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Battletech - Also known as Trannytech
- Thread starter Frosted Snowflakes
- Start date
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- Sep 7, 2019
yeah they'd need to put a Fusion engine in for a Gauss and that kind of goes against the Hetzer's whole purpose
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- Jun 4, 2018
Still, the Regulator's not bad. 45 ton hovertank, decent armor, moves 9/14, gauss rifle. At a little over 2 million C-bills, it's actually cheaper than the Hollander-F3 Mech.
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- Sep 7, 2019
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- Apr 25, 2020
Only for a Heavy Gauss Rifle. Normal Gauss Rifles can be mounted on ICE vehicles without power amps just fine. The Yellow Jacket, for example, is an ICE-powered VTOL with a Gauss Rifle.
Still, you wouldn't put it on a Hetzer. You're paying more in tonnage and you get a minimum range (no idea why GRs have a minimum range but thems the breaks), plus your gun blows up if it gets hit. Vehicles disperse heat from ballistic weapons without any need for heatsinks, so the AC/20's high heat output can be ignored just fine.
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- Jun 4, 2018
Indeed. Even with tank vulnerabilities, the Regulator stacks up pretty well against the Hollander-F3. The Regulator's got ten more tons of mass (which helps), and the Hollander's speed of 5/8 and lower armor (four tons versus the Regulator's six).
I used to get similar reactions when I deployed Saladin hovertanks. Nothing will make a Mech pilot nervously contemplate the fragility of existence quite like an AC/20 mounted on a hover chassis going almost 130kph. That doesn't even cover 3050+ upgrades which swapped out the stock AC/20 for an LB20X-AC or an Ultra AC/20.
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- Mar 23, 2016
The Hetzer could very easily carry a Gauss Rifle and 3 tons of ammo (instead of an AC20 and 4 tons of ammo). You'd get significantly more range, a little more than half the damage and a few more rounds. I thought the reason not to cram a Gauss into a Hetzer would be that it's kinda anathema to slap an expensive Gauss Rifle into a tank built around the concept of being cheap and easy to replace like the Hetzer... but wouldn't you know, the AC20 costs just as much as a Gauss Rifle (also less crits), so technically, there is no reason not to put one into the Hetzer and use it as a long to mid range Mech Destroyer.
I guess it would get its shit kicked in once it gets flanked or the enemy gets too close, but it certainly sounds like a type of tank that could work in a niche. You can almost field an entire lance of Gauss Hetzers for the price of one Regulator II tank, so that is actually nothing to sneeze at.
The only sources of heat buildup for a Gauss Rifle would be friction inside the barrel (which could be minimized) and whatever heat the circuitry produces - if any.
Both of those components could be set up to allow heat to be dissipated very easily. Modern prototypes of railguns use some sort of polymere casing around the projectile and that catches fire, but that doesn't generate as much heat as conventional propellant igniting at supersonic speeds in excess of a mile a second... and the burning lump of polymere is expelled out the barrel. BT Gauss Rifles could use a smarter system, that reduces friction inside the barrel.
The minimum range kinda eats, but a lance of 2 Gauss Hetzers and two AC20 ones (acting as bodyguards) could be pretty neat. Also, a Gauss Rifle blowing up on you might not be fun, but hitting an ammo bin on an AC20 will be visible from low orbit and make tiny Hetzer pieces fall down on the immediate area for minutes.
The more I think about it, the more I get to the conclusion that there needs to be a Gauss Hetzer.
Nothing is more funny than a tank going from "Fuck you and fuck your unprotected back" to "fuck you, fuck your unprotected back and fuck every single one of these assholes you call lancemates".
Thank god no one came up with the concpet of an LB-X UAC that can fire slugs and clusters in turns.
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- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Coilguns like Gauss rifles are a lot, lot less heat-inducing than railguns. First, the contact friction can easily be minimized through the use of polymer sabots because as you'll see later, you don't need the projectile to be in constant contact with the barrel. Second, there's no direct induction of electricity into the round itself. Railguns operate by using the projectile to close an arc, and then letting the electromagnetic field that's been created yank all the way through the barrels. So, you have the intense heat of the electric arc and the heat of the friction to deal with it. Coilguns are essentially a series of solenoids, and that means instead of one constant power dump you have a series of timed discharges, so instead of two rails getting hot as fuck its a series of separated coils.
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- Apr 25, 2020
The entire point of a Hetzer is to be as cheap and simple as possible while carrying the largest, most brutish gun available so you could park it in a pile of rubble and give an attacking 'mech a very unpleasant surprise at point-blank range. Sure, we can build one with a Gauss Rifle just fine. There's tonnage and vehicles don't care about internal space the same way 'mechs do. But in-universe putting a high-tech weapon like a Gauss Rifle on a Hetzer (even if technically the AC/20 and the GR cost the same) is a waste of development time and resources when you could just design a better vehicle that was made to take a Gauss Rifle in the first place. Something with a turret, for example.
I can just imagine an experimental Gauss Hetzer firing a shot and either flipping onto its roof, or skidding 30 feet backwards with every shot.
Speaking of railguns, I'm always kind of surprised that BattleTech doesn't have any railguns. Only MechCommander has any reference to them, and that game isn't even canon. Given that both the Inner Sphere and the Clans have much better materials science than us (BattleMech armor is nothing short of magical) you would expect them to get over the issues with rails being damaged by firing.
Hell, even if they couldn't fix that, it could be an interesting weapon. More compact and lighter than a Gauss Rifle and with a similar range and damage profile, but its "ammo" is all built in. Give it 12 shots or something, Once these shots are fired, the rails are too damaged and must be replaced. Have the rails be modular enough that replacing them is the equivalent to an ammo replenishment operation.
Someone call the Captain-General, we have an idea for a new weapon for the FWLM!
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- Mar 23, 2016
Usually, I would agree, but the AC20 and the Gauss Rifle cost the same and that makes any such argument fall flat instantly. If the Gauss is harder to get or more rare, why is the cost the exact same? It seems to be an oversight by the authors of BT that the Gauss is relatively cheap, but that doesn't change the fact that it is cheap. Arguing that it's a "waste of resources" is entirely pointless when I can just refer the cost of resources and go "but there isn't any difference". A standard Hetzer costs 616,000 ComStar bucks, while a Gauss Hetzer would cost you 636,000 Fochts, due to the slightly higher cost of the ammo and that difference is entirely negligible.
In fact, there's a FedCom Civil War era version with a fusion engine and a ludicrously expensive LB-X 20 (that's also more rare than a Gauss Rifle, mind you)... for shit's n giggles: an LB-X 20 plus one ton of ammo costs more than a standard Hetzer.
The LB-X 20 Hetzer variant costs you 1.3 million credits - and it isn't even the most expensive stock variant of the Hetzer. The only variants cheaper than the Standard Hetzer are the Laser and AC10 version, the LRM, SRM and Scout versions are slightly more expensive, the sealed version costs a whooping 2.5 million (but given it's a post Jihad design, being poor is better than coughing up liquified lung tissue).
As for the tactic uses of a Gauss Hetzer, I don't really know what the issue is. It's not a tank to break through hostile lines, it's a (more or less static) tank destroyer for defensive lines.
In that niche it's far more versatile when it has actual range to take advantage of.
The AC20 Variant really only shines in city maps or any other kind of map where fighting happens at very short ranges. The Gauss Rifle allows it to be used on more open spaces.
Admittedly, the AC10 version of the Hetzer is a bit cheaper than even the standard version, does almost the same damage (while carrying more ammo and armor with the added benefit of AC munitions like AP rounds being carried) and it has a pretty decent range, too, so that seems to be a good compromise between the AC20 version and a non-canon Gauss version.
Sorry, but that's just utter nonsense. The Hetzer weighs in at 40 tons, has a low point of gravity and can distribute the recoil of shooting across its 4 wheels. The Hollander weighs less while having the gun at the highest point and offset to the right. If the Hollander can fire, so can the Hetzer.
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- Apr 25, 2020
You're talking about tabletop terms, I'm talking about in-universe reasons. In-universe, it takes money to develop a new vehicle, and a Gauss Rifle isn't a drop-in replacement for an Autocannon for at the very least two reasons: power consumption and recoil management. And likely way more. Like Quickscell being a bunch of cheapskates. If we're going by your argument, there's no reason why we couldn't replace the Gauss Rifle on a Hollander with a bunch of machineguns and call it a Piranha.
If you want something that can reach out and touch someone, get a few LRM carriers. If you want something cheap to annoy people in urban combat, get Hetzers. Or Urbies, for that matter.
The Hollander can do one thing the Hetzer can't, though: it can lean into the shot and brace itself. It's also built from the ground up to take that massive burst of recoil. Which a Hetzer isn't. (Also, BattleMechs are magical things that don't have to worry about center of gravity because the authors said so.)
Either way, this is pointless. Saying "we need a Gauss Hetzer" doesn't do anything, none of our wishes are canon and the Hetzer isn't going to get an updated version unless someone decides to install a HAG on it or some silly shit like that on a future TRO. Homebrew your own for your matches. Me, I'll stick with 'Mechs. Vehicles are sturdier now than they were before, but you have to roll so many crits against them it's not even funny.
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- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
Aw, man, you never let us do fun stuff with the vehicles, Leftenant.
*hides his Savannah Masters*
*hides his Savannah Masters*
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- Apr 25, 2020
A Savannah Master blows up if anyone even looks at it funny, so you might as well have fun with it. Find a nice salt flat, zoom around like a maniac while poking things with the laser.
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- Mar 31, 2020
The Hetzer got all kinds of variants but they all revolve around the AC (well most of them) We got one with an LBX-20, then we got one with a RAC5. The Blakists build one with an Ultra AC20 and Stealth Armor. Oh and the Blakists also improved the Regulator: the Regulator 2 with more speed, more armor and more ammo. Though according to the lore the Fedsuns had an effective counter: use Grenadier battle armor as mobile land mines. After all the death of any vehicle in the BT universe are SRM's. Oh and the Star League also had the Fury as a tank with a Gaus Rifle (though that was an 80 tons tracked tank.
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- Sep 7, 2019
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- Apr 25, 2020
As I said, drive around like a maniac around a salt flat and poke at things with the laser for maximum fun with Savannah Masters. Nothing like having a flank speed of 20 to make sure only double-sixes with Pulse Lasers can hit you.
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- Jun 4, 2018
Huh.
So we all know how certain brands became known generically. Xerox, Kleenex, etc, right?
Evidently that's where the 'LBX' designation for the LBX autocannon comes from. The original Star League era manufacturer, Lubalin Ballistics, manufactured the LBX autocannon for the Champion. As the original LB10X-AC was rushed into production, my guess is the X stands for 'experimental'.
I always wondered about that.
So we all know how certain brands became known generically. Xerox, Kleenex, etc, right?
Evidently that's where the 'LBX' designation for the LBX autocannon comes from. The original Star League era manufacturer, Lubalin Ballistics, manufactured the LBX autocannon for the Champion. As the original LB10X-AC was rushed into production, my guess is the X stands for 'experimental'.
I always wondered about that.
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2019
The fact that the answer to a star of Clan mechs is to throw their weight/BV back at them in Savannah Masters is legit the funniest thing in Battletech to me.
This is before you get into abuse of things like skid rules, collisions and all that other stuff. Bowling for Mechs.
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- Apr 25, 2020
Did they make that official? When I first heard about it (a good 20 years ago. Jesus Christ, I feel old now), it was considered a fun but apocryphal theory.
Yep. It's just silly fun. Of course, that strategy completely falls apart once you leave Planet Cueball and fight on any map with forests. Or gentle rolling hills. Or just particularly large pebbles. Inertia is a harsh mistress when your top speed is 200+km/h and you have literally zero grip.
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- Mar 31, 2020
Interesting. Sarna.net states this for LB-X
It remains unclear what "LB-X" actually stands for. Several suggested explanations are mentioned in various sources:
It remains unclear what "LB-X" actually stands for. Several suggested explanations are mentioned in various sources:
- "LB" supposedly stands for "Lubalin Ballistics", the original designer and manufacturer of the weapon[1][2]
- "Light Barrel - Extended Range"[3]
- "Large Bore - Extended"[4]