You said "less emphasis on using the myomers for locomotion". That to me said you would be reducing the myomers. That tonnage devoted to reaction mass has to come from somewhere. Since the myomers are being kept, they will be taking up tonnage while an ASF can use that tonnage for more armor/weapons.
You mean they already have.
But, no, I meant that you could redirect power from myomer activation, especially the legs, to other places. it wouldn't mean shutting down the myomers entirely, because you'd want to be able to do some defensive twitching or contorting. (This will be explained,
again, below.)
For the fast pack, where you strap a set of fusion thrusters to a mech, we can calculate it right now using cargo tonnage in a Mech (ignoring locations and crit requirements, just the engine tonnage).
Again, you seem to misunderstand. And, you're being overly redundant. Why would you have to mount a
second fusion reactor to the Mech? All you need is fuel and maybe jets if the Mech isn't already outfitted. The system would be powered by the Mechs existing reactor, much like Jump Jets. The LAM is already capable of this, by the way.
The Mech reorienting also means it will need a way to keep its target profile minimized. ASF already do this since they are arodynamic, and all their weapons are mounted on their 'top' as perceived from their direction of flight. A Mech trying to keep its profile minimized means it will only be able to use its arm-mounted weaponry, or it will be giving its opponent a larger target.
No, you don't need a smaller profile. In fact, the Mech works
by presenting a bigger target. Otherwise, ground combat would be completely different, and QuadVees, or Quad Mechs in general, would be the mainstay of combat.
Again, you're working from outside what I'm seeing. From that rather (in my opinion) dated concept of armored combat, you would generally be correct, especially if you're
trying not to get hit. But, I've already pointed out how
'Trying Not to Get Hit'{tm} is ineffectual. In space combat, at such short ranges depicted on the map, speed of light weapons like lasers and PPCs will still reach out and touch someone pretty effectively unless they're
beyond one (1) Light Second (300,000 km). At which point, the target can simply thrust in an unpredictable direction and properly
Not Get Hit{tm}.
When you can't avoid being hit, what do you do? You make sure the hit is as meaningless as possible.
As I see it, in the BTu future, they've worked out how to make that happen to the point that we can represent it in 2d6 probabilities. ^-^
Presenting a small target doesn't necessarily mean that's where all your armor is. In fact, with a BattleMech, they present a large target, using limbs and motion to intercept some shots or cause them to glance or spread around a series of plates harmlessly. (This may explain the shot-trap armor layouts we see on almost all Mechs and tanks.)
They can contort and twist in ways that tanks and fighter planes can't. Once fighters or tanks try to do that, they lose whatever bonuses they have as mobile armored brick.
And, let's not forget that while they only have to armor to protect from six directions on Aerospace, they still have to cover broad surface areas when it comes to wings and other control surfaces. Unlike Mechs, Fighters (and tanks) are effectively a large armored egg or box protecting a singular, open and vulnerable core. Mechs have compartmentalization.
Finally, let me be clear. You can't get that kind of defensive movement by mere human control and reaction times. While we may process lots of data with our brains, we're still not as fast as a machine. So, active mobile defensive measures would have to be controlled by one or more computers.
It's been established that computers in BT are small and very effective. Sensor programs can pick out details that a human can miss.
(Some rules examples would be that once a hidden unit is revealed, it cannot go back into hiding during the rest of the game. But, something as simple as immobile targets imparting a huge -4 to-hit bonus to the attacker shows that mobility has a huge effect on the success of an attack. Target movement mods should be meaningless, since leading a shot would be simple for computer aided gunnery, but they have a huge effect the more distance a target can cover on the ground. Under that light, Jumping movement is probably not parabolic or anyway predictable, as you're now adding a new axis of motion, granting a mere +1 to an attacker's to-hit value.) All it would take is the application of predictive algorithms to guess where and when an attack might strike from a given enemy, and present an appropriate glancing armored face to that attack at that moment, or be ready to do so at the first sign of the weapon firing. It's not fool proof, and can be overwhelmed. (You throw enough dice and something's sure to land a hit. ;) ) Attack algorithms will be working to guess the target's motion and trying to predict where a 'good shot' will land at any given moment.
A computer guessing war. The pilot is merely there to steer the stead and dictate the target of any given weapon in the process. (This is how I see BT combat working. It makes it hyper-futuristic while accounting for the obvious inaccuracies one sees in combat when first viewed.)
If the high-speed gyro is not useful on ASF (for whatever reason), then why would it be useful on a Mech? If anti-grav is needed for a Mech to work in space, then why can't that technology also be applied to an ASF?
For the latter about anti-grav application, I'm not saying it can't, and I'm asking why it hasn't been done, personally.
In fact, during the short dint that AT1 was the rule-set for space combat, those speeds and ranges would seem to suggest that there was some involved, or the pilot/crew of a ship would be turned into paste by simply changing facing. Under that set-up, ASFs and other space craft already have it! So, the question becomes, 'Why wasn't it done on Mechs?'
As for the Gyro, I think this is more a matter of in-universe historical focus, and this is why I lament some factions not having a different design doctrine, focusing on one-man battle tanks or improved AeroSpace. It's not that the gyro isn't effective on a fighter. It's that nobody's tried.
The ASF is a centuries old design, like the mobile land brick that is the main battle-tank. The idea of presenting a small target area presided in the early development, and it's stuck. ASFs maneuver and dance through vectored thrust, and nobody has seen to improve that, especially since what they do have now is phenomenal by 21st century standards.
When all development went into the BattleMech, someone must have thought, 'Hey! We can make a super space fighter with some of this stuff from the Mech.' But, everything was going into Mech research. You can see it in some of the fiction. Fighters are considered generally fragile combat units that could easily be written off as a loss if it did take damage, especially in atmosphere and/or gravity. Gyro systems were once expensive enough that most bean-counters said 'no'.
So! Now that I've gone through all that, let's take a moment, and do a little rules meta, shall we? The rules for Mechs and other ground units fighting in space are where, again? An 'optional' rulebook, is it? Do those rules happen to give Aerospace some undue advantage in space? Like range? What about LAMs? They can convert to a Fighter Mode and engage at those same space ranges. If
they can do it, then why can't the range computers for space fighting be incorporated into other 'ground units' in space?
Okay, Since those rules are optional, let's ignore them for a moment. We're stuck with the core rules. A fight is happening in space, and you want to incorporate ground units in some way, say to deploy and protect a crippled transport.
How would you do it?
Well, we have a rule for that. Ground units function on a 'ground map'. Whether there's any actual ground on said map is immaterial. Any air or space units wanting to attack ground units must attack said ground units on their 'ground map'.
All of a sudden, any space unit loses its range advantage. It has to enter the space hex the 'ground units' are in, and then enter a 'low-altitude' scale map to make a typical attack run on said ground units, who can fire back. All the while, said space units are being shot at, at range, by other space units.
Now, if we were to apply some logic and limitations, how would this work? For Mechs, we already have an answer (Gyro + Future Armor). For other ground units, we would have to come up with a different solution. Infantry would be outfitted for their environment, so no problem there. Most track and wheeled units need contact with a surface to get the defensive mobility required to get the same 2d6 level invulnerability save. Hovercraft require the presence of significant amounts of gas. So, unless they're outfitted with thrusters or an internal gyro-flywheel system, they really are fish out of a barrel.
If we can't come up with a solution, then maybe we apply motive limitations for being in an illegal hex type, and they lose their status as Ground Combat Units. ^-^
Now. If we assume it's the Gyro that's making it work well for the Mech, (Anything infantry do would be immaterial to application to fighter craft...) and someone got the bright idea in-universe to apply it to an Aerospace fighter, what has changed?
For the most part, when Space units are dealing with ground units, nothing. However, on the space side of things, the gyro-equipped ASFs have the same range invulnerability that ground units do. Space combat would have to require that space units move into dog-fighting ranges with gyro-equipped units.
Wave of the future!
Dog-fights would be required to protect any attack runs on vulnerable droppers in transit. You can't shoot at the big metal barn when someone's on your tail, ready to take you out the moment you lose focus.
AoE weapons would be required of dropships and warships to give them the necessary range and first strike capability to cause some damage before having to commit fighter escorts to the battle.
And, so, we're back where we started in some ways. So, why would a Mech still be better if it could spend reaction mass and get up to speed? Because the Fighter still is limited by its construction. It still only has four armor locations to track, and big ones at that, which still leaves threshold limits. A Mech may have more locations with limited armor, but it also has ribbons of myomer helping it to keep its frame together like a bunch of rubber-bands. An ASF doesn't have that, either. Sure, there may be myomer threads linked to control surfaces to help speed their movement in an atmosphere, but not to the degree you see in a Mech. Nowhere near.
And, then there's the versatility factor. And, we really don't need to go into holding ground on a target area with gravity or a large surface area.
During the transition, from non-gyro ASFs to gyro-equipped ASFs, I'd like to point out that the Gyro-equipped fighters would enjoy a significant range boost against the non-gyroed fighters. The losses would be one-sided as fighters that can't weather the hits have to race into dog-fighting range, getting picked apart as they go.
Does that sound somewhat familiar? Let's hearken back to the days of the first BattleMechs, and how they could curbstomp (depending on which source you believe, entire armor brigades, or other) large formations of conventional armor of the day. I posit that the standard of the day was ranged fighting out to line of sight. Lasers and PPCs were great for that, and a mere extension of 21st century style conventional combat. The magic armor on the first Mechs, alone, wouldn't have cut range. But, you combine that armor with active defenses in the form of predictive algorithms tied to motion control (my idea of why ranges in BT ground combat are so short)! Suddenly, Mechs could snipe at range while those outdated armor brigades had to focus fire and rush to get close to hope to do
any damage.
So, yeah. A company of Mechs could chew through an armor brigade during those initial years.
And, the question would be, why wasn't that applied to tanks? Well, the answer is, it was. But, with ground units in general constant contact with the ground, and generally being armored bricks, they didn't need the gyro to achieve it.
(Not only do you get standard BT front-line tanks, but this should explain why so much of a vehicle's hit table is dedicated to the body. The turret will only get hit 1 in 6 times, probability-wise. It happens to be the most mobile part of the tank. And, if you're wondering about VToL rotors, I'd like to point out the thin central axle they're generally attached to.)This is one way I would propose seeing tech advancement.
The other would be to find a way to figure out how to apply long distance space targeting to Mechs, and even space-capable tanks. That would be another way. And, then, to get proper SpaceMechs, it's a matter of incorporating a method of getting up to speed.
Or, would you rather leave that to LAMs?
Me? While I love me my transformers, I want to see the BattleMech stay the
King of the Battlefield, all battlefields. That has to include space, someday.
