Machine Guns?

[ajcbm]

If heat is an issue, LMGs are the way to go. If heat is not an issue, ER Flamer.

Frankly, Infantry aren't supposed to even damage a BattleMech. Getting close enough where Infantry can damage you is already a loss.

[Hellraiser]

What not to do? Heavy MGs. The power sounds great, but the range reduction now means that those infantry may actually outrange YOU in some cases, and that won't fly. HMGs are best left alone whenever possible, in favor of standard or light models.

The HMG is one of those weapons that no matter how hard I try, I fail to come up with some niche use for it.
It just has horrible stats.

I'd be curious to find out if anyone has found a good use for it.  (Outside the very very rare option of an Array that will Headcap a Mech)

[Firesprocket]

I'd be curious to find out if anyone has found a good use for it.  (Outside the very very rare option of an Array that will Headcap a Mech)

I made an opponent unwilling to ever let my Viper F in his flank ever again because of the mass of crits I rolled up with the arrays.

[Scotty]

That's not a use for the HMG though.  Any MG would have done that.  Any other MG would have done that better.

[Black_Knyght]

Infantry aren't supposed to even damage a BattleMech

LOL - THAT is one of the mentalities/rules sets in Battletech that drives me crazy, having personally served as an anti-armor specialist for nearly two decades in the Corps!  :P ;)

[Weirdo]

The HMG is one of those weapons that no matter how hard I try, I fail to come up with some niche use for it.
It just has horrible stats.

I'd be curious to find out if anyone has found a good use for it.  (Outside the very very rare option of an Array that will Headcap a Mech)

Aero units geared toward ground support. Range is irrelevant, since your shots are always at short range. Aeros have limited slots, so have difficulty mounting large numbers of the lightest guns.

[Hellraiser]

Aero units geared toward ground support. Range is irrelevant, since your shots are always at short range. Aeros have limited slots, so have difficulty mounting large numbers of the lightest guns.

Hmm, interesting.
I hadn't thought of that.
So a really big Conventional Fighter with boatloads of HMG's.
I feel a MechBuster variant coming on.

[Weirdo]

Boatloads might not be the word for what you manage to fit in there. Seriously, you run out of item slots FAST on fighters.

[Liam's Ghost]

The HMG is one of those weapons that no matter how hard I try, I fail to come up with some niche use for it.
It just has horrible stats.

I'd be curious to find out if anyone has found a good use for it.  (Outside the very very rare option of an Array that will Headcap a Mech)

A heavy machinegun on rapid fire mode has a one in three chance of beating the barrier armor rating threshold of BAR 5 armor.

So there you go.

It's used for shooting poor people.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

LOL - THAT is one of the mentalities/rules sets in Battletech that drives me crazy, having personally served as an anti-armor specialist for nearly two decades in the Corps!  :P ;)

I once was in a game with a pair of generic rifle infantry.  Sent them up against an Atlas.  He thought it was safe to ignore them.  By the time he realized just how much of a threat they were, he had a broken hip in one leg and a broken knee and foot in the other.

[Black_Knyght]

 ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Being trained the way I was, you learn what works, how it works, and where it works against an armored behemoth intent on killing you. Battletech's rule rarely ever reflect that kind of common sense training for infantry.

JUST my opinion...

[Weirdo]

I've always assumed that individual infantry weapons do negligible damage to armored units, damage is marked when two or more troopers coordinate with each other to land their shots in the same spot. 95% of infantry shots hit their target, the gunnery and cluster rolls reflect the need to coordinate fire. Platoons that fail the to-hit roll or do poorly on the cluster roll didn't miss the mech, they were unable to concentrate their shots enough to have an effect.

Black_Knyght, in your experience, how hard would it be when shooting at an active vehicle for you and the soldiers next to you to shoot the same spot on that vee(say, the same wheel for example) at roughly the same time? Is this a plausible headcanon or am I armchair general-ing too hard?

I once was in a game with a pair of generic rifle infantry.  Sent them up against an Atlas.  He thought it was safe to ignore them.  By the time he realized just how much of a threat they were, he had a broken hip in one leg and a broken knee and foot in the other.

Geez, you guys play rough. But enough about the players, what'd you do to the mech? :)

[JadeHellbringer]

That... actually makes a lot of sense. Far more plausible than 26 guys all firing at an Awesome 60 meters away and missing. I can get behind this idea.

[Black_Knyght]

Black_Knyght, in your experience, how hard would it be when shooting at an active vehicle for you and the soldiers next to you to shoot the same spot on that vee(say, the same wheel for example) at roughly the same time? Is this a plausible headcanon or am I armchair general-ing too hard?

Not that hard at all. You're trained to coordinate and focus your firepower. If you were intent on taking our a wheel (or the ankle joint of a mech), then that's where all fire would be focused. Additionally, infantry support weapons, particularly man-portable missiles, are highly effective and pretty commonly carried.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Geez, you guys play rough. But enough about the players, what'd you do to the mech? :)

Played a game of Personal Space Invaders. >:D

[massey]

Not that hard at all. You're trained to coordinate and focus your firepower. If you were intent on taking our a wheel (or the ankle joint of a mech), then that's where all fire would be focused. Additionally, infantry support weapons, particularly man-portable missiles, are highly effective and pretty commonly carried.

Sure, in modern times.  Modern weapons versus modern tanks.  No reason that would have to hold true in a sci-fi future though.  The entire point of a battlemech is that it is super-technology that way outclasses anything else.

[Charistoph]

Not that hard at all. You're trained to coordinate and focus your firepower. If you were intent on taking our a wheel (or the ankle joint of a mech), then that's where all fire would be focused. Additionally, infantry support weapons, particularly man-portable missiles, are highly effective and pretty commonly carried.

Based on how it is presented, that type of training is not standard in the Btech universe.  Sure, it doesn't take long (based on how effective a certain Carlyle was at teaching it), but it takes time and money away from just getting boots on the ground.  Rifle infantry is meant to deter other infantry, not 'Mechs or Tanks.  That is true of our armies today.  Even today we have good armies which include that training as standard, while others are more concerned with getting a standard, sub-standard of training just to get troops on the field.

Remember, Btech is based on a neo-feudalistic system.  If your local infantry is just there to keep the populace in line and you have 'Mechs for anti-Mech work, why bother training your infantry to knee-cap, especially if you don't want those same infantry knee-capping YOUR 'Mech?

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I've always assumed that individual infantry weapons do negligible damage to armored units, damage is marked when two or more troopers coordinate with each other to land their shots in the same spot. 95% of infantry shots hit their target, the gunnery and cluster rolls reflect the need to coordinate fire. Platoons that fail the to-hit roll or do poorly on the cluster roll didn't miss the mech, they were unable to concentrate their shots enough to have an effect.

That works...  my headcanon was that the small arms are completely besides the point on TW scale.  There's only a handful of squad level "support" sized weapons, and those are the weapons that are actually scoring any damage at mech-scale.  E.G. a SRM platoon doesn't have everyone armed with missile launchers, there are only a few across the platoon and everyone else is either supporting the few trigger pullers (spotting, radioing, lugging spare missiles, etc) or simply plinking harmlessly with their puny people-sized rifles.  I always presumed that infantry platoons do the same damage vs mechs as vs other infantry was just an abstraction deemed acceptable as the game was never about infantry vs infantry combat.

[Weirdo]

I always presumed that infantry platoons do the same damage vs mechs as vs other infantry was just an abstraction deemed acceptable as the game was never about infantry vs infantry combat.

Very much this. All explanations work, as long as everybody has fun and mechs continue to fear the little guys. :)

[Black_Knyght]

Sure, in modern times.  Modern weapons versus modern tanks.  No reason that would have to hold true in a sci-fi future though.  The entire point of a battlemech is that it is super-technology that way outclasses anything else.

And THAT is the beef I have with future infantry in Battletech. Everything EXCEPT pbi's has improved over the centuries. They've gone from being an effective fighting force to little more than meat targets, unless of course a mech pilot REALLY screws the pooch.

Anyway, NOT a debate I'd intended to get into here...

[Kovax]

PBIs are supposed to carry LAWs and other equipment to (marginally) deal with such situations.  I don't have a problem with an infantry squad damaging a 'Mech, but it should only get one (or possibly two) shots at it before all such specialized equipment has been used up, unless the squad is specifically armed with a weapon that CAN damage 31st Century armor.

[Daryk]

The "specialized equipment" you're speaking of is the Mark 1 Mod 0 Auto-Rifle.  For a mere 80 C-Bills, this beauty can do one point of damage to a battlemech ALL BY ITSELF (0.52 rounds up to 1).

Now, whether the damage conversion rules that resulted in this are reasonable is a whole other ball of snakes...

[massey]

The "specialized equipment" you're speaking of is the Mark 1 Mod 0 Auto-Rifle.  For a mere 80 C-Bills, this beauty can do one point of damage to a battlemech ALL BY ITSELF (0.52 rounds up to 1).

Now, whether the damage conversion rules that resulted in this are reasonable is a whole other ball of snakes...

The point of that line of discussion is that those damage conversion rules are stupid.

[Liam's Ghost]

PBIs are supposed to carry LAWs and other equipment to (marginally) deal with such situations.  I don't have a problem with an infantry squad damaging a 'Mech, but it should only get one (or possibly two) shots at it before all such specialized equipment has been used up, unless the squad is specifically armed with a weapon that CAN damage 31st Century armor.

LAWs are dealt with under a separate rule. As an advanced level rule, an infantry unit can be equipped with disposable weapons (LAWs, VLAWs, Grenades, that weird disposable pulse laser) that can potentially deal a horrendous amount of damage exactly once.

However, if we're talking about an autorifle damaging mech armor, that's actually pretty possible at the RPG scale. It requires firing off half the magazine in one shot and getting somewhat lucky, but you can accumulate enough personal damage to shave off a point of mech armor*. In fact, infantry weapons damaging mech armor has been in the "DNA" of the roleplaying side of things from the beginning.

*Further detailing the mechanics, you need to hit a mech sized target with a burst of at least seven rounds from a standard autorifle while achieving a margin of success of at least seven. Armor Piercing rounds reduce both the number of shots needed and the margin of success by one.  Weapons with lower armor penetration or base damage require more shots. High rate of fire pulse lasers a good, because they don't have a recoil modifier. It's virtually impossible for a non-burst firing personal weapon to scratch mech armor.

[SCC]

I've always assumed that individual infantry weapons do negligible damage to armored units,

This is acceptable for rifle and laser infantry and even MG infantry but it doesn't work for those armed with anti-'Mech weapons like SRM's and LRM's.

Really I think that keeping infantry down by giving them bad weapons gives a nice genre effect has some nasty balance effects on the game. And keep in mind that realistically any advance that effects 'Mechs should also effect infantry.

[guardiandashi]

my personal interpretation was a little more cruel to the infantry, remembering the story of the Mackie where the "new" mech armor stopped cold, rounds that would blow straight through over a meter of (or over 2 meters) I don't remember exactly, of "conventional armor".

I always took it as the infantry damage is heavily abstracted, and represents effectively "critical hits" on the mech from the infantry, in fact MOST of the rounds are harmlessly bouncing off (much like shooting a MBT's main armor, with something like a modern m16 is not going to accomplish much) but if you happen to hit the "chinks" in the armor, then you might actually damage "something" it might be something that takes time and money/parts to fix, or it might be something that can be repaired by switching to a secondary redundancy, or even something that "rebooting" will fix, but its at least disabled temporally.

when I was converting into another game system for house rules I said that battlemechs were really really tough, and their weapons do variable damage to the other systems units because they are so powerful they tend to overpenetrate to a massive extent, the other games units would automatically damage 1 point of mech armor for every 100 damage, and if there was a remainder then it had damage % chance of blowing off 1 point of mech armor.

so they have a gun that does 3d6X10 damage per shot, it has a pretty good chance that each shot will do between 0 and 2 damage up to 4 if they roll max damage and get a critical hit (for double damage)

on the other hand a battletech (standard) machinegun did 2d10x10 damage to their units and a ppc would do a massive 10d10x10 or for simplicity 1d10x100 damage to their units

[Kovax]

According to the RPG weapons rules, a standard infantry rifle round (from a 31st Century high-tech weapon) does a point of damage to 'Mech armor on a roll of 11+, if I recall.  That means, you've got to score an average of 12 hits for each point of damage (each hit having a 1:12 chance of doing damage).  With automatic weapons being fired by an entire platoon of grunts, that very roughly adds up to the several points of damage that a rifle platoon inflicts.

The game apparently simplifies it drastically, by assuming that each and every trooper either lands 6 rounds on target to do 1/2 point of damage (0.52 damage, to be more exact), if the platoon as a whole "hits", or else every single trooper fails to land enough rounds to do damage, if the platoon "misses".

Personally, I'd rather see reduced infantry damage "on average", but with a table that does variable damage based on the margin of success or failure (unlike the missile hits tables, which use a second die roll).  The greater the success, the higher the total damage (up to a maximum of around the current numbers), but with so many shots being fired from so many rifles, a few hits and some trivial damage should be fairly likely even with relatively poor shots.

If that 'Mech steps into short range of your Regulars without a movement modifier (4 to-hit), and your platoon rolls a perfect "12" (margin of success = 8 )*, then the rated 14 damage for the squad is believable (28 guys each hit with an average of 6 shots = 168 high tech armor piercing rounds hitting the target in several tight groups).  If the modifiers are higher, and the roll not so great, but the roll still "succeeds" by a couple of points, 1-4 damage sounds more likely, as the smaller number of hits are likely to be spread out across the target.  Considering that doing ANY damage with infantry weapons is already a "critical hit", the odds of doing through-armor criticals could be penalized as well.

* = If I don't leave a space between the "8" and the ")", the editor interprets it as an emoticon.

[Weirdo]

This is acceptable for rifle and laser infantry and even MG infantry but it doesn't work for those armed with anti-'Mech weapons like SRM's and LRM's.

Meh. No headcanon has to be perfect. Like I said, the only thing that matters is that mechs fear infantry. Once that's achieved, you can explain it any way you want.

[massey]

Not every guy in an SRM squad has to be carrying an SRM.

Infantry in Battletech are heavily abstracted to make them playable, because they aren't the main focus of the rules and at a certain point, too much detail is counterproductive.  After all, we don't worry about what brand of medium laser your Shadow Hawk is using.

My personal head-canon is that anti-personnel weapons don't do jack to mechs.  The damage that infantry do comes down to LAWs, rifle grenades, etc.  But rather than keeping track of how many rocket propelled grenades infantryman #26 is carrying and has used so far, just averaging the damage works better. 

SRM and LRM infantry would be those that carry a higher percentage of dedicated anti-armor weapons.  These forces would be more expensive to equip, and probably not as useful against other infantry, so they'd be more rare (or at least they wouldn't be the default option).  But you'd still have guys with regular rifles in the squad.

[Daemion]

LOL - THAT is one of the mentalities/rules sets in Battletech that drives me crazy, having personally served as an anti-armor specialist for nearly two decades in the Corps!  :P ;)

Wait. You're bringing that attitude to BattleTech? A fantasy game of futuristic combat? Really?

 ;D

But, you would have been one of the very rare standard infantry fielded on the map, so I digress.