Fixing the fleets, or why having real fleets would not hurt the game

[BloodRose]

So, greetings.
I hear a lot of talk these days that the warfleets of the SL needed to be destroyed and that bringing back a real navy, or ungimped warship construction rules, as opposed to PWS would lead to Battlemechs being invalidated in a logical sense because ships would just bombard them from orbit.
Well, I say nay.
Why? Because there is one simple thing that everyone forgets in Battletech. Atmospheric interference. If you fire at a planet you are not just firing your shots at the ground. If you fire straight down then only energy weapons will ever reach the surface, and they will do so with much less force. Why? Because of the atmosphere.
The atmosphere of a planet, espcially the upper layers, would strip energy beams of their power and scatter the energy resulting in a far lower level of hitting power when the shot impacts, and ballistic projectiles would burn up.
Ballistic weapons are not firing dropships or even self propelled rounds, which means they do not have the magic power that lets BT dropships and ASF fly in with such a vast delta-V, meaning that they would have the same entry profile as an early rocket had. So, to drop a barrage of NAC rounds on the planet you would first have to work out the shots delta-V and then reach a point above the planet that would let your shot enter the atmosphere and impact somewhere around your target, a process that would be extremely innacurate. And to really make matters fun every ballistic weapon would have its own delta-V. So your NAC-40's would not be able to use the same firing plot as your NAC-35's or your Naval Gauss Rifle. Add to this the relative innacuracy of the shots and you have at best an area saturation weapon of limited use.
Finally what about missiles? A Capital Missile would have a vetter delta-V than ballistic weapons and would be able to partially guide itself onto the target, yes. But at what cost? capital missiles do less damage than any other Capital Weapon, and they are a lot heavier and bulkier meaning that a ship carries a lot less of them.

In the end the choice would come down to this:
Accurate but stripped of most of its hitting power - Direct Energy bombardment
Heavily innacurate but does a lot of damage - Ballistic bombardment
The best of both worlds but is only available in extremely limited numbers - Missile bombardment

Now if you start to factor in an increase in damage to Naval weapons as well (no Mech should be able to survive a NL 35 hit with only heavy damage) and make Capital scale weapons automatically roll for criticals against conventional units (with a bonus) and you have a start of something good.
Also, allow capital Scale weapons to be direct fired from ground units against other ground units. If someone has managed to mount a capital scale weapon in a fortress or mobile structure then they deserve to be able to use it, especially as  it has a massive too-hit penalty for firing at none-capital targets.

[Frabby]

You're effectively suggesting a rewrite of the rules here. Given the history of the AeroTech/BattleSpace/AeroTech 2/StratOps rules, I don't see that happening in the forseeable future.

And BattleMechs would still be marginalized by those strategic assets.

[BloodRose]

Well, the Aerotech rules for naval engagements have been in need of a rewrite for some time. Right now they are all over the place, require three books to play and are difficult to navigate. Fixing them would be a start.
I am not quite sure how this idea would marginalise Battlemechs. Orbital attacks on planets would be difficult to conduct, require a vast expenditure of resources and force the ship to be held immobile in place over a planet.
If you add in rules for surface to orbit fire then it becomes a lot more dangerous and few people would want to leave an expensive sitting duck hanging around to perform the task, especially as orbital to surface fire would only really be effective on area targets, and reaiming would require the entire vessel to be shifted.

[Robroy]

I can see reducing the effectiveness of energy weapons due to the effects of an atmosphere. As for ballistics, I don't know. Goggle "rod from god". Maybe make orbital bombardment only practical from capital missiles. Then you could have anti ship and ground attack types a player would have to load in the magazine.

Making orbital bombardment harder / less accurate is a good way to ensure the use of mechs on the ground to take objectives. As well keep in mind that not every, or most victories comes with the destruction of a target.

Perhaps we need a Aerospace Manual.

[Elmoth]

Wasn't Ronald Reagan's Star Wars the idea of filling space around Earth with ballistic nuclear missiles that could then enter space and destroy whatevger the operator fancied? It would seem that guided missiles should be able to do that in BT as well, then...

[dgorsman]

Wasn't Ronald Reagan's Star Wars the idea of filling space around Earth with ballistic nuclear missiles that could then enter space and destroy whatevger the operator fancied? It would seem that guided missiles should be able to do that in BT as well, then...

Not quite.  It was the flip-side of the coin, a ballistic missile defense system.  Hard to go into without getting into the political side of things.

[Elmoth]

Not quite.  It was the flip-side of the coin, a ballistic missile defense system.  Hard to go into without getting into the political side of things.

Ah, I stand corrected then. Had this idea that someone went that route during the last steps of the cold war.

[The_Caveman]

Perhaps we need a Aerospace Manual.

Nobody plays AeroTech because AeroTech is bad.

AeroTech never gets a rewrite because nobody plays AeroTech.

Also this conception of atmosphere as being able to stop capital weapons is basically rooted in wishful thinking. NAC rounds and lasers are more than capable of reaching the surface of any Earthlike planet.

[Robroy]

Also this conception of atmosphere as being able to stop capital weapons is basically rooted in wishful thinking. NAC rounds and lasers are more than capable of reaching the surface of any Earthlike planet.

I know. I was not saying it stopped them. Atmosphere does interfere with energy weapons. An explosive round fired down into a gravity well may pick up to much speed. Some thing some bombs have had to deal with as they hit so hard the detonator is crushed. I was just offering an in universe explanation to justify rules for reducing their effectiveness/damage so warships can still exist without dominating everything.

[dgorsman]

When the large scale game is destroy everything and rebuild, they are unbalanced.  When the game is conquer and capture, not so much.  You need to land troops for that.

Granted there's still the problem of getting past a defending fleet.  Maybe the whole "space is really really big thing" could be leveraged along with lower thrust values (I know - existing designs...) and long production times.  Just enough to balance things to the point where having a WarShip is somewhere between good and great, but not overwhelming.

[Liam's Ghost]

I know. I was not saying it stopped them. Atmosphere does interfere with energy weapons. An explosive round fired down into a gravity well may pick up to much speed. Some thing some bombs have had to deal with as they hit so hard the detonator is crushed. I was just offering an in universe explanation to justify rules for reducing their effectiveness/damage so warships can still exist without dominating everything.

Ballistic naval weapons use little to no explosive. Their destructive value pretty much comes from their insane muzzle velocity. And what explosive they do have is already designed to withstand the stress of being fired and impacting at that velocity.

And planetary gravity isn't going to have time to add all that much velocity when the shell is already flying at around (conservatively) twice escape velocity when it leaves the barrel. 

[BloodRose]

Incorrect, its not the gravity. Its the atmosphere and the burn up zone. No matter how powerful the shot it is still a massive unguided shot that has to enter the planets atmosphere and survive the burnup zone. Modern spacecraft can only reenter the planets atmosphere through a very narrow trajectory band and deviating by even a degree can result in the ship being destroyed. The disadvantage with ballistics would come not from them moving too fast due to gravity, but from them having to be fired from a precise point into a very tight delta-V with an angle of shot that means they could be scattering a mile off target, and each different type of cannon would have a different approach vector meaning the entire ship would need to reposition just so it could switch from NAC30's to NAC35's or Light Naval Gauss.

[Liam's Ghost]

Incorrect, its not the gravity. Its the atmosphere and the burn up zone. No matter how powerful the shot it is still a massive unguided shot that has to enter the planets atmosphere and survive the burnup zone. Modern spacecraft can only reenter the planets atmosphere through a very narrow trajectory band and deviating by even a degree can result in the ship being destroyed. The disadvantage with ballistics would come not from them moving too fast due to gravity, but from them having to be fired from a precise point into a very tight delta-V with an angle of shot that means they could be scattering a mile off target, and each different type of cannon would have a different approach vector meaning the entire ship would need to reposition just so it could switch from NAC30's to NAC35's or Light Naval Gauss.

I was responding to a different statement that specifically referred to what I was talking about.

Even so, I think you greatly overestimate the atmospheric affects. The distance from firing range to ground simply isn't that big, and the shells are simply moving too fast. And as for repositioning, the ships firing the shots have literally impossible capabilities for repositioning. We know how to achieve better accuracy right now over longer distances without magic fusion engines and projectiles that can't even approach the same velocity. It's silly to assume the nations of the battletech universe couldn't work out the math themselves with all of those advantages. 

[RifleMech]

Battlemechs, and other units, are only marginalized when the game consists of "I kill your mech regiment with my warship!"  It's no fun. Warships should be used to clear the jump point and then the orbital path for the troopships. Once in orbit they clear the LZ and send in the ground troops. Yes that could mean blasting away at a fortress but the idea shouldn't be to create a crater or a field of glass. Those aren't as valuable as a fortress you can repair and use against your enemies. That means you need to put troops on the ground. That means mechs aren't marginalized. If you end up glassing the place, you might have taken it from the enemy but you didn't win either.

[Maingunnery]

I rather have Surface-to-Orbit retaliation/counter-fire be a bigger thing.

[Jellico]

Surface to space fire makes life too difficult for DropShip which in turn makes life difficult for small loads of Mechs to be delivered. Remember Battletech is a squad based game which is at the core of all the low numbers of military forces.

[Maingunnery]

Surface to space fire makes life too difficult for DropShip which in turn makes life difficult for small loads of Mechs to be delivered. Remember Battletech is a squad based game which is at the core of all the low numbers of military forces.

Dropships should get down to the surface as fast as possible, as fast and evasive as possible.
Warships on the other hand would need to be more 'stationary' to hit surface targets.

Balance by to-hit number.

[AlphaMirage]

Or dropships land far enough away from the action and you launch an overland assault

[R.Tempest]

 Not having the physics knowledge to argue the point, my gut says that while it may be correct that Naval A/C's might have a problem hitting ground target's accurately, I'm not sure the same would be true for Naval Gauss rifles. They're basically mass drivers after all.

[RifleMech]

Surface to space fire makes life too difficult for DropShip which in turn makes life difficult for small loads of Mechs to be delivered. Remember Battletech is a squad based game which is at the core of all the low numbers of military forces.

I would think that the surface batteries would be busy dealing with the warships. Leave the Dropships for the fighters, and AA units.

[The_Caveman]

Modern spacecraft can only reenter the planets atmosphere through a very narrow trajectory band and deviating by even a degree can result in the ship being destroyed.

Modern spacecraft have nothing in common with a NAC shell. It's difficult to stress just how fragile anything we can put into orbit today is compared to the flimsiest AeroTech unit.

And it would take 1-2 seconds for a NAC projectile to travel from the top of the atmosphere to the surface. Even with maximum deflection from a 100 km/h wind (for an unrealistic planet where the winds are equally strong all the way up to space) the shot would deviate by ~55 meters. Less than 2 ground hexes.

A WarShip with a big battery of NAC/10s and ground spotters could simply remove any 'Mech or vehicle force that stood in the way of a conquering army.

Would that WarShips had originally been given a factor of 10 less thrust so that maneuvering them into a planetary gravity well was considered an unnecessary risk. That'd keep them out of the ground battle. But it's a bit late now.

[snewsom2997]

Wasn't Ronald Reagan's Star Wars the idea of filling space around Earth with ballistic nuclear missiles that could then enter space and destroy whatevger the operator fancied? It would seem that guided missiles should be able to do that in BT as well, then...

That was Fractional Orbital Bombardment.

[Scotty]

Surface to space fire makes life too difficult for DropShip which in turn makes life difficult for small loads of Mechs to be delivered. Remember Battletech is a squad based game which is at the core of all the low numbers of military forces.

So make Dropships arbitrarily harder to hit, or Warships arbitrarily easier with a high base to hit.  Or make damage taken by Warships in close orbit significantly more dangerous to the Warship.

Realism serves gameplay, not the other way around.  There are multiple ways to prevent Warships from obsoleting ground troops without removing them from the game as a meaningful option.

[Two Guns Blazing]

Not all "planetary bombardment" would take place on planets with atmospheres like Earth, even so, I imagine that targeting computers/ballistic calculators combined with rail guns with specially designed ammunition for planetary bombardment (may have ablative heat shielding and be guided, perhaps by laser designators from the bombarding ship), would overcome any accuracy problems encountered.

[Jellico]

So make Dropships arbitrarily harder to hit, or Warships arbitrarily easier with a high base to hit.  Or make damage taken by Warships in close orbit significantly more dangerous to the Warship.

Realism serves gameplay, not the other way around.  There are multiple ways to prevent Warships from obsoleting ground troops without removing them from the game as a meaningful option.

Because authors don't always read the rules and sooner or later one will hit a Gordian Knot that can only be broken by ignoring the rules. Gameplay serves narrative which is why we now have extensive rules for nukes.

[Wrangler]

As much i would wish the rules to redone to allow Battletech have warships. There too many people who don't like them.
That why i suspect most of the players who were into Aerospace(and Warships) a lot have left. 

I like Battletech as a whole, i'd welcome a rewrite in the rules to see Mechs be around same time as Warships (in reason numbers, not 1 or 2 per nation if at all.)

Will happen? I doubt it.  Too many have bad mojo against Warships on Blakist level now. 

This is just my opinion. 

[The_Caveman]

Get rid of the needlessly giant hexes and 60-second turns and the muzzle energies of capital weapons don't have to be in the kiloton range anymore (and it would also eliminate some don't-think-about-it-too-hard-or-your-head-will-explode conundrums with fighter aka 'Mech scale weapons). That'd make ortillery significantly less OP.

Go to 500m hexes and 10-second turns and a heavy NGauss only needs to be packing 8-10 tons of TNT equivalent energy to hit its target. That's still a hefty punch, but it's not going to obliterate a small city.

Cut the capital damage multiplier from 10 to 5, reduce the blast radius of capital weapons from 4 hexes to 1 hex at half damage like normal artillery. A NAC/10 now does 50/25 damage making it basically a scarier Long Tom with worse accuracy. A NAC/40 will still ruin one guy's day in particular (though an assault 'Mech *might* survive it) but the odds of a direct hit are slim and it's now much harder to saturate the play area with damage.

Additionally, as a balancing factor, large craft making orbit-to-surface attacks can't spend thrust points and attacks against a large craft declaring orbit-to-surface fire are made at -4 to-hit. Do that, and putting a valuable WarShip in position to rain down fire suddenly becomes a huge gamble (and by definition, WarShips can no longer simply hover over the target firing indefinitely, but have to remain in orbit).

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[grimlock1]

Modern spacecraft have nothing in common with a NAC shell. It's difficult to stress just how fragile anything we can put into orbit today is compared to the flimsiest AeroTech unit.

And it would take 1-2 seconds for a NAC projectile to travel from the top of the atmosphere to the surface. Even with maximum deflection from a 100 km/h wind (for an unrealistic planet where the winds are equally strong all the way up to space) the shot would deviate by ~55 meters. Less than 2 ground hexes.

A WarShip with a big battery of NAC/10s and ground spotters could simply remove any 'Mech or vehicle force that stood in the way of a conquering army.

Would that WarShips had originally been given a factor of 10 less thrust so that maneuvering them into a planetary gravity well was considered an unnecessary risk. That'd keep them out of the ground battle. But it's a bit late now.

You are neglecting the complexities of orbital mechanics.
If something is in orbit and accelerates straight down, radially in, that actually has very little effect on its altitude. It will have a MUCH bigger effect on the eccentricity and the latitude of the apsides of the elliptical orbit. But you won't notice those effects until half an orbit later.   

To get down to the surface, an object needs to reduce its orbital velocity, so any projectiles would have to be fired backwards.  How fast they are fired will determine where they land. So if you fire 2 projectiles with different velocities, at the same time, in similar directions, they will hit different locations on the planet.

Picture this, you and a couple buddies are at the range shooting at a target 1,000 feet away. One of you is shooting .308 Winchester, 3,000fps, another has .300 Blackout, 2,000 fps, and the last has .22LR, 1,000fps. I've rounded everything for convenience. If you all squeeze the triggers at the same time, the bullets will all strike at different times.

Now imagine that you are all sitting in the back of a pickup truck, driving around a race track, trying to hit a target 1,000 feet away in the center of the track.  It starts to get complicated with having to pull lead on the target to account for the fact that you are in motion, etc.  Once you scale up to orbital numbers, you are leading the target by 90 degrees and adjusting the muzzle velocity by adding or subtracting grains of gunpowder.

There's a guy on Youtube, Scott Manley.  He's an astronomer by training and has some good videos discussing the weirdness in orbital mechanics. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5XPFjqPLik
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0zkhQFHNac

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