Battletech - Also known as Trannytech

  • 🐕 I am attempting to get the site runnning as fast as possible. If you are experiencing slow page load times, please report it.
Is it just me or did the beginner box not come with alpha strike cards? I went through my cards because I want to use the vindicator in my lance but I don’t remember there being a card.
 
Might have been either you or @RomanesEuntDomus who dropped it, but it sounds great to me to be honest. Frankly the Gauss Rifle as it is now as an AC/15 is just ridiculous since it does 50% more damage than the AC/10 at more range, which is the inverse of how ballistics typically work, and the extra damage also butts up against the AC/20's job. Don't forget it also has one heat compared to the AC/10's three heat, so that's two less SHS or one less DHS necessary to balance it out. It also has more damage output per ton of ammo, since 15x8 is 120 and 10x10 is only 100. Although the issue there isn't necessarily the Gauss Rifle itself but if I recall correctly its because the AC/10 is statistically speaking the worst weapon in the game by far. Even with Succession Wars tech the Large Laser is a better choice by far in terms of both tons and crits, and the PPC is at a net 1 extra heat when you factor in the ammo vs. heat sink needs, which for the extra range and no ammo dependency or explosion risks is worth it. There's a reason the LB and Ultra versions are so hilariously better than they are for the other sizes, the IS Ultra AC/10 even having the same range brackets as the Clan one which none of the other Ultras do.
So I went looking and yeah, it was me.

As I said in that post, it's pretty obvious autocannons were supposed to be the Big Guns of Battletech but FASA fucked up really hard with them. Even in 3025 tech, lasers + heatsinks are usually better bang for your buck, if for no other reason that they don't explode. Ultras and their double rate of fire helped, but jams being permanent makes them unacceptably unreliable as main guns.

It's the kind of stuff that could be fixed with a new edition and associated rebalancing of the game, but BattleTech is never going to have that because the game has far too much back catalogue (including mech designs) that would be rendered either illegal (if crits/tonnage are changed) or unbalanced (if heat/range/damage are changed) by mucking about with weapon stats. All they can do is add new gear.
 
Last edited:
  • Agree
Reactions: Snekposter
How would you guys balance Ballastics with Engery weapons, I enjoy the double ammo bins of YAML and really think they help balance things out.
For me is usually Ballistics for long range and Energy for everything else, you could easily swap it the other way around too, in fact, my most used mech was a Marauder II armed with a Gauss Cannon, I replaced the medium lasers for medium pulse lasers and the PPCs for large pulse lasers and filled it with as much double heat sinks as I could, you could solo some difficult missions with it.

I think you can even use a AC/2 as a long range weapon in MW5 because, iirc, ballistic weapon don't have a maximum range, they only disappear when they go out of bounds or hit something, I could be terribly mistaken, it's been a while since I played MW5.
 
For me is usually Ballistics for long range and Energy for everything else, you could easily swap it the other way around too, in fact, my most used mech was a Marauder II armed with a Gauss Cannon, I replaced the medium lasers for medium pulse lasers and the PPCs for large pulse lasers and filled it with as much double heat sinks as I could, you could solo some difficult missions with it.

I think you can even use a AC/2 as a long range weapon in MW5 because, iirc, ballistic weapon don't have a maximum range, they only disappear when they go out of bounds or hit something, I could be terribly mistaken, it's been a while since I played MW5.
It also means the AI, including your teammates, only fire at optimum range instead of what in TT would be max range. There's YAML settings that lets you play around with how missiles and ballistics operate, with ballistics getting dropoff and allowing the AI to fire to their full Extreme range bracket and missiles moving on a bit before dropping dead once they hit their max range instead of disappearing. Balance wise I move armor and structure to 1.25x and set ballistics at 1.5x damage, which puts them in the big gun role they deserve.
 
I think you can even use a AC/2 as a long range weapon in MW5 because, iirc, ballistic weapon don't have a maximum range, they only disappear when they go out of bounds or hit something, I could be terribly mistaken, it's been a while since I played MW5.
No you are right, it makes the AC/20 one of the strongest weapons in vanilla since the AI is so predictable you can snipe way out to 2km fairly consistently with it.
 
Hopefully, some mod such an update for YAML or PGI's next MechWarrior game, can implement some actual bullet drop on Ballistics weapons, especially if the mission takes place in world with either high or low gravity, it should affect the trajectory of projectile and wildly change the minimum/effective/maximum range of the weapon.

Then again, at the ranges most fights in the game take place, just a couple of kilometers, it might be a moot point, given the calibers of the weapons used. A lore reason to not implement it or just implement something very basic like now.
 
Hopefully, some mod such an update for YAML or PGI's next MechWarrior game, can implement some actual bullet drop on Ballistics weapons, especially if the mission takes place in world with either high or low gravity, it should affect the trajectory of projectile and wildly change the minimum/effective/maximum range of the weapon.

Then again, at the ranges most fights in the game take place, just a couple of kilometers, it might be a moot point, given the calibers of the weapons used. A lore reason to not implement it or just implement something very basic like now.
Yeah, the tabletop game doesn't translate very well to a real-time video game. There's a massive lore explanation (because of course there is because this is BT) but the TL;DR is that since armor is extremely ablative and excellent at both stopping penetrating hits and keeping fractures localized (space magic!), the only best way to open up a BattleMech is by smashing the entire outside to bits, so autocannons are exactly that: burst-firing weapons firing APHE shells designed to detonate inside the armor to maximize disintegration.

End

Autism Begins

Now since the best means of dealing with BT-style armor is to break the whole thing apart piece by piece, the best way to do that is by slamming it with a crapton of rounds designed to cause sub-surface fractures. So a whole lot of relatively low-velocity but high-filler shells works a lot better than deep penetrating shells that cause a void but also don't weaken the armor above because space magic. You can see how that is sub-optimal given our objective. So, the best way to accomplish our goal is a relatively light, short-length projectile designed to fire at a relatively low velocity but maximizing the amount of HE filler. Now, that coincidentally allows us to cut down on the necessary weight of propellant, which for high-velocity cannons really adds up. The M103 heavy tank of the 1950's had a 120mm cannon that fired a 24.02 pound HE shell but it took 12.4 pounds of powder and 22.35 pounds of metallic cartridge to safely fire it, for a total of 34.75 pounds. Its AP shell was 50.85 pounds and took 56.46 pounds of cartridge and propellant to send it flying. You can see where the problems with trying to maximize muzzle velocity run into our goal of literally shredding the armor apart. Its also why in BT AP rounds are twice the per-shell weight (since heavier shell), and why hyper-velocity autocannons are the way they are, since increasing velocity and therefore range requires more powder, more chamber pressure, a longer barrel and reinforced breech to handle the pressure, and a thicker, heavier shell that won't shatter on impact at those higher velocities while still maintaining the same amount of HE filler as a lighter round.

TL;DR of the autism: autocannons work by tearing armor apart section by section, and to do that spraying the whole thing with a bunch of rounds works a lot better than a single big hit that causes significant yet purely localized damage. And to spray things with a lot of rounds you need to sacrifice velocity and shell weight. Naturally that sort of gameplay would be considered very un-fun and dumb by players since you'd need to uh... close to about oh, you know a bit less than 300m or so if you wanted to reliably land all your shots on a single mech section with such a weapon.

Okay, so long, long discussion on ballistics over with, even in MW5 you still need to substantially elevate and lead your target since even a Tier 5 AC/20 has a velocity of 500 m/sec, which is a full 2 seconds to get to 1km. That's 1640 feet per second, which is roughly half of what modern 5.56x45mm NATO rounds achieve (3100 fps/944 m/sec). For comparison to actual cannons, a modern howitzer that's designed to shoot over obstacles at stationary targets has more muzzle velocity. I don't know what settings you're using but I have to use a targeting computer that gives a lead indicator if I want to use an AC/20 as a sniper weapon.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: Corn Flakes
Fantastic autism, @Snekposter. I'm pretty sure the only weapon class in BattleTech that works entirely on kinetic energy is the Gauss Rifles. And even then, it's less penetrating the armor, and more hypersonically splashing slugs against the target and taking chunks of Space Wizard Metal Ferro-Fibrous with it. Everything else is either dealing damage through high explosives (Autocannons, missiles) or heat and impact (energy weapons).

Seriously, by itself BattleTech armor is a miracle of materials science that rivals fusion engines. Its material properties are fucking nuts.
 
Fantastic autism, @Snekposter. I'm pretty sure the only weapon class in BattleTech that works entirely on kinetic energy is the Gauss Rifles. And even then, it's less penetrating the armor, and more hypersonically splashing slugs against the target and taking chunks of Space Wizard Metal Ferro-Fibrous with it. Everything else is either dealing damage through high explosives (Autocannons, missiles) or heat and impact (energy weapons).

Seriously, by itself BattleTech armor is a miracle of materials science that rivals fusion engines. Its material properties are fucking nuts.
Yeah, Gauss Rifles are brute force approach to the problem. Like taking a sledgehammer to concrete over and over. Simple in concept, and effective with a heavy enough and fast enough hammer.

As to BT armor, I actually did some thinking on how we could make something similar. Because we already have analogues on both the macro level (reinforced concrete) and on the micro level (resin composites). So the thing I came up with was a few sets of inch-thick compound plates, the top half being a cermet that's been reinforced with tungsten fibers on both sides and internally, the back half being a hardened steel plate to catch spall and provide a backing to the top layer. You then take those plates and stack them on top of one another, and secure them with a series of vertical reinforcing rods that go all the way through. Any voids would be contained, and the compound design would hinder both kinetic and chemical threats, forcing one to break the whole assembly apart layer by layer. You can also scale it, by taking said assemblage, sticking it in a box with armored sides, and then using those boxes to cover a larger area, making it both infinitely scaling in coverage and allowing for ease of repair.

Hmm, I think I just figured out how the Merkava's armor works.
 
Hopefully, some mod such an update for YAML or PGI's next MechWarrior game, can implement some actual bullet drop on Ballistics weapons, especially if the mission takes place in world with either high or low gravity, it should affect the trajectory of projectile and wildly change the minimum/effective/maximum range of the weapon.

Then again, at the ranges most fights in the game take place, just a couple of kilometers, it might be a moot point, given the calibers of the weapons used. A lore reason to not implement it or just implement something very basic like now.
Actually MW5 Vanilla balistic weapons start dropping after a certain range. One of things I found out you can sit very far away from the city your about to destroy and just lob AC rounds into it.
 
Actually MW5 Vanilla balistic weapons start dropping after a certain range. One of things I found out you can sit very far away from the city your about to destroy and just lob AC rounds into it.
Yeah theres a cheat mech in YAML that has 8(!) RAC/2s and it makes objective destruction trivial, it also makes trival destroying atlases leopards and small moons but thats netheir herw nor there.
 
For once I would LOVE a new MW game that is not about some random mercs (because the writers were too lazy to work) and has the player as a permanent part of one faction or another.

The the word of blake Jihad would be a great unexplored era for mechwarrior games that the battletech timeline stopped at prior to FASA becoming defunct.
 
For once I would LOVE a new MW game that is not about some random mercs (because the writers were too lazy to work) and has the player as a permanent part of one faction or another.

The the word of blake Jihad would be a great unexplored era for mechwarrior games that the battletech timeline stopped at prior to FASA becoming defunct.
I always wanted a game where you got to choose which House military you can join and played a campaign as whatever canon or made for the game Guard unit.
 
Last edited:
For once I would LOVE a new MW game that is not about some random mercs (because the writers were too lazy to work) and has the player as a permanent part of one faction or another.

The the word of blake Jihad would be a great unexplored era for mechwarrior games that the battletech timeline stopped at prior to FASA becoming defunct.
Everybody looks at me like I'm some kind of heretic when I say I liked MechWarrior 4: Vengeance more than Mercenaries*, but that's precisely the reason why I liked that game: you're a well-defined character in an actual story as opposed to just a [Insert Protagonist Here] whose actions will never be recognized in the canon, or even just future MechWarrior games. For all the sterling work [Your Dudes] do in the BattleTech videogame putting Kamea Arano's butt on the throne, the setting doesn't give a shit about your character. Give me a game where I play someone in the setting any day of the week.

* I still think they did Ian Dresari dirty in Black Knight, though.
 
Bitch got suspended.
 

Attachments

  • 1690253601362.png
    1690253601362.png
    23.3 KB · Views: 32
Back