mech. The quatermaster has a budget to spend!

[mangosta71]

If you're referring to weapon ranges, the latest rules make it blatantly official that the "real" in-universe ranges were vastly shortened for the sake of playability.
Except that the fluff (novels) backs up the claims made by the tech books. In the first book of the Warrior Trilogy, Phelan marvels that the unknown 'Mech he's facing (turned out to be a Timber Wolf Prime) was hitting targets 700 meters (23-24 hexes) away with a large laser because that's beyond the range of his own weapons (including his extended-range large laser). In the novels, 'Mechs really are as slow as the tech manuals make them (the fastest 'Mech has a lower maximum speed than a sports car, while the average of 4/6 translates to about 40mph).

[Gnoman]

Simply put, that's because it's older material. It's a retcon (or rather, an explanation that the fluff was erroneous to begin with.)

Speed wasn't stated to be changed, but it's pretty arguable whether it should have been.

[Erloas]

The novels use a lot of the "advanced"/non tournament level rules. Including things like extreme ranges. But the range of a Clan ERLL is 25 hexes anyway.

If you're saying that the books range of 700m matches the games ranges of the laser... well that is as it should be. But I think the main statement that Gnoman was talking about was the fact that even 700m is very short range for what a real world version of these weapons would likely be. Since current Battleships have guns with ranges in miles (the 16"/45 caliber Mark 6 gun on some current US Battleship has a range of 22 miles, even the smaller 20 mm cannon had a range of over 4 miles/6800M as claimed by Wikipedia at any rate) and in theory the ACs of 'Mechs would be at least as strong if not stronger then what we currently have. Even "short range" missiles of today have much longer range then 700m.
They also acknowledge that a real fusion engine couldn't possibly explode, but they do in Battletech because "its what people expect and it makes for better stories" is basically paraphrasing what they stated.


edit:
And its worth keeping in mind that although a 'Mech exists doesn't mean it was highly produced or used much. They openly admit in universe that quite a few designs were almost total failures. In the Succession Wars they were probably producing 100 Warhammers or more to every Urbanmech that was produced. Those Urbanmechs would probably last a long time though because they are never going to see frontline duty and probably sitting in many small militas on planets that will probably never be invaded. A joke from the House leadership when the world demanded some 'Mechs for protection. Or given to that pilot that was always a PITA but couldn't be gotten rid of for political reasons so you give him something he couldn't possible cause much trouble in.

Just because the design exists says nothing of its use or production history. It says nothing of how many places manufactured it or how many are available throughout any given House or providence.

[Philistine]

Note that IRL, current-gen MBTs also top out at around 40mph - and that's on roads, cross-country they're slower. Sure, BT has ~1000 years on us; but OTOH, bipedal walkers cannot help but be hideously inefficient and slow compared to even tracked locomotion. Still moreso compared to wheels (like the aforementioned sports car). So 'Mech speeds are one of the more plausible things in the setting.

[snoopy13a]

The novels use a lot of the "advanced"/non tournament level rules. Including things like extreme ranges. But the range of a Clan ERLL is 25 hexes anyway.

If you're saying that the books range of 700m matches the games ranges of the laser... well that is as it should be. But I think the main statement that Gnoman was talking about was the fact that even 700m is very short range for what a real world version of these weapons would likely be. Since current Battleships have guns with ranges in miles (the 16"/45 caliber Mark 6 gun on some current US Battleship has a range of 22 miles, even the smaller 20 mm cannon had a range of over 4 miles/6800M as claimed by Wikipedia at any rate) and in theory the ACs of 'Mechs would be at least as strong if not stronger then what we currently have. Even "short range" missiles of today have much longer range then 700m.
They also acknowledge that a real fusion engine couldn't possibly explode, but they do in Battletech because "its what people expect and it makes for better stories" is basically paraphrasing what they stated.

They do have huge artillery pieces in the Battletech world.

[Provengreil]

Note that IRL, current-gen MBTs also top out at around 40mph - and that's on roads, cross-country they're slower. Sure, BT has ~1000 years on us; but OTOH, bipedal walkers cannot help but be hideously inefficient and slow compared to even tracked locomotion. Still moreso compared to wheels (like the aforementioned sports car). So 'Mech speeds are one of the more plausible things in the setting.

FWIW, for tactical movement along roads the Abrams can disconnect a sort of limiting device and pull 60 mph. It's less safe, but if you have to get there fast you can.

one thing I notice about any game with walkers is that the canonical benefits always seem to be greater damage distribution, a lot more guns, and the ability to negotiate a lot more terrain a lot easier. This holds true in Armored Core, Mechwarrior / Battletech, Chrome Hounds, and Front Mission off the top of my head, and the way Armored Core bots work that series barely counts anyway.

All of these can be explained in all the series that use bipeds as a primary combat unit the same way: they started with the idea of big stompy robots, made it fun, and then justified it. That's the only way it works, because if justification comes earlier you never get to the walkers. So sometimes you just have to accept it.

[Erloas]

They do have huge artillery pieces in the Battletech world.

Yes, but my point was that the standard BattleMech weapon would have a range upwards of 10-20 times the ranges they use in the game. These aren't artillery equivalents.
I did a bit more checking and the 120mm cannon on the M1 Abrams has a range of 4000M or 8000M depending on the shells loaded.

Modern artillery has ranges in the 30-40km range, with 55-60km being possible (not sure how much it might change from the quick examples I've found).
And modern "short range" ballistic missiles are defined as ranges less then 1000km, although probably a better equivelent would be a surface-to-surface anti-tank missile with a range around 5000m, with many other types of missiles in the 100km ranges. Of course even a man-portable rocket launcher has a range of 200m and the smaller semi-guided TOW type missiles (probably closer to Battletech missiles) have ranges around 500m to 4000m depending on the type.

[Provengreil]

Does anyone know of any programs, possibly java, that simply track record sheets?

you know, current heat, various bits of damage, etc?

[Drasius]

Yes, yes, real worl tanks here and now in the 21st have a range of >4km. Go have a look at the BAR calculations and come back to us.

It's a space opera with giant stompy robots people, it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, economies of scale or even good common sense. Use your imagination a bit.

[Rockphed]

Yes, yes, real worl tanks here and now in the 21st have a range of >4km. Go have a look at the BAR calculations and come back to us.

It's a space opera with giant stompy robots people, it doesn't have to obey the laws of physics, economies of scale or even good common sense. Use your imagination a bit.

The problem isn't people not using their imaginations. It is people using their imaginations to take the rules of a 30+ year old game to their logical conclusion.

[Philistine]

Something I've been thinking about lately is how to keep Assault fights from bogging down into a static Game of Turrets, and it occurs to me that this might be doable with a couple of (apparently) small tweaks. If the problem is that Assault 'Mechs can't move without taking worse penalties to their own gunnery than they can hope to impose on their opponents', then maybe the Attack Modifiers table needs to be adjusted to reduce the penalties for attacker movement - perhaps also increasing the penalties for target movement, to keep games from suddenly becoming significantly more lethal. So instead of taking +1 for Walking, +2 for Running, and +3 for Jumping, now you'd take no penalty for Walking and a +1 for Running (I'd seriously consider leaving Jumping at +3, because it's already a very powerful ability - and one which I really suspect players don't need as much extra encouragement to use). I really think that might be enough to get the big iron moving; but if not, or if everybody's fire suddenly becomes too accurate, the option to increase the modifiers for target movement is also available. Obviously stationary targets should never impose a penalty to the attacker's target number; but even shifting one or two hexes could add a +1, with 3-4 hexes of movement being good for a +2, and so on (but leaving Jumping alone).

I haven't sat down and done the math yet, but back of the napkin it looks like this should mostly balance out - I think it makes speed a bit more valuable, but then again I would consider that a positive. YMMV. It seems like it should work to get rid of the godawful boring "run into short range, and then stand completely still and trade punches until somebody falls down" style of gameplay, by making it almost always advantageous to keep moving.

[Alex Knight]

In my experience, the only reason to stand still is when you can't get a better firing position (via range/intervening terrain/firing arcs).

Of course, I don't play solitary one on one fights, and I love artillery so.....

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Something I've been thinking about lately is how to keep Assault fights from bogging down into a static Game of Turrets, and it occurs to me that this might be doable with a couple of (apparently) small tweaks. If the problem is that Assault 'Mechs can't move without taking worse penalties to their own gunnery than they can hope to impose on their opponents', then maybe the Attack Modifiers table needs to be adjusted to reduce the penalties for attacker movement - perhaps also increasing the penalties for target movement, to keep games from suddenly becoming significantly more lethal. So instead of taking +1 for Walking, +2 for Running, and +3 for Jumping, now you'd take no penalty for Walking and a +1 for Running (I'd seriously consider leaving Jumping at +3, because it's already a very powerful ability - and one which I really suspect players don't need as much extra encouragement to use). I really think that might be enough to get the big iron moving; but if not, or if everybody's fire suddenly becomes too accurate, the option to increase the modifiers for target movement is also available. Obviously stationary targets should never impose a penalty to the attacker's target number; but even shifting one or two hexes could add a +1, with 3-4 hexes of movement being good for a +2, and so on (but leaving Jumping alone).

I haven't sat down and done the math yet, but back of the napkin it looks like this should mostly balance out - I think it makes speed a bit more valuable, but then again I would consider that a positive. YMMV. It seems like it should work to get rid of the godawful boring "run into short range, and then stand completely still and trade punches until somebody falls down" style of gameplay, by making it almost always advantageous to keep moving.

Several flaws with this logic:

1) Battletech was supposed to be a slugfest, not a rapier duel. You are supposed to be highly inaccurate. You're supposed to have to worry about using up precious ammo, or overheating yourself too much, because you usually have less than a 50% chance of landing any given blow.

2) It wouldn't stop the 'run into short range and trade punches' mentality, because punching is just as inaccurate as firing at Close range. The only real reason to 'run into melee and punch' is if you are an assault mech, preferably with a hatchet and TSM. Otherwise, you generally do more damage, on average, with your weapons loadout.

3) Penalties for opponents movement are already harsh enough. You want to make the Hussar completely invincible?

[Provengreil]

Something I've been thinking about lately is how to keep Assault fights from bogging down into a static Game of Turrets, and it occurs to me that this might be doable with a couple of (apparently) small tweaks. If the problem is that Assault 'Mechs can't move without taking worse penalties to their own gunnery than they can hope to impose on their opponents', then maybe the Attack Modifiers table needs to be adjusted to reduce the penalties for attacker movement - perhaps also increasing the penalties for target movement, to keep games from suddenly becoming significantly more lethal. So instead of taking +1 for Walking, +2 for Running, and +3 for Jumping, now you'd take no penalty for Walking and a +1 for Running (I'd seriously consider leaving Jumping at +3, because it's already a very powerful ability - and one which I really suspect players don't need as much extra encouragement to use). I really think that might be enough to get the big iron moving; but if not, or if everybody's fire suddenly becomes too accurate, the option to increase the modifiers for target movement is also available. Obviously stationary targets should never impose a penalty to the attacker's target number; but even shifting one or two hexes could add a +1, with 3-4 hexes of movement being good for a +2, and so on (but leaving Jumping alone).

I haven't sat down and done the math yet, but back of the napkin it looks like this should mostly balance out - I think it makes speed a bit more valuable, but then again I would consider that a positive. YMMV. It seems like it should work to get rid of the godawful boring "run into short range, and then stand completely still and trade punches until somebody falls down" style of gameplay, by making it almost always advantageous to keep moving.

The only real answer here is don't use assault mechs much. Even the lightest ones are going to be 5/8 movers, tops. by trying to make them fight at the medium mech speeds and/or modifiers, you're just doing a square peg/round hole thing. If you don't like playing with assault mechs, I'm sure your opponents can accomodate you, and there are very few scenarios that actually require them.

[Philistine]

AK:
Yes, adding artillery should also get movement back into the game. But artillery is an extra set of rules that may or may not be in play in any given game, and has its own issues besides - for one, I seem to recall scatter rules for misses being really bloody awful.

StL:
1) Oh... kay? I don't see how either of the changes I proposed could have the effect you're describing here. The TN for shooting while Walking would be equal to the TN while standing still; but the base chance to hit wouldn't change from what you'd previously have had while stationary. And remaining parked would continue to be a wash from a TN point of view; giving a bonus would would entirely miss the point. So it would still be mostly a game of trading whiffs; the idea is just to make it a mobile game of trading whiffs, even for slow 'Mechs.

2) "Trading punches" is not "trading Punches," and I said "run into short range," not "run into melee." That distinction really should have been obvious in context, what with the kvetching about static "turrets" and not a single word about physical attacks.

3) The extreme end of the spectrum is exactly what I'm worried about, in fact. That's why I said that increasing the TN penalty for target movement might be something extra to consider, if reducing the TN for own movement wasn't enough to stop the Stupid Turret Tricks. Another option, instead of increasing the TN penalty for target movement across the board, would be to stretch the +1 and +2 Penalty bands down a bit, so that moving 1-3 squares gives your opponent a +1 and moving 4-6 gives +2, with 7-9 and 10+ remaining the same; the problem here is that widening the speed bands at the low end would put a lot of 'Mechs' Walk and Run speeds in the same penalty band. Of course movement other than "straight ahead on a featureless plain" is going to mix things up a bit anyway, but still.

P:
As stated further up the page, I don't have much use for Assault 'Mechs on principle. The whole point of an Armored Fighting Vehicle is mobility (otherwise, you could build pillboxes a lot cheaper); that gets lost if the game devolves into a turretfest because moving penalizes your offense without necessarily improving your defense. So the idea is not "trying to make Assaults fight at Medium speeds," it's "giving Assaults any reason to keep moving after they reach optimum weapons range."

[Erloas]

So the idea is not "trying to make Assaults fight at Medium speeds," it's "giving Assaults any reason to keep moving after they reach optimum weapons range."
Isn't that what medium and light 'Mechs are for though? Generally speaking you have to keep moving to keep your opponent from easily getting into your rear arc, because then even a light 'Mech with a few MLs can become a pain very quickly. If you aren't moving then no matter which movement system you use (double blind or alternating movement) a light 'Mech can easily get into and stay in your rear arc and start blasting away, but just moving a bit helps make it so fewer opponents can get and stay there.

Then there is also the options for things like TAG where the pillbox approach becomes less viable because your opponent will almost always have better to-hit numbers at range and they know it so they will keep moving and you have to keep moving too.
The pillbox approach only really works if you have the opponent seriously out gunned and/or you both fall into it.

The other option is to build scenarios into your game where victory is much harder to achieve by simply trying to blast your opponent to pieces.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

StL:
1) Oh... kay? I don't see how either of the changes I proposed could have the effect you're describing here. The TN for shooting while Walking would be equal to the TN while standing still; but the base chance to hit wouldn't change from what you'd previously have had while stationary. And remaining parked would continue to be a wash from a TN point of view; giving a bonus would would entirely miss the point. So it would still be mostly a game of trading whiffs; the idea is just to make it a mobile game of trading whiffs, even for slow 'Mechs.And why should one hundred tons of clumsily maneuvered metal be particularly mobile?

Assault mechs are not supposed to be particularly mobile. You want something with mobility? Stick with Medium and Light mechs. Assault mechs are supposed to anchor a position. Slowly moving forward and obliterating anything within its range. Medium and Light mechs are supposed to run circles around it and easily evade it. That's the only thing that will keep a light or medium mech from getting obliterated by assualts.


2) "Trading punches" is not "trading Punches," and I said "run into short range," not "run into melee." That distinction really should have been obvious in context, what with the kvetching about static "turrets" and not a single word about physical attacks.Then perhaps you should have said 'trading shots' rather than 'trading punches'. There's a rather large faction of individuals who are of the opinion that every fight ends up in melee attacks, much to their dismay, and I had thought that you were of this opinion.

Quite bluntly... that's what modern day tanks do... move into optimum range, fire until target is neutralized, move on to next target.

Assault mechs are not mobile. They should not be mobile. However, neither are they static turrets. Heck, most assaults have a 3/5 speed, which isn't really all that bad. Ones like the Highlander have 3/5/3, which is *REALLY* dangerous, particularly in urban or broken terrain.

Furthermore, short range is not always optimum range, depending on your opponent's weapon loadout. It may be more advantagous to hold to Medium range and completely deny your opponent attacks than to close and risk a lucky 'golden bee-bee'.

This isn't Mechwarrior, it is Battletech. Don't confuse the two.


3) The extreme end of the spectrum is exactly what I'm worried about, in fact. That's why I said that increasing the TN penalty for target movement might be something extra to consider, if reducing the TN for own movement wasn't enough to stop the Stupid Turret Tricks. Another option, instead of increasing the TN penalty for target movement across the board, would be to stretch the +1 and +2 Penalty bands down a bit, so that moving 1-3 squares gives your opponent a +1 and moving 4-6 gives +2, with 7-9 and 10+ remaining the same; the problem here is that widening the speed bands at the low end would put a lot of 'Mechs' Walk and Run speeds in the same penalty band. Of course movement other than "straight ahead on a featureless plain" is going to mix things up a bit anyway, but still.I strongly disagree here. I don't know what you are talking about when you say 'stupid turret tricks'. Turrets are easy to bypass, simply go around their range. Trying to remain immobile is utterly ridiculous for an assault mech, because he can simply then be ignored completely.


As stated further up the page, I don't have much use for Assault 'Mechs on principle. The whole point of an Armored Fighting Vehicle is mobility (otherwise, you could build pillboxes a lot cheaper); that gets lost if the game devolves into a turretfest because moving penalizes your offense without necessarily improving your defense. So the idea is not "trying to make Assaults fight at Medium speeds," it's "giving Assaults any reason to keep moving after they reach optimum weapons range."

Why should anyone want to move out of optimum range? That's where you want to be, after all. The only thing your 'fixes' would do is make combat even more lethal for lighter mechs.

[Alex Knight]

AK:
Yes, adding artillery should also get movement back into the game. But artillery is an extra set of rules that may or may not be in play in any given game, and has its own issues besides - for one, I seem to recall scatter rules for misses being really bloody awful.


Might want to double check the errata then, because they did correct the scatter issue.

[big teej]

I finally played my first game of battletech two days ago :smallbiggrin:

I almost won too :smalltongue:

consider this fair warning of impending tons of questions.