Excellent. Yet another Cannonshop essay.
It's the same junk post after post after post. You come in with a gish gallop of points why the vehicle sucks or doesn't make sense. Most of them are factually wrong. I prove that those points are factually wrong. You ignore it, not even acknowledging the points where you were blatantly wrong (or worse: Repeating it), and make yet another essay, just as confident and authoritative as if you hadn't made page after page of unforced (and unapologetic) errors.
This thread is a waste of time. I'll touch on two more things. That's it. Then I'm done with this thread.Chin turrets are technology level B according to Tactical Operations. The Clans and the Inner Sphere are perfectly capable of producing.
Not only can you make a chin turret, you can make a chin turret without factory tooling because the tech level of the component is so low (Strat Ops Pg.179).
That neither the IS nor the Clans, canonically, made many chin turrets up until that point is irrelevant and not of my concern. Prancing about harping on their availability is just another red herring.
They have the technology. Period.It makes sense to me. It made sense to them. It just doesn't make sense to you, but you've proven to be neither an unbiased nor a reliable actor. There are far more productive things for me to do with my time than to tailor a unit and a campaign to your flawed sense of the BT universe.
Obviously in the CANON, they
don't or it would already be in use. Tech B is low enough tech that Dirtbag the Militia can have it. it's not in mass production, you can't answer why, when you and I can both agree it's simple enough to be a 'no brainer'. This is kinda like Rocket-Launchers, Retry. We had them in the 1940s, but they took until the late 3050s to show up in the Battletech Universe.
Even when a narrative constraint doesn't make sense in reality, it's still part of your fundamentals in a fictional setting. In the 3050s nobody had, or was using, chin turrets. We have evidence of this, that makes it, whether you like it or not, experimental tech in THAT PERIOD OF THE SETTING. It doesn't matter if it's bone-stick-stone-rock-simple, it isn't in the engineering libraries of your clan-trained techs.
The inclusion makes it POSSIBLE to invent within the rules, that's all it does until we get a canon design that uses it. At "B" it makes it POSSIBLE for anyone with any sort of war-gear production to have the idea, (By anyone, I mean any of the Periphery or Inner Sphere powers, and yes, the Clans). But that doesn't mean they're either in a political or tactical situation where the invention is going to be made, and catch on. Something as GOOD as chin turrets would do that very thing-it protects your largest vulnerability and it expands your available engagement envelope, creating a mild game-changer for tactical use of a class of combat vehicles. This is farly major in a setting where everyone is at war with someone at all times.
so why is it that when they were moved to rules-legal, we didn't get an example in a TRO (or even, an XTRO?)
simplest answer is, "Nobody's looking in that direction." that is the SIMPLE answer. It doesn't require the marysue handwave you're relying on, it's consistent with the narrative of the setting if it doesn't show up until one of the periods of
relative peace, as a response to experiences in the prior war. Unfortunately for you, the people most likely to HAVE that response don't have access to Clan Technology, nor work under the restrictions on that tech imposed by that civilization and mindset.
This is why the Federated Suns, er, Commonwealth, can invent a rapid-fire autocannon that can be un-jammed in the field, where the Clans couldn't, why something as rock-simple as disposable rocket-launchers had to be invented in the Periphery instead of being a slap-add-on used by everyone since forever, why the DRACONIS COMBINE came up with C3, instead of it being a Hegemony or even pre-hegemony innovation used since the 21st century, and why it took the Lyrans to suggest that you can build a bigger gauss rifle, while it took the Free Worlds League to say "You can get more range from a gauss rifle than that!". Triple Strength Myomer's another example, and don't forget the variant munitions, which won't chamber and fire in Clan equipment.
The tech level assignment just shows WHO, within the narrative, is CAPABLE of inventing a given bit of gear. Possible=/=Available, especially without an intro date.
I mean, you said it yourself; Tech B, availablility F. Means it's a simple thing nobody is building. means you have to custom make every component, and likely have to develop your manufacturing drawings from scratch using trial and error-which takes something we call 'time'. That time in the hands of combat technicians who are supposed to be working on serving combat vehicles, means serving combat vehicles ('mechs, suits, air, ships) aren't being serviced while it's going on.
tellya what, go pop out to your garage and assemble an AK-47 from raw materials by
memory and guesswork. It's a simple device, made for easy production, with easily understood principles that are proportionally almost 19th century technology. or, if you live in a country where that's illegal, go build an engine turbocharger from theory using hand tools for your automobile, no downloading plans from the internet or buying one already made.
This is the level of your 'Field refit' when the tech level is B, and the availability is F.
