Author Topic: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.  (Read 37512 times)

Stormfury

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #30 on: 13 June 2011, 22:20:44 »
Which is pretty much the point, you know?

In the same way that a guy armed with a crossbow and short sword is going to be useless against a modern tank, modern tanks are useless against 'Mechs.

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FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #31 on: 14 June 2011, 00:05:36 »
A 120mm cannon would have to be a heavy rifle cannon and the armor for the Abrams would have to be at least BAR 7. Older and smaller tanks would have smaller sized cannons and lower BAR levels.

Think about it. The lunar lander which had tinfoil in some places for skin would be made with 1 point of BAR 2 armor in each location.  (In actuality id be much less but the rules state a minimum of BAR 2.) A WWI tank is going to have much more armor if not a higher BAR rating with an armored chassis. WWII tanks would have even higher BARs and larger cannons. And so on. Besides, BAR 2 isn't intended for combat but to protect the vehicle passengers and cargo from the elements and accidents. Only when they get to the higher BAR rates are they meant for combat.

Armored Chassis can be built under tech level A. The lowest BAR rating that you must have in order to have an Armored Chassis Mod is tech A BAR 5 armor which weighs 100kg per point. I'm pretty sure we can agree that a Tank regardless of age is an Armored Vehicle.

I'm not saying a WWI tank has BAR 5 Armor but it would have armor greater than a heavy construction vehicle. It'd certainly have greater armor than a non combat car or truck. The BAR would also vary between tanks. A Tiger is going to have a greater BAR rating than a Sherman. The Sherman's gun couldn't penetrate the armor. The Tiger could and did punch holes in Shermans. (Yes, Sherman's could take out a Tiger from the rear but unless you're using the Patchwork Armor Rules, the tank is going to have 1 type of armor.)

Now since Rifle Cannons are pre-spaceflight weapons they're going to be mounted on pre-spaceflight tanks. Yes individual models may have different dates but even 120mm and greater cannons were used on tanks during WWII. For example, the Rheinmetall 120 mm gun was produced in 1974. The JS-2 Heavy Tank introduced in 1944 mounted a 122mm gun. I'm pretty sure we can agree that both these guns would be in the same class. At least in Battletech terms.

Now if a 120mm cannon equals a light rifle what class are smaller cannons? They're sure not machine guns. As there are smaller cannons there must be smaller class sizes so a 120mm cannon can not be a light rifle. That would match up with their introduction dates. Their growing size also match up with history. As armor increased the smaller sized guns became less effective, which lead to larger guns, which lead to better armor, etc. Otherwise a WWI tank would be equal to an early 21st Century tank.


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The aerospace rules are an abstraction. Therefore, they don't allow for Rifles. You want a rifle, file it under an autocannon. That is the best the rules are going to accommodate.  I'm sure, if, in universe, someone wanted to duct-tape a heavy cannon on a Corsair, nobody is going to stop them. You could even fire it. Hell, you might even hit something. Is it going to do damage? Who knows. Who cares. Put an AC/2 on it and call it done.

I care. AC's aren't available until 2250. That's nearly 300 years of space travel and combat. Granted a rifle isn't ideal but they'd be more useful for taking out dropships than machine guns.


Nebfer

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #32 on: 14 June 2011, 01:36:30 »
That's cool. Under armed but cool.

I'd use the light and medium rifle cannons for most WWI and WWII tanks, with the exception of the FT-17, which I haven't figured out how to build yet. The MG variant I can make a reasonable version but the cannon and other variants can't be done.

Infantry support weapons can't be mounted on vehicles over 4.999 tons and 3 MGs for a Sherman. I'd give the Sherman a medium rifle so it'd be more effective than WWI tanks but less so against modern ones. It also fits with the rifle cannons introduction dates.
Tech B rifles supposedly are from the post 1950s, as Tech B is supposedly the latter half of the 1900s, though I suppose it's all approximately...

Also An AC-2 is commonly used debates as an 120mm gun stand in if one wants to be generous to current day equipment, it after all dose fire 22kgs worth of ordnance, about the same for real 120mm guns.

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Are you talking about just replacing a damaged weapon? That can be done now. substituting other weapons though takes more effort. Just like it does now.
No, I mean like Swapping out an AC-10 on an enforcer and mounting it on say an Orion, according to the rules that would take about 4 hours in the field. At most it would only take 20 hours to perform any such modifications. your practically taking a weapon installed on one unit and installing it in a completely different unit even if they would ordinarily mount weapons of different calibers. (like a 40mm AC-5 on the Striker (mech) vs an 80mm one on the Riflemen)

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1) Battletech vehicles don't require heat sinks to fire rifle or autocannons. It's a feature of their design. Mechs on the other hand do require heat sinks. If the heat sinks were part of the weapon they wouldn't generate heat.
2) 120mm cannons can be made to sustain that rate of fire and more. Read the article. It lists some that do far greater than that.
3) A good well trained crew can fire Well trained crews can fire rifle cannons at rates between 15-18 rounds per minute. Without autoloader.
4) All the other sensors and computers are part of other systems.
They can fire at that rate but not for long and it's almost never fully realized (partly due to the fact you rarely see that many targets). And your completely ignoring the fact that B-tech autocannons are firing multiple rounds per shot. 120mm is a common caliber for AC-20s in the fluff, at 20kg per round it's firing 60 rounds a minute and with Tac ops 120 RPM, an 50mm RAC-5 would be able to fire something like 720 rounds in a minute. Though their not doing a slow steady fire rate it's shot bursts followed by reloading, aiming and cooling off.

Don't be silly even though vehicles do not produce heat when firing, autocannons (and like weapons) are not suddenly ice cold heat vacuums when mounted on a vehicles. No their just better at getting rid of heat their weapons give off with out the need for the heavy duty heat sinks, their built in sinks are more than up to the task, it's that the energy weapons produce to much heat for that system to work. Battlemechs due to their more air tight construction lack that ability.

And how can you tell if your remotely fired weapon (two meters down and two meters to your left) is even aiming at what you want it to if theirs no sensors telling you that it is. And how do you even know if it's damaged if theirs no electronics their to say so. Heck autocannons have an issue of frying their firing circuits when fired at their maximum rate...
 
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Again there are cannon sizes smaller than 100mm. The Abram's 120mm cannon would be more of a Heavy Rifle not light.
And pray tell how you came to this conclusion, the weapon weight is more in line with the light*, as is the ammo, and the theoretical damage is also more in line as well. Considering that a Gauss Rifle is easily doing oh I don't know something along the lines of 400ish megajoules, if not higher like what cray suggests. Also if a 120mm gun is a heavy whats a 140 or 150 or even a 203mm gun going to be rated as**?

* No need for high angle elevation, or possibly independent traverse, no need for rapid reloading, though an autoloader could be include, Nor any need for it to reload at presumably at any angle, and no need for recoil gear built for hypervelocity shells.

** In the 1950s the British built a tank (FV 215b) with a 183mm (7.2 inch) direct fire gun. The Russians had a 152mm L60 gun prototype in the 1960s (object 120 -supposedly the Mv was 1.7km/s with a 13kg APDS projectile), the US contemplated 175mm tank guns during that time frame as well. Then theirs the 165mm gun used on engineering vehicles.

The Russian gun had a Ke of 18.5 megajoules more than twice that of the 120mm guns, a medium rifle is twice that of a light rifle...  ;)
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Since they've been in production since their creation and I would have to say not. Besides why would they build them to lesser specs when they could build them to modern ones and not lose 3 points of damage?
Who knows perhaps it's partly due to why they are not all that good on B-tech armor in the first place.

After all armor thats at best an inch thick can stop repeated impacts from Gauss Rifles which easily have the Kinetic energy of a 16 inch naval rifle. If a battle mech is taking that kind of energy do you really think a single piddly 8.5 megajoule impacter is going to be much of a threat (this kind of energy would turn current MBTs to scrap metal oh shear Ke alone)? B-tech autocannons get by due to the armor seems to be weaker to rapid fire weapons like autocannons, but even then B-tech autocannons supposedly have higher velocity's than real world weapons as well.

A 120mm cannon would have to be a heavy rifle cannon and the armor for the Abrams would have to be at least BAR 7. Older and smaller tanks would have smaller sized cannons and lower BAR levels.

Think about it. The lunar lander which had tinfoil in some places for skin would be made with 1 point of BAR 2 armor in each location.  (In actuality id be much less but the rules state a minimum of BAR 2.) A WWI tank is going to have much more armor if not a higher BAR rating with an armored chassis. WWII tanks would have even higher BARs and larger cannons. And so on. Besides, BAR 2 isn't intended for combat but to protect the vehicle passengers and cargo from the elements and accidents. Only when they get to the higher BAR rates are they meant for combat.
Their guns would be considered pop guns, rather pointless to use. The 37mm gun on a FT-17 is effectively pointless as an anti-armor weapon by WW2 (in fact most where removed after the war and reissued MGs), If most WW2 tanks where immune to WW1 weapons and most modern tanks are immune to WW2 tank guns why should B-tech units care to much about modern weapons?

Heck My 70 year old bolt action Rifle can penetrate the armor of many WW1 tanks, and even a good number of post WW1 tanks (it's a Mauser 98k).
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Armored Chassis can be built under tech level A. The lowest BAR rating that you must have in order to have an Armored Chassis Mod is tech A BAR 5 armor which weighs 100kg per point. I'm pretty sure we can agree that a Tank regardless of age is an Armored Vehicle.
Nope. The Bob Semple would disagree with you... As would the mark II tank (boiler plate)

Also if an Abrams is Bar 7, that's effectively making that their was no development in armor for close to 400 years. Also by making the heavy rifle the current top end tank guns your also say theirs no development in tank armament for some 300 years.
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Now since Rifle Cannons are pre-spaceflight weapons they're going to be mounted on pre-spaceflight tanks. Yes individual models may have different dates but even 120mm and greater cannons were used on tanks during WWII. For example, the Rheinmetall 120 mm gun was produced in 1974. The JS-2 Heavy Tank introduced in 1944 mounted a 122mm gun. I'm pretty sure we can agree that both these guns would be in the same class. At least in Battletech terms.
Their also post 1950s weapons as thats what Tech B represents by and large. And no their in the same range Kinetic energy wise. The modern 120s are in the 7 to 9 megajoule range the 122mm D-25T Russian gun was 8 megajoules. So both could be lights...

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Now if a 120mm cannon equals a light rifle what class are smaller cannons? They're sure not machine guns. As there are smaller cannons there must be smaller class sizes so a 120mm cannon can not be a light rifle. That would match up with their introduction dates. Their growing size also match up with history. As armor increased the smaller sized guns became less effective, which lead to larger guns, which lead to better armor, etc. Otherwise a WWI tank would be equal to an early 21st Century tank.
Completely and utterly irrelevant to the game? Perhaps as a yet unknown weapons system. Bend the rules and use infantry weapons? A heavy recoilless rifle dose .36 damage, and in the RPG has a array of shell types not used in the regular game.

If you want ww1 guns what about the french 75mm artillery gun, what weapon represents it in game? Or the 15cm howitzers the Germans used in ww1? Or the 12 pound napoleon of the US civil war for that matter? Are you going to suggest we represent them with thumpers?
« Last Edit: 14 June 2011, 01:47:19 by Nebfer »

Daemion

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #33 on: 14 June 2011, 16:43:56 »
Yes individual models may have different dates but even 120mm and greater cannons were used on tanks during WWII. For example, the Rheinmetall 120 mm gun was produced in 1974. The JS-2 Heavy Tank introduced in 1944 mounted a 122mm gun. I'm pretty sure we can agree that both these guns would be in the same class. At least in Battletech terms.

This is actually a flawed assumption. The cannon's effect is not necessarily equal. We've seen that Every weapon of a class in BT is in some way different. You can't declare that an AC/2 is going to be x caliber all the time.

Same goes with single shot cannons. The 122mm is subject to the ammo and propellant it fires as well as the controlling platform which fires it. It was mounted on tanks with mostly manual control devices. The Rheinmetall was developed in an age where computers aid the system in tracking targets and aiming the shots. It also uses ammo that has been updated with advances in propellant, casing, and metallurgy.

That's what defines the gun in BattleTech terms. You outfit the 122 with the stuff the Rheinmetall is normally hooked to, and you effectively have a different gun. It can shoot more accurately to better ranges. Create updated ammo that fits it, and it suddenly does more damage.

This is why you can't use the BAR system or the Rifled Cannons to emulate combat vehicles from another age. If you decide to try to do so, be sure to give it a 'Mk #' because it ain't the original. (The M1 is significantly different from its A1, A2, A3 and other variants. But, we're not talking like an ARC-2R Archer to an ARC-2S or 2K (to give a mech example.) We're talking an ARC-2R to an ARC-5R.)

The current Support Vee design rules which make extensive use of BAR make no room for steady progression of firepower. It assumes that everything is all at a certain level, always was, and always will be. And what level is that? Why the current one the BTU is set in, which is pretty damn high. They also use the current vehicle critical hit tables and location charts. (When a Sherman is punched through by a Tiger's shot, did it really just stun the crew, for a few seconds at a time, most of the time? Or, did they normally die in some horrible fashion? They were called Zippos for a reason.)

The Rifled Cannons rule is under the same paradigm.  So, while you might get away with using it for historical games, its being used out of context, and at that point, whey bother following the rules to an exact T? Once you do this, you're assuming a different scale, and expecting it to mesh up with the true scale is not logical.

They did try to remedy this with the -3 damage mod applied under specific conditions, but it isn't enough.



Now, as to cannons in space in BT. It better have a muzzle velocity of at least 18km/s (1 TW/AT2 Space hex) to be effective. At the speeds space fighters are generally flying, one second is more than enough time to avoid a shot that takes any longer to get there. Otherwise, it's only good against installations and in the atmosphere. (Air Ground-hexes result in the short range band being around 3 km. Again, against moving targets, it better take no more than a second or it whizzes by. BT sensors are now, thanks to suggestions from TechManual, pretty powerful and tied to some fast, smart computers with some excellent programming. They can track pending or incoming attacks, and all a crew/pilot has to do is heed the warning and adjust course.  [Maxwell Smart] "Missed it by that much." [/Smart])

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worktroll

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #34 on: 14 June 2011, 19:03:32 »
The v0s are for RL weapons, not fictional but it still makes one wonder. Why can't they operate in space?

Space is a suprisingly hostile environment, after all. Let's take some simple, reliable modern weapons - the AK-47 and Ma-Deuce .50 HMG, both renowned for their reliability in the field. Let's assume you take them out of a pressurised compartment, into vacuum. Both will fire - for a little while. But then they'll probably jam, due to factors such as:
- lubricants boiling off into space (boiling temp drops with pressure, and pressure is near zero)
- inequal contraction or expansion of different metal components (in the shade it's approaching 0K, in sunlight it's 350K+)

A lot of work goes into protecting mechanical components of satellites against these effects. Yes, you can move to solid lubricants like graphite, or arrange heating jackets, and ... etc etc etc. THe weapons become bigger, bulkier, and require more specialised components.

(Things get worse on the lunar surface. Moon dust is a kick-arse grinding medium, and the Apollo astronauts experienced severe wear on their moon suits from walking around - almost to the point they were losing seals at wrist and helmet joins.)

I know, bringing real-world physics into a BT argument  ::) Catgirls, forgive me ;)

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FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #35 on: 15 June 2011, 00:49:06 »
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Tech B rifles supposedly are from the post 1950s, as Tech B is supposedly the latter half of the 1900s, though I suppose it's all approximately...

Rifles are pre-space weapons. Strategic Operations states that pre-spaceflight is 1950 and before. Early spaceflight is 1950-2200. That means Rifle Cannons are introduced before 1950. Internal Combustion engines are also Tech B. If we go by the Tech Ratings ICE weren't introduced until 1950, yet automobiles, tanks, planes, etc. were all introduced pre-spaceflight. You can't go by the Tech Ratings. They're broken.

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Also An AC-2 is commonly used debates as an 120mm gun stand in if one wants to be generous to current day equipment, it after all dose fire 22kgs worth of ordnance, about the same for real 120mm guns.

That's the first I heard about that. I think that's silly. A generic AC/2 fires a max of 4 shots per round at 1 point each. That's little better than a Light Rifle firing one 3 point shot. A Heavy Rifle Cannon is way bigger than either. And again, using weights doesn't really work as they don't match up.

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No, I mean like Swapping out an AC-10 on an enforcer and mounting it on say an Orion, according to the rules that would take about 4 hours in the field. At most it would only take 20 hours to perform any such modifications. your practically taking a weapon installed on one unit and installing it in a completely different unit even if they would ordinarily mount weapons of different calibers. (like a 40mm AC-5 on the Striker (mech) vs an 80mm one on the Riflemen)

Ah, I see what you mean. That would cause some problems but the rules don't go by sizes in mm but in class. You could always house rule it though. Where does it say they have those sized weapons? I can't find it.


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They can fire at that rate but not for long and it's almost never fully realized (partly due to the fact you rarely see that many targets). And your completely ignoring the fact that B-tech autocannons are firing multiple rounds per shot. 120mm is a common caliber for AC-20s in the fluff, at 20kg per round it's firing 60 rounds a minute and with Tac ops 120 RPM, an 50mm RAC-5 would be able to fire something like 720 rounds in a minute. Though their not doing a slow steady fire rate it's shot bursts followed by reloading, aiming and cooling off.

If there aren't that many targets what's the problem? I am not ignoring anything. Autocannons fire 2-4 shots per round. Some are fluffed to be more. That's far less than 60 rounds a minute. Even the RAC only gets 36 rounds per minute.


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Don't be silly even though vehicles do not produce heat when firing, autocannons (and like weapons) are not suddenly ice cold heat vacuums when mounted on a vehicles. No their just better at getting rid of heat their weapons give off with out the need for the heavy duty heat sinks, their built in sinks are more than up to the task, it's that the energy weapons produce to much heat for that system to work. Battlemechs due to their more air tight construction lack that ability.

Please don't sink to the level of being insulting. I know vehicles are better at getting rid of heat from non energy weapons. That's why they don't require heat sinks. I also know mechs aren't as capable which is why they do. However, the heat sinks aren't a part of the weapon. They're a separate item.


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And how can you tell if your remotely fired weapon (two meters down and two meters to your left) is even aiming at what you want it to if theirs no sensors telling you that it is. And how do you even know if it's damaged if theirs no electronics their to say so. Heck autocannons have an issue of frying their firing circuits when fired at their maximum rate...

The sensors are part of the fire control system, for vehicle built with the support vehicle rules and they're part of the vehicle weight under the combat vehicle rules.


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And pray tell how you came to this conclusion, the weapon weight is more in line with the light*, as is the ammo, and the theoretical damage is also more in line as well. Considering that a Gauss Rifle is easily doing oh I don't know something along the lines of 400ish megajoules, if not higher like what cray suggests. Also if a 120mm gun is a heavy whats a 140 or 150 or even a 203mm gun going to be rated as**?

Try reading my post again. I explained how I figured that. You're also using real world weights which don't match up with Battletech weights.  If a light rifle is such a big caliber we'd have no need for artillery. We'd also be missing all sizes of guns under it.

Also class sizes go up. A 203mm gun would be up. Otherwise we'd have AC/30s and AC/40s as well.

They'd be rated sniper thumper and long tom which are also prespaceflight weapons.

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* No need for high angle elevation, or possibly independent traverse, no need for rapid reloading, though an autoloader could be include, Nor any need for it to reload at presumably at any angle, and no need for recoil gear built for hypervelocity shells.

Those would be part of the weapon mount or part of the weapon.

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** In the 1950s the British built a tank (FV 215b) with a 183mm (7.2 inch) direct fire gun. The Russians had a 152mm L60 gun prototype in the 1960s (object 120 -supposedly the Mv was 1.7km/s with a 13kg APDS projectile), the US contemplated 175mm tank guns during that time frame as well. Then theirs the 165mm gun used on engineering vehicles.   

The Russian gun had a Ke of 18.5 megajoules more than twice that of the 120mm guns, a medium rifle is twice that of a light rifle...  ;)

Why is why you can't compare real world stats to Battletech stats. If Battletech's damage rules were closer to real life we'd have weapons and damages based on gun sizes not classes of guns. Imagine how big the tables at the back would be.


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Who knows perhaps it's partly due to why they are not all that good on B-tech armor in the first place.

After all armor thats at best an inch thick can stop repeated impacts from Gauss Rifles which easily have the Kinetic energy of a 16 inch naval rifle. If a battle mech is taking that kind of energy do you really think a single piddly 8.5 megajoule impacter is going to be much of a threat (this kind of energy would turn current MBTs to scrap metal oh shear Ke alone)? B-tech autocannons get by due to the armor seems to be weaker to rapid fire weapons like autocannons, but even then B-tech autocannons supposedly have higher velocity's than real world weapons as well.

Which makes me wonder why build to lesser standards? If autocannon rounds are traveling faster why not use the same propellant in rifle cannons? Wait we do! They're called LB-X Autocannons! They fire a single shot or cluster per round. Just like Rifle Cannons. Only they can't fire clusters. Let's compare single shot weapons instead of single shot weapons and machine guns.

A Light Rifle is close to a LB-X-2 AC in terms of damage. Since Rifles use less powerful propellant their rounds don't go as far, and need a lot more propellant to do so, and they don't do as much damage to the higher grade armors. If a LB-2X is 30mm wouldn't the Light Rifle be about the same size or slightly larger? If a LB-2X and Light Rifle are close then a LB-5X is close to a Medium Rifle, and a LB-10X is close to a Heavy.

Now these are my own but if cannon class sizes are 30-60, 60-90, 90-110, and 110 and up, with some overlapping a LB-10 X and Heavy Rifle could both 120mm as representatives of the larger sizes in their class.

And again, if a Light Rifle Cannon equals the smaller sized deck guns on a ship a Heavy Rifle must be the main gun. If that's the case, why do we have the Sniper, Thumper, and Long Tom?


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Their guns would be considered pop guns, rather pointless to use. The 37mm gun on a FT-17 is effectively pointless as an anti-armor weapon by WW2 (in fact most where removed after the war and reissued MGs), If most WW2 tanks where immune to WW1 weapons and most modern tanks are immune to WW2 tank guns why should B-tech units care to much about modern weapons?

But they were still used against lightly armored units. Also 37mm guns were good at the beginning of the war and not so good at the end do to the increase in tanks armor protection. That would be reflected in game terms as increased BAR ratings. A 37mm round might not do much to an Abram's armor. It'd probably bounce off. Makes me thing of the damage reduction rules for BAR 8 and above armor. Even if that isn't the case it might damage a sensor or camera or the top mounted machine guns.


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Heck My 70 year old bolt action Rifle can penetrate the armor of many WW1 tanks, and even a good number of post WW1 tanks (it's a Mauser 98k).

Yep, which is another reason why comparing our universe to Battletech doesn't match up. A WWI Tank probably equals a modern day armored car but its still an armored vehicle. 


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Nope. The Bob Semple would disagree with you... As would the mark II tank (boiler plate)

Who? The mark II tank had a max armor of 12mm. That isn't much now days but it was pretty good for then.

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Also if an Abrams is Bar 7, that's effectively making that their was no development in armor for close to 400 years. Also by making the heavy rifle the current top end tank guns your also say theirs no development in tank armament for some 300 years.

You have seen the Support Armor Table haven't you? Armor decreases in weight the more advanced the tech rating. Tech B BAR 7 armor weighs 88kg per point. Tech F weighs 37 kg per point. Higher rated tech chassis don't even have to use the Armored Chassis Mod to mount it! That's a big improvement.

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Completely and utterly irrelevant to the game? Perhaps as a yet unknown weapons system. Bend the rules and use infantry weapons? A heavy recoilless rifle dose .36 damage, and in the RPG has a array of shell types not used in the regular game.

If you want ww1 guns what about the french 75mm artillery gun, what weapon represents it in game? Or the 15cm howitzers the Germans used in ww1? Or the 12 pound napoleon of the US civil war for that matter? Are you going to suggest we represent them with thumpers?

It is completely relevant. They're not infantry weapons but vehicle weapons.  If a light rifle cannon is 120mm why do we have artillery cannons? Lighter cannons have to be light rifle cannons. Yes I would use a Thumper as the 15cm Howitzer. It's a pre-spaceflight weapon. Would I use it for a weapon from before WWI. No. Should we have horse pulled artillery? I don't know why not. We still have cavalry units. Should we have better infantry support weapons. Absolutely. A 10kg SRM should do 2 points of damage with a range of 9 no matter what fires it. And A BA Heavy Recoilless Rifle shouldn't do ten times the damage, with ammo that weights 20 times less, of the infantry version. Does that mean there should be infantry used "extra" light rifle cannons that are the same as those on early tanks. Probably. There is a big gap in weapons between infantry and vehicle scale. Maybe then a Light Rifle really will be 120mm. Until then though, it can't possibly be.




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This is actually a flawed assumption. The cannon's effect is not necessarily equal. We've seen that Every weapon of a class in BT is in some way different. You can't declare that an AC/2 is going to be x caliber all the time.

It isn't flawed. It's based on game rules. In the game the cannons are equal whether they're fluffed at firing 3 shots or 5 or having  a size of 30mm or 40mm. An AC/2 is an AC/2. In reality, they would have different effects. In the game they don't unless you use house rules.


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Same goes with single shot cannons. The 122mm is subject to the ammo and propellant it fires as well as the controlling platform which fires it. It was mounted on tanks with mostly manual control devices. The Rheinmetall was developed in an age where computers aid the system in tracking targets and aiming the shots. It also uses ammo that has been updated with advances in propellant, casing, and metallurgy.

Actually fire control computers have been around since the late 19th Century. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-control_system  Granted they were on every gun but they were still available. They've just gotten smaller and faster.  Ammo has been updated though as has the material used to make the guns. Newer ammo wears out the older guns faster.


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That's what defines the gun in BattleTech terms. You outfit the 122 with the stuff the Rheinmetall is normally hooked to, and you effectively have a different gun. It can shoot more accurately to better ranges. Create updated ammo that fits it, and it suddenly does more damage.

That's reflected in upgrading from no fire control to basic and advanced fire controls and better ammo type. Except, Rifle Cannons can't use alternative Ammos.


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This is why you can't use the BAR system or the Rifled Cannons to emulate combat vehicles from another age. If you decide to try to do so, be sure to give it a 'Mk #' because it ain't the original. (The M1 is significantly different from its A1, A2, A3 and other variants. But, we're not talking like an ARC-2R Archer to an ARC-2S or 2K (to give a mech example.) We're talking an ARC-2R to an ARC-5R.)

 ???

Quote
The current Support Vee design rules which make extensive use of BAR make no room for steady progression of firepower. It assumes that everything is all at a certain level, always was, and always will be. And what level is that? Why the current one the BTU is set in, which is pretty damn high. They also use the current vehicle critical hit tables and location charts. (When a Sherman is punched through by a Tiger's shot, did it really just stun the crew, for a few seconds at a time, most of the time? Or, did they normally die in some horrible fashion? They were called Zippos for a reason.)

Actually you can. There's a varying degree of BARs. A Tiger would have a higher BAR than a Sherman. the Sherman's BAR would be under the amount of damage the Tigers cannon would do so it'd take full damage and get to roll for penetrating critical hits. That greatly increases the chances of lighting up a Sherman. The Tiger though has BAR at least equal to the damage a Sherman's gun would do so no penetrating hits. It'd have to wear down the armor or get a lucky critical hit.

Now while Armor does vary between ages and tech ratings, Weapons haven't changed. Well, some have reduced ammo loads but that's it. Still an AC/2 is still an AC/2 whether it was made in 2300 or 3085. Should there be an optional rule for improving ammo capabilities over time? Probably. I'd use it if there were one. How would it work though? Reduced ranges? Reduce their damages same as the Rifle Cannons?

Quote
The Rifled Cannons rule is under the same paradigm.  So, while you might get away with using it for historical games, its being used out of context, and at that point, whey bother following the rules to an exact T? Once you do this, you're assuming a different scale, and expecting it to mesh up with the true scale is not logical.

 ??? Rifle Cannons are pre-spaceflight weapons. They, artillery cannons and machine guns are the only ones available for historical games. How can they be taken out of context?

Quote
They did try to remedy this with the -3 damage mod applied under specific conditions, but it isn't enough.

I think it's plenty since no other pre-spaceflight weapon suffers a -3 damage mod.

Quote
Now, as to cannons in space in BT. It better have a muzzle velocity of at least 18km/s (1 TW/AT2 Space hex) to be effective. At the speeds space fighters are generally flying, one second is more than enough time to avoid a shot that takes any longer to get there. Otherwise, it's only good against installations and in the atmosphere. (Air Ground-hexes result in the short range band being around 3 km. Again, against moving targets, it better take no more than a second or it whizzes by. BT sensors are now, thanks to suggestions from TechManual, pretty powerful and tied to some fast, smart computers with some excellent programming. They can track pending or incoming attacks, and all a crew/pilot has to do is heed the warning and adjust course.  [Maxwell Smart] "Missed it by that much." [/Smart])

I agree only the rules say different. A machine gun works in space. They're mounted on aerospace fighters. I don't know why rifle cannons couldn't either.

worktroll

 :) All very true. But the Russians manages it some how. How dare they!

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #36 on: 15 June 2011, 01:03:25 »
Or, it's not just an issue of velocity in space or air combat. We're talking about weapons that rock a tank back on its treads with recoil when fired; a conventional fighter might not be able to handle the recoil, and aircraft have traditionally relied on RoF weapons due to the lead time and distances involved.
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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #37 on: 15 June 2011, 01:11:20 »
Quote from: FedComGirl
If there aren't that many targets what's the problem? I am not ignoring anything. Autocannons fire 2-4 shots per round. Some are fluffed to be more. That's far less than 60 rounds a minute. Even the RAC only gets 36 rounds per minute.

You are conflating shots with rounds. A BT 'shot' is a salvo of indeterminate rounds for autocannons.

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #38 on: 15 June 2011, 01:29:46 »
Quote
Or, it's not just an issue of velocity in space or air combat. We're talking about weapons that rock a tank back on its treads with recoil when fired; a conventional fighter might not be able to handle the recoil, and aircraft have traditionally relied on RoF weapons due to the lead time and distances involved.

That makes sense, machine guns also have recoil as do autocannons.


Quote
You are conflating shots with rounds. A BT 'shot' is a salvo of indeterminate rounds for autocannons.

No I'm not. For each round an AC is used, two shots are fired. Four if using rapid fire rules. The number of "rounds" listed in the ammo tables is the number of two shot bursts the AC's can fire. Some AC/s are fluffed or have art showing they'd fire more shots per round but those would come under house rules.

guardiandashi

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #39 on: 15 June 2011, 02:41:22 »

No I'm not. For each round an AC is used, two shots are fired. Four if using rapid fire rules. The number of "rounds" listed in the ammo tables is the number of two shot bursts the AC's can fire. Some AC/s are fluffed or have art showing they'd fire more shots per round but those would come under house rules.

yes you are not all autocannon fire 2 or 4 rounds per "shot"

the 120mm gm whirlwind autocannon fires rounds out of a revolver style speedloader cassette of ~3 to 5 rounds
the riflemans ac 5's are lower calibur 80mm or less and fire closer to 50-100 rounds of belted ammo per "shot"

the pontiac ac20 fires ~100 rounds per shot

also lbx autocannon are still autocannon they do NOT fire 1 round per "shot" a 100mm ac 10 could be firing 10 rounds per "shot" with each round doing ~1 point of damage

in fact you could have a ac series made by a manufacturer that decided to simplify logistics by making all their cannons say 100mm
the 100mm ac2 has a really long barrel, and fires 2 or 3 100mm rounds per "shot"
the 100mm ac5 has a long barrel and fires 5 or 6 100mm rounds per "shot"
the 100mm ac 10 has a medium length barrel and fires between 10 and 15 100 mm rounds per "shot"
the 100 mm ac20 has a short barrel and fires between 20 and 30 100mm rounds per "shot"
there you go and the sick part?  ya the shells and rounds are all the same so with a little "tweeking" you can load that series's ac2 ammo in an ac20 with just some minor "tweeks" in the ammo mags

FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #40 on: 15 June 2011, 05:41:12 »
Hmm. Let's see the rules shall we?

Tactical Operations page 100. Using the rapid fire rules, autocannons fire two shots. The Multiple target rules allow you to fire at two targets and if successful they're struck by a single hit. So if standard firing is 2 shots, or rounds if you prefer, and rapid fire is twice that, the maximum rate of fire a standard autocannon is capable of is 4 per round. 24 per minute.

I may not have a math degree but that much math I can handle.

The firing rates you state are fluff. Fluff, as well as art, says some autocannons use multiple barrels but that doesn't change the rules. When it comes to rules vs fluff, rules win. Unless you use house rules. If you want to have your AC/20 firing 20 shots per round at me fine. But each shot only does 1 point of damage and you'll have to roll on the cluster hits table. I'll stick with my heavy rifle cannon and hit you at twice the distance for 6-9 times the damage shot.

Also if you want to compare firing rates, we have autocannons now with firing rates that are just as good or better. We've had them for years. Even WWI tanks have better firing rates, than a by the rules AC.  The QF 6 pounder Hotchkiss (57mm gun) used on the Mark 1 Tanks has a firing rate of 25 per minute. And they were hand loaded.

Where are you getting the Rifleman's AC/5's being 80mm? I know the Defender, the Rifleman inspiration, mounts 2 twin barreled 78mm guns with a firing rate of 500 rounds per barrel, with 200 rounds of ammo gun. But I don't remember the Rifleman giving a size for its guns.

Oh, it looks like you may be right about the LB-X firing bursts. Of course that makes me wonder why its fluffed to being similar to a shotgun. Then again,  there are automatic shotguns so I suppose that works. Still, its not how they're portrayed. I also have to wonder how long they'll last before going extinct since you can accomplish the same results using a standard autocannons and alternative munitions.

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #41 on: 15 June 2011, 07:22:16 »
Hmm. Let's see the rules shall we?

Tactical Operations page 100. Using the rapid fire rules, autocannons fire two shots. The Multiple target rules allow you to fire at two targets and if successful they're struck by a single hit. So if standard firing is 2 shots, or rounds if you prefer, and rapid fire is twice that, the maximum rate of fire a standard autocannon is capable of is 4 per round. 24 per minute.
Man, as said before.
A 'Shot' is not a 'Round'!
A 'shot' in BT represent a differing number of actual rounds fired. Some AC 'shots' include a few rounds, other many. Depends on  the type of the weapon. So a AC/5 manufactured by Company A have 20 shots per ton, each with (example!) 10 rounds.
Company B produces an other AC/5, also with 20 shots per ton, but firing 20 rounds per volley (= shot).

For the terminology I suggest you to read the museum technica entry, p.98 of Era Report 3052.

And, please, for gods sake, it's a game. And a game needs abstractions. TPTB states that a typical modern tank gun is represented by a light rifle cannon. Period.
Makes no sense, to build tanks from today with (abstracted) rules for weapons of tomorrow.
« Last Edit: 15 June 2011, 07:26:45 by Demos »
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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #42 on: 15 June 2011, 07:33:33 »
Quote
Tactical Operations page 100. Using the rapid fire rules, autocannons fire two shots. The Multiple target rules allow you to fire at two targets and if successful they're struck by a single hit. So if standard firing is 2 shots, or rounds if you prefer, and rapid fire is twice that, the maximum rate of fire a standard autocannon is capable of is 4 per round. 24 per minute.

That's a pretty strained reading of texts that describe walking fire across multiple targets and/or locations, along with multiple early texts talking about multi-round clips for the Armstrong J11, let alone the multiple depictions in art of more than two shell casings falling away from an A/C discharge slot.

Quote
The firing rates you state are fluff. Fluff, as well as art, says some autocannons use multiple barrels but that doesn't change the rules. When it comes to rules vs fluff, rules win. Unless you use house rules. If you want to have your AC/20 firing 20 shots per round at me fine. But each shot only does 1 point of damage and you'll have to roll on the cluster hits table. I'll stick with my heavy rifle cannon and hit you at twice the distance for 6-9 times the damage shot.

Rules are actually the lowest level of canon, below art. Fiction has primacy, and so the firing rates remain.

Quote
I also have to wonder how long they'll last before going extinct since you can accomplish the same results using a standard autocannons and alternative munitions.

Considering that standard A/Cs are heavier, run hotter, have shorter range and cannot match Cluster munition (Flechette works differently), I doubt LB-Xs are in any real danger. Standard A/Cs, however, were ridiculously obsolete before being given a marginal reprieve in the form of their alternate ammo types.

I know you've got a Thing about primitive units and weapons in BattleTech, and all I can say is what I've said before; modern-day weapons are ineffective against the technologies of BattleTech.

I would not expect today's equipment to stack up well against that of Mass Effect, what Barrayar deploys in the Miles Vorkosigan novels, or what Revelation Space employs either.

And not because an Asari can create a localised Black Hole, or because of Soltoxin, or because of Hell-Class Weaponry. Because it is a more advanced setting where the weapons and equipment of today have been tried and found wanting in the face of the higher technologies employed in battle.

It's not meant to be competitive. Technology has moved on, and the forces 'Mechs throw around and resist make the weapons and equipment of today useless against combat-rated BT vehicles and a good number of civilian BT equipment too.

And that, given we're in a universe with cold fusion, reality-warping space travel, organ cloning and limb replacement, is as it should be.
« Last Edit: 15 June 2011, 07:53:38 by Stormfury »
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Kit deSummersville

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #43 on: 15 June 2011, 07:39:40 »

No I'm not. For each round an AC is used, two shots are fired. Four if using rapid fire rules. The number of "rounds" listed in the ammo tables is the number of two shot bursts the AC's can fire. Some AC/s are fluffed or have art showing they'd fire more shots per round but those would come under house rules.

A round is an individual shell. Where did you get this idea that ACs fire two shots per turn?

Quote from: TechManual, p. 207
most autocannons deliver their damage by firing high-speed streams or bursts of high-explosive, armor-defeating shells through one or more barrels

Quote from: Total Warfare, p. 103
A “shot” in this case represents a single use of the weapon in a single turn, not a single missile or round of ammunition

Both the rules and fluff disagree with you.
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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #44 on: 15 June 2011, 11:44:42 »


I know you've got a Thing about primitive units and weapons in BattleTech, and all I can say is what I've said before; modern-day weapons are ineffective against the technologies of BattleTech.



You do know that sixty angry men with sledgehammers (0.04 damage each) will, if not opposed, reduce a shutdown AS7-D to powder in less than an hour.
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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #45 on: 15 June 2011, 12:21:41 »
You do know that sixty angry men with sledgehammers (0.04 damage each) will, if not opposed, reduce a shutdown AS7-D to powder in less than an hour.

I think inefficient would have been a better word than ineffective.  Or you can say that primitive weapons are ineffective against Battletech technology under battlefield conditions. 

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #46 on: 15 June 2011, 14:40:10 »

Ah, I see what you mean. That would cause some problems but the rules don't go by sizes in mm but in class. You could always house rule it though. Where does it say they have those sized weapons? I can't find it.
Price of Glory mentions it's an 80mm.


Quote
If there aren't that many targets what's the problem? I am not ignoring anything. Autocannons fire 2-4 shots per round. Some are fluffed to be more. That's far less than 60 rounds a minute. Even the RAC only gets 36 rounds per minute.
You have been told by more than one person in this thread your wrong on this issue. The game rules and fluff and even art all say a shot is not a single round (though it can be), their can be dozens of rounds in a single shot, that all add up to what ever damage rating the autocannon is. Gauss Rifles and Rifle canons are the exception as they have been described as firing single rounds per shot.

Quote
Please don't sink to the level of being insulting. I know vehicles are better at getting rid of heat from non energy weapons. That's why they don't require heat sinks. I also know mechs aren't as capable which is why they do. However, the heat sinks aren't a part of the weapon. They're a separate item.
Why can their be a basic heat sink on the weapon? Heat has to be gotten rid of some how, even in a vehicle. A CPU has a heat sink built onto the Die. And we often install more capable ones on top of that.


Quote
Try reading my post again. I explained how I figured that. You're also using real world weights which don't match up with Battletech weights.  If a light rifle is such a big caliber we'd have no need for artillery. We'd also be missing all sizes of guns under it.

So? Who cares about the 50mm KwK 38 & 39 guns or even the 88mm KwK 43 their irrelevant to B-tech game play. If you want them house rule them as say a Rifle cannon 1 (as in damage). The guys who made the weapons hint that the modern 120mm is what they based the light rifles off of.
B-tech weight do not match up because their not real life weapons. And that their including in their wights more than just the gun barrel and mount.



Quote
They'd be rated sniper thumper and long tom which are also prespaceflight weapons.
No they would not your reading way to much into the pre space flight thing. A B-tech MG is rated as pre space flight sure, buit it's not a pre space flight weapon. Know any real life Machineguns with a Velocity of at lest 1,800 meters per second that was available before the 1960s? Or even today for that matter?

Quote
Those would be part of the weapon mount or part of the weapon.
Sensors and other electronics can and are part of the gun, their are infantry rifles that have bus loads of electronics built into them, to find ranges, and fuze the rounds so they go off at the right time. I guess these sensors are not part of the gun then? Even though their a intrinsic part of it. It's the same way. Heck their will have to be sensors built into the weapon to provide diagnostic feed back.

Quote
Why is why you can't compare real world stats to Battletech stats. If Battletech's damage rules were closer to real life we'd have weapons and damages based on gun sizes not classes of guns. Imagine how big the tables at the back would be.
I don't know I can calculate B-tech Fighter performance quite well, and they would slaughter real world fighters in almost every category.


Quote
Which makes me wonder why build to lesser standards? If autocannon rounds are traveling faster why not use the same propellant in rifle cannons? Wait we do! They're called LB-X Autocannons! They fire a single shot or cluster per round. Just like Rifle Cannons. Only they can't fire clusters. Let's compare single shot weapons instead of single shot weapons and machine guns.
Who says their built to less standards, The Rifle cannon could very well be built to modern "b-tech" specifications (or close to it) and it still "sucks", Because in part it fires a single chemically fired shell vs dozens of shells. Ignoring the fact that Rifles have far less velocity.

Quote
And again, if a Light Rifle Cannon equals the smaller sized deck guns on a ship a Heavy Rifle must be the main gun. If that's the case, why do we have the Sniper, Thumper, and Long Tom?
Because their different kettles of fish. And a long tom is easily 240mm, which is a bit bigger than the ~200mm of a heavy Rifle.

Quote
Who? The mark II tank had a max armor of 12mm. That isn't much now days but it was pretty good for then.
Wiki it

Quote
You have seen the Support Armor Table haven't you? Armor decreases in weight the more advanced the tech rating. Tech B BAR 7 armor weighs 88kg per point. Tech F weighs 37 kg per point. Higher rated tech chassis don't even have to use the Armored Chassis Mod to mount it! That's a big improvement.
Your wrong here Tech B only includes Bar 5, and higher is not available at that tech level, see tech manual for this (pg 280)
Support vehicle armor Tech ratings
BAR 2&3 is Tech A
BAR 4&5 is Tech B
BAR 6&7 is Tech C
BAR 8-10 is Tech D

So a tech B vehicle only has BAR 5 available in either A or B ratings.

Quote
??? Rifle Cannons are pre-spaceflight weapons. They, artillery cannons and machine guns are the only ones available for historical games. How can they be taken out of context?
ent. A machine gun works in space. They're mounted on aerospace fighters. I don't know why rifle cannons couldn't either.
They may be pre-spaceflight but their not necessarily "1000" year old weapons, a B-tech MG has a velocity greater than 1.8km/s their is no real world weapon of this class that comes close to this velocity. As such it can not really be a pre spaceflight weapon. B-tech even mentions the 23mm gun on the space station, heck they even mention the Seawolf class subs.

Edit:
The Powers have mentioned that they loosely based the Light rifle off the modern 120mm guns, though their not intended to be strictly them.
« Last Edit: 15 June 2011, 14:47:52 by Nebfer »

FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #47 on: 16 June 2011, 00:28:36 »
For those who think I'm not going by the rules.

From Tactical Operations.
Quote
No matter what type of autocannon is being used, both targets
must be in adjacent hexes and within range of the weapon.
Determine the to-hit number for both targets and make separate
to-hit rolls against each target, using the higher (more diffi cult) of
the to-hit numbers and adding a +1 modifier for firing at multiple
targets with a single shot. Note that this is not the secondary
target modifi er; that modifi er does not apply to this type of attack
unless multiple targets also are being attacked in the same phase.

The bold is mine.


As for the fiction and art vs rules, I direct you to read the relevant sections on page 9 in Total Warfare. The pdf page numbers may vary. It clearly states though that fiction and art are not rules.

Those are the rules and I'm going by them in this discussion. However, I have said that fluff and art do show higher firing rates. But if you want them reflected in your game you have to house rule it.  That is also why I've said you shouldn't compare real world tech with Battletech tech. By the rules autocannons aren't any better than hand loaded rifle cannons and autoloading rifles in the real world have just as high firing rates as autocannons.


Quote
Price of Glory mentions it's an 80mm.

Thank you. I'll have to reread it.


Quote
Why can their be a basic heat sink on the weapon? Heat has to be gotten rid of some how, even in a vehicle. A CPU has a heat sink built onto the Die. And we often install more capable ones on top of that.

Considering the same AC that's mounted in a vehicle can be mounted in a mech and the Vehicle doesn't worry about the AC's heat but the Mech does, the heat sink must not be on the AC itself but a part of the vehicle.



Quote
So? Who cares about the 50mm KwK 38 & 39 guns or even the 88mm KwK 43 their irrelevant to B-tech game play. If you want them house rule them as say a Rifle cannon 1 (as in damage). The guys who made the weapons hint that the modern 120mm is what they based the light rifles off of.
B-tech weight do not match up because their not real life weapons. And that their including in their wights more than just the gun barrel and mount.

From Herb
http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,3745.0.html 
Quote
3) We have never specified the size of the Rifles, and more than we have done more than fluff-wise describing Autocannons. Fact is, this is a level of detail far below that which we prefer to operate nowadays, and so definitive answers will be denied. Because it's a royal pain in the ass to get involve in such details, knowing that there are ballistics experts out there too willing to do out some math to prove how this Can Not Be. We at Catalyst Game Labs prefer to view BattleTech as the fun game universe our forefathers intended.

For those of you who insist on using fluff to make the 120mm cannon so light.  I'd asked about the Arbiter being fluffed as making it's Heavy Rifle Cannon look like an AC/20. If the light cannon is 120mm, as you all insist, you couldn't possibly disguise a Heavy Rifle as an AC/20 as it'd be the size of an artillery piece. You'd have to make the Heavy Rifle Cannon look smaller! 


Quote
No they would not your reading way to much into the pre space flight thing. A B-tech MG is rated as pre space flight sure, buit it's not a pre space flight weapon. Know any real life Machineguns with a Velocity of at lest 1,800 meters per second that was available before the 1960s? Or even today for that matter?

No I'm not. The Tube Artillery we have are pre-spaceflight weapons.
I can't think of any machine guns that do at the moment, however going by the rules the same machine gun mounted on a tank now can be the same machine gun mounted on a tank in a thousand years. Technology does have peaks. Perhaps it peaked until the clans came up with lighter materials?


Quote
Sensors and other electronics can and are part of the gun, their are infantry rifles that have bus loads of electronics built into them, to find ranges, and fuze the rounds so they go off at the right time. I guess these sensors are not part of the gun then? Even though their a intrinsic part of it. It's the same way. Heck their will have to be sensors built into the weapon to provide diagnostic feed back.

Not according to the rules. Remember you can take an AC out of a tank and put it into a Mech. Vehicles and Mechs have different sensor systems can can't be mixed. I know. I've asked.

Quote
I don't know I can calculate B-tech Fighter performance quite well, and they would slaughter real world fighters in almost every category.

Considering real life weapons have firing rates equal to those of Battletech, with a much greater range, the only thing Battletech units have going for them is their armor. Which isn't a big advantage since they'd die long before they got into firing range.

Quote
Who says their built to less standards, The Rifle cannon could very well be built to modern "b-tech" specifications (or close to it) and it still "sucks", Because in part it fires a single chemically fired shell vs dozens of shells. Ignoring the fact that Rifles have far less velocity.

If they were modern versions they would not require larger amounts of propellant, meaning more shots per ton. They also wouldn't suffer a -3 damage mod against BAR-8 and above armor. Besides the fact that they never went out of production. They're production just became so limited that they were extremely hard to find. That is now changing with the increase of retrotech.



Quote
Because their different kettles of fish. And a long tom is easily 240mm, which is a bit bigger than the ~200mm of a heavy Rifle.

This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_90_240_mm_railway_gun
is more than a bit bigger than this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_120_mm_gun


Quote
Wiki it

I have wikied the Mark I.

Quote
Your wrong here Tech B only includes Bar 5, and higher is not available at that tech level, see tech manual for this (pg 280)
Support vehicle armor Tech ratings
BAR 2&3 is Tech A
BAR 4&5 is Tech B
BAR 6&7 is Tech C
BAR 8-10 is Tech D

So a tech B vehicle only has BAR 5 available in either A or B ratings.

Not wrong. The tech ratings are broken. Remember an ICE is Tech B as are Tanks. Going by the tech ratings, Tanks could not have been invented before 1950. Also see page 135 in Tech Manual. Tech B BAR goes up to 10.

Quote
They may be pre-spaceflight but their not necessarily "1000" year old weapons, a B-tech MG has a velocity greater than 1.8km/s their is no real world weapon of this class that comes close to this velocity. As such it can not really be a pre spaceflight weapon. B-tech even mentions the 23mm gun on the space station, heck they even mention the Seawolf class subs.

And yet we have weapons that are hundreds of years old. The Machine Guns on the Hurricane Conventional Fighter (2297) have the same range and damage as Machine Guns made in 3085. That's 788 years. The Machine Gun on the Stoat Armored Car (2250) 835 years old. The Estevez MBT's Heavy Rifle, machine guns and VGLs. 785 years old. (2300). and those weapons weren't new then. The AC/5 wasn't even introduced until 2250.


Quote
Edit:
The Powers have mentioned that they loosely based the Light rifle off the modern 120mm guns, though their not intended to be strictly them.

THE power says they having given them sizes. Even if we go by that, if they're not strict with them, why are you?


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Considering that standard A/Cs are heavier, run hotter, have shorter range and cannot match Cluster munition (Flechette works differently), I doubt LB-Xs are in any real danger. Standard A/Cs, however, were ridiculously obsolete before being given a marginal reprieve in the form of their alternate ammo types.

There's Flak ammo. And while alternative ammo types may be new, relatively speaking, to the game in universe they've been around nearly as long as autocannons, dating to 2300.
« Last Edit: 16 June 2011, 01:34:38 by FedComGirl »

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #48 on: 16 June 2011, 03:00:39 »
For those who think I'm not going by the rules.

From Tactical Operations.
The bold is mine.
Theirs nothing indicating that a single "shot" is only a single round, what its saying is that a single ammo point (i.e. a single shot) can hit two targets. it dose not say that auto cannons only fire "one shell". Shots in this case dose not = number of rounds fired per shot.

This is what Tech manual says about it
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Auto cannons are a broadly varied class of rapid firing, auto loading heavy ballistic weaponry - gigantic machine guns, in other words... Most auto cannons deliver their damage by firing high speed streams or bursts... though one or more barrels.
Nothing about them firing only a single round at a time. It practically says their giant machine guns, and a weapon that fires 6 or 12 rounds per minute is stretching the terminology's of machine gun and auto cannon.

However B-tech game play dose not account for this fact that a single shot from an auto cannon is in reality often dozens of shells, the one time it dose is in fact that rule you quoted.

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Those are the rules and I'm going by them in this discussion. However, I have said that fluff and art do show higher firing rates. But if you want them reflected in your game you have to house rule it.  That is also why I've said you shouldn't compare real world tech with Battletech tech. By the rules autocannons aren't any better than hand loaded rifle cannons and autoloading rifles in the real world have just as high firing rates as autocannons.

Sigh. Per the rules and fluff, an 80mm Autocannon-5 can fire say 5 rounds in a single shot, It is not firing 1/4th of a ton of ammo in a turn, but ONE single point of ammo or just 50kg. These 5 rounds all add up to just 5 points of damage. Likewise a 40mm AC-5 can fire ~20 rounds in a single shot but despite it firing 20 rounds it's only doing just 5 damage and only 5 damage not 100 damage like your claiming. An 120mm AC-20 (and yes their are such calibers listed) would be firing 8-10 rounds per burst/shot to do it's 20 damage.

In any case how are you going to explain a 30mm shell being 22 kilograms by your interpretation of B-tech fire rates? And do not use the weights do not match up.

Also note the fluff for the Rifle cannon also mentions that they have inferior rates of fire to auto cannons.

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Considering the same AC that's mounted in a vehicle can be mounted in a mech and the Vehicle doesn't worry about the AC's heat but the Mech does, the heat sink must not be on the AC itself but a part of the vehicle.
Then wheres the heat sink? vehicles do not have any if theirs no energy weapon, no

From Herb
http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,3745.0.html 
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For those of you who insist on using fluff to make the 120mm cannon so light.  I'd asked about the Arbiter being fluffed as making it's Heavy Rifle Cannon look like an AC/20. If the light cannon is 120mm, as you all insist, you couldn't possibly disguise a Heavy Rifle as an AC/20 as it'd be the size of an artillery piece. You'd have to make the Heavy Rifle Cannon look smaller! 
Autocannons can be as large as 203mm right? Gauss Rifles fire shells that mass in the same weight range as 203mm naval shells. A single shot from a Heavy Rifle Shot is 166kgs. Well using half of the weight as the shell the rest being the cartridge case and propellant charge (a silly amount of propellant, but who knows) a ~90kg shells is funny enough in the weight range for a 203mm shell (203mm shells range from 90 to 150kg for full caliber rounds like APCBC & HE).

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This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_90_240_mm_railway_gun
is more than a bit bigger than this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinmetall_120_mm_gun
Except I equated the Heavy as a 200mm gun your making it much smaller. Your also ignoring the fact that a Gauss Rifle has the equal to or greater KE as a 16 inch L50 gun (Iowa Class), If a battle mech can take repeated hits from that and remain standing, a 120mm AP round at 8.5 megajoules (1/45th the power of the gauss slug) is not going to much of a threat, A weapon that deals more damage than an AC-5 is a reasonable threat. Also Abrams tank would be turned to scrap metal from a single Gauss hit.

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I have wikied the Mark I.
Sigh Bob Semple tank wiki that. But it's a tank that was built from corrugated steel bolted on top of a tractor (literally!). I would hardly call that an Armored vehicle. And In WW1 their where tanks that went into battle with boiler plate (not something I would call armor plate).

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Not wrong. The tech ratings are broken. Remember an ICE is Tech B as are Tanks. Going by the tech ratings, Tanks could not have been invented before 1950. Also see page 135 in Tech Manual. Tech B BAR goes up to 10.
it dose not matter if their broken their still canon. Can not make a tank before 1950 well to bad, it's not like B-tech really intends you to make WW2 era tanks. It's not a WW2 simulator, nor is it really a modern one as well, it's a simulator of 31st century combat. Why do you have this obsession at making ww2 era tanks any way?

Why not make Stealth armor tech B while we are at it, so we can make F22 Raptors and JSFs. How about C3 so we can net work out Abram tanks and Fighter jets, How about MG arrays so I can make my flakvierlings, Or even (laser) AMS and CASE...

All of them are items we have now and or have been mentioned in B-techs version of "now". Yet according to the rules are not available (even though some of them do mention the "idea" dating back hundreds of years prior like CASE and AMS).

Just because one dose not have rules for them, dose not mean that tanks did not exist till after "1950" it's just that they fall out side the bounds of the rules as they currently reside. 
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THE power says they having given them sizes. Even if we go by that, if they're not strict with them, why are you?
Why are you? Your making the largest of them a mid sized round leaving little to no room for larger caliber guns, like 140mm, 150mm, or even 203mm guns.

It would make more sense for you to be saying that the medium is a 120mm not the heavy, that way you can have your lighter guns, and have room for some larger guns.
Making the 120 a Light gives you lots of room for "later tank gun development" at the expense of some of the smaller guns.
« Last Edit: 16 June 2011, 03:02:27 by Nebfer »

FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #49 on: 16 June 2011, 05:05:35 »
Quote
Theirs nothing indicating that a single "shot" is only a single round, what its saying is that a single ammo point (i.e. a single shot) can hit two targets. it dose not say that auto cannons only fire "one shell". Shots in this case dose not = number of rounds fired per shot.

This is what Tech manual says about it
Quote

    Auto cannons are a broadly varied class of rapid firing, auto loading heavy ballistic weaponry - gigantic machine guns, in other words... Most auto cannons deliver their damage by firing high speed streams or bursts... though one or more barrels.

That's fluff not rules. The rules don't say a group of shots hit.  It says single shot.

There's two Battletechs. There's Game Rules Battletech and Fluff Battletech. The two do not often meet. In the case of number of "bullets" fired, the two do not meet.

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Nothing about them firing only a single round at a time. It practically says their giant machine guns, and a weapon that fires 6 or 12 rounds per minute is stretching the terminology's of machine gun and auto cannon.

I agree but the rules don't. The rules have standard autocannons firing at a max rate of 24 rounds per minute and Rifle Cannons firing 6 rounds per minute.

In reality and fluff the rates of fire are much higher.

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However B-tech game play dose not account for this fact that a single shot from an auto cannon is in reality often dozens of shells, the one time it dose is in fact that rule you quoted.

Yes 2-4 each times it is fired compared to 1 for the rifle.


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Sigh. Per the rules and fluff, an 80mm Autocannon-5 can fire say 5 rounds in a single shot, It is not firing 1/4th of a ton of ammo in a turn, but ONE single point of ammo or just 50kg. These 5 rounds all add up to just 5 points of damage. Likewise a 40mm AC-5 can fire ~20 rounds in a single shot but despite it firing 20 rounds it's only doing just 5 damage and only 5 damage not 100 damage like your claiming. An 120mm AC-20 (and yes their are such calibers listed) would be firing 8-10 rounds per burst/shot to do it's 20 damage.

What rule is that please? Book and page number. I have done so. Please do the same. And Fluff does not equal rules.


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In any case how are you going to explain a 30mm shell being 22 kilograms by our interpretation of B-tech fire rates? And do not use the weights do not match up.

I don't because the weights don't match up.

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Also note the fluff for the Rifle cannon also mentions that they have inferior rates of fire to auto cannons.

I am aware of that. They have a rate of 6 per minute. However, you constantly refuse to acknowledge that Real Life Rifle Cannons have a hand loading firing rate that is at least twice that if not greater. You also constantly refuse to acknowledge that there are automatic loading guns that have a firing rates that match the fluffed rates for Battletech Autocannons. Which is why I keep saying the two universe shouldn't be compared.


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Then wheres the heat sink? vehicles do not have any if theirs no energy weapon,

I don't need to come up with some fluffed up reason for you. The facts are that they are separate pieces of equipment. If heat sinks were part of the weapons they wouldn't generate heat!


Quote
Autocannons can be as large as 203mm right? Gauss Rifles fire shells that mass in the same weight range as 203mm naval shells. A single shot from a Heavy Rifle Shot is 166kgs. Well using half of the weight as the shell the rest being the cartridge case and propellant charge (a silly amount of propellant, but who knows) a ~90kg shells is funny enough in the weight range for a 203mm shell (203mm shells range from 90 to 150kg for full caliber rounds like APCBC & HE).

Yes and they are the exceptions not the average. They also don't do any more damage because they're twice as large as other AC/20s.

You're using real world weights again, aren't you?

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Except I equated the Heavy as a 200mm gun your making it much smaller. Your also ignoring the fact that a Gauss Rifle has the equal to or greater KE as a 16 inch L50 gun (Iowa Class), If a battle mech can take repeated hits from that and remain standing, a 120mm AP round at 8.5 megajoules (1/45th the power of the gauss slug) is not going to much of a threat, A weapon that deals more damage than an AC-5 is a reasonable threat. Also Abrams tank would be turned to scrap metal from a single Gauss hit.

Except large AC/20 sizes are outside the norm. The Iowa would be armed with Long Tom Artillery Cannons. Which will toast any tank.


Quote
Sigh Bob Semple tank wiki that. But it's a tank that was built from corrugated steel bolted on top of a tractor (literally!). I would hardly call that an Armored vehicle. And In WW1 their where tanks that went into battle with boiler plate (not something I would call armor plate).

Ah, No I wouldn't call corrugated steel an armored vehicle. Maybe if it were a lot of corrugated steel but probably not. Also even though some tanks were armored with boiler plate, their skin was still way thicker than your average car which has a minimum BAR of 2. Are you really going to tell me a mini-van is going to have the same BAR as a tank?

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it dose not matter if their broken their still canon. Can not make a tank before 1950 well to bad, it's not like B-tech really intends you to make WW2 era tanks. It's not a WW2 simulator, nor is it really a modern one as well, it's a simulator of 31st century combat. Why do you have this obsession at making ww2 era tanks any way? 

Why not make Stealth armor tech B while we are at it, so we can make F22 Raptors and JSFs. How about C3 so we can net work out Abram tanks and Fighter jets, How about MG arrays so I can make my flakvierlings, Or even (laser) AMS and CASE...

All of them are items we have now and or have been mentioned in B-techs version of "now". Yet according to the rules are not available (even though some of them do mention the "idea" dating back hundreds of years prior like CASE and AMS).

Just because one dose not have rules for them, dose not mean that tanks did not exist till after "1950" it's just that they fall out side the bounds of the rules as they currently reside.   

Except the introduction dates say they were available then. That's why the tech ratings are broken. To build something you must have the technology to do so. Tech B cannot be post 1950 when engines and vehicles that are Tech B are introduced before then. To say there must be a third, yet unknown, set of construction rules for low tech vehicles when that's what the support vehicle construction rules are for is silly. Tanks are Pre-spaceflight vehicles. Pre-spaceflight is 1950 or earlier. Either Tech B must be pushed back to 1900 or so or every Tech B item was introduced in 1950. Which seems more likely to you?

As for items such as antique CASE. We don't have rules for it. That doesn't mean they don't exist. Stealth Armor however obviously wasn't developed in the battletech universe until much later. Our universes share a history to a point. Then it diverges. Stealth technology is one of those diverges.

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Why are you? Your making the largest of them a mid sized round leaving little to no room for larger caliber guns, like 140mm, 150mm, or even 203mm guns.

I'm not being strict. I'm trying to include 100 years worth of cannons into 3 classes. There probably should have been 4. Also did you miss the and up part of what I said? A heavy rifle being XYZmm and up covers 140mm, 150mm and larger sizes. Which is exactly how it is done for AC/20s. Autocannon sizes can also overlap classes so Bob's 50mm AC may be a AC/2 but Jane's 50mm would be an AC/5. I see no reason why Rifle Cannons can operate the exact same way. In fact we know that low velocity guns are inferior to high velocity guns of the same size so that works out.

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It would make more sense for you to be saying that the medium is a 120mm not the heavy, that way you can have your lighter guns, and have room for some larger guns.
Making the 120 a Light gives you lots of room for "later tank gun development" at the expense of some of the smaller guns.

Except we've already seen a progression in common main gun sizes. I really don't think a 37mm gun should equal a 105mm gun. I don't think you do either but if we make them both light rifles then they will. 120mm is a common modern day main tank gun. Yes there's some larger and some smaller but it's what's common now. Making them heavy with other groups fitting in with the lighter classes fits with established groupings already. We also know that weapons haven't improved all that much as time moves on. Later tank gun development is the autocannon. At the time it's introduction the Rifle cannon was still a better choice for a quick kill against other opponents.

Can we stop this now?

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #50 on: 16 June 2011, 07:16:00 »
I turned this thread in a drinking game.

My poor head.  #P

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #51 on: 16 June 2011, 07:28:57 »
That's fluff not rules. The rules don't say a group of shots hit.  It says single shot.


Yes, but you are ignoring the BattleTech definition of a shot.

Quote from: Total Warfare, p. 103
A “shot” in this case represents a single use of the weapon in a single turn, not a single missile or round of ammunition
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Mohammed As`Zaman Bey

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #52 on: 16 June 2011, 08:50:25 »
 This is another apples vs oranges discussion -The armor used on most of today's vehicles are little different from the armor used during the First World War. Sure, there are better composites and alloys on current main battle tanks but far more vehicle still depend on sheets of metal between the enemy and the crew.

  Current weapon vs. armor contests amount to a pass/fail issue -Either the weapon penetrates armor or it doesn't. A platoon of infantry firing rifles at a main battle tank won't eventually sand away its armor.

  In one respect Aerospace threshold rules would be closer to how current weapons and armor work -a weapon penetrates armor but does not remove the armor entirely. During the Second World War some antitank weapons used solid shot to disable vehicles or cause the crew to bail out without actually destroying the vehicle. It was common practice to place multiple shots into a target, sometimes until it caught fire, in order to make certain it would stay out of the battle. Cannon rounds designed to explode after penetrating armor served to knock out vehicles and kill valuable crew members.

  If you haven't played a micro armor game I suggest you do and see what a huge difference in tactics is needed, compared to CBT, to maintain your forces and destroy enemy units.
A turn-based computer game that does a very good job in simulating tactical armored warfare is Steel Panthers World at War:
http://www.steelpanthersonline.com/main.asp


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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #53 on: 16 June 2011, 14:01:10 »
That's fluff not rules. The rules don't say....

...And Fluff does not equal rules. 

Now that I know where you're coming from, I see that arguing/debating any further is pointless.

However, let me tell you where a lot of the rest of us are coming from, and this probably includes many of the writers/storytellers:

The rules and the fluff go hand-in-hand, no matter what is said in the rulebooks. Without the fiction, there  is very little grounding for the game to stand on. The fiction is what helps most of us figure out what's happening on our table so we can see it in our mind's eye. The game works as a style guide for how combat should look in the fiction.

To most of us, you really can't have one without the other.

The comment 'Art and Fiction do not equal rules' is more of a guideline and not strictly a rule per se. However, I think it was a mistake to issue it in the first place.

Can we stop this now?

Since I know where you're coming from, you won't see any more comments from me. If it works in your game, great!  O0

But, I'm not letting you write any stories about any of my campaigns should we ever get a game in. M'kay? I have a vision of how things work in my games and most of that is a mesh of fiction and game mechanics, not one or the other.

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #54 on: 16 June 2011, 18:45:27 »
That's fluff not rules. The rules don't say a group of shots hit.  It says single shot.

There's two Battletechs. There's Game Rules Battletech and Fluff Battletech. The two do not often meet. In the case of number of "bullets" fired, the two do not meet.

I agree but the rules don't. The rules have standard autocannons firing at a max rate of 24 rounds per minute and Rifle Cannons firing 6 rounds per minute.
As said before the game it self dose not agree with your statement.
The game defines a shot as a single use of the weapons system not as a single round or missile fired (TW pg 103).
It then says Autocannons are large machineguns, and the novels and fluff agrees with that statement.

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I don't because the weights don't match up.
How do they not match up?
An autocannon clearly includes items like autoloaders, ammo feeds, Counter recoil systems, aiming systems and other items that you think is not their but can easily be their. Their also built with considerable amounts of durability, they can be fired with no issues in a dessert, 40m underwater, in space and at 30 below zero with no issues, real guns can not do that. Yes their heavy, however their not just a gun barrel and it's mounting bracket. Look at Naval guns compared to tank guns. Huge weight difference, also look at anti-aircraft guns again a huge weight difference compared to tank guns.

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I am aware of that. They have a rate of 6 per minute. However, you constantly refuse to acknowledge that Real Life Rifle Cannons have a hand loading firing rate that is at least twice that if not greater. You also constantly refuse to acknowledge that there are automatic loading guns that have a firing rates that match the fluffed rates for Battletech Autocannons. Which is why I keep saying the two universe shouldn't be compared.
Because your completely wrong on your assessment that B-tech autocanons only fire one round at a time. You acknowledge the fact that they fire faster in the fluff but refuse to believe so in game even though the game clearly says your wrong.

Sure at 6 rounds a minute is roughly half as fast as many tank guns but while many tank guns can fire at rates of 10 to 20 RPM or even faster, it dose not factor into account; crew skill, the lay out of the ammo racks, vehicle ergonomics and the size and configuration of the rounds. As such they can only fire at these rates for only a short amount of time.
Often the fastest rates could only be done by using the ready round rack, of which theirs only a limited number available (for the Sherman it was just 6 rounds). Once they are expended, the fire rate lowers dramatically, for instance the Shermans with the "wet ammo" racks, ammo storage was located under the turret basket, and as a result half the basket floor was removed. So if the gun was aimed forward ammo access was ok, if to the sides you only had a few rounds available out side of the ready rack, and heaven help you if the turret moved while your getting a round out... The only other available rounds relied on the hull MG gunner to be a contortionist. And never mind the fact the loader had to dodge hot shell casings on the floor.
The T-34 is another more well known contender for this, once it's ready rack was used, it's ammo was stored under the turret under a floor mat (IIRC it also had no basket). As such it was doing well to get 5 RPM at that point, the T-34/85 was not any better. The IS-2 only had a ROF of about 3 RPM at best (two piece ammo will do that).
Jagpanzer IVs could take as long as 17 seconds to load a single round, or 3 seconds at the fastest.
The Tiger II could take as long as 18 seconds to load from the ammo rack to the right of the radio operator.
The M60 Patton and Leo 1s could take a while to reload as well (the Leo 1 required you to manually extract the round from the gun, as it only did it part way).

So 6 RPM while not as fast as their maximum rates is a fairly reasonable approximation for a sustained rate of fire.

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I don't need to come up with some fluffed up reason for you. The facts are that they are separate pieces of equipment. If heat sinks were part of the weapons they wouldn't generate heat!
sigh, Im not arguing for weapons to be heat neutral, Im just saying they have some basic heat sinks to help dissipate heat, even if it's more along the lines of transferring it to the unit wide system. Look at it this way a computers CPU has a heat sink right on top of the die, that element is what Im saying is the weapons heat sink. On top of that heat sink is a layer of thermal compound and a much larger heat sink (and often a fan), this larger unit is part of the system wide heat sink of the unit. Even though the CPU/weapons system has it's own heat sink it needs the larger unit or it will quickly over heat and fail, it's main job is to facilitate that heat is transferred from the weapons components to the larger unit faster and more evenly.


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Yes and they are the exceptions not the average. They also don't do any more damage because they're twice as large as other AC/20s.
While 100 and 120mm AC-20s are common their are a number of larger AC-20s.
The AC-20 on the Hunchback is said to be 180mm (era report 3052 -intro), The Demolisher tank uses 185mm guns, as dose the Monitor (same gun in fact), The Hetzer is 150mm, The Fire Scorpion 3 uses a 200mm AC-20 (unit fluff from battlecorps), the Ultra AC-20 on the Cauldron born is 203mm (invading clans). A battlemech was hit by a 200mm round in one of the B-tech novels (no mention what fired it though), Regardless of caliber and rate of fire, they all average out to 20 damage. Caliber has less meaning for an Autocannon, their are 105, 110 and 120mm Autocannon 5s even though thoughs calibers are more common for AC-20s, It's rate of fire plays a vital role in it's damage rating. And AC-5 that fires 2 or 3 120mm rounds in a shot only dose 5 damage, an AC-20 thats 120mm would be firing 8 to 12 or so rounds for it's 20 damage.

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Except large AC/20 sizes are outside the norm. The Iowa would be armed with Long Tom Artillery Cannons. Which will toast any tank.
Why would any one equate a 16 inch naval gun with a 30 ton weapon that consumes 200kg of ordnance per shot. B-tech has no real equivalent to a 16 inch naval cannon, or even 11 inch naval cannons for that matter. 

A 16 inch barrel by it self is 120 metric tons (this dose not include the mount, a three gun mount is 1,700 tons, more than some dropships), a single shot would weigh in at over 1,500kgs (including propellant charge). Thats quite a stretch, A long tom is at lest 1/4th the weight, and has 1/8th the weight of shot.

The largest naval gun you can get away with for a long tom would be a 10 inch gun, but thats pushing it. But 9.4 inch guns do in fact weigh in at 30 metric tons (US M1 240mm) and have a ~200kg weight of shot.

And yes a 16 inch would shred any tank, however a B-tech Gauss rifle has the same Ke as one of thoughs rounds...
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Except the introduction dates say they were available then. That's why the tech ratings are broken. To build something you must have the technology to do so. Tech B cannot be post 1950 when engines and vehicles that are Tech B are introduced before then. To say there must be a third, yet unknown, set of construction rules for low tech vehicles when that's what the support vehicle construction rules are for is silly. Tanks are Pre-spaceflight vehicles. Pre-spaceflight is 1950 or earlier. Either Tech B must be pushed back to 1900 or so or every Tech B item was introduced in 1950. Which seems more likely to you?
neither, Tech B is post 1950 and thats that, any technology that existed before then can easily be safe to say out side of B-tech scope. We do not have rules for primitive case even though it's entry says that it dates back hundreds of years before it was "introduced", AMS was installed on Crippen and played a valuable role in the second russian civil war even though it will not be introduced for hundreds of years. So these weapons and equipment have predecessors that are not in the game, nor are the factored into the game, yet exist in B-tech. Why would not be the same for items we know existed before the game allows them to. After all the game developers even say the game is not a perfect model of reality, and that it's a low resolution look as well.

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As for items such as antique CASE. We don't have rules for it. That doesn't mean they don't exist. Stealth Armor however obviously wasn't developed in the battletech universe until much later. Our universes share a history to a point. Then it diverges. Stealth technology is one of those diverges.
Provide evidence that stealth tech was not introduced in the B-tech time line until the starleague? SAMs where introduced but fell out of favor for a time in B-tech only to get reintroduced latter on. Their is talk even now that Stealth technology may become largely obsolete in the next few decades (or at the lest less effective, due to better sensors).

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I'm not being strict. I'm trying to include 100 years worth of cannons into 3 classes. There probably should have been 4. Also did you miss the and up part of what I said? A heavy rifle being XYZmm and up covers 140mm, 150mm and larger sizes. Which is exactly how it is done for AC/20s. Autocannon sizes can also overlap classes so Bob's 50mm AC may be a AC/2 but Jane's 50mm would be an AC/5. I see no reason why Rifle Cannons can operate the exact same way. In fact we know that low velocity guns are inferior to high velocity guns of the same size so that works out.
I do not think we should be attempting to include 100 years of history at the cost of the "next 250 years".

You have to keep in mind an AC has substantially faster velocity than a Cannon, it's also got a vastly higher rate of fire than the cannon, this ROF is also a considerable part of their damage rating.
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Except we've already seen a progression in common main gun sizes. I really don't think a 37mm gun should equal a 105mm gun. I don't think you do either but if we make them both light rifles then they will. 120mm is a common modern day main tank gun. Yes there's some larger and some smaller but it's what's common now. Making them heavy with other groups fitting in with the lighter classes fits with established groupings already. We also know that weapons haven't improved all that much as time moves on. Later tank gun development is the autocannon. At the time it's introduction the Rifle cannon was still a better choice for a quick kill against other opponents.

Sure but your ignoring one element of the Rifle canons own fluff, that it was developed for centuries prior to the introduction of the Autocannon.

I do not think tanks prior to the 1950s would be even relevant to the game, so why would B-tech really support them, or their guns? Why would a 37mm "Door knocker" of a gun even be relevant in the game, or even to a battlemech, why should a 88mm KwK 43 even be relevant to the game? Why? These weapons should be irrelevant.

This is how I'm factoring in my calculations
0: I'm looking at this with both the Rules and Fluff, I view the B-tech Rules as the quick and dirty way to see what works in B-tech, but it's not very accurate for a bit more accuracy, I look to the fluff, other rules and compare.
1: A Gauss Rifle slug produces smiler Ke as a 16 inch battleships shell, hypersonic 125kg shells would do that.
2: Battlemech can take a number of these rounds and not be destroyed, the same can not be said for real vehicles.
3: Modern tank guns only produce a Ke that's at best 1/40th of the Gauss Slug making it a bit hard for a single 120mm slug thats said to be slower than Gauss Rifles and even Autocannons to do 6 damage when the real ones have 1/4th the Ke of a single B-tech 120mm shell that would do at best 2 damage. Of which upwards of 10 or so are fired in a single burst from an Autocannon (20).
4: Rifle canons where used and continuously developed for a period of over 250 years. And not ~100 like your using.
5: light rifles are much closer to the performance of what real world 120mm guns would be based off their Ke. And are closer in terms of weight of the gun and ammo count.
6: I see no need to represent tank guns earlier than 1950 at all in B-tech. It's not like their going to explore WW2 using B-tech rules and equipment. The Range of guns from thoughs years are just too diverse to be represented by a single weapons system or even two.


Though I'm getting tired of this, so this is likely to be the last one for me. We could do this all week and get no where.

FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #55 on: 18 June 2011, 23:20:57 »
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Yes, but you are ignoring the BattleTech definition of a shot.


Quote from: Total Warfare, p. 103
A “shot” in this case represents a single use of the weapon in a single turn, not a single missile or round of ammunition


Which is further defined in Strategic Operations as I've already said.



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This is another apples vs oranges discussion -The armor used on most of today's vehicles are little different from the armor used during the First World War. Sure, there are better composites and alloys on current main battle tanks but far more vehicle still depend on sheets of metal between the enemy and the crew.

  Current weapon vs. armor contests amount to a pass/fail issue -Either the weapon penetrates armor or it doesn't. A platoon of infantry firing rifles at a main battle tank won't eventually sand away its armor.

  In one respect Aerospace threshold rules would be closer to how current weapons and armor work -a weapon penetrates armor but does not remove the armor entirely. During the Second World War some antitank weapons used solid shot to disable vehicles or cause the crew to bail out without actually destroying the vehicle. It was common practice to place multiple shots into a target, sometimes until it caught fire, in order to make certain it would stay out of the battle. Cannon rounds designed to explode after penetrating armor served to knock out vehicles and kill valuable crew members.

  If you haven't played a micro armor game I suggest you do and see what a huge difference in tactics is needed, compared to CBT, to maintain your forces and destroy enemy units.
A turn-based computer game that does a very good job in simulating tactical armored warfare is Steel Panthers World at War:
http://www.steelpanthersonline.com/main.asp

Using the Aerospace threshold rules would be interesting. The micro armor game looks cool.


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Now that I know where you're coming from, I see that arguing/debating any further is pointless.

However, let me tell you where a lot of the rest of us are coming from, and this probably includes many of the writers/storytellers:

The rules and the fluff go hand-in-hand, no matter what is said in the rulebooks. Without the fiction, there  is very little grounding for the game to stand on. The fiction is what helps most of us figure out what's happening on our table so we can see it in our mind's eye. The game works as a style guide for how combat should look in the fiction.

To most of us, you really can't have one without the other.

The comment 'Art and Fiction do not equal rules' is more of a guideline and not strictly a rule per se. However, I think it was a mistake to issue it in the first place.



I totally agree. They should go hand in hand. It's frustrating when they don't even if there's rules that could end the conflict.



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Since I know where you're coming from, you won't see any more comments from me. If it works in your game, great!   

But, I'm not letting you write any stories about any of my campaigns should we ever get a game in. M'kay? I have a vision of how things work in my games and most of that is a mesh of fiction and game mechanics, not one or the other.


No problem but you might be surprised.  :D




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As said before the game it self dose not agree with your statement.
The game defines a shot as a single use of the weapons system not as a single round or missile fired (TW pg 103).
It then says Autocannons are large machineguns, and the novels and fluff agrees with that statement.

Except the rules as I've repeatedly pointed out say how many shots are fired one press of the trigger.
If you want to consider Fluff rules, the Zeus 75 fires a four round burst. One could argue that's even legal under the rules because aerospace weapons always fire at their max rate of fire.


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How do they not match up?
An autocannon clearly includes items like autoloaders, ammo feeds, Counter recoil systems, aiming systems and other items that you think is not their but can easily be their. Their also built with considerable amounts of durability, they can be fired with no issues in a dessert, 40m underwater, in space and at 30 below zero with no issues, real guns can not do that. Yes their heavy, however their not just a gun barrel and it's mounting bracket. Look at Naval guns compared to tank guns. Huge weight difference, also look at anti-aircraft guns again a huge weight difference compared to tank guns.

I'm aware that they're more than just the gun barrel. I'm not the one insisting on adding other items that are clrearly listed seperately.
You can have a gun with no firing system or with. Granted, with is preffered. However they're not the gun firecontrol and heatsinks.

Here's a weight comparision of 120mm guns.
4.7"/45 (12 cm) QF Mark XII Deck Gun:  3.238 - 3.245 tons
Rheinmetall 120 mm gun: 4.955 tons
Type 10 120 mm AA Gun: 8.5 tons   

They vary. If the Rhiemetal is a Light Rifle Cannon, what is the Type 10? It weighs almost twice as much. It's range is more that twice the Rhienmetal but it's muzzle velocity is half that. So what would it be? Going by weight, size, and range, it must be a heavy rifle. Going by muzzle velocity it can't exist because there isn't a Rifle Cannon lower than the Light. So what is the Type 10?


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Sure at 6 rounds a minute is roughly half as fast as many tank guns but while many tank guns can fire at rates of 10 to 20 RPM or even faster, it dose not factor into account; crew skill, the lay out of the ammo racks, vehicle ergonomics and the size and configuration of the rounds. As such they can only fire at these rates for only a short amount of time.
Often the fastest rates could only be done by using the ready round rack, of which theirs only a limited number available (for the Sherman it was just 6 rounds). Once they are expended, the fire rate lowers dramatically, for instance the Shermans with the "wet ammo" racks, ammo storage was located under the turret basket, and as a result half the basket floor was removed. So if the gun was aimed forward ammo access was ok, if to the sides you only had a few rounds available out side of the ready rack, and heaven help you if the turret moved while your getting a round out... The only other available rounds relied on the hull MG gunner to be a contortionist. And never mind the fact the loader had to dodge hot shell casings on the floor.
The T-34 is another more well known contender for this, once it's ready rack was used, it's ammo was stored under the turret under a floor mat (IIRC it also had no basket). As such it was doing well to get 5 RPM at that point, the T-34/85 was not any better. The IS-2 only had a ROF of about 3 RPM at best (two piece ammo will do that).
Jagpanzer IVs could take as long as 17 seconds to load a single round, or 3 seconds at the fastest.
The Tiger II could take as long as 18 seconds to load from the ammo rack to the right of the radio operator.
The M60 Patton and Leo 1s could take a while to reload as well (the Leo 1 required you to manually extract the round from the gun, as it only did it part way).

So 6 RPM while not as fast as their maximum rates is a fairly reasonable approximation for a sustained rate of fire.

Depending on the tank and crew, yes. However, again if you're just going to compare firing rates, what would a
5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun be It's 127mm and could originally fire 40 rounds per minute. Would you call it an ultra-autocannon a RAC? By the rules its a RAC. By the fluff????

RL guns are not BT guns. As I've pointed out even RL hand fed guns have equal rates of fire. Autoloaded guns have rates just as high now. If you must compare RL and BT, RL hand fed weapons would be Rifles. Autoloaded weapons would be Autocannons, LB-X, Ultra, or Rotary ACs. Autocannons would be Hypervelocity ACs. If you go by firing rates and muzzle velocity.


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sigh, Im not arguing for weapons to be heat neutral, Im just saying they have some basic heat sinks to help dissipate heat, even if it's more along the lines of transferring it to the unit wide system. Look at it this way a computers CPU has a heat sink right on top of the die, that element is what Im saying is the weapons heat sink. On top of that heat sink is a layer of thermal compound and a much larger heat sink (and often a fan), this larger unit is part of the system wide heat sink of the unit. Even though the CPU/weapons system has it's own heat sink it needs the larger unit or it will quickly over heat and fail, it's main job is to facilitate that heat is transferred from the weapons components to the larger unit faster and more evenly.

Except however it is they work they don't need those extra heatsinks.



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While 100 and 120mm AC-20s are common their are a number of larger AC-20s.
The AC-20 on the Hunchback is said to be 180mm (era report 3052 -intro), The Demolisher tank uses 185mm guns, as dose the Monitor (same gun in fact), The Hetzer is 150mm, The Fire Scorpion 3 uses a 200mm AC-20 (unit fluff from battlecorps), the Ultra AC-20 on the Cauldron born is 203mm (invading clans). A battlemech was hit by a 200mm round in one of the B-tech novels (no mention what fired it though), Regardless of caliber and rate of fire, they all average out to 20 damage. Caliber has less meaning for an Autocannon, their are 105, 110 and 120mm Autocannon 5s even though thoughs calibers are more common for AC-20s, It's rate of fire plays a vital role in it's damage rating. And AC-5 that fires 2 or 3 120mm rounds in a shot only dose 5 damage, an AC-20 thats 120mm would be firing 8 to 12 or so rounds for it's 20 damage.

That's all fluff and I agree. The Zeus 75 fires a 4 rounds per burst. How many rounds fired per burst makes a difference. If we go by each round fired, it's do 5 points each. But then we'd need to role on the cluster hits table to determine how many rounds hit the target.  However, an AC/20 is an AC/20 regardless of the size. If AC/20s can go from 120mm to 203mm why can't Heavy Rifle Cannons?
In fact there is a Heavy Rifle Cannon that is 150mm. The Heavy Rifle Cannon used by the Estevz/Kestrel is 150mm. It's machine gun is also refered to as a "fifty". That happens to be a nicknames of the M-2 Browning .50 cal Machine Gun, which has been in service since 1933.

And for an interesting bit of trivia, this is a machine gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_Gun   :D ;D



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Why would any one equate a 16 inch naval gun with a 30 ton weapon that consumes 200kg of ordnance per shot. B-tech has no real equivalent to a 16 inch naval cannon, or even 11 inch naval cannons for that matter. 

A 16 inch barrel by it self is 120 metric tons (this dose not include the mount, a three gun mount is 1,700 tons, more than some dropships), a single shot would weigh in at over 1,500kgs (including propellant charge). Thats quite a stretch, A long tom is at lest 1/4th the weight, and has 1/8th the weight of shot.

The largest naval gun you can get away with for a long tom would be a 10 inch gun, but thats pushing it. But 9.4 inch guns do in fact weigh in at 30 metric tons (US M1 240mm) and have a ~200kg weight of shot.

And yes a 16 inch would shred any tank, however a B-tech Gauss rifle has the same Ke as one of thoughs rounds...


Because that is what's used on big Naval ships in Battletech. They don't have to be ship guns though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_gun

Athough in Battletech terms those would be Artillery Cannons.

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neither, Tech B is post 1950 and thats that, any technology that existed before then can easily be safe to say out side of B-tech scope. We do not have rules for primitive case even though it's entry says that it dates back hundreds of years before it was "introduced", AMS was installed on Crippen and played a valuable role in the second russian civil war even though it will not be introduced for hundreds of years. So these weapons and equipment have predecessors that are not in the game, nor are the factored into the game, yet exist in B-tech. Why would not be the same for items we know existed before the game allows them to. After all the game developers even say the game is not a perfect model of reality, and that it's a low resolution look as well.

Strategic Operations clearly states that Pr-Spaceflight is 1950 or before. Battletech also allows for even more primitive items dating before 1900. The Technology Rating Table Lists Tech A as late 19th early 20th Century. Other tables though list items in conflict with that table and their introdates. Either the Tech Rating Table and the Introdates are wrong or the other tables are wrong. Why don't you ask Herb about it? I've tried. I'm pretty sure that if an Item is listed as Pre-Spaceflight it should be listed as Tech A and if it's listed as Early Spaceflight it should be Tech B or C as it's listed on the Technology Ratings table. If I'm wrong, then WWI and WWII were fought without any but steam powered and horse pulled vehicles.
 
According to Sarna, which matches what I remember from Dropships and Jumpships says that Crippen Station mounted laser weaponry which was used against Soviet ICBMs. It'd take quite a few Anti-Missile Systems, to take out an ICBM. A chemical Laser would stand a better chance.


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Provide evidence that stealth tech was not introduced in the B-tech time line until the starleague? SAMs where introduced but fell out of favor for a time in B-tech only to get reintroduced latter on. Their is talk even now that Stealth technology may become largely obsolete in the next few decades (or at the lest less effective, due to better sensors).

Null Signature System 2630  (Tactical Operations and available only to Battlemechs)
STEALTH ARMOR Introduced: 3063 (Tech Manual and Tactical Operations) and available to Mechs Fighters, and vehicles as of 3065)

If Stealth existed in Batteltechs 20th Century we haven't been told about it. Now it's your turn. Prove that Stealth was available.


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I do not think we should be attempting to include 100 years of history at the cost of the "next 250 years".

You have to keep in mind an AC has substantially faster velocity than a Cannon, it's also got a vastly higher rate of fire than the cannon, this ROF is also a considerable part of their damage rating.


I'm not including anything that isn't already there. All three classes are prespace which is defined as 1950 or before. Since Battletech does have at least 2 world wars before 1944, I'm going to believe that they dated before.

And again, rules wise AC/s have a rate of fire 4 times that of Rifle Cannons. Fluff that is different. However, fluff wise is equal to now. What would be different is the muzzle velocity. That lower velocity is why they lose 3 points of damage against BAR8 and up armor. That's why a 37mm rifle won't do any damage to a Battlemech. Personally, I think it should do at least 1 point as a machine gun will still do 2 points of damage no matter how old it is. But that's just me. The rules say otherwise.



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Sure but your ignoring one element of the Rifle canons own fluff, that it was developed for centuries prior to the introduction of the Autocannon.


No I'm not. In fact that supports that the weapons are pre-spaceflight. So does it's fluff about it harkening back to the early 20th century.


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I do not think tanks prior to the 1950s would be even relevant to the game, so why would B-tech really support them, or their guns? Why would a 37mm "Door knocker" of a gun even be relevant in the game, or even to a battlemech, why should a 88mm KwK 43 even be relevant to the game? Why? These weapons should be irrelevant.


They pretty much would be however they'd still have uses against any target with BAR7 armor and lower as well as infantry battle armor and buildings. They'd probably only be used by militia and those that can't afford better but they're still useful in some cases.



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This is how I'm factoring in my calculations
0: I'm looking at this with both the Rules and Fluff, I view the B-tech Rules as the quick and dirty way to see what works in B-tech, but it's not very accurate for a bit more accuracy, I look to the fluff, other rules and compare.
1: A Gauss Rifle slug produces smiler Ke as a 16 inch battleships shell, hypersonic 125kg shells would do that.
2: Battlemech can take a number of these rounds and not be destroyed, the same can not be said for real vehicles.
3: Modern tank guns only produce a Ke that's at best 1/40th of the Gauss Slug making it a bit hard for a single 120mm slug thats said to be slower than Gauss Rifles and even Autocannons to do 6 damage when the real ones have 1/4th the Ke of a single B-tech 120mm shell that would do at best 2 damage. Of which upwards of 10 or so are fired in a single burst from an Autocannon (20).
4: Rifle canons where used and continuously developed for a period of over 250 years. And not ~100 like your using.
5: light rifles are much closer to the performance of what real world 120mm guns would be based off their Ke. And are closer in terms of weight of the gun and ammo count.
6: I see no need to represent tank guns earlier than 1950 at all in B-tech. It's not like their going to explore WW2 using B-tech rules and equipment. The Range of guns from thoughs years are just too diverse to be represented by a single weapons system or even two.


Though I'm getting tired of this, so this is likely to be the last one for me. We could do this all week and get no where.



0: I do the same in my own games. However they would be house rules. Legal rules say otherwise
1: True
2: True
3: You're including fluff there. See 0:
4: Battletech doesn't constantly update weaponry. Standard Autocannons have existed since 2250. The only updates to them are the Clan versions which take up 1 less critical slot to a minimum of 1. That didn't happen until sometime after 2820. Presuming of course such weapons are still available to be used. That's nearly 600 years without improvement. By the time ACs were introduced Rifles had been around for only half that amount of time. Why should they be constantly updated when their replacements haven't?
5: Again BT weights don't match.
6: Yes the range of guns is diverse that's why they're grouped in classes. If there were by size we'd have a lot more ACs to chose from. Also while TPTB may or may not do any books set during the World Wars they are mentioned. Their weapons and vehicles are used since then as well. Furthermore, Battletech does have rules to allow us to create lower tech vehicles which could be used by lower tech planets. We may never get a book about WWII or the 2nd Soviet Civil War but we could have a book were a group finds a planet that uses the same tech.

Kit deSummersville

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #56 on: 19 June 2011, 00:36:49 »

Which is further defined in Strategic Operations as I've already said.
Where? Page 98?

Quote from: Strategic Operations, p. 98
As in Classic BattleTech ground unit game play, a single “shot” represents one use of the weapon, not a single shell or missile.

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FedComGirl

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #57 on: 19 June 2011, 18:44:57 »
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Where? Page 98?

yes

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #58 on: 19 June 2011, 20:46:17 »

Except the rules as I've repeatedly pointed out say how many shots are fired one press of the trigger.
If you want to consider Fluff rules, the Zeus 75 fires a four round burst. One could argue that's even legal under the rules because aerospace weapons always fire at their max rate of fire.
The rules say no such things, considering the game defines what your considering as a single shot as a single use not a single round, so give quotes now or admit your wrong. And keep in mind what the game defines as a "shot".

Total warfare pg 103 & Strategic ops pg 98 both mention that a single shot is only a single use, not a single projectile, tech manual pg 207 mentions their machineguns. The fluff to the game all says their machineguns.

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I'm aware that they're more than just the gun barrel. I'm not the one insisting on adding other items that are clrearly listed seperately.
You can have a gun with no firing system or with. Granted, with is preffered. However they're not the gun firecontrol and heatsinks.
Sigh, A missile launcher, in fact has fire control gear built onto the launcher it self or as an add on in the form of Artemis IV

TAG not only has a targeting laser it also has a laser communication array built in. (The mech already has communications gear...)
Targeting computers have more elements than an advanced targeting and tracking system mated to a better lead computing sight, it's has recoil compensators, better aiming motors, gyro stabilizers and the likes.   
Artemis IV is an add on to a missile launcher, that has it's own built in targeting and tracking software (ATMs have it built into the launcher). Not to mention a communication system so that it can talk to the missiles in flight
LBX ammo is going by game effects firing AHEAD ammo, (if it was a true shotgun it would be more like a HAG in effect, as such the rounds are going off at a set distance from the target) as such the fuze setter is part of the gun, and would have electronics.

Your reading way to far into my heat sink statement. If a fusion engine has built in heat sinks then so to can a gun, it's just that these heat sinks have no function ingame what so ever. That dose not mean they are not their. If anything it's something that the unit wide system connects to, to allow cooling of the weapon in game terms.

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Here's a weight comparision of 120mm guns.
4.7"/45 (12 cm) QF Mark XII Deck Gun:  3.238 - 3.245 tons
Rheinmetall 120 mm gun: 4.955 tons
Type 10 120 mm AA Gun: 8.5 tons   

They vary. If the Rhiemetal is a Light Rifle Cannon, what is the Type 10? It weighs almost twice as much. It's range is more that twice the Rhienmetal but it's muzzle velocity is half that. So what would it be? Going by weight, size, and range, it must be a heavy rifle. Going by muzzle velocity it can't exist because there isn't a Rifle Cannon lower than the Light. So what is the Type 10?
Well lets put it this way, their all the same caliber, yet they all weight different amounts, so how can you say that B-tech weapons do not match up with real life weapons when real life dose not even match up with it self.

By the way the 4.7"/45 QF Mark XII Deck Gun, is not ~3.3 metric tons, well it is but thats just the gun and breach block, good luck using it, the gun and mount is 8 to 12 metric tons.

As for the type 10, either a light rifle generically, or as a weapon system that dose not exist at this time.
which can be said for many a weapon, they exist but B-tech has no real weapon to use for them, it's just you who wants to have every weapons system known to man included in B-tech rules.

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Depending on the tank and crew, yes. However, again if you're just going to compare firing rates, what would a
5"/54 caliber Mark 42 gun be It's 127mm and could originally fire 40 rounds per minute. Would you call it an ultra-autocannon a RAC? By the rules its a RAC. By the fluff????
I'm not comparing firing rates, I'm telling you to not use it as a sole bases of what is and what isn't.
You can not just look at the fire rate and say it's clearly better than what B-tech uses, sure it might be but in reality your not likely going to reach max ROF with out a well trained gun crew (or no gun crew at all). For most tank guns the typical ROF is likely going to be noticeably less than the theoretical maximum is.

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In fact there is a Heavy Rifle Cannon that is 150mm. The Heavy Rifle Cannon used by the Estevz/Kestrel is 150mm. It's machine gun is also refered to as a "fifty". That happens to be a nicknames of the M-2 Browning .50 cal Machine Gun, which has been in service since 1933.
However we happen to know that their not M2HBs their listed as PC-50s. Though the "150mm" on the Estevz/Kestrel is a bit wacked, 68kg shell for a 150mm? yeah right, though I suppose it could be an extra long round (bit odd for a tank) worse that means it has 98kg worth of propellant.
By the way thats fluff and thus not canon, according to you.

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And for an interesting bit of trivia, this is a machine gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puckle_Gun   :D ;D
So you want it to do 2 damage? Even though it would likely not even scratch the paint off a Mk 1 "land ship"...

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According to Sarna, which matches what I remember from Dropships and Jumpships says that Crippen Station mounted laser weaponry which was used against Soviet ICBMs. It'd take quite a few Anti-Missile Systems, to take out an ICBM. A chemical Laser would stand a better chance.
Dose not change the fact that they had AMS sense 1985, yet "we" only have the one from 2600... Meaning that their have been AMSs before B-techs AMS showed up.

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Null Signature System 2630  (Tactical Operations and available only to Battlemechs)
STEALTH ARMOR Introduced: 3063 (Tech Manual and Tactical Operations) and available to Mechs Fighters, and vehicles as of 3065)
If Stealth existed in Batteltechs 20th Century we haven't been told about it. Now it's your turn. Prove that Stealth was available.
Obviously, like SAMs Stealth armor seems to have fallen out of favor, for a time. And B-tech Stealth armor is not evidence that it was invented at that time, as it's based off null sig. Besides Current Stealth is largely passive stealth, B-tech uses active stealth. Also sense your so big on the rules, A battlemech (or vehicle) has the same IR sig as a 5 man squad of guys (or a 30 man platoon). So their you have it all "vehicles" have IR stealthing built in... As it's kinda hard to be as stealthy as a few guys with out it...

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0: I do the same in my own games. However they would be house rules. Legal rules say otherwise
I do not use them for rules, I do not use any fluff as rules. However unlike you I know that the B-tech universe revolves around more than just the rules (which can be contradictory in of them selves at times).

After all if the Tech ratings is broken (or intro dates) yet it's canon what dose that say about how accurate the canon rules are, and if their that inaccurate then why should we use it as the main component of what happens in the B-tech universe? After all the Game makers themselves say the game is not a perfect model of reality (or even B-techs reality) and is a low resolution in it's dealing with damage and what naught.
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3: You're including fluff there. See 0:
Thats not fluff silly, Thats the cold hard math.
If you can accept that a Gauss Rifle has 300+ megajoules of KE than you know that it is impossible for a modern 120mm gun to do 6 points of damage flat out when it dose less than 10 megajoules.

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5: Again BT weights don't match.
Says who? You agree that their more than just a simple gun, and that weapons systems can very in a wide range of weights, yet you say that B-tech weapons weights do not match up, Match up to what? single shot guns? Fully automatic guns that weight more than twice their weight?


A while back I asked Herb about this, though in a message, not an open post.
"The Rifle cannons reflect modern main tank guns, with the light end likely reflecting 20th-21st century versions, while the medium and heavy would have been later, pre-mech pieces." Though he also said that It's not directly a modern 120mm like the M256

Kit deSummersville

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Re: M-48's and other "very primitive" units in Battletech.
« Reply #59 on: 19 June 2011, 23:14:25 »
yes

I'd suggest you reread it or the quote I have from it. It specifically mentions it is not necessarily one round/shell/bullet. In the CBT universe, ACs are super-sized machine guns. Perhaps in your universe they aren't, but if that is the case, you should recognize that in your argument.
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