why cant they just slap the mech armor on a tank
>>65262758They do? Tanks in Battletech use the same armor.But myomer is more powerful than the tank engines, giving mechs the advantage.
They do retard, get your nerd shit right and then come back
Well, yeah. Thats been one of the big recurring arguments against mechs on /k/ for the 15 years Ive been here, is that any material lightweight and tough enough to make mechs not a retarded death-trap would also necessarily result in gunships that can take direct cannon fire all day and MBTs that can be dropped by parachute.
>>65262767Mechs in battletech only exist due to magic macguffin artificial muscles, that cannot do rotational movement.Even still, tanks are 95% of the ground vehicles.
>>65262792The best and most realistic mech is unironically the urbanmech
>>65262801Most realistic? Sure.Best? Shut up, because the MadCat is classic.
>>65262792You could just use that stuff to make a reciprocating engine that is converted to rotation
>>65262809Doesn't work, just how the setting works.
>>65262759Then why don't they use it for the tanks?
>>65262758They do. The problem is that tracks/wheels/blades CAN'T be armored so when they get hit it cripples the vehicle, unlike mechs whose legs can be armored.
>>65262933Because if the tank has legs, it's not a fucking tank now is it?
>>65262933Because if you're going through all that effort you might as well make one of the existing mechs and be better armed overall
for the same price of a mech i can make 50 or so AT guns which have better armor, dont need a turret and can still fire from inside a ditch.but that doesnt matter because fpv drones already obsoleted mechs before they became a thing
>>65262758They do. Its even more efficient because tanks have fewer hit zones to distribute armour across. The issue is that myomer is more efficient for generating force from a fusion reactor than a rotary engine and legs enable jump-jetting in a way that vehicle suspension struggles with. Also track/motive hits are more common on tanks, further damaging the mobility of an already cumbersome unit. If you need to lock down an objective in a citytech fight take a demolisher and park that fucker right on it - tougher and cheaper than any 'mech. If you need to remove that demolisher? Defeat in detail. Overload point B then use your superior movement to cycle across and overwhelm it.
>>65262971>for the same price of a mech i can make 50 or so AT guns which have better armor, dont need a turret and can still fire from inside a ditch.Congrats, now assault that position with those defensive weapons. Good luck.They also get bombed by the 100 ton aerial strikecraft that roam the skies lmao.
>>65262971People like you are why people like me put incindiary LRMs in their catapults
They do but tanks fall into three categories in BTHover vehicles that are really fast but fairly lightly armed and die in one shotWheeled vehicles which are fast but get btfo by terrainTracked vehicles which are slow and while durable often get immobilsed by tracks getting blown off or whatevermechs have none of those issues. Vehicles work best as combined arms, either disposable harrassers/transports or stuff that sits in the back and doesn't get shot at because you have to focus on the mechstanks are a lot cheaper though and so are better for stuff like planetary defence or militia, but worse for offensive interplantery attacks because they need more crew and are less potent
>>65262971>but that doesnt matter because fpv drones already obsoleted mechs before they became a thingBattletech has actually reliable AMS systems plus their armor is tough enough to shrug it off long enough to complete the missionalso FPVs are the poorman's SRM2, without the elemental to fuck shit up
>>65262982fpvs wouldnt be much use in BT, even a very light mech like a locust can tank a truckfull of c4 exploding a few meters away. And modern tank cannons would take dozens of hits do do any real damage
>>65262986>And modern tank cannons would take dozens of hits do do any real damageBattletech 'rifles' (modern tank guns) specifically do massively reduced damage to vehicles.
>>65262935Sure they can. You can use solid rubber or runflats with a big armoured hub plate, and apache blades at the very least are proofed against rifle rounds.
>>65262982>>65262986my fpvs with home in on heat will fuck eventualy fuck up your sensors enough you re blind and useless,>>65262979>>65262978a 100 tonne slow mover is getting raped by modern long range AD, LRM can be degraded enough they wont threaten reliably a well dug in entrenched position.i can just sit on my objective and force you to either confront my AT guns or rape you with FPVs
>>65262997>a 100 tonne slow mover is getting raped by modern long range AD, LRM can be degraded enough they wont threaten reliably a well dug in entrenched position.I don't think you understand how battletech shit works, a 100 ton aerial can get hit by modern 140mm APFSDS rounds and still need at least a dozen to a single location to take it out.Firing AA missiles at battletech planes basically tickles them.
>>65262990>massively reduced>>65262986>dozensa heavy rifle is a pre-spaceflight (modern 2020s) tank gun dealing up to 9 damage for four heat. it has superior tonnage and criticals (per damage) to an equivalent AC10 and arguably superior range. The problem is it does -3 damage to anything equipped with standard, ferrofibrous or other specialist armour types. That makes it perfectly viable against anything with primitive armour, industrial mechs and civilian infrastructure like buildings. 6 damage isnt even that bad, you can happily hunt most lights with it, especially pre-helm IS designs. The only reason not to is that you're usually paying too much for the platform carrying it to justify the savings of operating the cheaper weapon
>>65262997>eventualyyeah thats the key word, i can plink at a tank with a .22 and kill it eventually, doesn't mean it will happen before it kills mealso how convenient you don't address the AMS point, something the matter?
>>65263002actually it forces a piloting check, drowning it in AA missiles is the most efficient way to kill it through elevation loss
>>65263004>The problem is it does -3 damage to anything equipped with standard, ferrofibrous or other specialist armour typesThat is to say, every fucking armor you'll find in Battletech outside of 'lol universe is fucked' time periods. >>65263010Battletech missiles aren't the same as IRL continuous rod AA missiles.
Any of you BT autist can tell me a book that explains anti air and anti orbital weaponry in thos setting
>>65263020Anti-Air: Large Lasers, PPC (particle cannons) and such for the most part. Battletech cannon velocity is too slow to hit planes for the most partAnti-orbital: Not really a thing, there's some fuckhuge defensive emplacements but they are rare.
>>65263022ac5s and ac2s are premier anti air weapons they have crazy high velocity>anti orbital weaponryNOOOOKor SDS (giant ground based guns, orbital drones and bases)
>>65263031Oh right I forgot about the smaller AC's.Yeah those are good at AA too. But they still need direct hits, no flak styled rounds really work on battletech armor.
>>65263022>>65263031>ac5s and ac2s are premier anti air weapons they have crazy high velocitThis, the Rifleman and Jagermech are two purpose built ballistic AA mechs, its just that the 3D games don't address the combined arms aspect beyond having tanks to shoot so we don't see them do it
>>65262937>>65262962> has legs,You don't need to give it legs. As long as the fibers are able to contract and relax they can be used to power and move tracks. >better armed overallA mech would be less efficient at carrying both armor and weapons. The tank would also be a smaller target and be less noticeable.
>>65263037>You don't need to give it legs. As long as the fibers are able to contract and relax they can be used to power and move tracks.Doesn't work in universe.
>>65263037Muscles fibers and similar doesnt realy work when they are short though
>>65263037>You don't need to give it legs. As long as the fibers are able to contract and relax they can be used to power and move tracks.like a piston and crankshaft? i don't imagine it would give it that much more power, plus i don't believe for a second that the fiber is smaller and lighter than a transmission>A mech would be less efficient at carrying both armor and weapons.i didn't write the lore, im merely reciting how it works in setting
>>65263013jokes on you im autistically fascinated with price-to-performance budget combat units. you roll up on my lost periphery banana republic you better believe you're seeing ICE mechs with industrial armour and heavy rifles. yeah the missiles arent the same, but its not about the damage, just triggering hits. speaking of...>>65263020cannon AA mechs like the rifleman are usually pretty ass because the AC2 is comically unviable. you're supposed to compensate for it somewhat with flak ammo. if i had to make a dedicated AA mech i'd run large pulse lasers with a targeting computer, but i usually carry a lot of AC10s and PPCs so my whole board can focus-fire any aircraft that happens to drop byThat said i dont play with air assets very often so i cant guarantee im doing it right
>>65263032flak rounds are a thing for acs and work really well against aircraft. Usually even a minor hit is enough for the plane to get out of control and slam into the ground since they need to make low altitude attack runs
>>65263049a leg is just a fiber bundle and a transmission thoughbeit. if you look at your tank example yeah you CAN do that, but contraction speed would be an issue just like real muscles and you probably want higher RPMs than that system can sustain (at least compared to a system with longer levers like say... a leg). as for being smaller, not really. the tank needs far more internal space for crew compartments since it needs 5x as many crew. also the best weapons like large ACs and systems like double heatsinks and ferrofibrous armour are very low-density, so you end up large regardless
>>6526305399% of the time if you even hit a plane with any amount of damage it has a high chance of instantly crashing and dying, which is why ac2s are good with their long range, or something like a hyper assault gauss
>>65262758>>65262759>>65262760>>65262767Dropping tank threads for myomer peristaltic locomotion systems is a step too far for BT.
>>65263066it just sucks that they're so abysmal at everything else. UACs should've been the default and even then a UAC2 is not enough
Is there any lore on how a physical munition moves from one body part to another? It always struck me as the most retarded thing in battletech that they don't have set ammo mounts like the weapons (on the games that do that), at least CASE explicitly demands it can only be used on the torsos so it makes some sense but when you have a AC20 shell or LRMs moving from the left leg to the right arm it gets a little silly
>>65263090thats fairly uncommon tbf>>65263070they aren't bad for their BV cost and its good having the longest range weapon to force the enemy to come to you, though in later eras you might as well take erll or erppc
>>65263090Space magic, except when it isnt, then it causes unreliable ammo feed quirks>>65263109Yeah they're cheap in BV but... so is a heavy rifle. You just cant get enough AC2s onto a combat unit to make it cost-effective to field
>>65263063Flak rounds in BT are more like giant shotguns/canister-shot than flak rounds.
>but worse for offensive interplantery attacks because they need more crew and are less potentThis is still the dumbest part of the lore. You can have an INCREDIBLY complex machine like a mech piloted by one main character nigga who has systems simplifying all tasks down to a HUD showing him all info he needs, doing the targetting, situational awareness, adjusting legs and feet to walk up and down crazy slopes, balancing fast runninh and shooting, and even damage control as it happens, but a tank needs more than two guys? And why wouldn't more crew be better then, life is super cheap and you can have more eyes and more brains looking, targetting and shooting more weapons at more enemies at once. You should be having more crews IN mechs, you got two arms why not aim at two different things, or have 4 arms and focus or divide your fire at will.Mechwarrior tries so hard to justify having everything be done better by mechs but its to its detriment because it makes non-mech enemies super weak, lame and boring, and the point is that mech technology is stagnant or lost and they aren't shitting them out the factories. All the new videogames do the same shit too, gauntlet of enemy mech, blow up shitty emplaced defenses, blow up building, new gauntlet. It's so unfun to face any enemy that isn't a fucking boss fight top tier enemy mech.
>>65263116the pike combat vehicle is pretty useful, sits at the back all game and snipes
>>65263121Tankers dont have neurohelmets
>>65263121i assume it has to do with the fact the tanks are significantly cheaper than mechs, they strip all the fancy automated systems and instead use regular meatbags to save on costs which can be used to buy 3 or 4 more
>the largest battletech warship is smaller than the smalest 40k warp capable ship>900mt mjolnir vs 950 scoot slop
>>65262759>>65262792Why can't they just use myomer to drive a crankshaft?Also, as a non-BT fan why are crab/spider tanks not more common in universe? I get that bipedal locomotion has some major advantages but it also has tradeoffs, and 4/6/8 legged tanks seem like they could fill some niches better than bipedal mechs and possibly substitute tracked/wheeled tanks in others
>>6526315840k ships are also underpowered for their size.
>>65263163>Why can't they just use myomer to drive a crankshaft?They just can't. Doesn't work that way.
>>65263068why can't you rotate a drive shaft with myomer?
>>65263178But why not? It contracts under electrical current to produce force, why can't you use that in place of a combustion engine's piston? Does it become too heavy in that configuration and lose out compared to the electric motors or whatever are used in the tank?
>>65263195It just doesn't work that way, talk to the battletech founders if you want to know why.
>>65263163>why are crab/spider tanks not more common in universe?quad mechs are a thing but they're basically unicorns, you only really see them in Terra or other such ultra rich worlds as static emplacements, mainly to flex on the poors
>>65263182>>65263195>>65263163Because that would by cycling.>>65263090>Is there any lore on how a physical munition moves from one body part to another?They never talk about it, but the game's rules strongly and consistently suggest Hammer Space technology.
>>65263133i love a good ICE vehicle but man, those AC2s are getting completely mogged by a single light gaus. it's only viable if you already overmatch your enemy enough to screen the pikes, and then why not use the money on units that will just kill faster? a pike is 1:1 on BV and even if we use Cbills i reckon three commandos would roll six pikes
>>65263163>why are crab/spider tanks not more common in universe?because mechanically a quad has more legs which means more places that need armour, with no increase in carrying capacity. so a quad-atlas is still limited to 100t just like a biped atlas, but it needs to armour twice as many legs, and that means either less guns or weaker legs. damaged legs lock up or hang uselessly, so having many weaker legs actually becomes a liability when compared to a few strongly armoured ones. additionally, quads cant turn in place as easily or strafe like bipeds, and often cant torso-twist without expensive turret equipment. Lastly, quads and especially tris struggle to interface with human nervous systems. TLDR - they're harder to make and operate for less power and survivability, and also no arms
>>65263209>talk to the battletech founders if you want to know why.Yes, I want to know the lore explanation. Where can I read it?
>>65263163>Why can't they just use myomer to drive a crankshaft?Because battletech writers couldn't imagine how that would be possible. They genuinely don't know how a steam engine works
>>65262758They do, they just break alot easier than a mech which relies on myomers. Sometimes though a tank is more optimal, like if you have a wide open map, a rommel with a gauss rifle can tear apart incoming mechs pretty good and you don't need to babysit it to much. Overlap it's firing arc with where your other mechs are fighting and you've got a good bit of extra damage per turn. Like I said though the problem is that they are generally more fragile and tanks very quickly become fixed in places due to engine hits. They have their uses tho. Theoretically if you take a ton of SRM carriers to a close range city right and be able to rape anything that is unfortunate enough to turn the street corner on you. I would say demolishers but they have a pretty high BV iirc
>>65263272There is no lore explanation, you just can’t.Just like monitors don’t work because reasons.
>>65263262>and also no armsnta by why would this be an issue? there's plenty of mechs without arms
>>65262758>>65262767The chink GD01 weighs just 500kg and is way cheaper than a tank, albeit it's not armoured yet: https://youtu.be/oWOyUMJWptc?
>>65263272>>65263049>>65263163>>65263182There will be a proper in universe explanation somewhere, but finding it will be hard. I'm curious as well so I might spend some time looking, but the availability of the old sources where they laid the hard technological foundation for things is patchy and, ironically mirroring the setting, a lot of it is now lost. Have the outputs and operating parameters of some lasers while we're at it. The joules are (were?) hard canon for the classes of laser btw, table in pic is errata for a typo in another issue where someone accidentally gave the wattages as joules and the section that in included this table was meant to be definitive: Small lasers are about 0.8-1MW, LL are about 5MW etc. Notice also that the beam duration is much shorter than in the much later video games. Interesting stuff.
>>65263495>a lot of it is now losyandex search vk forum,z-library.skthe slavs share thousands of pdf on western table top games
>>65263401>Theoretically if you take a ton of SRM carriers to a close range city right and be able to rape anything that is unfortunate enough to turn the street corner on you.Hardly a theoretical, SRM 40 (2xSRM20) carriers are a thing, so are SRM60 (10xSRM6), they just don't get the same fame as Demolishers because the absoulute lack of armor, meaning they get shot once and light up the sky with ammo detonation
>>65263478And its a serious handicap>cannot punch, so no chance to crit the head in melee>cannot say, grab objectives or enemy mechwarriors and escape with them>cannot stand up as easily iirc>cannot repel battle armour during boarding actions>cannot wield a +1 katana>cannot be used for recovery of other assets>much less useful for stealing things during piracy operations>no hypermobile actuators quirk to shoot behind you>no extended firing arc for arm mounted weapons>cannot pick up a tree and beat you to death with it>cannot swap out weapons by holding them or dropping them
>>65263503They don't seem to have any of the magazines at all.
>>65263182>>65263495Lmao the nu lore says that myomers aren't even efficient electrical motors. Truly all tabletop writers in the 21 century are just vandals in the ruins of something that used to be grand. Picrel: Pack it up, even Battletech now thinks there's actually no reason that Battletechs should exist anymore.Anyway, haven't found grognard lore for it yet. I'm going to give it a rest, it might not even exist anymore. I'll keep an eye out though.
>>65263574whats the name you re searching i can try finding it
>>65263624there were some different magazines that had this stuff, Battletechnology was one, the first one I looked for and didn't find, Sarna has a backlog of some of them if you want refs for what they look like, some other titles etc
>>65263621>energy efficiencyWhy does that matter when you're sitting on top of a minature sun? Just put more power into it until it outperforms any other engine limited by fuel flow rates and RPM. There's a reason mech performance is heat limited and not power limited after all...
>>65262971>muh fpv dronesLiterally unuseable in the EWAR environment of even the most backwater battlefield in Battletech.
>>65263013>Battletech missiles aren't the same as IRL continuous rod AA missiles.Well, yeah. They're anti-TANK rated missiles because ASF are supersonic flying bricks that can carry main battle tank levels of armor for the heavier models and essentially just fucking laugh at anything resembling a modern SAM warhead.
>>65263495>illumination times under 0,5 secsKek. These rifles would vaporize themselves, no?But then again, my headcanon is that standard laser rifles have a continuous beam that has about the illumination time of a flintlock's lock time (0,07-0,04), with the option of longer beam duration, so that your target's movement assists in the cutting action.
>>65263644https://www.sarna.net/files/media/magazines/ctrl-f battletechnology
>>65263621Energy-efficiency is literally irrelevant when you have a goddamn fusion engine powerful enough to operate a whole-ass arsneal of anti-tank rated DEWs.
>>65263621>even Battletech now thinks there's actually no reason that Battletechs should exist anymore.they were nobility weapons for a while, even in old lore battlemechs were hunks of junk only kept as status symbols for their petty wars
>>65262767>Well, yeah. Thats been one of the big recurring arguments against mechs on /k/ for the 15 years Ive been here, is that any material lightweight and tough enough to make mechs not a retarded death-trap would also necessarily result in gunships that can take direct cannon fire all day and MBTs that can be dropped by parachute.
>>65266262What's even the argument being made here? An F16 could be rendered inoperable by a single burst of rifle fire, as could a semi truck. A mech should at the very least survive rifle fire, presumably more if you want them to be worth fielding. An F16 will also crumble like paper if its weight is concentrated on any surface that isn't the landing gear, whereas a mech should reasonably expect every part of its frame to be structural and load bearing from practically any angle, to account for the mech going prone or taking a knee, etc; and shock resistant since not every step it takes will be soft or from a uniform height. You would have to be the dumbest nigger alive to be making the assertion that the material demands of a mech chassis are the same as those of an airframe or truck chassis, so presumably you're trying to say something else?
>>65266262damn, how many truck could you fit in a carrier?
