Wow! :o That's cool! Thanks! :) So its like in between Medium and Heavy? Medium's damage and Heavy's range? Would the damage be 2+3 against BAR-7 Armor or 4+3? 4 being the LAC/2's max damage potential rapid-firing? How's it compare to the 8.8cm Tank Canon? It kind of seem like the Tank Cannons are another +3 damage against other WWII units. It looks like it'd be either slightly better or slightly worse. Or do post WWII weapons get extra damage against BAR-5 armor?
Thanks! :) :beer:
The XTR 1945 weapons were all statted based on BAR 5 armor targets, and a special set of rules was thrown in to explain how they should behave against both inferior armors and superior armors. Here's the relevant text (from my original documents, anyway):
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Iron Sights Gunnery (Air and Ground Combat)
Despite the lack of targeting technologies and advanced sensors, gunners and pilots in the days of World War II remained quite capable of hitting each other in battle. In fact, this kind of iron-sights targeting—for which all pilots and tank crews were trained—combined with the lack of targeting technologies and ambient electromagnetic interference to generate the ability to deliver attacks at far greater ranges than weapons of the ages to come.
To reflect this, the 1945 Gameplay Weapons Table provides the effective combat ranges for all featured weapons, including Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme range. (The Aerospace Max Range applies only when such weapons are mounted on airborne units, though it should be noted that tank cannons may not be mounted on airborne units, and bombs have no aerospace range as they are used only for air-to-ground attacks.)
The special LOS Range (see p. 85, TO) can even be used by gunners of particularly fearsome skill. Furthermore, since all military units built for this era are treated as though they have no intrinsic sensor technology, the usual +2 to-hit modifier for possessing No Fire Control does not apply.
1945 vs. BattleTech: Remember, that the above benefits only apply as long as these units face one another with none of the “modern” conveniences of BattleTech technology present. If these units are employed in games set during the Age of War and later, none of these benefits will apply, and—in addition to suffering the gunnery modifiers for lacking fire control systems—all of the weapons featured in this book will behave in accordance with their BattleTech Equivalent Weapon as noted in the construction tables.
Weapon DamageThe damage values for each weapon given in the 1945 Gameplay Weapons Table reflects the effectiveness of these weapons against other 1945 units with an armor BAR of 5. When used against vehicles with a BAR of less than 5, add 1 point of damage to each hit for every point of BAR the target has below 5. Thus, an attack that would deliver 3 points of damage to a BAR 5 target would deliver 4 points against a BAR 4 target, and 5 points against a BAR 3 target. Armor stronger than BAR 5 simply did not exist in the World War II era.
Against any target with a BAR of 6 or greater, treat the damage effects of these weapons as equivalent to their BattleTech Equivalent Weapon as noted in the construction tables.
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Note that the idea of adding the BAR difference only works when attacking something BELOW the weapon's rated BAR factor, and not above. This was mainly intended to cover the difference between the WWII gear and anything from the Age of War and onward, and factored in more than mere damage-vs-armor. In real-life, WWII cannon didn't work in the ablative fashion BT weapons do on the tabletop; they either penetrated armor or they didn't, depending on where they hit, how the armor was sloped, how thick it was at the point of impact, and so forth. In addition, most weapons tech in the era used what amounts to manual aiming, rather than an abundance of computer-controlled, gyro-stabilized gear. To reflect this in game terms, we used an equivalency table to cover use against armors above BAR 5 instead of a simple "subtract the difference" rule, which not only made these weapons less destructive against BT units (especially anything with BAR 7+, which effectively represents the Age of War armor standard), but also changed their effective ranges against BAR 6+ units. In this way, a unit equipped with Rifle-Cannons now not only had to contend with less damage potential, but had to get even closer to try and hurt anything.
By the way, the Abrams, in my notes, got to BAR 6, representing "proto-21st century tech". This meant that WWII-era units used the equivalency weapons against it, and it could effectively ignore a Panzer IV's main gun. And when it returned fire? The 120mm Smoothbore (with Accurate Weapon Quirk), would deliver a 12-point hit, which would either strip the target's armor off (if it hit the front or turret) or guarantee a crit (from the sides or rear). A second hit from the same weapon--or just a few bursts of MG fire--would then seal the Panzer's fate.
It can be argued I had too much fun there.
Oh, and for the record, Rifle (Cannons) WERE meant to be useless/severely inferior to BT weapons when we put them out--laughably so. The idea was to show what came before the Autocannon. Upgrading such weapons to be more effective was simply never done in the BT universe because there just wasn't a point to it. Furthermore, the fact is that extant BT weapons painted us into a corner when it came to introducing this primitive tech. When the LB-2X AC or a single LRM warhead is considered a "viable" weapon system, after all, how do you reflect an inferior weapon that's supposed to represent a standard from BEFORE their day?
(Also, a bit of "behind the curtain" here: there is basically a standing directive that weapons never change once introduced, which is why you still have the standard 10-point PPC on the table, and a whole mess of PPC alternatives that could all nominally be considered a PPC's upgrade/downgrade. ACs and missile launchers get to use new ammo as a workaround, but the standard AC/20 will always be a 20-point, 3/6/9-hex range weapon that gets 5 rounds to the ton. A Rifle-Cannon upgraded to post-Age of War tech standards would get a whole new entry, and it basically did in the form of the modern autocannon.)
...Damn it; now I almost wanna make more WWII/Modern conversions again. Must. Resist. Waste of Time!
- Herb
