Author Topic: Musings on VTOL rotors  (Read 3883 times)

Calimehter

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Musings on VTOL rotors
« on: 28 February 2020, 08:29:13 »
As someone coming back to Battletech after a long absence, some of the Total Warfare changes to the previous rules-sets, while over a decade old, are still somewhat "new" to us.  There are a lot of great, well-thought-out improvements to our beat-up old rulebooks in there . . . but there are a couple that have us scratching our head, where some of the improvements to previous issues swung the pendulum a bit too far in the other direction, as it were.

Probably the strangest one (to us anyway) is VTOL Rotors.  The old rules were pretty hard on VTOLs, at least when you could land hits on them.  We never had much of an issue with the basic notion of VTOLs having some delicate linkages that made them vulnerable to fire, but I get the idea of wanting to make the rotors a bit less of an auto-kill hit location and to make the armor carried by a VTOL more meaningful in game play than it was with BMR and prior rules sets.

That said . . . the current rotor rules seem to have overshot that mark and gone clean past "reducing weakness" and straight into "made from vibranium" territory.  Rotors now enable VTOLs to shed PPC, Gauss, and heavy AC fire with relative ease . . . well, with greater ease at least than a similarly armored ground vehicle . . . as large portions of their hit location chart will now reduce those shots to 1pt. of damage.  Why does spinning a thin bit of metal really fast suddenly turn it into Captain America's shield or Wonder Woman's bracers?  We have joked around about why Battletech engineers haven't cottened on to this phenomenon, and built spinning rotors onto every combat unit in the game to take advantage of it even if they cannot fly.  If nothing else, the notion of a No-Dachi Mech spinning its sword General-Grievous-style to parry high caliber weapons fire has given us a few laughs, as has the notion of that same Mech instead strapping a 5-ton Ferret VTOL to its other arm and acting as the ultimate "sword and board" Mech.

-------------------

I'm not sure what I am "looking for" in this post.  I'm sure everyone else here has well and truly settled into playing with it as-is over the years, and its not like it breaks the game open or anything silly like that, and its not exactly the only "quirky" thing about the Btech rules.  It just seems . . . really weird to us.  We may end up house-ruling it to a middle ground (1d6 damage instead of 1).  Does anyone else house rule it or roll their eyes at it when rotors shed hits?

worktroll

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #1 on: 28 February 2020, 13:08:52 »
Kalimera, Calimehter!

The thing to remember is, the rotor gets at most 2 points armour, and 3 point of IS. The original rules meant that pretty much anything as big as an ML could insta-kill the VTOL. I'm guessing that TPTB felt all vehicles died too fast - not only VTOL damage changed, but vehicle crits too. Motive hits are the big winners from those changes. Did they go to far? Dunno, but IMHO the general player base  feels the collected vehicle changes made vehicles last longer, and therefore gave them more purpose in the game

What it does mean is that PPCs stop being your VTOL killers, and LB-X - or straight ACs with FLAK rounds - now are. The -2 and -5 size guns do well because of their range, while the -10 can engage (usually when the VTOL is engaging too). Even SRMs at a pitch. THe more 'bits' you can fling, the more VTOL rotor hits you'll get.

So the paradigm changes.
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Paul

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #2 on: 28 February 2020, 14:24:46 »
I agree; I feel the solution shouldve been to just reduce how many spots on the chart the rotor gets. MLs still instakill, but only on a 12. Or maybe 11 and 12.
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ANS Kamas P81

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #3 on: 28 February 2020, 19:20:01 »
I always saw it as less a case of vibranium rotors as it was "the rotor disc covers a large area, but the rotors themselves only occupy a very small part of that area at any given time" and you're just near-missing/nicking the blades.  Does 'just missing a fast moving object' apply to shooting at similarly fast Aerospace units? No.

But in the end it's just a game, and just an abstraction so that helicopters don't become completely useless as soon as anything bigger than an AC/2 fires at them.  2 armor and 3 max IS means a single LRM cluster, a medium laser, a clan small laser, or other such things blows them out of the water as an afterthought.  Nowadays you can at least get some versatility in case you can't hide constantly.
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Daryk

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #4 on: 28 February 2020, 20:02:59 »
I agree; I feel the solution shouldve been to just reduce how many spots on the chart the rotor gets. MLs still instakill, but only on a 12. Or maybe 11 and 12.
I could see that if Gauss Rifles were as ubiquitous as Medium Lasers.  As is, I think the damage reduction was a good way to make it work.

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #5 on: 28 February 2020, 20:54:13 »
It should be noted nothing is as ubiquitous as medium lasers

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Daryk

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #6 on: 28 February 2020, 20:59:07 »
My point precisely...  ;)

Paul

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #7 on: 29 February 2020, 05:54:13 »
Mechs >>>> vtols though.
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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #8 on: 29 February 2020, 06:10:48 »
No argument there, but turning literally the most common weapon in the game into an instant killer isn't exactly a good idea.

Paul

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #9 on: 29 February 2020, 06:20:31 »
No argument there, but turning literally the most common weapon in the game into an instant killer isn't exactly a good idea.

I'm totally fine with it. I remember the old rules. As said, I would've reduced how easy it was to hit rotors, but when you do, yeah, that should be an insta-kill.

The solution is just ignore Paul.

Daryk

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #10 on: 29 February 2020, 06:23:02 »
I remember the old rules too, and we never used VTOLs as a result.  The current rules make them more playable.  I'm pretty sure that's exactly why they are the current rules.

Paul

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #11 on: 29 February 2020, 06:28:17 »
I remember the old rules too, and we never used VTOLs as a result.  The current rules make them more playable.  I'm pretty sure that's exactly why they are the current rules.

You're right, I remember the conversation back in the day: that's exactly why a change happened.
I just think it's an over-correction, and reducing rotor hits from 1 in 6 to 1 in 36 would've had the same beneficial results.
The solution is just ignore Paul.

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #12 on: 29 February 2020, 07:43:20 »
Statistically maybe, but I think the optics of the most common weapon in the game being an instant kill would result in a different player experience.

Paul

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #13 on: 29 February 2020, 08:01:16 »
Statistically maybe, but I think the optics of the most common weapon in the game being an instant kill would result in a different player experience.

To me, it's about statistics/math. I'll grant that optics do matter, IE, people drastically overestimating the impact of headcappers.
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Daryk

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #14 on: 29 February 2020, 08:16:40 »
It's so nice to be able to disagree in a civil manner!  :thumbsup:

You'll be missed at the game today... hope to see you at the next one!  :)

Cannonshop

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #15 on: 29 February 2020, 08:35:56 »
I always saw it as less a case of vibranium rotors as it was "the rotor disc covers a large area, but the rotors themselves only occupy a very small part of that area at any given time" and you're just near-missing/nicking the blades.  Does 'just missing a fast moving object' apply to shooting at similarly fast Aerospace units? No.

But in the end it's just a game, and just an abstraction so that helicopters don't become completely useless as soon as anything bigger than an AC/2 fires at them.  2 armor and 3 max IS means a single LRM cluster, a medium laser, a clan small laser, or other such things blows them out of the water as an afterthought.  Nowadays you can at least get some versatility in case you can't hide constantly.

You're kind of missing the trade-off there; a VTOL can carry more things, faster, than anything else in that weight class.  Further, it ignores ninety percent of the underlying terrain of a typical map engagement. Rivers=not a barrier,  pits/drops=not a barrier, forest=not a barrier.  (You just go over it).

This made the whole classification with only (at the time) one or two exceptions extremely hard to GET that small laser or medium laser to hit.  (Had to get close, and sit still.)

The exceptions, naturally, being
1)the Jellowbucket.  (Yellowjacket)  which could be outpaced by some light and even MEDIUM battlemechs from the same era.

2) anything that the designers thought should be carrying small pulse lasers as a primary weapon, with no backups that could reach further-because that puts you in arm's reach.

Basically, the change was all about the Yellowjacket, which at the time was getting all the hype, but on the table, from introduction onward, was (Put gently and nicely) underperforming in ways that make the Ubie blush and the Charger feel good about itself.

The base model Charger.

the old BMR rules for VTOLs were a demonstration that yes, you can build something (VTOL gunships at 30 tons) but it wasn't necessarily a good idea (They'll be slow and vulnerable fire magnets that don't last particularly long after their first shot.)

The TW change was basically all about salvaging a paper favorite-with the change, the Yellowjacket became a viable unit, where it had been something of a boondoggle before.  well, barely viable anyway.  aside from fighting an AC/20 platform on muddy ground that has no support, anyway.  (The ideal pre-Total Warfare opponent for the Yellowjacket being the AC/20 variant of the Urbanmech, on open ground, with the urbie being unsupported.)

In a sense, what the rules change did, aside from rescuing a poorly thought out unit from the trash heap, was lower the practical "useful speed" of VTOLs to allow phallic-big-gun-designs to at least contribute more than some spare victory points and salvage to the other side.

It went from 10/15, to 8/12.

Meaning the Yellowjacket is still an overweight piece of crap, but at least the Hawk Moth is viable when intelligently applied.



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PuppyLikesLaserPointers

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #16 on: 29 February 2020, 09:34:02 »
Superheavy VTOLs may have up to 6 internal on the rotor, although there are very few canon Superheavy VTOLs.

That said, while it is true that rotors are too durable than it should in the reality, most VTOLs are no more than annoying 30t flies. If you ever land a direct hit to it more than once, it should be a fatal blow whatever you hit the rotor or not. Some designs will have enough armor to sustain some punishment but many VTOLs are made in paper.

And this is 31th century, where biped war-machines are dominates the battlefield. Attack helicopters and small VTOL planes are must adapt the battlefield or simply perishes. It is no wonder that they made rotors very durable, or design it to efficiently bend the incoming attack.

Also, you know it is possible to simply destroy the rotor by roll a 11+ on the rotor critical hit table. If it was a 'real' clean hit it likely destroys the rotor by only one blow. The other results are can be explained as a glancing hit, and the modern armor is very good at deflect the incoming impact.
« Last Edit: 29 February 2020, 09:50:58 by PuppyLikesLaserPointers »

Calimehter

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #17 on: 29 February 2020, 11:23:03 »
Also, you know it is possible to simply destroy the rotor by roll a 11+ on the rotor critical hit table. If it was a 'real' clean hit it likely destroys the rotor by only one blow. The other results are can be explained as a glancing hit, and the modern armor is very good at deflect the incoming impact.

I think that the problem is that the rotor rules don't act much like the 'glancing blow' rules, and instead more closely mirror the partial cover rules. 

Partial cover converts hits against Mech armor into misses 8 out of 36 times (i.e. the leg hits) . . . but it makes at least some sense, in that there is a substantial hill or building in the way of those legs that you would otherwise have hit.  The obstacle converting the hits into misses passes the verisimilitude test as something you would expect to "parry" an otherwise successful shot.

For VTOLs, their "vibranium rotor" partial cover coverts 11 out of 36 hits into misses, in a way that makes much less sense than having a hill or building in the way . . . with the admittedly non-trivial caveat that you can eventually ablate the VTOL's cover with those misses, and that some weapons are very efficient at doing that (LB-X being the chief).

The situation that keeps coming to my mind is a 3025 Panther (or equivalent) sniping away at a small, annoying hovercraft vs. a small annoying VTOL of the same tonnage/armor.  You take shot after shot against a combat unit whose primary defense is their high TMM, and may eventually hit . . . the hit will kill the small speedy hovercraft in one blow, but the VTOL has a nearly 1 in 3 chance of "parrying" the blow with the partial-cover-emulating rotor it is hiding behind, even though it is the same size/speed/armor/etc..

I think a better solution would have been one like Paul's where the rotor is just rarely hit (1 or 2 in 36), and where such a hit really more represents destroying the vulnerable top linkage than it does pinging the ends of the rotor blades (which should be just a flavorful way of describing a near miss against a high TMM, or even a special case of the optional Glancing Blows rules if they are being used).

---

Again, it doesn't break the game or anything, and I get that there was a good reason to buff up VTOLs from the old BMR rules.  I'm not posting this to pick a fight.  I just wish a less . . . jarringly odd way of doing it had been implemented, and was wondering if the larger community that has used them for longer than us has had the same issues.


PuppyLikesLaserPointers

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #18 on: 29 February 2020, 12:22:41 »
That's a fair point, I admit. It is true that the shot hits rotor by 11/36(roll on 3, 4, 10, 11, and 12). And unless it causes the critical it reduces the armor of rotor by 1, that's all. At least it would have two lives before had actual problem unless it suffers a critical.

Still cluster weapons will like that. Maybe it makes the difference? VTOLs are very good at dodge one but powerful shot, however they are easily scrapped by a bunch of dakka - especially against LB-X cluster shell.

Wait, what to do when a Clans VTOL puts Ferro-Lamellor on it? It makes them invincible against LB-X cluster shell. Still a bunch of medium lasers/SRM/LRM will works, though.
« Last Edit: 29 February 2020, 12:24:12 by PuppyLikesLaserPointers »

Cannonshop

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #19 on: 29 February 2020, 14:01:30 »
That's a fair point, I admit. It is true that the shot hits rotor by 11/36(roll on 3, 4, 10, 11, and 12). And unless it causes the critical it reduces the armor of rotor by 1, that's all. At least it would have two lives before had actual problem unless it suffers a critical.

Still cluster weapons will like that. Maybe it makes the difference? VTOLs are very good at dodge one but powerful shot, however they are easily scrapped by a bunch of dakka - especially against LB-X cluster shell.

Wait, what to do when a Clans VTOL puts Ferro-Lamellor on it? It makes them invincible against LB-X cluster shell. Still a bunch of medium lasers/SRM/LRM will works, though.

that's working-as-intended.  a 'superunit', because Dark Age gave it improbably good stats instead of simply accepting that the inexperienced mobs of MWDA might just not be very good at combat.
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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #20 on: 29 February 2020, 15:54:29 »
Do you not get an automatic "Roll on the motive chart" with each rotor hit? Or am I remembering wrong? That's not nothing.

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #21 on: 29 February 2020, 16:21:11 »
Movement reduction

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Cannonshop

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #22 on: 29 February 2020, 22:55:28 »
Do you not get an automatic "Roll on the motive chart" with each rotor hit? Or am I remembering wrong? That's not nothing.

automatic MP reduction...by one.  with the Ferro-Lam armoring, this means you can be hypothetically immobilized by rotor hits, preventing forward/aft/up/down motion, but still retaining full SI and the full 15-20 point shield against incoming fire on 11 out of 36 possible results.  On a 30 ton chassis like the Jellowbucket, (armor variant) with Ferro-Lam it's effectively making you a turret that is more difficult to kill than some heavy battlemechs.
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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #23 on: 29 February 2020, 23:22:45 »
In a sense, what the rules change did, aside from rescuing a poorly thought out unit from the trash heap, was lower the practical "useful speed" of VTOLs to allow phallic-big-gun-designs to at least contribute more than some spare victory points and salvage to the other side.

It went from 10/15, to 8/12.

Meaning the Yellowjacket is still an overweight piece of crap, but at least the Hawk Moth is viable when intelligently applied.

Well the LGR has slight superior range bands to the AC/2 you like so much for the VTOL "snipe from halfway to the horizon" tactics you advocate for survivability.  So 17 hexes is medium, and it hits four times as hard.  And 25 hex range, well if the enemy wants to play turret Tech, you can get high enough to negate nearly any cover and have enough ammo to take long range potshots till they move.

It's just the mass of the weapon, over half the whole chopper once you count ammo takes up so much room.  You could maybe get the Hawkmoth up to 9/14 with a fusion engine, but have to throw out the second ton of ammo, or go for a fuel cell, which came into the game well after the design.  10/15 requires a XL fusion engine, unless you jump the design to 30 tons, and even then still needs at least a light fusion engine.
« Last Edit: 29 February 2020, 23:25:03 by Nikas_Zekeval »

Cannonshop

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #24 on: 01 March 2020, 02:09:54 »
Well the LGR has slight superior range bands to the AC/2 you like so much for the VTOL "snipe from halfway to the horizon" tactics you advocate for survivability.  So 17 hexes is medium, and it hits four times as hard.  And 25 hex range, well if the enemy wants to play turret Tech, you can get high enough to negate nearly any cover and have enough ammo to take long range potshots till they move.

It's just the mass of the weapon, over half the whole chopper once you count ammo takes up so much room.  You could maybe get the Hawkmoth up to 9/14 with a fusion engine, but have to throw out the second ton of ammo, or go for a fuel cell, which came into the game well after the design.  10/15 requires a XL fusion engine, unless you jump the design to 30 tons, and even then still needs at least a light fusion engine.

Going up to 30 tons actually slows you down.  The suspension factor loses 'sweet spot' between 25 and 30 tons and what you end up with can be done cheaper and better on a hovertank (which doesn't have nearly the pyrotechnics from losing motive that a VTOL does...or did, before they nerfed out that too.)

to push a hawkmoth to 10/15 requires lightweight engines (iirc it already comes with a fusion plant, so you're looking at an XL.)  This is a basic problem with the phallic-big-gun philosophy of VTOL design-better designs under the prior conception relied on LRM, or AC/2 for range, because those allow it to move.  under the current regime, the Hawk-Moth is really about the upper limit of useful, and that's more to do with changing how the damage is dealt in an effort to salvage the overweight  chopper designs with the overcompensation guns.

you know, trying to make the 'Assault vehicle' choppers worth taking by trying to line them up on the same scale-of-assumptions we see with 'mechs (Heavier is better/more survivable).  Basically they had to give them magic vibranium rotors to turn 30% of the hit locations into a shield capable of deflecting everything but specified weapons.

the sick part being, the previous rules were actually more realistic than the current rules.  small arms can and regularly DO kill helicopters in the real world when the pilots get sloppy or cocky-and most often by inflicting damage to rotors or engines.  (because those components have to be precisely balanced and KEPT in balance or they pull themselves apart via centrifugal force and unstable airflow.)

this is all, of course, an argument that's been had before.  many times. 

the out-of-universe explanation is simply that they were integrating rules from Unbound, Munchtek (maximum tech) and MFUK sources (among others) and wanted to preserve a unit that has special favor with a segment of the playerbase (The Yellowjacket gunship in specific) due to being a contest winner back when we had the OLD magazine (and FASA was a functionally alive entity).  There were a large number of players who would refuse to play in games that didn't incorporate Munchtek's Munchkin options, esp. with regards to vehicles, and they were quite vocal about it.

There were some improvements to TW: Sideslip was incorporated more thoroughly, including penalties for flanking all the time, which is good, imho, and applying sideslip to Hovers (which would be the case-an air-cushion vehicle is going to be running on a low-friction surface and doesn't by definition have 'traction' for hard manuevers).  but there were, in my view, some rules that should NOT have carried over to the core, and among these, is the rotor-damage-nerf, esp. considering the later incorporation of fancy armors that make LBX pellets a non-factor, particularly since the change to sideslip was sufficient to unseat the savannahswarm exploit by itself.

VTOLs honestly  didn't need it, but specific VTOLs did-because they were examples of 'yes, you can do that, no, it won't be awesome'.

and imho, that was fine.  Part of a game that lets you design units, is that some designs even canon designs, are simply going to suck no matter how amazing the concept sounds before you stat it.

NOT every design needs to be a winner.  sometimes you get a T-34, and sometimes you get a Vickers Valiant.  There isn't a GOOD reason to change the physics of the setting to salvage said Valiant attempt, not when other designs work just fine.

Try running the Goat Path scenario-12 3026 H-7s against a light company of mechs in mountainous terrain using BMR(r) rules-it actually works like the writeup unless you dump the stats on the choppers to green...trying it at same tech levels with Yellowjackets and you're redistributing armor and in some cases gauss rifles to the winning team of 'mechs by turn 5, as salvage.

This is the true origin of the "VTOLs are too weak" argument.  using designs that were actually bad designs with an impressive main gun as if they were tanks or 'mechs with predictable results.

btw: the tactics that worked for VTOL users pre-TW still work, it's just that now you can run previously garbage designs and get almost as good a result thanks to that 35% immunity to incoming fire presented by the rotor damage nerf.  (The reverse is blatantly NOT so.  Try running TW era tactics by BMR rules and you'll lose...often quite badly.)

This is kind of akin to the changes to Tank tactics from Total Warfare's adoption of Munchtek rules for tanks- in BMR(r) play, parking was what you did NOT want to do with tanks.  EVER.  Some designs were only good for a 'surprise!' positioning (3/5 and slower designs) usually one or two turns of fire, and if you wanted win using conventionals (tanks especially) as your primary force, you stayed in motion as long as possible.  why? In BMR(r) play, parking was a suicide act if you weren't also hidden (using Hidden Units rules or double-blind with hidden units).  why was this? because there were weapons that were an IMMEDIATE threat no matter how thick your armor was, and by immediate, I mean 'existential' threat. 

Infernoes hitting a hex with a tank or two in it meant a survival roll in the heat phase and 'get out if you didn't cook off because you have to make it again'. a single inferno could kill an Alacorn, which made a bog-standard Commando (CM-2D or S) an existential threat to a lance of Alacorns that had to be dealt with-because it could kill the whole lance in a couple of turns if it caught them out without support.

(You ain't gonna do that now. NOW you have motive crit tables that encourage parking and so much of the critical table is motives that you end up having to slowly erode your way through the plating-which is more plating than an equal weight 'mech can carry with the same weapons load due to spread per ton).

this in turn meant that for conventional-primary players in BMR play, you didn't park.  You at LEAST cruised every turn, and tried to avoid flanking penalties, which made the 3/5 designs among the weaker options, (Unlike Battlemechs, where being bigger and heavier translated into superior survivability AND weapons load), this in turn required some finesse to pull off, but made it more rewarding when you did.

but it doesn't fit with "park at medium range and roll dice until someone explodes".

In both cases, an Achilles Heel was removed with Total Warfare's adoption of munchtek's rules.  In both cases the expanded damage charts mainly added dice rolls and made specific (often narrowly specific) tactical or equipment options that were questionable-to-bad into viable (in the case of the big-gun heavy choppers) or even preferred (in the case of "parking at medium and rolling dice because you don't NEED to move") options under the new system.

In BMR(r) Big, slow VTOLs were worthless BV sinks, in TW they're viable options.  in BMR(r) Park-and-turret was suicidal behavior, in TW, it's how you run tanks if you want to win.  In both cases, the physics of teh game were changed to make top-weight, previously too-slow-to-be-useful units more useful and more in line with battlemech play.







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Daryk

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #25 on: 01 March 2020, 08:23:50 »
*snip*
the sick part being, the previous rules were actually more realistic than the current rules.  small arms can and regularly DO kill helicopters in the real world when the pilots get sloppy or cocky-and most often by inflicting damage to rotors or engines.  (because those components have to be precisely balanced and KEPT in balance or they pull themselves apart via centrifugal force and unstable airflow.)
*snip*
Good news, then... Since infantry now does damage in two point groups, not even Ferro-Lamellar will save the rotors from damage.

Retry

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #26 on: 01 March 2020, 11:18:23 »
Going up to 30 tons actually slows you down.

Let's check what he said:
Quote
It's just the mass of the weapon, over half the whole chopper once you count ammo takes up so much room.  You could maybe get the Hawkmoth up to 9/14 with a fusion engine, but have to throw out the second ton of ammo, or go for a fuel cell, which came into the game well after the design.  10/15 requires a XL fusion engine, unless you jump the design to 30 tons, and even then still needs at least a light fusion engine.
So there's a few claims being made here:
  • A 9/14 Hawk Moth needs a SFE + throwing out the 2nd ton of ammo, or a FCE
  • A 10/15 Hawk Moth requires a XLE or a 30-ton design with a LFE

So let's take the canon 8/12 Hawk Moth, adjust the engine slightly, and see what actually happens:

Hawk Moth, 9/14, SFE: 26 tons, 1 ton over weight (solved by, oh, I don't know, dropping the extra ton of ammo)
Hawk Moth, 9/14, FCE: 25 tons
Claim #1 is Confirmed.

Hawk Moth, 10/15, XLE: 25 tons
Hawk Moth, 10/15, LFE + 30 tons: 30 tons
Claim #2 is also confirmed.

Nikas is undeniably factually accurate in every single claim he made in that paragraph.

Now, just for funsies, let's take your claim that going to 30 tons slows down the Hawk Moth.  Like last time, we'll take a test case of the Hawk Moth and adjust the engine and weight.

Hawk Moth, ICE
At 25 tons: 8/12, no spare tons
At 30 tons: 8/12, 1 spare ton

Hawk Moth, SFE
At 25 tons:8/12, .5 spare tons
At 30 tons:9/14, no spare tons

Hawk Moth, FCE
At 25 tons: 9/14, no spare tons
At 30 tons: 9/14, 1.5 spare tons

Hawk Moth, LFE
At 25 tons: 9/14, no spare tons
At 30 tons: 10/15, no spare tons

Hawk Moth, XLE
At 25 tons: 10/15, no spare tons
At 30 tons: 11/17, 1 spare ton

Hawk Moth, XXLE
At 25 tons: 12/18, no spare tons
At 30 tons: 13/20, no spare tons

In every single engine case, the 30-ton Hawk Moth either matches the speed of the 25-ton Hawk Moth with extra tonnage to spare, or achieves a higher speed.  There is no case where switching to the 30-ton model slows the vehicle down.  Your claim is categorically false.

You should try fact checking sometimes before declaring others as wrong.

Bosefius

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Re: Musings on VTOL rotors
« Reply #27 on: 01 March 2020, 13:56:42 »
***MOD DIRECTIVE***

Cut the snark and attitude. Either reel yourself in or drop the conversation. This is the only notice.
Catalyst Demo Agent #221, Huntington, WV

It's times like this I ask myself "What would Jabba the Hutt do?"