- Joined
- Aug 18, 2019
Yeah, MG needs some kinda rework. I find em neat with the option rules but having a case of it explode and deal a whopping 400 damage is fucking insane.
Battletech - Also known as Trannytech
- Thread starter Frosted Snowflakes
- Start date
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Personally, I'd simply make MGs self-contained weapons. They already take the crit space of a Medium Laser, that is plenty of space to hang a nice chunky ammo drum off the side.
So, same 0.5 ton mass (1 ton for HMGs), but they come with 50 (25 for HMGs) shots built into the weapon. All other stats are the same, you can use them as part of a Machinegun Array, but they lose the Rapid Fire rule. A critical hit to a loaded MG results in a 2-point explosion (like a Gauss rifle crit, including additional crit rolls) as the ammo in the drum cooks off but vents out of the hole you just made. No heat-based ammo cook-offs.
There, done. 25 rounds might not sound like a lot for a HMG, but each one of those "rounds" represents up to 10 seconds of continuous fire. If we're being conservative and assuming a M2 Browning-style gun with a rate of fire of ~750 rounds per minute, that's 125 rounds per tick in the ammo bin. Or a total of 3,125 rounds per heavy machine gun. Call it 150 grams/cartridge (including links), and that's almost 470 kilos of ammo, leaving about half a ton for the machinegun itself. I think it adds up nicely.
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- Joined
- Mar 9, 2015
MGs are wonky because no one plays with foot sloggers and they don't do enough vs vees BA or protos.
The mg kaboom is absurd I agree.
Granted funniest I've ever seen was srm inferno pop on a TSM mech. You can guess how that ended.
The mg kaboom is absurd I agree.
Granted funniest I've ever seen was srm inferno pop on a TSM mech. You can guess how that ended.
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2020
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
"Impossible! His ammo exploded but it only made him stronger!"
TSM is one of those things that never fails to amuse me. Because oh boy, when it kicks on, it's like the meme about 'when the Doom music kicks in'.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Ahh, TSM. For when you really need to turn that Hatchet into a Lightsaber.
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2015
The Ostol 6D has TSM and is fucking comical. If you don't own a mini of one fix that so many great variants.
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
The Scarabus SCB-9T is another Mech that punches way above its weight when the TSM kicks in (although usually, you need to turn off a couple heat sinks to get things cooking; its loadout is two medium lasers and two small lasers, and even running that won't crank out enough heat to start warming things up).
But then it brings the hatchet out and it's 'oh hey, I now move 12/18 into your back arc and give you a 12 point whack'.
EDIT: Thinking in retrospect, the fix to this is to refit the gun pod with three ER medium lasers. That gives the Scarabus-9T a little more reach and bump its heat a little faster at the expense of one point of damage.
But then it brings the hatchet out and it's 'oh hey, I now move 12/18 into your back arc and give you a 12 point whack'.
EDIT: Thinking in retrospect, the fix to this is to refit the gun pod with three ER medium lasers. That gives the Scarabus-9T a little more reach and bump its heat a little faster at the expense of one point of damage.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
That little thing is just mean. Sure, it's still a light 'Mech and it dies like one (particularly with that big-ass 300 XL spreading into the side torsos), but no one expects the bug 'Mech to chunk you for more than a PPC's worth of damage up the tailpipe.
For the weapon tweaks, I would just replace the whole package with ER versions. 3 ER Medium Lasers give you 1 extra heat to play with, but 2 ER Medium and 2 ER Small Lasers give you 1 more damage and more granularity so you don't have to play so much ping-pong with the heat sinks. As a bonus, that's a very easy field modification since you're swapping exactly the same tonnage and crit slots.
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- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
I really dig that rule. 1t of Machine gun is pretty ridiculous, so just rolling up gun and ammo into one sounds reasonable.
An M2 weighs 40 kgs. Whatever the fuck are machineguns in the 31st century made of to weight a full ton? Even if it's several MGs duct-taped together, that would require more than 2 dozen M2s jammed in one crit to get even close to a ton...
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
In fairness, you could likely just completely ignore ammo tracking for MGs, make MG ammo bins a 5-point internal explosion and have an even simpler solution to the problem. Just assume there is ammo in the bins, but that it's not made of high explosives. If all MG ammo bins are destroyed (or detonated), then the MGs are assumed to be out of ammo. Done.
Really, there is literally no vehicle or 'Mech in BattleTech that's likely to run out of machinegun ammo within a reasonable length combat. Even the Piranha, Patron Saint of Memetic MG Builds, only runs out of ammo after over fifteen rounds of constant fire. That's literally over 2.5 minutes of constant bullet hosing before the two half-ton bins are empty. Likewise, the Timber Wolf Prime is an infamous "we'll just throw a couple MGs in there as an afterthought" design, and even with two of the damn things it takes sixteen and a half minutes to run out of ammo. That's longer than your average Clan-on-Clan engagement. The pilot could tape down the "fire MGs" trigger at the start and still have ammo left over by the time he ran out of targets. That's why the rapid-fire rules for MGs were released. And yet, keeping track of all that ammo is a hassle. SRM-2 and AC/2 ammo coming in lots of 50 and 45 are bad enough. 200 or even 100 rounds per bin, with most designs carrying only one or two MGs, is just too much work to track for no benefit.
And if someone tries to abuse that house rule by bringing in a MG boat with a single half-ton of MG ammo and literally every single remaining crit slot packed with a machinegun, you first wreck that 'Mech before it can come into range with almost literally any other weapon in the game, then slap them upside the head and tell them to fuck off for wasting everybody's time rolling so many attacks per shooting phase.
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
I never gave it much thought, but I would not be surprised to learn that Machineguns and their ammo are handled the way they are purely for memetic reasons.
Much like the carp in Dwarf Fortress having the same bite attack like tigers due to a bug that became so endeared to the fans that it became canon, having mg ammo explosions turn an entire mech into a pair of smoking legs on opposing sides of the map with a fine scatter of mech debris spread across the battlefield might just have been kept in the game cause it's just a funny little quirk.
Also I got something mixed up, IS MGs are half a ton, still rather ridiculous.
Much like the carp in Dwarf Fortress having the same bite attack like tigers due to a bug that became so endeared to the fans that it became canon, having mg ammo explosions turn an entire mech into a pair of smoking legs on opposing sides of the map with a fine scatter of mech debris spread across the battlefield might just have been kept in the game cause it's just a funny little quirk.
Also I got something mixed up, IS MGs are half a ton, still rather ridiculous.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Perhaps, but pre-CASE any ammo explosion is likely to completely wreck the 'Mech. And after (non-Clan) CASE, you still have to write off an entire side of the 'Mech.
Even if you hit a half-empty (3/5) AC/20 ammo bin on the side of an Atlas with a through-armor critical, it will destroy the side torso, transfer to the center torso, and turn the 'Mech inside-out anyway. It's no different with ammo stored in the arms: hitting a half-empty arm-mounted LRM-10 ammo bin on a Stalker is going to deal 60 damage, and the Stalker only has a total of 59 internal structure in the path from the arm to the CT. Again, the 'Mech is gone. The odds of an ammo crit are low to begin with, the odds of an ammo crit to a bin that won't turn your shiny new 'Mech into so much high-speed confetti are even lower.
MG ammo being the closest thing to a self-destruction device in BT is a meme, yes, but it's not even necessary. Doubly so on 'Mechs that run hot and risk cook-offs (which is where I see most ammo detonations in pre-double heat sink 3025-era games). Once you get past roughly 60 damage, which is very easy to get to with your average ammo detonation, there's just no surviving it. Thankfully, MG's ammo issues are easy to houserule away. When you look at a modern M1 Abrams (which carries only about 0.2 ton of 7.62x51mm NATO and 0.12 ton of .50 BMG) you realize just tremendously overloaded even a half-ton MG ammo bin is.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2021
Imagine coring out due to your own machine gun, holy shit.
That said, back in the day I had a Phoenix Hawk with pretty much everything but the engine, gyro, cockpit and a single MG shot away splash a pristine Warhammer with a cockpit crit.
Shit happens, the best thing you can do is hope you're on the right side of the dice.
Available to hire for Arabic weddings?
I'm guessing the Battletech universe has progressed from .50BMG to 1.0FML.
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- Mar 23, 2016
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Look, a ton of SRM ammo is merely 200 damage, not the 400 damage
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
The 400 damage from a single ton of MG ammo guarantees you're absolutely fucked. With any other ammo crit, you can sometimes hope that it won't completely turn your 'Mech inside-out because the bin might be half-empty. With machinegun ammo, you just write the 'Mech/location (depending on CASE) off and move on with your life.
That's why the rapid-fire rule was invented, so you could race to empty the bin as quickly as possible without having to spend a turn restricting your actions (can't run, back hits may cause detonations, etc) because you're dumping ammo.
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- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
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- Aug 18, 2019
I should try that for the lawls.
Also been giving MegaMek a go, a bit complicated but when you used to it its a pretty neat system.
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- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
Do that with a Fire Moth B. 2 CMPL, 2 CMG, and 162 kph, 216 with MASC. Run MASC every turn until you fuck up your actuators, fail a piloting check, and fall onto your head at full speed and get a TAC on the ammo bin. Yeah, it has automatic CASE in all locations as a Clan design... but that won't save you if the ammo is in the noggin.
Or you could always do a charge attack. Video related.
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