Author Topic: How can I explain a ASF crash and then the ASF being able to lift off again  (Read 3621 times)

Demon55

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Noble denizens of the forum.

I am doing a battle write up and had an ASF crash.  It exceeded its safe thrust, attacked a ground unit, lost control and crashed.  The unit survived intact and the pilot was not killed.  No location on the ASF was destroyed except two lasers were damaged. 

How would I explain the crash in a story?

Thanks and have a great day!
-Demon55

Giovanni Blasini

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Don't think of the crash as the fighter planting its nose into the ground like a lawn dart.  Instead, the pilot might have been able to level off and flare the fighter's nose at the last moment and drop their gear, bringing the fighter to an unplanned and extremely rough, but mostly controlled, landing, where the landing gear thankfully didn't buckle, but the jarring landing knocked the emitters for two of the lasers out of alignment, or perhaps their emitter ports were struck by foreign object damage (FOD) at the unprepared impromptu landing site, such as rocks that got thrown up in the air by the violence of the fighter's passing.
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RunandFindOut

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lowering the gear actually makes a crash landing worse as they tend to catch on obstructions and terrain features and rip off.  If you have to I'd describe it as he managed to get his nose up and make a hard belly landing.  Sure he scraped off some armor on the ventral surface and knocked those two lasers out of alignment but he got lucky and avoided running into anything that would do real damage.
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Giovanni Blasini

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lowering the gear actually makes a crash landing worse as they tend to catch on obstructions and terrain features and rip off.  If you have to I'd describe it as he managed to get his nose up and make a hard belly landing.  Sure he scraped off some armor on the ventral surface and knocked those two lasers out of alignment but he got lucky and avoided running into anything that would do real damage.

Yeah, but I thought he'd taken off again after crashing, which would probably require the gear.
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Archangel

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lowering the gear actually makes a crash landing worse as they tend to catch on obstructions and terrain features and rip off.

Not to mention completely losing control and having an entire wing tear off, the entire fighter start tumbling etc.

Yeah, but I thought he'd taken off again after crashing, which would probably require the gear.

That would simply mean that the repair/recovery team brought something that could lift it off the ground so the gear can be lowered.
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bluedragon7

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Remember that everything is in fluid motion, only for purposes of the do. we take a snapshot every 10 seconds.
So that fighter hit the ground, bounced off and continued his flight, damaged but still flying.

Giovanni Blasini

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Not to mention completely losing control and having an entire wing tear off, the entire fighter start tumbling etc.

That would simply mean that the repair/recovery team brought some things that could lift it off the ground so the gear can be lowered.

I meant during the same game/next turn.  Sounds like I was mistaken, though.
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idea weenie

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Ever skip a stone on a lake?  Something like that but with more noise/damage/screaming.   ;D

Imagine if the left wing hit harder terrain than the right, and the fighter went into a flat spin on takeoff/ricochet.  Hope the autopilot can recover before the pilot passes out too much.

Archangel

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I meant during the same game/next turn.  Sounds like I was mistaken, though.

The OP talks about 'a story' not a game and what you are describing about would be described either as a hard landing or a near crash not a crash.
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Demon55

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The game is part of a story. 

The CSR-V12 attacked a ground target and exceeded its safe thrust.  Control was lost and it lost control.  Its altitude dropped from 4 hexes of height down to 1 and after 2 turns it crashed. 

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Good thing to do is remind your readers somehow that aerospace fighters are NOT as fragile as 20/21st-century aircraft, not by a long shot. They are fusion rockets plated in many tons of the same armor that makes mechs viable. 'Flying Tank' is a term that actually does a gross disservice to ASFs, as they're built far tougher than any real tank we can conceive of.
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Demon55

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Good thing to do is remind your readers somehow that aerospace fighters are NOT as fragile as 20/21st-century aircraft, not by a long shot. They are fusion rockets plated in many tons of the same armor that makes mechs viable. 'Flying Tank' is a term that actually does a gross disservice to ASFs, as they're built far tougher than any real tank we can conceive of.

Does that make their crews/techs cry harder when the ASF needs to be scrapped?

Nebfer

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Yeah ASFs are quite capable in fact theirs a bit of a quirk in the rules in regards to aircraft damage when colliding with something. Crashing into the ground is 2d6x10x velocity (which is 50m/s per point) in 10 point clusters. However in space the dmg for colliding or ramming is mass of other unit / 10 multiplied by net velocity (the sum of the velocity of the two colliding units also in this case each point of velocity is 300m/s) applied in a single grouping.

Their are ASFs that can survive a 1.8km/s (velocity 6) collision with a 200 ton small craft, as it's only 120 dmg
yet a velocity 6 collision with the ground will deal at lest 120 to as much as 720 (avg 420) damage, yet while only traveling at 300m/s...

As for taking off after the crash, you guys do know that ASFs are VTOL capable so all it has to do is use its RCS to take off vertically.

Though one would then have to figure out did you actually do this in game or did you take off normally?

Darth_Biagio

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The Millennium Falcon landing on the Starkiller planet, in SW Episode VII, is an example of how an aerospace unit can survive a crash and lift again.

BattleTech armour and internal structure are much more sturdy than modern day equivalents.

As stated in another post, this is why 'Mechs are even possible: thanks to their impenetrable armour, they can have easy to hit silhouettes, compared to modern day tanks that needs much more lower profiles to survive.

How could the pilot/crew survive such a crash landing... well, that's another story...

JenniferinaMAD

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This happens to me frequently in megamek, actually. Crashlanding damage is based on velocity, and I tend to fly very slow for the tighter turning circle (velocity 1-2), so that I don't constantly fly off the map while delivering close air support.

The heavier fighters are quite capable of surviving a crash (and there don't seem to be rules for pilot hits from crashlanding either; MM never applies any), after which they can vertically take off again (with the penalty for not being on a runway/spaceport, of course). I've had one survive two crashes, even, though I usually try to get them to withdraw when they make it back into the air after the first crash.

I always assumed that with the array of space manoeuvring thrusters an ASF has, they can fire them to raise themselves up enough from the ground at most angles to extend the landing gear and then do a proper take off from that.


Demon55

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The Millennium Falcon landing on the Starkiller planet, in SW Episode VII, is an example of how an aerospace unit can survive a crash and lift again.

BattleTech armour and internal structure are much more sturdy than modern day equivalents.

As stated in another post, this is why 'Mechs are even possible: thanks to their impenetrable armour, they can have easy to hit silhouettes, compared to modern day tanks that needs much more lower profiles to survive.

How could the pilot/crew survive such a crash landing... well, that's another story...

Agreed.  But what have I done to you to make you mention that terrible movie?