What new technology for 3150

[Istal_Devalis]

Yeah...IIRC, the gear card made it sound like something that went over the existing armour,
or an advancement on the standard battletech armour. It could be argued that it is actually
Ferro-Llamelor..but...

Sounds like armor pods to me. (which we have rules for)
For the post-Blackout gear, you mostly want to look at the RISC stuff. That's all the hyperadvanced, high risk, high reward experimental tech.

[Hptm. Streiger]

treble heat sinks?
What about improved Inferno rounds? Not only creating a torch but also creating a temp. magnetic field that makes the magnetic shielding for the fusion instable...
wasn't there some rules once?

However... is a heat sink able to reduce heat when the exhaust is burning?

[Gus]

treble heat sinks?
What about improved Inferno rounds? Not only creating a torch but also creating a temp. magnetic field that makes the magnetic shielding for the fusion instable...
wasn't there some rules once?

However... is a heat sink able to reduce heat when the exhaust is burning?

You're thinking of EMP missiles. Created an instability within a fusion engine's magnetic field that inflicted a heat burden on the mech. EMP missiles also caused a +1 penalty to-hit on the target. Experimental, and IIRC actually extinct.

[ANS Kamas P81]

We have tracks, what about Hover Legs for 'mechs?  Just to give it a high-speed movement option for crossing terrain; and easily done as a prototype in-universe.  Take a pair of Maxim Mk IIs with 265 engines replacing the current engine, cargo, and weapons, have an Annihilator step on each one; weld the contact points down and each Maxim carries a 50 ton load.  And now you have a 5/8 Annihilator.

[Hptm. Streiger]

We have tracks, what about Hover Legs for 'mechs?  Just to give it a high-speed movement option for crossing terrain; and easily done as a prototype in-universe.  Take a pair of Maxim Mk IIs with 265 engines replacing the current engine, cargo, and weapons, have an Annihilator step on each one; weld the contact points down and each Maxim carries a 50 ton load.  And now you have a 5/8 Annihilator.

that will become a nice kill for a single soldier with a anti material rifle }:)
 (damaging the hover skirt) and you see 100tons diging the dirt

[ANS Kamas P81]

"The bigger they are, the more likely you are to win Inner Sphere's Funniest Home Videos when they fall"

[Nanaki]

new jumpships-ones capable of moving about insystem,

They call those warships.

[Moonsword]

They call those warships.

They call those JumpShips, too.  As useless as they are for tactical mobility, a JumpShip's transit drive is quite sufficient for moving around a star system.

[Stormlion1]

I was thinking of something more along the lines to allow jumpships to cut transit time from ship to planet, not being armed and armored for combat. Jumpships don't always need a military use.

[ANS Kamas P81]

Thought you can't apply thrust with dropships docked anyway.

[Cergorach]

Nanite armor repair systems? Drone Battlemechs? Anti-grav (tank) units?

[Peacemaker]

I trimmed down the stuff that we already have stuff for(even if it is named differently,
somethings just already exist)

From the culled list:
Fire Shot is just incendiary ammo

I don't think you're right about that. Fire Shot is a R.I.S.C. weapon, none of which have been debuted yet. Also, judging from the AoD rules, it heats up not only the target but the surrounding units as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't there's a current BattleTech weapon that does that sort of splash damage.

Homing Beacons are NARC, while Haywire "missiles" are the Haywire rounds for iNARC

You're definitely right about the Homing Beacons, but I'm not sure if the Haywire Missiles being the same as the Pods. The Missile affects defensive systems while the Pod affects targeting.

Heat Seeking missiles already exist in game(get a bonus for how hot the 'mech they are shooting at is!)

You're right about these too.

Heavy Armour is likely Ferro-Llamelor, or even Heavy Ferro(basicly, that gear represents having more armour)

Or Ferro-Aluminum. Either way, you're right.

Emergency Coolant Systems are the well known coolant pods we already have.

Emergency Coolant Systems are R.I.S.C. gear and WizKids introduced a separate card for coolant pods. The ECS definitely a post-3085 technology.

Hot-Drop Shielding is the ablative cocoons we have had for years for droping 'mechs in from orbit

That was my initial thought as well, but it's a R.I.S.C. piece and it's pretty clear it's armor, not a cocoon. I think it might be a special type of armor that allows 'mechs to hot drop without a cocoon.

Plasma Guns are...just that, Plasma weapons(IIRC< they do no damage to 'mechs, so are likely Plasma Cannons)

I agree.

I'll repost an edited list soon.

And one more prediction: more and more Inner Sphere manufacturers will unlock the secrets of mass producing Clan weapons.

[JPArbiter]

Pulse Lasers for the inner sphere upgraded to X Pulse range, Inner Sphere versions of the AP Gauss

[rlbell]

Nanite armor repair systems? Drone Battlemechs? Anti-grav (tank) units?

The big problem with nanotechnology, as put forward by nanotech eutopians, is that there is no way to power the damn things.  The proponents tend to ignore the problem by pointing out that no one wonders how viri and bacteria are powered, and then go right back to describing nanites doing things requiring orders of magnitude more power than is available to viri and bacteria.  Will nanites repair armor?  Definite yes.  Will nanites repair armor faster than a trained tree sloth?  Definite no.  In fact, the difference between nanite armor production and coral reef growth favors the polyps (economies of scale).  The grey goo problem of nanowarfare is no worse than weaponised ebola (dreadful enough, thank you, but the human body already has nanites-- white blood cells-- capable of mounting a defence, if the attacking nanites can be tagged for destruction).

If HPG's and KF drives work by generating wormholes, anti-grav units are only an engineering problem, as all of the heavy lifting has been done.

[Cergorach]

The big problem with nanotechnology, as put forward by nanotech eutopians, is that there is no way to power the damn things.  The proponents tend to ignore the problem by pointing out that no one wonders how viri and bacteria are powered, and then go right back to describing nanites doing things requiring orders of magnitude more power than is available to viri and bacteria.  Will nanites repair armor?  Definite yes.  Will nanites repair armor faster than a trained tree sloth?  Definite no.  In fact, the difference between nanite armor production and coral reef growth favors the polyps (economies of scale).  The grey goo problem of nanowarfare is no worse than weaponised ebola (dreadful enough, thank you, but the human body already has nanites-- white blood cells-- capable of mounting a defence, if the attacking nanites can be tagged for destruction).

If HPG's and KF drives work by generating wormholes, anti-grav units are only an engineering problem, as all of the heavy lifting has been done.

Reality and Battletech go hand in hand like a drug induced hallucination and engineering a fusion reactor ;-)

The nanites could be powered wirelessly by the fusion reactor, should have a lot of power for that. Maybe even use bricks/blocks or pellets of armor and the nanites only fuse them together at the right place.

[Dread Moores]

Reality and Battletech go hand in hand like a drug induced hallucination and engineering a fusion reactor ;-)

So that's how they made the D-Engines of Cthulutech!  ;D

[Moonsword]

If HPG's and KF drives work by generating wormholes, anti-grav units are only an engineering problem, as all of the heavy lifting has been done.

K-F drives don't work by generating wormholes.  StratOps says that very bluntly.  The ComStar sourcebook indicates HPGs work by the same basic hyperspace mechanics as K-F drives, so this is a non-starter.

[stoicfaux]

Gauss Autocannons (GACs) or maybe Rail ACs instead.  The GAC/RailAC has a variable choke and variable power, so you can fire any type of AC round.  It can also be used as a mortar to fire mortar rounds indirectly.  It solves the problem of ACs being underpowered and overspecialized compared to energy weapons.

Improved Armor technology would swing the pendulum from WWI/II-ish nature of large mech armies fighting with increasing lethal weapons back to small mech units with better survivability. 

Bigger, single missiles.  LRM/MRM/SRM/etc. are replaced with Thunderbolt style variants with lighter launchers and heavier missiles.  This is necessary to defeat improved armor and to help speed up the game.  Fewer missiles would be carried.

Bigger Rocket Pods replace RLs (and LRM/MRM/SRMs).   The big launcher, small ammo paradigm of missiles is replaced by RL style rockets.  Bigger rockets to help defeat improved armor, and a single RL system replaces a plethora of LRMs, MRMs, SRMs, etc..

Energy weapons would run off of capacitors.  You can run with just enough capacitors to fire the big energy gun or to fire just the short range energy weapons, but not both.  Or you can mount enough capacitors to alpha with everything.  Losing a capacitor means you might not be able to fire all your energy weapons or have to fire them a reduced power.  Capacitors would also add the "explosive ammo" liability to energy weapons to tone them down compared to ACs.

CASE II is standard on everything.

Basically, start off with fewer weapons systems and start the era with fewer mechs and focus more on tactics instead of having a crazy number of mechs that seem to mount a random assortment of weapons at varying movement speeds.

[Carbon Elasmobranch]

Gauss Autocannons (GACs) or maybe Rail ACs instead.  The GAC/RailAC has a variable choke and variable power, so you can fire any type of AC round.  It can also be used as a mortar to fire mortar rounds indirectly.  It solves the problem of ACs being underpowered and overspecialized compared to energy weapons.

But doesn't make much sense.  I mean, even given that a lot of things, mostly about armor, don't.

Energy weapons would run off of capacitors.  You can run with just enough capacitors to fire the big energy gun or to fire just the short range energy weapons, but not both.  Or you can mount enough capacitors to alpha with everything.  Losing a capacitor means you might not be able to fire all your energy weapons or have to fire them a reduced power.  Capacitors would also add the "explosive ammo" liability to energy weapons to tone them down compared to ACs.

Power amplifiers.  Why would you need to mount power amplifiers if you have a nuclear engine?

[stoicfaux]

But doesn't make much sense.  I mean, even given that a lot of things, mostly about armor, don't.

What doesn't make sense?

AC rounds have varying weight and propellant charges.  The propellant is replaced by electro-magnetism to propel the round.  You can vary the power you put into the gun to vary the range.  Gauss/Rail guns float the round via magnetism so you can, in psuedo-science theory, use any size round (up to the max size limit of the gun.) 

Additionally, instead of firing inert slugs, the GAC/Rail AC would still fire normal HE/Penetrator type AC rounds.  Meaning, instead of relying completely on kinetic energy for damage, the rounds would be fired at slower AC style velocities and would rely on the round warhead type to do damage.

This would let you fire anything from a long ranged AC2 round to a short ranged AC20 round to a mortar round from a single weapons system.

Power amplifiers.  Why would you need to mount power amplifiers if you have a nuclear engine?

No, I mean capacitors.  Existing BT energy and gauss weapons have integral capacitors.  You apparently cannot draw power fast enough from the engine to fire a laser or PPC.  So you have to store up energy in a capacitor in order to release enough energy in a very short amount of time. 

By making capacitors separate from the energy/gauss weapons, you make the weapons a bit lighter and give energy weapons an ammo-ish quality (i.e. do I have enough capacitor energy to fire all the energy weapons that I want/need to.)  It would also provide the ability to under or over charge energy weapons.

[Nebfer]

Since according to the PTB we're getting a tech manual for that period.

The thing is, that bigger numbers are getting boring.

BUt, btech is not about transhumanism, OGRES or fighting with networked drone swarms. It's mainly about mechs and a retro future look, so I'm wondering what sort of tech could be included without either just getting into "It's a gauss gun, only BETTER" or risking changing the setting so that it isn't battletech.

Wait when did they say we are getting a new tech manual for the 3150 time frame?

Though at some point it's better to say this weapon simply is better than what they had in 3070... You know real tech progression...

[Moonsword]

The noon BattleChat on Sunday.

[PeripheryPirate]

Not a new Tech Manual... just a new TRO with some new tech in it.

[Moonsword]

Oh, TechManual, not TRO.

[Red Pins]

...I realize new tech is inevitable, but I think its hit a limit for a while and we'll see it become more refined and common.  It's going to take some kind of major "breakthrough" to change the basis of a mech; the 100-ton limit is one, crit spaces might be another.

I think I'm becoming a grognard - there's enough tech choices for me by the end of '85, but there's more on the way.

[Dragon Cat]

I'd say 3150 tech will be nice and simple.

What was experimental in Techmanual is now Advanced tech, what was advanced is now standard.

From evidence thus far not much new experimental stuff

Oh and here is Colossal construction rules - this is how bad they really suck the ones already built are as optimized as you get. (probably not this bad but I hope they really suck)

Other than that I'd be surprised if there is much else or much point... unless we get new novels that introduce new stuff or new source books.

[Talz]

We already have a good look at the years leading up to 3150 with the MWDA units and novels.  TRO Prototypes for 3090 tech advancement table likely covers a large part of what we'll see.  I expect we'll see a few more technology label changes related to the tech/rules levels as some advanced/experimental equipment moves into production with only a few brand new advancements.  It won't be as simple as Experimental = Advanced and Advanced = Tournament though since Prototypes already shows some Experimental moving straight to Tournament Level for 3090 play.

This will be settings things up nicely for an eventual revision of the current core rulebooks, it will be interesting to see how that is approached and if IO will beat TW 2 out the door?  I'm in no hurry but TW's time will come (along with TM, etc), Compendium 1990, Master Rules 1998, Total Warfare 2006.  It's wild speculation but at the same time 2014 fits a pattern... }:)

[Moonsword]

To clarify something, advanced rules gear is frequently in standard production but may not be appropriate for tournament level play.  For instance, HVACs aren't tourney because they depend on the smoke rules.

[rlbell]

Reality and Battletech go hand in hand like a drug induced hallucination and engineering a fusion reactor ;-)

The nanites could be powered wirelessly by the fusion reactor, should have a lot of power for that. Maybe even use bricks/blocks or pellets of armor and the nanites only fuse them together at the right place.

There are two problems with powering nanites, the first is getting the power to the nanite and the second is not destroying nanites with the power.  The amount of energy needed to blow apart a nanite is measured in electron volts.  Wireless power transmission has the fun limitation that the amount of energy taken up by the receiver is proportional to the area of the receiver.  For nanites, this is on the order of 10^-16 square meters, so you can do the math on the energy density of the field.  A nasty effect is that it will take potentials of a few millivolts to electrically power a nanite and they are only tens of nanometers long, so the electrical field strength will be tens of millions of volts per meter, a stress that no insulator, not even a hard vacuum, will support.

A big problem for nanite armor repair is that the damage is almost always on the outside, and even anthrax can only endure battlefield conditions as a dormant spore.  If nanites cannot repair armor during a fight, they must be compared to a tech who is much faster, can handle blocks that are much more massive, and is much better at identifying battle damage.

K-F drives don't work by generating wormholes.  StratOps says that very bluntly.  The ComStar sourcebook indicates HPGs work by the same basic hyperspace mechanics as K-F drives, so this is a non-starter.

I did say "If".  However, unless K-F drives and HPG's do not warp space, at all (outside of warping space from their mass), the physical possibility exists for anti-gravity, even if the engineering problems are insurmountable.  The one hope that we (you, me, and everyone else in real life) have for FTL travel is that while no easy mechanism suggests itself to accomplish that goal, General Relativity does not absolutely forbid it.  If we happen to live in an eight dimensional universe and can produce negative matter (bizarre stuff that is repelled by gravity), FTL, anti-gravity, and time travel become real, as opposed to hypothetical, possibilities (there are no shortage of physicists laboring to modify GR to make time travel absolutely impossible, but they have yet to succeed).

[StCptMara]

That was my initial thought as well, but it's a R.I.S.C. piece and it's pretty clear it's armor, not a cocoon. I think it might be a special type of armor that allows 'mechs to hot drop without a cocoon.

Actually...the orbital drop cocoon as is fits very much into the RISC concept. Think about the risks associated with an orbital
drop. You can hit the atmosphere wrong and burn-up, you can fail to trigger jump jets or fire them at the wrong angles, and crash.