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- Mar 23, 2016
It'll put the ejection seat on a straight trajectory to the closest jump point, that's for sure.
Battletech - Also known as Trannytech
- Thread starter Frosted Snowflakes
- Start date
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- Dec 16, 2019
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- Apr 25, 2020
Do that with a customized Hatchetman, put the ammo between the head and the torso, watch the pilot only dying when he burns up on re-entry.
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- Mar 23, 2016
I imagine that would kinda like this:
On the topic of full-head-ejection-systems, it's almost weird that I don't see more military units specialized in -say- fighting in a vacuum or on mars-like planets by using certain mechs like the hatchetman.
Especially with Omnimechs, you'd think the setting might take advantage of the flexibility and introduce different subvariants for certain mechs that have more or less heatsinks to deal with different surroundings. It would encourage people to use non-standard game maps a bit more or could introduce interesting fights like "enemy with far superior standard units against local milita with mechs adapted perfectly to the situation". Hard to balance, sure, but could be a lot of fun.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
Happy page 100, MechWarriors! Remember to shoot a Liao in celebration today!
Any damage-dealing hit at all has a ~16% chance of disabling the entire location. So load up on the SRMs and LB-Xs and it essentially becomes a game of rocket tag. Vehicles have it worse, of course, since any damage-dealing hit has a ~16% chance of destroying the vehicle outright.
Vacuum is the domain of Aerospace units for a reason. And that's not even considering that the rules don't talk about it because it would just be mean, but heatsinks would not work at all in a vacuum. In short: if you have to use BattleMechs in a vacuum, you're already in trouble.
There's a very good reason for it: BattleMechs turn into glass in a vacuum.
Any damage-dealing hit at all has a ~16% chance of disabling the entire location. So load up on the SRMs and LB-Xs and it essentially becomes a game of rocket tag. Vehicles have it worse, of course, since any damage-dealing hit has a ~16% chance of destroying the vehicle outright.
Vacuum is the domain of Aerospace units for a reason. And that's not even considering that the rules don't talk about it because it would just be mean, but heatsinks would not work at all in a vacuum. In short: if you have to use BattleMechs in a vacuum, you're already in trouble.
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
Still, sometimes you gotta put boot up someone's ass even on an airless shitheap of moon, so at least run with mechs that use full-head ejection systems.
The more likely version might be planets with radioactive surroundings (ie: literally any place that housed something that ComStar didn't like during the 2nd Succession War), hot desert planets or cold ice planets. Places with non-breathable atmosphere. Stuff like that.
Also, might be mistaken here, but I think at least in 4th edition, heatsinks still worked in a vacuum, but their efficiency was drastically reduced... which is still pretty favorable compared to how fucked a fusion reactor-powered vehicle actually would be in hard vacuum. It'd turn into a puddle of molten everything within minutes, if the reactor even allowed you to start in the first place.
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
Full head ejection systems became more common in designs post-Tukayyid (see: Project Phoenix. Every other refit in that TRO had the full-head ejection system).
You could probably use HarJel systems to prevent breaches in vacuum, but that has its own problems.
You could probably use HarJel systems to prevent breaches in vacuum, but that has its own problems.
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- Aug 18, 2019
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- Apr 25, 2020
Yeah, anything with even just a rarified atmosphere is free game. So long as there's air, it works fine.
It's actually really weird. BattleMechs shouldn't depressurize like humans, and last I checked they aren't even airtight. The cockpits are, but the internals need to have gaps. Maybe the myomer bundles need to be kept pressurized or the fluid inside causes them to burst? The cooling system would definitely not appreciate sudden exposure to vacuum either, the channels inside heatsinks' radiators are incredibly fine after all.
They kind of vanish again after a while. Still, it's an interesting design option, even more so with the Perks system allowing for 'Mechs to have things without having to pay for them in tonnage and crits.
It does, yes. Really, if you're running a campaign in vacuum, you might as well just go with light 'Mechs armed with as many individual weapons (preferably cluster-table weapons) and blast away while running around like a madman. Hitting and avoiding hits, no matter the damage, is key in a vacuum.
Or you could just get Aerospace fighters armed with a bunch of LB-Xs.
So, an average day in the Deep Periphery. Gotcha.
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- Dec 17, 2019
I'll admit, I haven't looked at the more recent Aerotech stuff closely enough, but I know as of Battlespace you couldn't out heat your actual heat sink capacity, or else you cook everyone inside your tin can. The huge ass fins on the original warship art were meant to be the heat sink/radiators. It's why I hate the Clan "refits" from TRO:3057. The original warship art looks like skyscrapers in space, warships shouldn't look like traditional Sci-Fi ships. Except for the Potemkin, the new art for that was fine.
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- Mar 23, 2016
I feel the spaceship/aerotech design was always a bit subpar in BT.
Many great designs for mechs and tanks, but anything that flies has a decent chance to look wonky. For instance, I'd love to see more spin-gravity rings on ships. It's one of the best aspects of HBS' design for the Argo, it's a great concept to have folding spin-gravity-decks. it just makes a lot of sense.
Spaceships in BT should have giant radiators here and there, maybe ones that fold and get stored during jumps and combat, but a setting that's as hard-sci-fi as BT should have kept an eye on believable heat management on its spaceships.
StevieLasVegas
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Well boys if you're up for getting it, Catalyst has release digital and hard copies of the ilClan sourcebook. I bought it, but haven't had a chance to browse through it yet.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
A lot of the fighters are weird. It's part of why I hate how the Shiva is stated out. It's good looking, but it suffers from "lol, FWL designers are tards." Just because it's meant to be a "bad guy" design you fight. 5/8 on an Aerospace Fighter with armor like that is suicide.
A lot of the original designs were finned in TRO:2750, there weren't construction rules for warships until Battlespace so I don't know if they had grav-decks in mind when they made the original art. Most grav-decks aren't that big compared to the size of warships though, it's not unreasonable to think they'd be completely internal. Large is always better for realism though, smaller decks have to spin faster.
- Joined
- Mar 23, 2016
Some of the new Aerospace fighters look pretty rad, I have to say that.
As much as I like the Chippewa, the Stuka and the Lucifer, their designs are just ... not particularly pleasing to the eye. But they have a classic sci-fi vibe to it that makes them awesome nonetheless.
Designs like the Thrush and the Slayer are pretty good looking. Like, it's old-timey sci-fi, but in a good way.
I like the newer designs like the Sai, Shiva and Ammon.
Though the armament always kinda weirds me out. With ground units, having missiles that only fly shy of 300m is not that weird to me, but in a fighterjet that should be able to easily go Mach 1, a range of 300m is virtually nothing. Also having a clusterfuck of an arsenal all over a mech with a wild mix of lasers, autocannons and lrms is fine, but on a fighter?
I guess I wouldn't mind Aerospace fighter specific weaponry that is more akin to what we see on fighters nowadays, like thunderbolt missiles.
I just can't get myself invested in this ilClan stuff. I love how it turned the IS map through a blender and made it a lot more interesting than a literal pie-chart (though I still ike the pie-chart of the olden days).... but the whole concept of an ilClan sounds like "Writer's pet clan Saga" to me. Doesn't help that I need to get past the Jihad before I can dive into the ilClan era either.
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StevieLasVegas
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
I'm with you on this. Unless we get to see some fuckery that'll mess with the ilClan, I also feel it'll come across as favoritism. Haven't read much of the lore leading up to it, but I really get some Gary Stu vibes from Allaric from browsing Sarna.
Also, just browsing through it, I don't appreciate the neglect towards the Periphery outside of the Raven Alliance. I know I have my stuff geared towards the Lyran Commonwealth, but I thought really hard about making my mechs a Taurian outfit and really dig the Periphery's outsider underdog vibes. Whenever I get a chance to not be at work, I'll sit down, read through it and form an opinion on the file overall.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
The Wolves have always been the favorite, although some of that may be the "Clan of Kerensky" thing. The Wolf Empire was pretty bullshit if you look at their specific designs. Like that Omni they have that's just a fast ER PPC carrier with stealth armor? That's some bullshit.
Edit:
I had to look it up just to remember how bad it was. The Wulfen is a 30 10/15 Omnimech, with a XXL engine mind, ECM suite, 104 points of Stealth armor. The A configuration runs 14 double heat sinks and a clan ER PPC. So, you have a unit that can move potentially 15 hexes, tag you with an ER PPC at range, and then gets all the bonuses from the movement and the stealth armor. I'm not entirely sure you're heat neutral, as I forget if XXLs generate extra heat, but you're not at that much risk of overheating.
I was thinking about it recently, I'm pretty sure you could have fixed the Clans if you'd forced them to build mechs like they were actually resource strapped and conscious. Standard engines unless you're a rare Totem Mech going to a Ristar or whatever. And cut the range on their pulse lasers to standard equivalent range. Would have fixed a lot of the issues with them initially, they'd still be better, but they wouldn't be stupid broken. Instead, the powers that be just keep giving them more stupid toys.
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- Apr 25, 2020
Unfortunately, big fucking spaceship radiators tend to be extremely fragile, which makes the whole concept of WarShips hard to excuse. It's just one of those breaks from realism they made in order to have a game about spaceship combat.
Personally, I wouldn't have bothered with it and instead used it as an excuse for why battles are fought on the ground: the ships up in space would be too fragile and expensive to risk in direct combat, like the original 3025-era JumpShips. I don't think I know a single person who's actually played AeroTech, or the aerospace part of the Strategic Operations book.
Personally, I wouldn't have bothered with it and instead used it as an excuse for why battles are fought on the ground: the ships up in space would be too fragile and expensive to risk in direct combat, like the original 3025-era JumpShips. I don't think I know a single person who's actually played AeroTech, or the aerospace part of the Strategic Operations book.
The problem is that they already did that. The Clans were very resource-conscious, that's why they operated comparatively tiny formations of extremely advanced units, and reused shit until it was literally too damaged to keep fixing. And their garrison/second line forces used a lot of Star League-era designs, mostly just modified to fit upgraded components. Shit, they had Mackies and other pre-Amaris Civil War 'mechs operating post-3050. You can bet your ass a lot of material that was deployed to garrison conquered Inner Sphere worlds in the Clan Invasion was originally captured in Operation Klondike.
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- Dec 17, 2019
I meant even out to their mainline Omnis. The fundamental problem with the Clans is that they never have to deal with the Weapons/Armor/Speed, pick two dynamic of design in Battletech, not on the same level of the Sphere. I don't even really mind the Clan tech, others than pulse lasers, I just feel like it and their initial designs were a few balance passes short of being really balanced.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
That's because they were foolishly designed assuming that the players would follow zellbrigen and always fight outnumbered. When you pit Inner Sphere vs. Clan at a 8-to-5 tonnage ratio, the fights get close enough that RNG is the defining factor. It's even better when you round out the BV with vehicles on the IS side. Worse, the Clans came out before the BV system was implemented, so there was no real way to balance Clan vs. IS interactions. Back then it was either numbers or tonnage.
The other fuckup in designing the Clans was allowing OmniMechs to be fully customizable. As I said before in this thread: every OmniMech is essentially a homebrew on legs, and we all know how easy it is to break the game with homebrew designs, even using only IS gear. If instead of "put everything you want, everywhere!" Omnis were normal 'Mechs with 4-5 canon, carefully-designed variants that could then be swapped as a package within a few hours, they'd be far easier to balance. You'd still get the flexibility of having a single 'Mech carry out multiple tasks if you're playing a campaign, but you wouldn't have shit like Timber Wolves with quad LPLs ruining things for everybody.
If that had been the case, then the Clan designs could have been hobbled by having very little ammo, for example. Or sticking with engine-mounted Double Heat Sinks only. Two things that make perfect sense in lore: Clan 'Mechs weren't supposed to go from battle to battle, they're meant to have time to resupply between duels. And Clan MechWarrior would take it as a matter of pride to be able to manage their heat themselves, and since engine-mounted heat sinks are more efficient than those mounted in the rest of the chassis it would make sense to use those whenever possible.
As an additional perk, Omnis being limited in variants would give more design space for new 'Mechs. Design-wise Omnis are a pain in the ass because a single OmniMech can take the design space of a dozen or more "canon" designs, and they're a munchkin's wet dream. Who needs fluffy, non-optimized designs when you can just boat everything?
iceteayo
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2020
I might be in a minority but I am immensely interested in a lot of the non-mech based units in Battletech like the Zephyros or those power armor units. It kind of sucks whenever I catch a rare game in person I typically see the same giant robots and not a lot of the minor shit.
Imagine trying to drive a dune buggy versus things that can decimate cities.