Author Topic: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare  (Read 18197 times)

truetanker

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #30 on: 31 July 2019, 21:58:13 »
An individual with a TK Assault Rifle doing 1 point of damage to a mech while a 10 man squad will do 4 points of damage and a small vehicle with the same weapon won't do any damage (.44=0) to a vehicle/BA at all.

That's wrong...

.44 = 0 damage for 1 Trooper, not 1. It'll take 2-3 troopers for that 1 point damage and 4 for a 2 point spread!

And then your not looking at the support weapon crews requirements either... one is needed to fire but the rest are needed to move, and you have a E (ncumbrance) rule to boot! So shoot or scoot not both.

Also about the infantry Heavy Recoilless Rifle, it is a single shot weapon. The BA version is heavier and an a automatic.

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RifleMech

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #31 on: 02 August 2019, 10:39:28 »
That's wrong...

.44 = 0 damage for 1 Trooper, not 1. It'll take 2-3 troopers for that 1 point damage and 4 for a 2 point spread!

And then your not looking at the support weapon crews requirements either... one is needed to fire but the rest are needed to move, and you have a E (ncumbrance) rule to boot! So shoot or scoot not both.

Also about the infantry Heavy Recoilless Rifle, it is a single shot weapon. The BA version is heavier and an a automatic.

TT

You're only looking at TW damage. And crew requirements and movement are irrelevant here. We're looking at damage from the weapon. That isn't going to change. The BA version of the HRR also fires a single shot per round. Battletech Companion even says that they're standard weapons adapted to BA. So the damage should be the same. Only it isn't.
 

Damage by individuals in ATOW add damage for MoS and burst up to as many rounds as fired. The TK can fire 10 rounds. Just the burst damage can increase the TK Assault Rifle's AP/BP from 4B/4B up to 4B/14B. BAR 10 armor will reduce that to 8B. Rounded up that is 1 point of damage. ATOW turns are also 5 seconds. TW turns are 10 seconds so the Trooper could fire again for more damage. Of course that's if the trooper is very lucky. A single shot will do 0 damage.


In TW the TK Assault Rifle only does .44 damage, per trooper. For a 10 trooper squad that's 4.4 points of damage. That's because TW doesn't bother with MoS, or the number or rounds fired, or other effects. It's as if all infantry weapons become single shot weapons. Of course you also get weapons like bows that will do damage in significant numbers in TW while they won't in ATOW.


The Battle Armor Heavy Recoilless Rifle is 6X / 12S. The Infantry version is 8X/12A. Against BAR 10 armor the BA version does 1 point of damage to BAR10 armor. The Infantry version does 1 point of damage. That's far different from 3 points and .57 points in TW. Other ordnance weapons have similar problems.

To really fix Infantry weapons, you have to fix how they go from on game to another. You also have to fix how they're used be different units. Damage shouldn't change depending on whether or not its used be BA, Infantry, or small vehicles.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #32 on: 02 August 2019, 14:54:35 »
I think the problem was introduced with BA scale weapons.  Yes, that was a LONG time ago.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #33 on: 03 August 2019, 23:52:25 »
To really fix Infantry weapons, you have to fix how they go from on game to another. You also have to fix how they're used be different units. Damage shouldn't change depending on whether or not its used be BA, Infantry, or small vehicles.
It'd likely be a simple enough measure to convert these weapons for BA use.  Just need to add a value for weight, crits, and weight per shot and it should be good to go.  Of course, that'd basically mean you'd have to rework every single canon BA suit...

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #34 on: 03 August 2019, 23:58:25 »
that'd basically mean you'd have to rework every single canon BA suit...

the moment of death for virtually every revision i come up with  ;D

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RifleMech

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #35 on: 04 August 2019, 20:50:39 »
It'd likely be a simple enough measure to convert these weapons for BA use.  Just need to add a value for weight, crits, and weight per shot and it should be good to go.  Of course, that'd basically mean you'd have to rework every single canon BA suit...

Actually some of the weapon fluff in older rule books does just that.

I think the problem was introduced with BA scale weapons.  Yes, that was a LONG time ago.


The biggest problem with Battle Armor equipment is that no other unit can use it. They should be allowed on small vehicles and as crew served infantry weapons.

That would be more overlap in weapons but that's okay. BA versions should be a larger caliber.


Talen5000

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #36 on: 05 August 2019, 03:36:48 »
Actually some of the weapon fluff in older rule books does just that.


The biggest problem with Battle Armor equipment is that no other unit can use it. They should be allowed on small vehicles and as crew served infantry weapons.

That would be more overlap in weapons but that's okay. BA versions should be a larger caliber.

Actually, IMO, BA scale weaponry just should NOT exist at all.

They should be using scaled down Mech Weaponry (e.g calculate BA weapons as one third the mass of the BM equivalent) or they should be using Support weapons as is. There was no need for yet another weapon class that duplicated already existing weapons.
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Daryk

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #37 on: 05 August 2019, 03:43:39 »
*snip*
There was no need for yet another weapon class that duplicated already existing weapons.
Seconded!

RifleMech

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #38 on: 05 August 2019, 06:26:53 »
Actually, IMO, BA scale weaponry just should NOT exist at all.

They should be using scaled down Mech Weaponry (e.g calculate BA weapons as one third the mass of the BM equivalent) or they should be using Support weapons as is. There was no need for yet another weapon class that duplicated already existing weapons.

I agree. Battle Armor weaponry shouldn't duplicate. It should be in between Infantry and Vehicle Scale. When I say some overlap its the same way the BA Small Laser is equal to the Vehicle/Mech version. The heaviest Infantry weapons should be equal to the lightest Battle Armor versions.  And all of these should be mountable on small vehicles. I also think there should be vehicle scale versions of some of these weapons such as the Recoilless Rifles and the Support PPCs. 

idea weenie

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #39 on: 07 August 2019, 20:09:43 »
I agree. Battle Armor weaponry shouldn't duplicate. It should be in between Infantry and Vehicle Scale. When I say some overlap its the same way the BA Small Laser is equal to the Vehicle/Mech version. The heaviest Infantry weapons should be equal to the lightest Battle Armor versions.  And all of these should be mountable on small vehicles. I also think there should be vehicle scale versions of some of these weapons such as the Recoilless Rifles and the Support PPCs. 

The BA weaponry does have a couple advantages:
1) closer to the surface, so it is easier to dissipate heat.  This means no fancy cooling systems that have to be built into the weapon to transfer weapon heat to the Heat Sink network
2) BA are a slightly more flexible platform than Mechs.  A Mech can put a weapon in its torso, but that weapon will need some way of angling to hit a target.  That means some form of internal myomers/actuators to move the weapon up/down/left/right.  A BA would just have the electronic version of an iron sight, so it may just display where the weapon will hit if you fire, and rely upon the wearer to aim it properly

Of course, you still have issues like the Inner Sphere Small Laser being .5 tons, while the BA Small Laser is .2 tons.  The BA Small Laser does have an ammo requirement of a sixth of a kilo per shot, compared to the Support Laser's ammo requirement of 3 kg per shot (about 18* as much).

So a rough comparison:
  • Mech Small laser - no ammo needed, 500 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • BA Small Laser - .16kg needed per clip, 30 shots per clip, 200 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • Support Laser - 3 kg per shot, 72 kg mass, less than 1 pt of damage
So a BA Small Laser will need to fire 56,250 shots to equal in mass to an Inner Sphere Small Laser.  If it fires less than that between reloads, it is better than the Inner Sphere Small Laser
A Support Laser will need to fire 45-46 shots to equal a BA Small Laser in mass (this is assuming both fire the same number of shots, total mass is ~207 kg)

Assuming you pack together 3 Support Lasers to equal a BA Small Laser via rounding (.84 * 3 = 2.52, rounded up to 3), that means the triple Support Laser combo will mass 216 kg, and need 9 kg per tri-shot.  This is ~56 times as much mass per shot as BA Small Laser uses.


Edit - modified the number of shots the BA Small Laser gets
« Last Edit: 05 November 2020, 08:53:23 by idea weenie »

Talen5000

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #40 on: 08 August 2019, 02:57:46 »
Of course, you still have issues like the Inner Sphere Small Laser being .5 tons, while the BA Small Laser is .2 tons.  The BA Small Laser does have an ammo requirement of a sixth of a kilo per shot, compared to the Support Laser's ammo requirement of 3 kg per shot (about 18* as much).

So a rough comparison:
  • Mech Small laser - no ammo needed, 500 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • BA Small Laser - .16kg needed per shot, 200 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • Support Laser - 3 kg per shot, 72 kg mass, less than 1 pt of damage
So a BA Small Laser will need to fire 1875 shots to equal in mass to an Inner Sphere Small Laser.  If it fires less than that between reloads, it is better than the Inner Sphere Small Laser
A Support Laser will need to fire 45-46 shots to equal a BA Small Laser in mass (this is assuming both fire the same number of shots, total mass is ~207 kg)

Assuming you pack together 3 Support Lasers to equal a BA Small Laser via rounding (.84 * 3 = 2.52, rounded up to 3), that means the triple Support Laser combo will mass 216 kg, and need 9 kg per tri-shot.  This is ~56 times as much mass per shot as BA Small Laser uses.

That's kinda what I mean.

We have three weapons that are "supposedly" the same weapon but very different stats.

Did we need a specific BA Tech base? Yes..
And no.

There are two ways this could have be done....
1....use the support weaponry.  BA has a weapons interlink meaning the appropriate support weapon slots into place. BA becomes little more then an enhanced gyroscopic harness

Simple....but it makes support weaponry very effective. Too effective for the setting. If infantry had these weapons, then the given numbers don't work. BT works the way it does partly because infantry is largely ineffective

You give every platoon a single weapon like this and that changes.

2....scale up the support weaponry. You add an armoured housing, power feeds and cabling, links to cooling systems, whatever. Same weapon, but much more effective. You make too heavy or large to move easily and you have a partial solution to the infantry issue.

3...use Mech scale weaponry. You take the Mech system, but strip off the armoured housing, power and control feeds, cooling system, targeting and turret mechanisms, anti recoil/heat systems and the like. You have a weapon that is much lighter...make it 20-50% of the original mass...has the same performance as Mech scale weaponry (because it is a Mech Scale weapon,) but then you still have the need for either dedicated weapon tables or a simplistic approach such as "BA weapons mass 20% of their Mech scale counterparts"
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Daemion

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #41 on: 08 August 2019, 14:33:13 »
battledroids infantry didn't actually have small arms. it was a nine man squad that had an SRM-2 or MG (with limited ammo but never lived long enough to use it all) and died from one point of damage damage (but got a +2 mod to hit). you could stack ten squads in a hex, which was hilarious. much simpler to use as you don't have to cross-reference two tables to calculate their damage or an infantry-specific range table. i'd give them a few more options but i'll start another thread if i want to brainstorm using those rules. i've already derailed this one enough

And, you could tell from this that Battle Armor was meant to amplify a trooper to the level of being a one-man squad. 
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #42 on: 08 August 2019, 14:59:18 »
I'd model a 120mm shell as a medium or a heavy rifle.  That'd mean 3-6 damage on ablative armor, and way more than a hunting rifle.  HE or HEAT would actually probably fair better than APDSFS against ablative, judging by the description of Autocannon rounds as a form of HEAP and SRM warhead's as basically a minengeschoss on steroids.

And, yet, the AC/5 of a Marauder is firing similar rounds at a rapid rate, each shell maybe doing a full point of damage, maybe less, according to some 'canon' sources.


The anti-armor capabilities of infantry isn't the real issue for me, with some minor caveats.  In fact, the notion that the platoon can gather enough firepower to damage armor should have been the basis for the Rifle Cannons, and not the hard value they provided.  You get a large enough number of tanks together, and they can concentrate fire enough to start doing damage on One Mech.  Maybe a company? I wouldn't go so far as to say a platoon (3-4).  Need's to be more than that. This is how I imagine a lot of tank formations had to combat Mechs when they first faced them in combat, like during that Marik invasion that saw a small force of Lyran Mechs (depending on source - Original House Steiner Book - a company) trounce a whole brigade, including aerial and space support assets like assault dropships. 

I hated the Rifle Canon rules as soon as I read them.  Just doesn't work in the light of other rules, styles, and what I can piece together from fiction. And, it just made the glaring problems of the application of the BAR system that much more apparent.

So, I have no real problems with your assumption on that side of things.   I'm more interested in the infantry-on-infantry side of things.

Which is why I think it would be much more fun to revive BattleTroops in some fashion, whether it's a simplification of AToW rules and stats, or something in between that and Total Warfare, or even a call-back to other rule-sets, like MechWarrior 2nd ed, which seemed to integrate better using the pilot consciousness chart, and an applied hit location that had really bad effects on a person.



 
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #43 on: 08 August 2019, 15:55:30 »
That's kinda what I mean.

We have three weapons that are "supposedly" the same weapon but very different stats.

Did we need a specific BA Tech base? Yes..
And no.

There are two ways this could have be done....
1....use the support weaponry.  BA has a weapons interlink meaning the appropriate support weapon slots into place. BA becomes little more then an enhanced gyroscopic harness

Simple....but it makes support weaponry very effective. Too effective for the setting. If infantry had these weapons, then the given numbers don't work. BT works the way it does partly because infantry is largely ineffective

You give every platoon a single weapon like this and that changes.

2....scale up the support weaponry. You add an armoured housing, power feeds and cabling, links to cooling systems, whatever. Same weapon, but much more effective. You make too heavy or large to move easily and you have a partial solution to the infantry issue.

3...use Mech scale weaponry. You take the Mech system, but strip off the armoured housing, power and control feeds, cooling system, targeting and turret mechanisms, anti recoil/heat systems and the like. You have a weapon that is much lighter...make it 20-50% of the original mass...has the same performance as Mech scale weaponry (because it is a Mech Scale weapon,) but then you still have the need for either dedicated weapon tables or a simplistic approach such as "BA weapons mass 20% of their Mech scale counterparts"

For simplicity and fun's sake, I'd normally go with option 3.  The idea that a support laser is effectively a small laser lines up with the notion of a single BA trooper being a one-man squad.  But, then the only weapons I'd allow to damage a Mech, at that point, would be the support weapons. The idea that all the anti-infantry guns from the armored game are the same ones used by Infantry as well is appealing.  It's simple to port over and play with. 

But, if you go that route, you do need some restrictions or drawbacks.  My suggestions:
1) The weapon, to be portable, has exactly what you stated, next to nothing in the way of protection. 

2) The squad would have to spend a turn having spent no MP to move, though not necessarily immobile. 

3) Unless we come up with some explanation about how each trooper's personal ECM package helps mask the support weapon in a squad from a directed attack, then any attack directed at the squad should be directed at one of the squad's two damage capacities - Anti-Armor or Anti-Personnel.
     3A)Any Mech scale weaponry will obliterate a support weapon, no questions asked, but it will only take out a squad's support weapon.  Let's assume standard to-hit procedures are necessary, to account for Infantry having some sort of ECM and mobility training.  If there were any ancillary damage to the number of men in the squad, it would be the guy manning the support weapon, and him alone.  If you want more, I'd put it up to a random crit-chance table roll, in my opinion, if you're wanting to track such things. 
     3P)Hurting a squad's or platoon's anti-personnel capacity would be a separate effect, which is where the body counting comes in.  Each man in a platoon/squad is a gun, at the very minimum, when in regards to infantry firefights against other infantry.  I'd personally suggest that the TW conversion values be by squad (7 men) as a damage total modifier when rolling cluster to see how much damage the squad/platoon actually did against another infantry unit.  So, take your TW Rifle infantry, find out how much damage 7 men do, and add the remaining bodies to get your AP damage value.  The reason I suggest this is because of the way the burst mechanic is helping boost damage for rapid-fire weapons.
           3Pa) Optionally, instead of relying on a static to-hit roll, you could just put infantry versus infantry fire-fights on the cluster chart directly, skipping the gunnery modification and to-hit roll entirely.  Terrain and range could be applied to the final cluster result in the same way as AMS is applied to Missile cluster rolls, as a negative modifier.  Any result below 2 would do 0 damage.

4)Personally, I'd love to have Platoon stats arrayed on a sheet in the same way as you would a BA squad.

Something like:
Squad 1 - OOOOOO(S)[T]            S = the trooper manning the Support weapon.
Squad 2 - OOOOOO(S)[T]            T = the transport identifier number if the unit is mechanized.
Squad 3 - OOOOOO(S)[T]
Squad 4 - OOOOOO(S)[T]

You could then have the remaining troopers each have the modified value for their class of stock weapon (B Rifle, E Rifle, SRM, etc ), and as the squad takes AP damage, the damage bonus goes down as well, if you want to get that detailed.

Damn, now I'm wanting to make something that actually looks good. I may have to break out Paint some time today, and grab my TW and BMR.

This would put weapons such as the Machine Gun, Small Laser, and Flamer on Mechs and Tanks purely in the infantry support role.  They would have to wade into range, but it would be in support of other infantry to wipe out a squad or platoon.

I'm a big fan of squad operations in general, because a 30-man platoon in a 30 meter hex has some interesting visuals once you start stacking in enemy and friendly platoons of similar volume. I put together some shots of infantry minis spread out over an appropriately scaled hex template to show just how crowded a BT hex can get.  I'll dig that up here in the next post.
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Daemion

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #44 on: 08 August 2019, 16:03:27 »
Why I prefer the idea of deploying infantry in squads.

Also a big reason why I'm much more a fan of random damage to infantry in general, from all sides.

Now, time to make that platoon template!
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #45 on: 08 August 2019, 16:08:51 »
it's funny you should say that because i was playing around with something very similar. you've basically created an update to the BattleDroids infantry.

I was imagining a dude in each squad with an SRM-1 like a modern Javelin missile launcher.



the other option is that the squad has a small motor-assisted "wagon" they can pull the weapon on.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #46 on: 08 August 2019, 21:13:26 »
And, yet, the AC/5 of a Marauder is firing similar rounds at a rapid rate, each shell maybe doing a full point of damage, maybe less, according to some 'canon' sources.

Actually, a Light Rifle would likely represent a more lethal weapon than the 120mm M1 gun.

A Tiger circa 2400 has a BAR of 7.
We can surmise that an M1 Abrams has a BAR of 5, perhaps 6 on the front and the 120mm cannon would probably be best described as having an AP around 5.

This tallies fairly well with the vintage weaponry listed in ATOWC


« Last Edit: 09 August 2019, 09:24:09 by Talen5000 »
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #47 on: 09 August 2019, 06:42:03 »
The BA weaponry does have a couple advantages:
1) closer to the surface, so it is easier to dissipate heat.  This means no fancy cooling systems that have to be built into the weapon to transfer weapon heat to the Heat Sink network
2) BA are a slightly more flexible platform than Mechs.  A Mech can put a weapon in its torso, but that weapon will need some way of angling to hit a target.  That means some form of internal myomers/actuators to move the weapon up/down/left/right.  A BA would just have the electronic version of an iron sight, so it may just display where the weapon will hit if you fire, and rely upon the wearer to aim it properly

Of course, you still have issues like the Inner Sphere Small Laser being .5 tons, while the BA Small Laser is .2 tons.  The BA Small Laser does have an ammo requirement of a sixth of a kilo per shot, compared to the Support Laser's ammo requirement of 3 kg per shot (about 18* as much).

So a rough comparison:
  • Mech Small laser - no ammo needed, 500 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • BA Small Laser - .16kg needed per shot, 200 kg mass, 3 pts of damage
  • Support Laser - 3 kg per shot, 72 kg mass, less than 1 pt of damage
So a BA Small Laser will need to fire 1875 shots to equal in mass to an Inner Sphere Small Laser.  If it fires less than that between reloads, it is better than the Inner Sphere Small Laser
A Support Laser will need to fire 45-46 shots to equal a BA Small Laser in mass (this is assuming both fire the same number of shots, total mass is ~207 kg)

Assuming you pack together 3 Support Lasers to equal a BA Small Laser via rounding (.84 * 3 = 2.52, rounded up to 3), that means the triple Support Laser combo will mass 216 kg, and need 9 kg per tri-shot.  This is ~56 times as much mass per shot as BA Small Laser uses.

The laser is also closer to the occupant so I would think you'd want some cooling there.

You're just looking at adding ammo for the BA Laser to compare it to the mech version. The vehicle version. The Vehicle version has heavier mounting brackets, possibly with a way of aiming the weapon. It is also set up for direct power feed from the mech, all those power lines could also be adding to the weight of the weapon.

I also wouldn't put the infantry Support Laser in the mix as its just too small. The BA version is the mech version stripped of a lot of stuff and set up to take power clips. The Support Laser would  have to be scaled up completely to be equal to the BA small laser.

Fun Fact
The Rules in Combat Equipment does list "RPG" Infantry Support Weapons (Medium Scale) and their equivalent "BT" vehicle scale weapons and their ranges and damages. It also gave rules for mounting them. Weapons and ammo took 2 critical slots. Energy weapons also required a heat sink.



And, yet, the AC/5 of a Marauder is firing similar rounds at a rapid rate, each shell maybe doing a full point of damage, maybe less, according to some 'canon' sources.


The anti-armor capabilities of infantry isn't the real issue for me, with some minor caveats.  In fact, the notion that the platoon can gather enough firepower to damage armor should have been the basis for the Rifle Cannons, and not the hard value they provided.  You get a large enough number of tanks together, and they can concentrate fire enough to start doing damage on One Mech.  Maybe a company? I wouldn't go so far as to say a platoon (3-4).  Need's to be more than that. This is how I imagine a lot of tank formations had to combat Mechs when they first faced them in combat, like during that Marik invasion that saw a small force of Lyran Mechs (depending on source - Original House Steiner Book - a company) trounce a whole brigade, including aerial and space support assets like assault dropships. 

I hated the Rifle Canon rules as soon as I read them.  Just doesn't work in the light of other rules, styles, and what I can piece together from fiction. And, it just made the glaring problems of the application of the BAR system that much more apparent.

So, I have no real problems with your assumption on that side of things.   I'm more interested in the infantry-on-infantry side of things.

Which is why I think it would be much more fun to revive BattleTroops in some fashion, whether it's a simplification of AToW rules and stats, or something in between that and Total Warfare, or even a call-back to other rule-sets, like MechWarrior 2nd ed, which seemed to integrate better using the pilot consciousness chart, and an applied hit location that had really bad effects on a person.

In regards to comparing AC/s and recoilless rifles, if we went by the fluff and number of rounds fired then a single Infantry RR round doing 1 point of damage or less makes sense. A 4 round burst from an AC/5 would do 1.25 damage each. The problem is you'd be needing stats for each individual weapon. That's a lot of weapons. The BA versions would also have to be firing bursts to get their increased damage over the Infantry versions.

And you're right. There's also problems with BAR. Infantry weapons should do a lot more damage to BAR 2 armor than to BAR10. That's reflected in the RPG but not in the board game.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #48 on: 09 August 2019, 11:55:55 »
it's funny you should say that because i was playing around with something very similar. you've basically created an update to the BattleDroids infantry.

I was imagining a dude in each squad with an SRM-1 like a modern Javelin missile launcher.



the other option is that the squad has a small motor-assisted "wagon" they can pull the weapon on.

Pretty Much.  Have a look at the attached for what could be an option.  The left-most, if it has a colored box, is the support weapon and the damage it does to hardened targets. (The Rifle Platoon is the one exception.)  The values to the left are the anti-infantry damage modifiers based on the number of troopers capable of participating in anti-personnel firefights.  As the squad takes personnel damage from AP attacks, the value will shrink with the number of capable troopers in a way you might recognize. This does not have to be done that way, but I put it in as an example.

Now, this is just a rough version.  I recognize that the LRM and SRM platoons in AToW have different body counts compared to the other weapon types. And, then there are the different motive types which also have reduced counts per squad.  Have yet to decipher whether that is due to crew requirements both on the part of the support weapon and the dedicated vehicle or otherwise, so I just let it go for now.

Playing around with this style of infantry would have been fun, for me.
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #49 on: 09 August 2019, 12:13:56 »
MechInf Transport visualization.  Check the PDF Attachments in the post.

Does anybody know what the official MechInf dedicated vehicles are based off of? I thought we had something from TRo Vehicle Annex, but my run through Sarna has been inconclusive.    I remember the 'Rock Rover' being bandied about a couple times on these forums. 

 
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Talen5000

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #50 on: 09 August 2019, 12:20:28 »
MechInf Transport visualization.  Check the PDF Attachments in the post.

Does anybody know what the official MechInf dedicated vehicles are based off of? I thought we had something from TRo Vehicle Annex, but my run through Sarna has been inconclusive.    I remember the 'Rock Rover' being bandied about a couple times on these forums.

Whatever you want.

Sorry  - I had this conversation just a few weeks back when i wanted clarification on terminology but the truth is that there is no clearcut "definition". It is fairly clear what they were intended to be....IMO...but the actual rules and design examples go against this. A Mechanised Infantry unit thereby becomes an infantry unit that you want to be tougher and have a specific movement mode.
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #51 on: 09 August 2019, 15:07:23 »
Whatever you want.

Sorry  - I had this conversation just a few weeks back when i wanted clarification on terminology but the truth is that there is no clearcut "definition". It is fairly clear what they were intended to be....IMO...but the actual rules and design examples go against this. A Mechanised Infantry unit thereby becomes an infantry unit that you want to be tougher and have a specific movement mode.

I get that.  I was thinking of the Dark Age hover bike infantry being what Hover MechInf were supposed to be, when I first saw them in Total Warfare.  The Tech Manual rules for their design, however, specified, or used to in the first printing, that it was a single vehicle per squad.  With that conditional statement,  hover bike infantry were ruled out as a thing.  Has that changed?  Or, are we still looking at something akin to 40k Imperial Gurad squads in a platoon outfitted with dedicated Chimeras?

 
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #52 on: 09 August 2019, 15:13:09 »
I get that.  I was thinking of the Dark Age hover bike infantry being what Hover MechInf were supposed to be, when I first saw them in Total Warfare.  The Tech Manual rules for their design, however, specified, or used to in the first printing, that it was a single vehicle per squad.  With that conditional statement,  hover bike infantry were ruled out as a thing.  Has that changed?  Or, are we still looking at something akin to 40k Imperial Gurad squads in a platoon outfitted with dedicated Chimeras?

Nope. it didn't. Mechanised Infantry and motirised infatry are now the same thing - both can use single man vehicles, with bikes and both can use heavily armoured APCs and IFVs. Why? Because the construction rules did not provide proper limits, restrictions or clarificationd on what was what so the designers went with what was there.

The differences are how tough you want them to be - MechInf absorb more damage - and do you want to keep track of movement modes - MechInf get to use Hover, Wheeled and tracked movement.
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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #53 on: 09 August 2019, 20:10:09 »
3...use Mech scale weaponry. You take the Mech system, but strip off the armoured housing, power and control feeds, cooling system, targeting and turret mechanisms, anti recoil/heat systems and the like. You have a weapon that is much lighter...make it 20-50% of the original mass...has the same performance as Mech scale weaponry (because it is a Mech Scale weapon,) but then you still have the need for either dedicated weapon tables or a simplistic approach such as "BA weapons mass 20% of their Mech scale counterparts"

The BA Small laser is 40% of a Mech Small Laser, so it would be in line with your idea here


You're just looking at adding ammo for the BA Laser to compare it to the mech version. The vehicle version. The Vehicle version has heavier mounting brackets, possibly with a way of aiming the weapon. It is also set up for direct power feed from the mech, all those power lines could also be adding to the weight of the weapon.

I also wouldn't put the infantry Support Laser in the mix as its just too small. The BA version is the mech version stripped of a lot of stuff and set up to take power clips. The Support Laser would  have to be scaled up completely to be equal to the BA small laser.

The Support Laser was scaled up further on.  Three of them did the same damage as the BA Small Laser (if you round), but doing that amount of damage used ammo that massed ~50* as much as a BA Small Laser unit of ammo

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #54 on: 09 August 2019, 21:16:38 »
The BA Small laser is 40% of a Mech Small Laser, so it would be in line with your idea here

Yes - but the slight difference here is that in my way, the BA SL actually IS a Mech Scale Laser, just with all the "junk" stripped off, rather than the current approach of an infantry support laser that is scaled up. Subtle difference but one that I think simplifies things. We already have rules for how Mech scale gear affects conventional support vehicles (they go boom) and humans (they go poof) and Mech scale armour (3 points of damage from the BA SL) and it bypasses the need for quite a bit of conversion tables. All you'd need then would be some way to determine power usage - probably so many power points power heat generated and a PPC Power pack or three.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #55 on: 10 August 2019, 02:28:00 »
The BA Small laser is 40% of a Mech Small Laser, so it would be in line with your idea here


The Support Laser was scaled up further on.  Three of them did the same damage as the BA Small Laser (if you round), but doing that amount of damage used ammo that massed ~50* as much as a BA Small Laser unit of ammo

I don't recall seeing anything that said a Support Laser was scaled up to a small laser. Its ways been Mech/Vehicle being made into a Battle Armor versions. The Small Laser was stripped of stuff so it could fit on a Battle Armor. Plus you have the Support Laser's range of 9 compared to the small laser's range of 3. The one doesn't really fit as scaled up.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #56 on: 12 August 2019, 09:00:04 »
I always envisioned the stock support laser being the basis behind the Mech Small Laser, having all that fancy stuff applied to it for the accuracy needed to do damage against MagiTech Armor that is the standard.

I never understood the range boost it got in TW.  I'd easily imagine that to be the range it has against soft, unarmored targets, like poorly kitted infantry.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #57 on: 12 August 2019, 10:17:38 »
I don't recall seeing anything that said a Support Laser was scaled up to a small laser.

It's mentioned in some weapon descriptions, and there is a table in Combat Equipment equating the support weapons to BT weapons.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that combat in MW should start with the BT game, and then worked the other way and thereby remove as much requirement for conversions as possible.

Mech scale small laser vs infantry? Infantry goes pop. Vs Mech? Does 3 damage. Vs Support Vehicle? Does 3 damage and compare BARs.
Mech scale small laser as BA Small Laser vs infantry? Infantry goes pop. Vs Mech? Does 3 damage. Vs Support Vehicle? Does 3 damage and compare BARs.
Mech scale small laser as support laser? Does not happen.

Support Laser vs Mech? Zero damage. Infantry weapons don't work too well against Mechs. Vs Support vehicle? Compare AP vs BAR and deal damage.

And so on.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #58 on: 13 August 2019, 08:33:50 »
It's mentioned in some weapon descriptions, and there is a table in Combat Equipment equating the support weapons to BT weapons.

The table I remember not the description for the support laser. It's also no longer legal. :(


Quote
Personally, I'm of the opinion that combat in MW should start with the BT game, and then worked the other way and thereby remove as much requirement for conversions as possible.

Mech scale small laser vs infantry? Infantry goes pop. Vs Mech? Does 3 damage. Vs Support Vehicle? Does 3 damage and compare BARs.
Mech scale small laser as BA Small Laser vs infantry? Infantry goes pop. Vs Mech? Does 3 damage. Vs Support Vehicle? Does 3 damage and compare BARs.
Mech scale small laser as support laser? Does not happen.

Support Laser vs Mech? Zero damage. Infantry weapons don't work too well against Mechs. Vs Support vehicle? Compare AP vs BAR and deal damage.

And so on.

I agree. There should be little conversion and what conversion there is should be seamless.

Long time ago only support weapons always did damage to mechs. The other weapons did damage only if they got lucky.

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Re: Infantry Weapon Overhaul for Total Warfare
« Reply #59 on: 13 August 2019, 09:18:54 »
Long time ago only support weapons always did damage to mechs. The other weapons did damage only if they got lucky.

And by and large I'd suggest even that was too generous to the infantry. Its a game tweak that doesn't fit in with the established universe and it only adds unnecessary conversion systems such as the "only does damage on rolls of 2 or 12"

But, just my opinion.
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