In praise of the obvious...

[HazMeat]

Because they're transitional. They're more expensive than standard weapons but not as good as improved weapons. Having them be available in refit kits and omni pods might help sales but they've got a lot of competition with standard and upgraded weaponry. They would need something to get buyers attention. Like how Chemical Double Heat Sinks were still around in the 3060s. They provided double heat sinks to severely crit limited mechs.

I didn't say anything about how expensive transitional weapons should be, but now that you mention it, I look to canon for a model and find that the LGR costs 275kCB, while the AC/10 costs 200kCB, though to be fair LGR ammo costs much more than AC/10 ammo.  The SRM-6 costs 80kCB, which is less than the 90kCB of the Streak-4 and 100kCB of the Narc Launcher, but more than the 50k of the MRM-10.  If we include near but imperfect fits, the MML-5 is a bit more affordable than the SRM-6 at only 75kCB, and the Gauss Rifle is the same 300k as the AC/20.  If you don't like the idea of there being buyers somewhere in the 'Sphere whose attention would be grabbed by an opportunity to spend just a few dozen kilobucks more on a multi-megabuck machine to have a different piece of equipment that just happens to be a better fit for the user's purpose, that's fine.  No one's forcing you to put it in your game or your headcanon.  I just like the way some new toys can be fitted into a 'mech by simply swapping out something else, and think it makes sense to deploy new technology that way- not exclusively that way, but inclusively. 

As for long-term viability, nowhere did I say that transitional weapons are supposed to be "not as good as," and in fact clarified that the idea is NOT an immature version of later equipment, it's just the models and configurations that make the most sense to develop first.  I'll try illustrating with an analogy.  Would you have the same objection if, hypothetically, the Streak-4 were not canon but the Streak-6 were, and I were suggesting the smaller launcher as a transitional Streak weapon?  That's the entire idea behind transitional weapons; slightly different implementations that happen to be more interchangeable with existing popular equipment. 

Well, there some things that are, "Why don't they do that?" and others that are, "Why haven't they done that?"  I'm obviously thinking the latter. We've got streak lasers in the fluff why not give us rules for them?

If you're referring to the Alexis system, the fluff in the TRO explicitly says that readying the weapon to fire builds up waste heat which must be dealt with, but at least saves wear and tear on the part of the weapon that doesn't operate.  I've long wondered why Streak technology only works with missiles, though; if anything, if it works with only some weapons, it should include beams, barring of course the fluff bit about heat that doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to explain why the Hermes' laser functions as standard in-game.  Then again, it's hard to worry about that when we have weird things like Gauss rifles requiring dangerously volatile energy storage while beam weapons don't.  (Realistically, coilguns require such energy that they ought to produce MORE waste heat than comparable chemical guns, but still be much more energy-efficient than laser weapons.) 

In the OPs case you're mixing technologies. Why would the Clans use MMLs when they have ATMs? And aren't the X-Pulse Lasers were the IS equivalent to Clan ER Pulse Lasers? And why would the Clans make an Heavy Gauss Rifle when they have HAGs? I'm sure the Clans could do something with it but unless it'd be an improvement over what they have I don't know why they would.

I would love dead end tech like Sheild2099 suggested. Why isn't there a small and medium scale binary laser? As for the multiple laser blasts, that'd be cool too. It sounds like a gattling laser cannon I've seen in a magazine. 

MML and ATM are only superficially similar; MML have access to a dizzying array of ammo types and only need two types to be able to pull their weight in most situations, while ATM only have vanilla damage-inflicting options yet they're more awkward to plan because they're more range-specialised and give relatively little per ton.  Improved ATM have some ammo types that look pretty fun to me, but I think it feels like the improvement is too much. 

ER Pulse and X-Pulse are fluffed as being different, so there's room for both in the same tech base; the ER Pulse is a new laser type developed from both ER and Pulse laser technologies, while X-Pulse is a variation mostly amounting to pushing existing Pulse weapons harder.  The rules are different, too: ER Pulse loses half of the Pulse bonus (but retains all the limitations) while X-Pulse gets full performance but pays for it with more heat. 

HAG and HGR are so very dramatically different that rather than explicate it here, I just advise you to look up whichever one you're totally unfamiliar with and see.  Ironically, in the fiction HAG are inspired by HGR.  Go figure. 

I do like the Blazer's fluff, but I have pet peeves with the rules.  Since the damage is 12, I'd rather just have it do 8 damage times cluster 2; IOW, be an Ultra version of the LL, since the average damage would be very close to the same that way.  It would better fit the fluff and have the thing be not COMPLETELY outclassed by the Bombast.  That also fits much better with Shield's QML. :D 

If you lurk around Solaris7, you might be interested in the fanon Rotary Laser System or whatever it was called, by the late Lonely Coyote.

I can't see these being an easy upgrade. Not only would they weight a lot more but they also take up a lot more crits. Maybe if you were replacing an AC/20 with a HRAC/2. I'm also not sure what the point of a light LB-X would be. LACs have more ammo choices. I suppose it could be done. Maybe instead of a LB-X actually having a traditional ballistic cannon that functions like a shotgun? Marry the HGR with the AC?

Whoops, I was spreading out over multiple subtopics, so I probably could have made that clearer.  Hoo, yeah, Heavy Rotary would be bulky, but I kinda like for some weapons to be hard to cram onto a 'mech, like the HGR.  It's probably half-baked because I don't even know how to get into the proper mindset to want RAC for my own use; I really only like the idea because Rotaries are adored by some people, and they only get a couple of AC models to play with. (Kinda tangential, maybe HAG should have been more like RAC rules-wise, to differentiate a bit more from LRMs?) As for the Light LB-5X, I said that upon considering what the stats would look like, it looks overpowered to me.  I understand that not every one agrees with me, but I'd happily just feed an LB 5-X with cluster rounds and never buy slugs unless it's the only ammo available, so that's why I said in that post that a 5-ton version with range reduced to match the 8-ton AC/5 looks overpowered to me. 

I like your idea of a shotgun-style cluster weapon, a TN bonus at long range but fewer hits can be an interesting mechanic and I'd be able to point to it to illustrate that the LB-X is not a literal 'mech-scale shotgun.  It could use either HAG-style cluster roll mods, or simply use different columns at different ranges for more Snubbie-like aesthetics.

Um...Okay? :-\ 

Yes, that's correct.  "Okay."  This thread's very topic is about what we [would] like to see.

Sorry you're losing me.

Defib!
1) I agree with the sentiment voiced by many that BT is really flooding weird about which weapons inflict one big hit and which pepper the target with cluster hits, including Pulse weapons.  I think the rules for LB-X weapons much better fit the fluff for Pulse weapons, at least what of that fluff I've read, than the rules for Pulse weapons do. 
2) I also agree with the sentiment voiced by not-so-many that a Pulse PPC could be nice, and think a plausible in-fiction incentive for its development exists in one of the great houses seeming to be very interested in both PPC and Pulse Lasers.  Since lasers and PPC are different weapons with different operating principles in the fiction, it's easy to say that's somehow why no Pulse PPC exists, but the only reason to do that is a real-life desire to either make an excuse for there being no Pulse PPC and/or prevent that from changing.  I have no such real-life motive. 
3) The fiction could instead be used as an excuse for many other things, one of which is that a Pulse PPC could behave differently than a Pulse Laser.  Have I found you? 

Re: the proposed stats in my last post, I'm not satisfied with where the ER version is at, so I might hash out more stats next weekend; if it spits a mess of little beams to long range, it should suffer from loss of effectiveness there, and I kinda prefer letting Gauss weaponry be the queen of long-range direct-fire tasks anyway.  ATM I'm leaning toward scrapping the ER version and going for a shorter-ranged version instead; maybe short-range with full Pulse bonus and mid-range with LB-X bonus, and one of the two emphasising heat instead of damage.
[brew] 

AC 5's: normally 3-6-12-18
ER- 4-8-16-24 @ damage 4
HE- 3-6-10-15 @ damage 7

AC 10's: 5-10-15
ER- 6-12-18 @ damage 8
HE- 4-8-12 @ damage 12

ATAC?  Nice, and the name even evokes "Ack-ack!" O0 

[Khymerion]

I wouldn't go quite that far. There are some one city worlds in Battletech. They've been there since the beginning. I also wouldn't say that there hasn't been periods where there hasn't been any fighting in Battletech. Someone some where's going to be fighting. I also wouldn't say that Units in Battletech wouldn't have records that could stand up with the best of WWII units. I also wouldn't say there couldn't be scenarios like you describe. In fact I'm pretty sure we can read about them in TROs. Like WWII there's so much happening that you can not possibly fit it all into a single book. And we're still learning new things about it. Battletech is the same, only sadly for us, there aren't thousands of writers writing about every different aspect of everything like WWII has. That's going to leave a lot of blanks for us to fill in with our own campaigns.

Oh, I know there is PLENTY out in the BT universe that can have the scenarios that I brushed over...  It is just that if you listen to some of the fans of the game and writers talk...  we have small scale fights.   And I mean small scale.   Heck, I broke out my Atlas of the 4th Succession War: Vol 1 because I was cleaning and found it in a box.   And then I was depressed to see that the bulk of the fights in that book were company and battalion engagements with a few regiments at best.   At most, there were only a few fights to take a world and the worst fighting was Tikonov.   This was still not an exceptionally large battle on the great scheme of things.

Yes.  I am never going to run the full OoB of Army Group Center or South at the battle of Kursk.   I know this.  Much like I know that I will never see a fight where I will throw the full OoB of the ComGuard at Tukayyid or the DCMS at Luthien...  but when you have clashes on this scale, on this level, you can have so much thrown about...  you can run a scenario where forces of this far greater cataclysmic battle hammer it out, to what ever end, and still have the greater narrative twist it to how the story was supposed to end.

Oh, your star of mediums surviving against impossible odds and did better than they were supposed to historically?   Well... something terrible still happens elsewhere on the front and the narrative can still dictate the collapse or victory in the greater battle.   Sadly... when you have small scale conflicts that look more like a Vietnam era skirmish instead of an actual conflict between armies...  you really don't have that chance to have a scenario that is just a small part of that bigger conflict.

That is why I have a problem with the clan system of bidding things down and the adherence to small armies, small skirmishes, and the 'one city' worlds... where all you got to do is put your flag on the capital and the populace begins to start bowing down to the new rulers like completely and totally spineless worms.

There are some things TPTB refuse to fix that bothers me but fasa-nomics isn't one of them. Well, there is some parts, determining cost by weight for example that could use a look at, but for the most part I don't have a problem with it. In fact I favor it compared to what we have in real life. Can you imagine trying to figure out the inflation or deflation depending on what era you're playing in? Since I got into Battletech gas prices have quadrupled! Trying to figure out the price of a tank on gas in 3025 and then in 3050, 3067, 3145? [AAAH]  I'll stick with fasa-nomics. Any part I really don't like, I'll house rule.

I'll have to agree there... I hate having to convert the value of an object from one house to the next...  I can do it and have had to thanks to having accountants as opponents for awhile.   I think it is more the problem with the way the industrial capacities of worlds are mishandled that really grinds my gears.

I also think that WWII games don't suffer because we know what happened, and with what, but because we can have bullshit sci-fi crap. There's how many WWII games with Mechs out there? WWII as a game and story universe has all the options. Battletech nearly does too. And I say nearly because there are some vehicles, weapons, and equipment that having been given rules. Outside of that though we can do all kinds of things.

I can think of a few WWII games that have mechs and they are actually pretty good.   I know GearKrieg is not exactly supported much but it was a blast to play.   I think the problem with BT is that there is no end.  There never will be an end.   If a faction looks like it might win, it will suddenly slip on a banana peel and fall down the stairs or choke on the proverbial stupid pill.    We deal with time lengths that should see incredible shifts of at least industrial potential... if not technological.  40 years is a LONG time.   That is the end of WWII through the Cold War...   where we saw countries that were reduced to nothing but ash and debris become industrial and economic power houses...  and that is just on a single world.   Yet...  the narrative has to make everyone lethargic at best.   It makes little sense.

I applaud TPTB when they kill a faction.   They bring an end to something.    But till there is actually a real end to the story and narrative, it is hard to really feel engaged in the greater story.    It is why I loved the Star League books or Operation Klondike and the early clan books.   We know the details, we know how it ends.   We always have known.   Now here is the information we need.

Hell, the fall of the Star League actually was about the only time we really had the conflicts that were on the scale of conflicts of old.   Where armies are dropping onto worlds.   In an invasion of that scale, you can run an infinite variety of scenarios and still have feel like it is part of the greater war, the greater invasion.    Because you know the fighting is going to be brutal and lasting weeks or months at the very least.

None of the company on company skirmish garbage to see who gets to own the pile of garbage heaped in the corner that might still have a working capacitor in it and who will get the tithe of grill cheese sandwiches that constitutes the planet's economic output this year.

As for vehicles having lots of variants and sub types. In a way I agree there probably should be more variants but then again maybe some units don't lend themselves well to change or are considered well enough that they don't consider further modifications necessary. At least until newer tech becomes available. Or all the differences could be internal and not really have an impact, so far, in game terms. Of course it's also possible that we haven't seen all of the variants. The universe is vast so there's bound to be variants we don't have yet. I'm still waiting for official stats for the PPC armed Locust and for Locusts with chin turrets. I also think some variants are unspoken. Like the difference between Locust minis. One type has boxy turrets and 4 small cockpit windows. The other has round turrets and 2 large cockpit windows. My head canon has them being the same stat wise just made by different factories. My head canon also has the turret being present at the beginning but being phased out without ever changing the Locust's variant name. There's also the original Locust IIC. When the Locust IIC was introduced Clan Tech hadn't been fully introduced. It would have had older weapons and then been upgraded. Maybe the Clans decided changing the number wasn't worth it for a simple upgrade?

Yeah... I would like to see that.   I would love to see variants of existing units instead of infinite new units.   I want to see an evolution of the chassis from introduction through fielding through adaptation to conflicts of it's age to refits as new equipment comes along to make it adapted to the new eras and fights while seeing the engineers straining to push the chassis to it's limits to make more.   Only if it is critically different should it be a new vehicle.   Sadly... there is far too much 'rule of cool' or silly specialized units that seem to come out of nowhere and have no visible ancestry to earlier units.

At least with Locust and Locust IIC, you can see some signs of it's evolution from one to the other.   Sadly not really the case.   There really isn't even a national identity look to units.   Okay... some Combine units look samurai and that is a give away... but if you didn't have the tech fluff that told you 'This is Lyran.   This is Liao.'  You wouldn't know.    But that is an ascetic thing.   I can't tell who built something or what the design origins of something by just a glance.

And you should be able to do that.   That has always been a bit of a weak point.   I am okay with having a Churchill in with my T-34s and KVs or a B-1 in with my Pz-IIIs... but I can at least tell who built them at a glance.   I can tell a French LeClerc from a Korean K-1.    When you have a hodge podge of artwork just thrown together and then randomly assigned which house they belong to...  well... then the houses and factions stop really ultimately mattering.

Especially when you at best get a 'House specific' variant for common mechs for each era... without really getting the feel of the evolution that came to that point.

Sure, I know we can't always care that the changing of the running gear of Davion Vedettes Mk XIII in 3045 to a simpler configuration made maintenance 10% easier for long road marches and this lead to the Mk XIII-B that allowed the suspension to be improved enough in 3051 to allow for the better handling of the recoil of the Ultra AC-5 that was replacing the older model AC-5s in service.   That is just too much technical information, I understand that...  but I would rather have that then some new 50 ton tank that is only marginally better but gets to have special new artwork, new name, and a new miniature.

[bblaney]

Hi,

There is no longer any guarantee or promise whatsoever that we will ever see a 3250 era.

Thanks,

-

That works for me, though can't wait to see what happens over the next few years anyways

[FedComGirl]

I didn't say anything about how expensive transitional weapons should be, but now that you mention it, I look to canon for a model and find that the LGR costs 275kCB, while the AC/10 costs 200kCB, though to be fair LGR ammo costs much more than AC/10 ammo.  The SRM-6 costs 80kCB, which is less than the 90kCB of the Streak-4 and 100kCB of the Narc Launcher, but more than the 50k of the MRM-10.  If we include near but imperfect fits, the MML-5 is a bit more affordable than the SRM-6 at only 75kCB, and the Gauss Rifle is the same 300k as the AC/20.  If you don't like the idea of there being buyers somewhere in the 'Sphere whose attention would be grabbed by an opportunity to spend just a few dozen kilobucks more on a multi-megabuck machine to have a different piece of equipment that just happens to be a better fit for the user's purpose, that's fine.  No one's forcing you to put it in your game or your headcanon.  I just like the way some new toys can be fitted into a 'mech by simply swapping out something else, and think it makes sense to deploy new technology that way- not exclusively that way, but inclusively. 

I like having new toys and I'll mix and match things all over. I'll mount a Tank Cannon and a Prototype ER L Laser on a unit because that's what's available. And I can see people spending more to get a more advanced machine.  I can also see someone paying more for a weapon that suits them better. I'd pay more to arm a machine with Improved SRM Launchers rather than MRMs.

As for long-term viability, nowhere did I say that transitional weapons are supposed to be "not as good as," and in fact clarified that the idea is NOT an immature version of later equipment, it's just the models and configurations that make the most sense to develop first.  I'll try illustrating with an analogy.  Would you have the same objection if, hypothetically, the Streak-4 were not canon but the Streak-6 were, and I were suggesting the smaller launcher as a transitional Streak weapon?  That's the entire idea behind transitional weapons; slightly different implementations that happen to be more interchangeable with existing popular equipment. 

I'm sorry but I'm not understanding. To me transitional weapons sounds like experimental or low production versions that came between the standard weapons and the newer weapons. I'm not following your Streak analogy. Transition the Streak SRM-6 into what? May offer an analogy?

We have the Standard AC/5 and the Ultra AC/5. A transitional AC/5 would weight as much as the UAC/5 but fires as a SAC/5 using the rapid fire rules without blowing up on a roll of 2 and jams on a roll of 3, but only when using standard ammo. So the transitional AC/5s are a little better than the SAC/5 but not as good as the UAC/5.

If you're referring to the Alexis system, the fluff in the TRO explicitly says that readying the weapon to fire builds up waste heat which must be dealt with, but at least saves wear and tear on the part of the weapon that doesn't operate.  I've long wondered why Streak technology only works with missiles, though; if anything, if it works with only some weapons, it should include beams, barring of course the fluff bit about heat that doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than to explain why the Hermes' laser functions as standard in-game.  Then again, it's hard to worry about that when we have weird things like Gauss rifles requiring dangerously volatile energy storage while beam weapons don't.  (Realistically, coilguns require such energy that they ought to produce MORE waste heat than comparable chemical guns, but still be much more energy-efficient than laser weapons.) 

Yes, I am. Everything for rules are right there in the fluff. It only needs to generate 1 heat. Mechs do that walking. There's no reason, except TPTB don't want to, not to have "streak" lasers. They'd prefer to give the Hermes the improved targeting quirk but that doesn't satisfy the fluff nor does it satisfy the cost of the system. As for the Gauss Rifles exploding and lasers not, I'd have to guess and say that the coils are a lot bigger to hurl the projectiles than they are to fire lasers.

MML and ATM are only superficially similar; MML have access to a dizzying array of ammo types and only need two types to be able to pull their weight in most situations, while ATM only have vanilla damage-inflicting options yet they're more awkward to plan because they're more range-specialised and give relatively little per ton.  Improved ATM have some ammo types that look pretty fun to me, but I think it feels like the improvement is too much. 

Yes, they're not exactly the same but AMTs replace at least four different weapons depending on their ammo. An ATM-3 firing standard rounds is about equal to a MRM-10. An ATM firing HE rounds equals and SRM-6. and an ATM-3 is about equal to a LRM-5 with greater range. And it fires 3 missiles like the MML-3. The iATM adds Streak and more ammo choices. I can't see the Clans developing the MML when the ATM does all the same an more. What I can see the Clans doing is developing more ammo types for the ATM so all the SRM and LRM ammo types are available to it.

ER Pulse and X-Pulse are fluffed as being different, so there's room for both in the same tech base; the ER Pulse is a new laser type developed from both ER and Pulse laser technologies, while X-Pulse is a variation mostly amounting to pushing existing Pulse weapons harder.  The rules are different, too: ER Pulse loses half of the Pulse bonus (but retains all the limitations) while X-Pulse gets full performance but pays for it with more heat. 

They accomplish the same thing by different means. The IS sacrificed heat for range while the Clans sacrificed accuracy.

HAG and HGR are so very dramatically different that rather than explicate it here, I just advise you to look up whichever one you're totally unfamiliar with and see.  Ironically, in the fiction HAG are inspired by HGR.  Go figure. 

I know they're different. I just can't see the Clans developing a version of an IS weapon to do the same thing.

I do like the Blazer's fluff, but I have pet peeves with the rules.  Since the damage is 12, I'd rather just have it do 8 damage times cluster 2; IOW, be an Ultra version of the LL, since the average damage would be very close to the same that way.  It would better fit the fluff and have the thing be not COMPLETELY outclassed by the Bombast.  That also fits much better with Shield's QML. :D 

I don't mind both barrels not firing together. Although I'd be nice. I'm more bothered by the heat. I think 16 heat for it is excessive. A 100% increase in heat for only a 50% increase in damage? And it weighs nearly as much as 2 L Lasers. Keeping the heat the same as the damage (12) would be more than enough to keep it from mainstream use in an age of single heat sinks. As it is two L Lasers mounted together and fire linked would be more effective. The only reason to use a Blazer instead of twin large lasers is that 1 ton weight difference. Which, most of the time, is nullified by needing more heat sinks. 

If you lurk around Solaris7, you might be interested in the fanon Rotary Laser System or whatever it was called, by the late Lonely Coyote.

It might be interesting but I don't know where it is. I do know of a gattling laser cannon though from a magazine.

Whoops, I was spreading out over multiple subtopics, so I probably could have made that clearer.  Hoo, yeah, Heavy Rotary would be bulky, but I kinda like for some weapons to be hard to cram onto a 'mech, like the HGR.  It's probably half-baked because I don't even know how to get into the proper mindset to want RAC for my own use; I really only like the idea because Rotaries are adored by some people, and they only get a couple of AC models to play with. (Kinda tangential, maybe HAG should have been more like RAC rules-wise, to differentiate a bit more from LRMs?) As for the Light LB-5X, I said that upon considering what the stats would look like, it looks overpowered to me.  I understand that not every one agrees with me, but I'd happily just feed an LB 5-X with cluster rounds and never buy slugs unless it's the only ammo available, so that's why I said in that post that a 5-ton version with range reduced to match the 8-ton AC/5 looks overpowered to me.

I don't mind some weapons being bulky. They should be. And I suppose there aren't larger sized Rotaries because they'd be too big. Two barrels takes up a lot of space on a Demolisher. Imagine six!  :o  A 5 ton LB-X does seem over powered.

I like your idea of a shotgun-style cluster weapon, a TN bonus at long range but fewer hits can be an interesting mechanic and I'd be able to point to it to illustrate that the LB-X is not a literal 'mech-scale shotgun.  It could use either HAG-style cluster roll mods, or simply use different columns at different ranges for more Snubbie-like aesthetics.

Well, when the LB-X was first presented it was made out to be a shotgun style weapon firing slugs or cluster rounds. Now it's an autocannon firing slugs or cluster rounds. Even the rounds have changed from cluster to proximity fused. Which are fluffed to be used by the Partisan's SAC/5s. The differences aren't so much in ability now as in quality.  As for the shot gun I was thinking more like firing slugs for long range and cluster for short. I was also thinking that it could hit more targets with less damage the further the cluster shot when. It'd make for a great trench clearer or street cleaner.


There was a type of cannon that used multiple rounds in multiple barrels that was talked about in another thread but I can't remember the name of it. It'd be a pain to reload but it could be devastating I'd think.

Yes, that's correct.  "Okay."  This thread's very topic is about what we [would] like to see.Defib!

I said, "Okay" because I didn't understand most of it but didn't want to get further into it.

1) I agree with the sentiment voiced by many that BT is really flooding weird about which weapons inflict one big hit and which pepper the target with cluster hits, including Pulse weapons.  I think the rules for LB-X weapons much better fit the fluff for Pulse weapons, at least what of that fluff I've read, than the rules for Pulse weapons do. 

It can be weird at times. I try not to let it bug me.

2) I also agree with the sentiment voiced by not-so-many that a Pulse PPC could be nice, and think a plausible in-fiction incentive for its development exists in one of the great houses seeming to be very interested in both PPC and Pulse Lasers.  Since lasers and PPC are different weapons with different operating principles in the fiction, it's easy to say that's somehow why no Pulse PPC exists, but the only reason to do that is a real-life desire to either make an excuse for there being no Pulse PPC and/or prevent that from changing.  I have no such real-life motive. 
3) The fiction could instead be used as an excuse for many other things, one of which is that a Pulse PPC could behave differently than a Pulse Laser.  Have I found you? 

Yes. :)    I suppose Pulse PPCs would be technically possible but would the result be more like a laser, as in a pulse version of the Cyclops Eye Laser, or like a rapid firing Parti-Kill PPC, or something entirely different? It'd need something to make it distinct as a weapon. If its no different than a laser just call it a laser give it the easy to repair quirk and fluff the rest. If it's like a rapid firing Parti-kill, and I don't know if they can, would it be like an energy autocannon? Or is it something else? Maybe the Pulsing is just a optional special feature of some PPCs that are built differently from others, like the Parti-kill. In my headcanon it can't use the PPC capacitor or fire at extreme or LOS ranges. But I'm not leaning towards it rapid firing and engaging multiple targets like an AC. Or allowing it to control the size of the "pulse/round" so it can crit seek like missiles. But that might be too much. But maybe it would lead to a Rotary version of the Parti-kill or just other sizes, Light and heavy?

Re: the proposed stats in my last post, I'm not satisfied with where the ER version is at, so I might hash out more stats next weekend; if it spits a mess of little beams to long range, it should suffer from loss of effectiveness there, and I kinda prefer letting Gauss weaponry be the queen of long-range direct-fire tasks anyway.  ATM I'm leaning toward scrapping the ER version and going for a shorter-ranged version instead; maybe short-range with full Pulse bonus and mid-range with LB-X bonus, and one of the two emphasising heat instead of damage.

Sounds interesting.

[FedComGirl]

Oh, I know there is PLENTY out in the BT universe that can have the scenarios that I brushed over...  It is just that if you listen to some of the fans of the game and writers talk...  we have small scale fights.   And I mean small scale.   Heck, I broke out my Atlas of the 4th Succession War: Vol 1 because I was cleaning and found it in a box.   And then I was depressed to see that the bulk of the fights in that book were company and battalion engagements with a few regiments at best.   At most, there were only a few fights to take a world and the worst fighting was Tikonov.   This was still not an exceptionally large battle on the great scheme of things.

Yes.  I am never going to run the full OoB of Army Group Center or South at the battle of Kursk.   I know this.  Much like I know that I will never see a fight where I will throw the full OoB of the ComGuard at Tukayyid or the DCMS at Luthien...  but when you have clashes on this scale, on this level, you can have so much thrown about...  you can run a scenario where forces of this far greater cataclysmic battle hammer it out, to what ever end, and still have the greater narrative twist it to how the story was supposed to end.

Oh, your star of mediums surviving against impossible odds and did better than they were supposed to historically?   Well... something terrible still happens elsewhere on the front and the narrative can still dictate the collapse or victory in the greater battle.   Sadly... when you have small scale conflicts that look more like a Vietnam era skirmish instead of an actual conflict between armies...  you really don't have that chance to have a scenario that is just a small part of that bigger conflict.

I think it depends on how the GM does things. You could certainly be a part of a big fight against the DCMS at Luthien or you could be sent off on a smaller mission and win that but still be forced to retreat because the rest of your clan is loosing. Yes, the small scale skirmishes do feel like Vietnam they do make up a much larger conflict. They could be on worlds like Trell I outside the main offensive while the big D-Day Landings take place on Tikonov.


 

That is why I have a problem with the clan system of bidding things down and the adherence to small armies, small skirmishes, and the 'one city' worlds... where all you got to do is put your flag on the capital and the populace begins to start bowing down to the new rulers like completely and totally spineless worms.

I think they'll always be more small skirmishes than big battles. And while I can see the value in trying to do the most with least nothing says I have to bid a single star to take or defend a planet or even just a city. The trial could be as big as I want it to be. Citizens being spinless worms kind of depends. In the Clans it's mostly a given. You could have partisans but they'll be dealt with harshly. In the IS it's more expected, at least on worlds further inside the boarders. On boarder worlds its more like, "Who's currency am I using now?". But there could still be partisans if you want them. 

I'll have to agree there... I hate having to convert the value of an object from one house to the next...  I can do it and have had to thanks to having accountants as opponents for awhile.   I think it is more the problem with the way the industrial capacities of worlds are mishandled that really grinds my gears.

I can understand that. I think for the most part industrial capacities are okay. War damage is going to slow production. And there isn't going to be a mech factory on every world. There might be vehicle factories but the quality can very and I'm not sure every planet would have one either. Does every country in the world have a car factory now or do some import?

I can think of a few WWII games that have mechs and they are actually pretty good.   I know GearKrieg is not exactly supported much but it was a blast to play.   I think the problem with BT is that there is no end.  There never will be an end.   If a faction looks like it might win, it will suddenly slip on a banana peel and fall down the stairs or choke on the proverbial stupid pill.    We deal with time lengths that should see incredible shifts of at least industrial potential... if not technological.  40 years is a LONG time.   That is the end of WWII through the Cold War...   where we saw countries that were reduced to nothing but ash and debris become industrial and economic power houses...  and that is just on a single world.   Yet...  the narrative has to make everyone lethargic at best.   It makes little sense.

I agree and disagree. WWII was really a continuation of WWI. Basically your succession wars. Then there was the Cold War with lots of conflicts where one major power was fighting a smaller on who had help from the other major power. And that in a way was a continuation of WWII. And there has been a lot of technological improvement. Mostly in electronics. But that doesn't make things better though. It might mean a car can go longer between visits to the mechanic but when you do finally go it costs a whole lot more. I also don't have a problem with it taking time to start innovating when you have hundreds of planets than need rebuilding. Especially not when a fraction is going around killing those innovators. But I do agree having Fractions slip on a banana peel is annoying.

I applaud TPTB when they kill a faction.   They bring an end to something.    But till there is actually a real end to the story and narrative, it is hard to really feel engaged in the greater story.    It is why I loved the Star League books or Operation Klondike and the early clan books.   We know the details, we know how it ends.   We always have known.   Now here is the information we need.

I do too. The thing is they haven't ended. Operation Klondike is over but then there was the rebuilding and various continuing feuds as a result of Klondike, and then annihilating the Wolverines. Time still continues.

Hell, the fall of the Star League actually was about the only time we really had the conflicts that were on the scale of conflicts of old.   Where armies are dropping onto worlds.   In an invasion of that scale, you can run an infinite variety of scenarios and still have feel like it is part of the greater war, the greater invasion.    Because you know the fighting is going to be brutal and lasting weeks or months at the very least.

None of the company on company skirmish garbage to see who gets to own the pile of garbage heaped in the corner that might still have a working capacitor in it and who will get the tithe of grill cheese sandwiches that constitutes the planet's economic output this year.

That still happened later on. Granted the armies weren't as big but they aren't now either. And there could still be company on company skirmishes going on with an infinite variety of scenarios. I think it really depends on the GM. Your company can be split off the main force for whatever reason and then after a long hard fought campaign have to do something else.

Yeah... I would like to see that.   I would love to see variants of existing units instead of infinite new units.   I want to see an evolution of the chassis from introduction through fielding through adaptation to conflicts of it's age to refits as new equipment comes along to make it adapted to the new eras and fights while seeing the engineers straining to push the chassis to it's limits to make more.   Only if it is critically different should it be a new vehicle.   Sadly... there is far too much 'rule of cool' or silly specialized units that seem to come out of nowhere and have no visible ancestry to earlier units.

I think some units have that, we just might not have seen them all yet. Other units don't really change much. And while some units do have a long history, there's always going to be other new ones being introduced. Sometimes their production is limited and sometimes productions keeps going. Others nearly cease production but at converted into other things. How many times has this chassis or that chassis been used to make a new mech?

At least with Locust and Locust IIC, you can see some signs of it's evolution from one to the other.   Sadly not really the case.   There really isn't even a national identity look to units.   Okay... some Combine units look samurai and that is a give away... but if you didn't have the tech fluff that told you 'This is Lyran.   This is Liao.'  You wouldn't know.    But that is an ascetic thing.   I can't tell who built something or what the design origins of something by just a glance.

You could say the same about things now though. Yes sometimes there's ascetic differences but there's also units that are widely available. Sherman tanks are American but they were used by many countries, some of whom came up with their own variants. But they still look like Shermans. Unless you knew though you'd either think they were all American or were exclusive to that country. Or the French FT-17? It's been all over with individual countries making their own versions like the American M1917.  The early cover those kinds of units. The ones that have multiple manufactures in multiple countries. There's some exceptions like the Panther and Jenner but for the most part they're wide spread. I'm sure there's more nationalistic units that were available but we just haven't seen them. They could be in the TROs that were produced before TRO:3025 that we haven't seen.

And you should be able to do that.   That has always been a bit of a weak point.   I am okay with having a Churchill in with my T-34s and KVs or a B-1 in with my Pz-IIIs... but I can at least tell who built them at a glance.   I can tell a French LeClerc from a Korean K-1.    When you have a hodge podge of artwork just thrown together and then randomly assigned which house they belong to...  well... then the houses and factions stop really ultimately mattering.

Especially when you at best get a 'House specific' variant for common mechs for each era... without really getting the feel of the evolution that came to that point.

I agree you should be able to mix and match but because one can tell who made a tank doesn't mean all can. I can't easily tell the difference between a Type 90 and an M1 and I don't know what a K-1 is. I also didn't know how wide spread the M1 was until now. I don't think units from different houses with similar appearances should be a problem.  I also don't have a problem with house specific variants. The British had the Firefly and the Israeli's the Super Sherman. It happens now I don't see why it can't happen in Battletech.

Sure, I know we can't always care that the changing of the running gear of Davion Vedettes Mk XIII in 3045 to a simpler configuration made maintenance 10% easier for long road marches and this lead to the Mk XIII-B that allowed the suspension to be improved enough in 3051 to allow for the better handling of the recoil of the Ultra AC-5 that was replacing the older model AC-5s in service.   That is just too much technical information, I understand that...  but I would rather have that then some new 50 ton tank that is only marginally better but gets to have special new artwork, new name, and a new miniature.

I'm not sure that we can't have both or that both aren't available. There's always going to be some who want to upgrade and other who want the latest thing. TPTB give us the new tanks and rules to upgrade the old ones. I think that's a good thing.

[HazMeat]

I'm sorry but I'm not understanding. To me transitional weapons sounds like experimental or low production versions that came between the standard weapons and the newer weapons. I'm not following your Streak analogy. Transition the Streak SRM-6 into what? May offer an analogy?

Okay, if you absolutely must insist that that name cannot refer to what I gave it to, let's call them "Refit-Oriented Product Line Debut Model" weapons instead of "Transitional."  My analogy is, imagine an alternate universe where the Streak-4 is the first Streak launcher rather than the Streak-2, by in-fiction design, for the in-fiction purpose of having the first mature production model be installable as a replacement for existing SRM-6 launchers.  In this alternate universe, the Streak-4 would be an example of a transitional ROPLDM weapon: an ideal first implementation of Streak technology, to attenuate the logistical adjustments necessary to support later Streak models.  The SRM-4 is not "somewhere between" standard SRM and Streak tech, nor inferior to the larger and smaller Streak models that follow, nor any of the other things you seem eager to assume that what I'm talking about must be despite my not only giving no suggestion in that direction, but repeatedly saying are not the idea.   

Yes, I am. Everything for rules are right there in the fluff. It only needs to generate 1 heat. Mechs do that walking. There's no reason, except TPTB don't want to, not to have "streak" lasers. They'd prefer to give the Hermes the improved targeting quirk but that doesn't satisfy the fluff nor does it satisfy the cost of the system. As for the Gauss Rifles exploding and lasers not, I'd have to guess and say that the coils are a lot bigger to hurl the projectiles than they are to fire lasers.

The fluff is ambiguous about how much heat is produced, so it could be anywhere from full heat to something too small to track, but at least to me it looks clearly like the intent of that fluff is to attach a mental picture to the 'mech and give it more character than just a collection of stats.  If the writer(s) at FASA way back when did not give rules for Streak lasers, then maybe, and I know this might sound really farfetched, but maybe their intent was not for the Hermes to have a Streak ML.  No one's forcing you to choose your interpretation which clashes with the rules rather than one that agrees with them, so any consequences of that choice are your responsibility first.  No one is forcing you to decide that this interpretation means you must complain about the rules not having stats for this very uncommon, perhaps unique laser system, either.   So, do you think Streak Lasers, or something to that functional effect by any other name, would be a good addition to your game?  This thread is for fanon, it's for adding things you'd like, so complaining here of all places about the lack of Streak lasers is a real head-scratcher for me.  If you think it's a good idea, then draw up some stats, play with them, share them, spread them on toast and have a snack, whatever.  Just write it. 

I don't know about "bigger coils," but a laser's output beam energy can be somewhere from a thousandth of input energy to three tenths, and more impressive outputs unfortunately generally tend toward the lower end of that efficiency range.  That's in the same ballpark as the coupling efficiency that today's coilgun designs boast, BUT those seem to be very immature designs, other magnetic induction motors can impart kinetic energy to their workloads with upwards of 90% efficiency, and we haven't to my knowledge experimented much with coilguns designed for projectiles more sophisticated than lumps of ferromagnetic material.  I rather expect those ball rounds to evolve into motor armatures with their own magnets if the technology goes anywhere, which IMO fits with how BT has GR ammo costing so much.  Physics works differently in BT, and there's a lot left open to interpretation, but at least where we choose to talk about "realistic," the default values for all variables are what the best of our knowledge holds them to be IRL. 

Yes, they're not exactly the same but AMTs replace at least four different weapons depending on their ammo. An ATM-3 firing standard rounds is about equal to a MRM-10. An ATM firing HE rounds equals and SRM-6. and an ATM-3 is about equal to a LRM-5 with greater range. And it fires 3 missiles like the MML-3. The iATM adds Streak and more ammo choices. I can't see the Clans developing the MML when the ATM does all the same an more. What I can see the Clans doing is developing more ammo types for the ATM so all the SRM and LRM ammo types are available to it.

I don't have much personal interest in this, but I've wrapped my head around iATM rules enough that I'd feel dirty using them already, so I don't have much to say WRT adding new stuff.  OTOH, classic ATM are not nearly as appealing an alternative to other Clan weapons as MML are to other I.S. weapons.  They're not crappy weapons, but ATM are kinda bland except for the need to dedicate more tonnage to ammo because it offers little per ton and you need to have a safety margin against coming up short for each of 3 types instead of 1 or 2 types.  To me, MML are the very opposite of ATM as far as missiles go; you can have lots of interesting and useful ammo types rather than just plain damage, they all give a competitive amount per ton, you only need two types to be effective across all ranges the weapon works at, and tube counts are high rather than low, so SRMs are great critseekers.  All of that could be offered by a clan version of MML, which IMO would be fine to implement as second-generation ammo types for standard ATM, so...

Second-generation ATM munitions: Smaller, lighter ATM munitions trade some firepower for more battlefield longevity.  (90 missiles instead of 60)

ATM Cluster: Each missile splits into two smaller submunitions.  Roll on the cluster column for twice the tube count, and each hit is 1 point of damage.  Range is [0] 4-8-12.

ATM DP: The Dual-Purpose missile uses a mixture of explosive and incendiary payload agents to provide maximal tactical flexibility.  Each missile which hits deals 1 point of damage and adds 1 point of heat.  Range is [0] 4-8-12.

ATM LR: Existing ER munitions are already pushing the lower limits of payload capacity, so propellant and guidance was sacrificed instead.  Most long-range performance was maintained, in part by using more modest guidance hardware and a more efficient ballistic path, though this makes it more difficult to hit targets closer than the missiles are optimised for.  Range is [6] 8-16-24.

ATM FASCAM: Based on LR ammo, this type mimics the function of LRM FASCAM though is somewhat less efficient.  Minefield rating is 5/3 of the tube count.  (ATM-3 is as powerful as LRM-5, etc.) Range is [6] 8-16-24.

Since I just pulled those out of my... uh, ear, they're almost certainly gonna need adjustment for balance if you want to try those, but it illustrates the idea. 

I don't mind both barrels not firing together. Although I'd be nice. I'm more bothered by the heat. I think 16 heat for it is excessive. A 100% increase in heat for only a 50% increase in damage? And it weighs nearly as much as 2 L Lasers. Keeping the heat the same as the damage (12) would be more than enough to keep it from mainstream use in an age of single heat sinks. As it is two L Lasers mounted together and fire linked would be more effective. The only reason to use a Blazer instead of twin large lasers is that 1 ton weight difference. Which, most of the time, is nullified by needing more heat sinks. 

It might be interesting but I don't know where it is. I do know of a gattling laser cannon though from a magazine.
 
I don't mind some weapons being bulky. They should be. And I suppose there aren't larger sized Rotaries because they'd be too big. Two barrels takes up a lot of space on a Demolisher. Imagine six!  :o  A 5 ton LB-X does seem over powered.

There was a type of cannon that used multiple rounds in multiple barrels that was talked about in another thread but I can't remember the name of it. It'd be a pain to reload but it could be devastating I'd think.

That description fits a pepperbox, which is like a revolver except that each chamber is extended into a barrel, instead of using a forcing cone, cylinder gap, sensitive timing whose failure can result in the gun shooting itself, etc.  I suspect that you might be talking about another weapon concept also fitting your description, known as superposed load, stacked load, stacked charge, etc. and more recently "Metal Storm," the name of a company that revived the concept for more modern weapons.  Stacked load is where multiple rounds are loaded into a single tube which functions as both barrel and chamber, and fired off one by one.  The front of the projectile is designed to seal under pressure when the round ahead of it fires, so that they don't all do a Roman Candle thing.  Neither is necessarily a pain to reload; there are revolver-style autocannon, which I presume load the same way as gatling-type autocannon, so a pepperbox should be no big deal, and stacked charge weapons can either have the projectiles bound together so that a group of them loads like a single munition, or kept in a stripper clip, or just use the whole barrel/chamber assembly as a swappable magazine- probably mostly for heavy weapons, so the rounds can be guided.  There are likely lots of other gun concepts that could fit your description, though.  If you're more specific about what you mean... 

Yes. :)    I suppose Pulse PPCs would be technically possible but would the result be more like a laser, as in a pulse version of the Cyclops Eye Laser, or like a rapid firing Parti-Kill PPC, or something entirely different? It'd need something to make it distinct as a weapon. If its no different than a laser just call it a laser give it the easy to repair quirk and fluff the rest. If it's like a rapid firing Parti-kill, and I don't know if they can, would it be like an energy autocannon? Or is it something else? Maybe the Pulsing is just a optional special feature of some PPCs that are built differently from others, like the Parti-kill. In my headcanon it can't use the PPC capacitor or fire at extreme or LOS ranges. But I'm not leaning towards it rapid firing and engaging multiple targets like an AC. Or allowing it to control the size of the "pulse/round" so it can crit seek like missiles. But that might be too much. But maybe it would lead to a Rotary version of the Parti-kill or just other sizes, Light and heavy?

That's part of why I'm revolving around a hybrid of Plasma and Cluster functionality. (mostly Rule of Cool for me; like a fiery dragon's sneeze, a really messy one with lots of napalm-like icky stuff) We have a pretty good idea of what lasers and kinetic beams would do to things if they could be weaponised, we just don't know how to build weaponisable machines to make those beams, or even if it's plausible.  "Energy autocannon," OTOH, doesn't suggest any particular real life phenomena I'm aware of, so I don't know how to even begin guessing "what it's like," so the answer is, "It's whatever you like."  To me, the Parti-Kill sounds vaguely similar to this mess, which has a velocity of 3% the speed of light IIRC.  I think a more realistic velocity would be even higher, for reasons I've described in other threads and don't really feel up for going over yet again, but even at MARAUDER project velocities, for all practical purposes it's a beam weapon. 

Personally, I like to leave the attack generation mechanism fuzzy to avoid "realism" issues, but for BT I bend that standard a bit in order to specify that different models use different methods; electrostatic continuous linac style, maybe a microfabbed array of surface emission devices, or a totally different magnetic pulsed linac like higher-energy research beams, maybe something like the wakefield accelerators that have become a hot topic, and most likely some clever schemes we don't even imagine today. 

[FedComGirl]

Okay, if you absolutely must insist that that name cannot refer to what I gave it to, let's call them "Refit-Oriented Product Line Debut Model" weapons instead of "Transitional."  My analogy is, imagine an alternate universe where the Streak-4 is the first Streak launcher rather than the Streak-2, by in-fiction design, for the in-fiction purpose of having the first mature production model be installable as a replacement for existing SRM-6 launchers.  In this alternate universe, the Streak-4 would be an example of a transitional ROPLDM weapon: an ideal first implementation of Streak technology, to attenuate the logistical adjustments necessary to support later Streak models.  The SRM-4 is not "somewhere between" standard SRM and Streak tech, nor inferior to the larger and smaller Streak models that follow, nor any of the other things you seem eager to assume that what I'm talking about must be despite my not only giving no suggestion in that direction, but repeatedly saying are not the idea. 

Please forgive me but how is that "Transitional"? ???  All you're doing is simply upgrading an older launcher for a newer one.  Are you preferring the Streak-4 came out first? It's your AU. Go for it. If I go by your definition of first implementation of technology the AC/5 is a Transitional Weapon. Is that right? I hope so because I'm lost.

  The fluff is ambiguous about how much heat is produced, so it could be anywhere from full heat to something too small to track, but at least to me it looks clearly like the intent of that fluff is to attach a mental picture to the 'mech and give it more character than just a collection of stats.  If the writer(s) at FASA way back when did not give rules for Streak lasers, then maybe, and I know this might sound really farfetched, but maybe their intent was not for the Hermes to have a Streak ML.  No one's forcing you to choose your interpretation which clashes with the rules rather than one that agrees with them, so any consequences of that choice are your responsibility first.  No one is forcing you to decide that this interpretation means you must complain about the rules not having stats for this very uncommon, perhaps unique laser system, either.   So, do you think Streak Lasers, or something to that functional effect by any other name, would be a good addition to your game?  This thread is for fanon, it's for adding things you'd like, so complaining here of all places about the lack of Streak lasers is a real head-scratcher for me.  If you think it's a good idea, then draw up some stats, play with them, share them, spread them on toast and have a snack, whatever.  Just write it. 

I picked one because the heat in the fluff is high enough to be mentioned but not high enough to be a burden. And 1 is the lowest amount of heat a laser can generate. As for FASA not having rules for it there's lots of things like the Null Signature System and Communication's Equipment that didn't start out with rules either. We had to house rule those things for a good decade or more. These lasers are an example of, "things that haven't been given rules yet and may not get them". Maybe we'll get them in IO maybe they'll be house ruled forever. I don't know. As for my complaint, this thread is about obvious weapon systems. Can you get more obvious than having everything you need for a new weapon right there in the fluff?

And for another reason TPTB probably won't give us streak lasers, Retcon. They don't want to retcon the Hermes-1S anymore than they do the Chippewa that's why they quirked the laser insulators instead of giving them actual equipment.

I don't know about "bigger coils," but a laser's output beam energy can be somewhere from a thousandth of input energy to three tenths, and more impressive outputs unfortunately generally tend toward the lower end of that efficiency range.  That's in the same ballpark as the coupling efficiency that today's coilgun designs boast, BUT those seem to be very immature designs, other magnetic induction motors can impart kinetic energy to their workloads with upwards of 90% efficiency, and we haven't to my knowledge experimented much with coilguns designed for projectiles more sophisticated than lumps of ferromagnetic material.  I rather expect those ball rounds to evolve into motor armatures with their own magnets if the technology goes anywhere, which IMO fits with how BT has GR ammo costing so much.  Physics works differently in BT, and there's a lot left open to interpretation, but at least where we choose to talk about "realistic," the default values for all variables are what the best of our knowledge holds them to be IRL. 

Well, physics does work differently in Battletech and currant coilguns are less mature than gauss rifles. The rest I'll just have to say "Okay" on.

I don't have much personal interest in this, but I've wrapped my head around iATM rules enough that I'd feel dirty using them already, so I don't have much to say WRT adding new stuff.  OTOH, classic ATM are not nearly as appealing an alternative to other Clan weapons as MML are to other I.S. weapons.  They're not crappy weapons, but ATM are kinda bland except for the need to dedicate more tonnage to ammo because it offers little per ton and you need to have a safety margin against coming up short for each of 3 types instead of 1 or 2 types.  To me, MML are the very opposite of ATM as far as missiles go; you can have lots of interesting and useful ammo types rather than just plain damage, they all give a competitive amount per ton, you only need two types to be effective across all ranges the weapon works at, and tube counts are high rather than low, so SRMs are great critseekers.  All of that could be offered by a clan version of MML, which IMO would be fine to implement as second-generation ammo types for standard ATM, so...

I never said MMLs were crappy. Just that I can't see the Clans using them. They are technologically a step sideways than forwards. Yes you'd need an extra ton of ammo to use all three range bands for the ATM but the ATM gives you a SRM, MRM, and LRM launcher in one. And the SRMs are more powerful and the LRMs have greater range. I can't see the Clans developing their own MML when all they need to do is to mount an SRM and LRM with a ton of ammo each and they'd fire more missiles. It'd make more sense for themo to develop more ammo types than take a step backwards to develop a system that doesn't improve things over their currant launchers.

Second-generation ATM munitions: Smaller, lighter ATM munitions trade some firepower for more battlefield longevity.  (90 missiles instead of 60)

ATM Cluster: Each missile splits into two smaller submunitions.  Roll on the cluster column for twice the tube count, and each hit is 1 point of damage.  Range is [0] 4-8-12.

The first one doesn't make much sense. You're sacrificing big boom so you can little boom your enemy more? How's that good? ???

The second one makes sense. They're crit seekers.

ATM DP: The Dual-Purpose missile uses a mixture of explosive and incendiary payload agents to provide maximal tactical flexibility.  Each missile which hits deals 1 point of damage and adds 1 point of heat.  Range is [0] 4-8-12.

Sounds alright.

ATM LR: Existing ER munitions are already pushing the lower limits of payload capacity, so propellant and guidance was sacrificed instead.  Most long-range performance was maintained, in part by using more modest guidance hardware and a more efficient ballistic path, though this makes it more difficult to hit targets closer than the missiles are optimised for.  Range is [6] 8-16-24.

Um... what?   Currant ATM ER Ammo can have a range of 27 hexes.

ATM FASCAM: Based on LR ammo, this type mimics the function of LRM FASCAM though is somewhat less efficient.  Minefield rating is 5/3 of the tube count.  (ATM-3 is as powerful as LRM-5, etc.) Range is [6] 8-16-24.[/color][/font]

Getting there although I would think  they'd be more efficient than LRMs.

Since I just pulled those out of my... uh, ear, they're almost certainly gonna need adjustment for balance if you want to try those, but it illustrates the idea. 

Yes.

That description fits a pepperbox, which is like a revolver except that each chamber is extended into a barrel, instead of using a forcing cone, cylinder gap, sensitive timing whose failure can result in the gun shooting itself, etc.  I suspect that you might be talking about another weapon concept also fitting your description, known as superposed load, stacked load, stacked charge, etc. and more recently "Metal Storm," the name of a company that revived the concept for more modern weapons.  Stacked load is where multiple rounds are loaded into a single tube which functions as both barrel and chamber, and fired off one by one.  The front of the projectile is designed to seal under pressure when the round ahead of it fires, so that they don't all do a Roman Candle thing.  Neither is necessarily a pain to reload; there are revolver-style autocannon, which I presume load the same way as gatling-type autocannon, so a pepperbox should be no big deal, and stacked charge weapons can either have the projectiles bound together so that a group of them loads like a single munition, or kept in a stripper clip, or just use the whole barrel/chamber assembly as a swappable magazine- probably mostly for heavy weapons, so the rounds can be guided.  There are likely lots of other gun concepts that could fit your description, though.  If you're more specific about what you mean... 

Metal Storm was the one I was thinking of. Thanks. :) I would think it'd take a while to load all the rounds into all the tubes. A pepperbox shouldnt' be too hard to load. You just put a round in to the empty barrel when it rotates into position. A Volley Gun though is hard to reload but I could see it being used too. It'd be like a Rifle Cannon the way the Metal Storm would be an Autocannon. The Pepperbox, and Gattling gun seem like variant of autocannons to me. I think it'd be nice if there were some advantages to multi-barrled autocannons that aren't quite Rotaries.

That's part of why I'm revolving around a hybrid of Plasma and Cluster functionality. (mostly Rule of Cool for me; like a fiery dragon's sneeze, a really messy one with lots of napalm-like icky stuff) We have a pretty good idea of what lasers and kinetic beams would do to things if they could be weaponised, we just don't know how to build weaponisable machines to make those beams, or even if it's plausible.  "Energy autocannon," OTOH, doesn't suggest any particular real life phenomena I'm aware of, so I don't know how to even begin guessing "what it's like," so the answer is, "It's whatever you like."  To me, the Parti-Kill sounds vaguely similar to this mess, which has a velocity of 3% the speed of light IIRC.  I think a more realistic velocity would be even higher, for reasons I've described in other threads and don't really feel up for going over yet again, but even at MARAUDER project velocities, for all practical purposes it's a beam weapon. 

Have you tried Pepperboxing Plasma Rifles? That would give you a plasma cluster wouldn't it?  I don't know about the Marauder but the Parti-Kill fires an energy shell. So it's an energy cannon. To me an energy autocannon version would be firing several smaller energy shells instead of one.

Personally, I like to leave the attack generation mechanism fuzzy to avoid "realism" issues, but for BT I bend that standard a bit in order to specify that different models use different methods; electrostatic continuous linac style, maybe a microfabbed array of surface emission devices, or a totally different magnetic pulsed linac like higher-energy research beams, maybe something like the wakefield accelerators that have become a hot topic, and most likely some clever schemes we don't even imagine today.

I like having the attack generation mechanism told because it makes the game more real. It doesn't have to match reality. It just has to sound good and work in the universe its in.

[HazMeat]

Please forgive me but how is that "Transitional"? ???  All you're doing is simply upgrading an older launcher for a newer one.  Are you preferring the Streak-4 came out first? It's your AU. Go for it.

It's not transitional any more, it's ROPLDM now, remember?  It's a weapon which is ideal for transitioning -dangit, ROPLDMing from not using Streak tech, to using Streak tech, because easy refits of existing units, perhaps even just replacing old weapons as they wear out or get totalled, is an easier starting point for adopting a new technology than heavy modification of those vehicles, or designing and building whole new ones.  I explicitly stated that I was describing an alternate universe specifically and only for the purpose of illustrating this concept which you seem to be having a bizarrely difficult time grasping.  What does my preference have to do with it?  If some one in-universe is new to Streak technology, the easiest way to start using it is likely to be by starting with the Streak-4 rack, because of the 3 sizes of Streak weapon, the -4 is the easiest to integrate into existing designs since it happens to fit anywhere the standard SRM-6 does.  Similarly, if some one is ROPLDMing from not having much experience with and logistical support for Gauss weaponry, then maybe the LGR is a logical first step for some one who has a bunch of old AC/10 in service.  Why is this hard to grasp?  At this point, I'm almost sure you're actively trying really hard to miss the point, so I might lose interest soon in answering your bizarre questions. 

If I go by your definition of first implementation of technology the AC/5 is a Transitional Weapon. Is that right? I hope so because I'm lost.

If the Heavy Rifle happened to be a commonplace weapon, then yes, the AC/5 is another example of a weapon whose stats works for this.  In this case the older tech is probably abandoned once AC are more common, which is different from what I had in mind earlier, but that difference is an independent thing. 

I picked one because the heat in the fluff is high enough to be mentioned but not high enough to be a burden. And 1 is the lowest amount of heat a laser can generate. As for FASA not having rules for it there's lots of things like the Null Signature System and Communication's Equipment that didn't start out with rules either. We had to house rule those things for a good decade or more. These lasers are an example of, "things that haven't been given rules yet and may not get them". Maybe we'll get them in IO maybe they'll be house ruled forever. I don't know. As for my complaint, this thread is about obvious weapon systems. Can you get more obvious than having everything you need for a new weapon right there in the fluff?

The lowest amount a canon laser weapon does generate is either 1 or 0, depending on whether you count things like TAG as laser weapons.  The lowest that any laser item I'm aware of generates is negative two, but there's no reason other than author's preference that either of those 3 numbers is the lowest amount a laser can generate.  I'll say it again: if you like the idea, quit repeating yourself about how the fiction can be interpreted as having it exist, and throw up some stats.  I've already acknowledged that the fiction allows your chosen interpretation, and neither I nor any one else here has shown sign of not understanding what you said.

And for another reason TPTB probably won't give us streak lasers, Retcon. They don't want to retcon the Hermes-1S anymore than they do the Chippewa that's why they quirked the laser insulators instead of giving them actual equipment.

There's a precedent for bypassing that obstacle, in the fiction for the Mercury's laser fitting being the inspiration for Omni tech. 

Well, physics does work differently in Battletech and currant coilguns are less mature than gauss rifles. The rest I'll just have to say "Okay" on.

I never said MMLs were crappy. Just that I can't see the Clans using them. They are technologically a step sideways than forwards. Yes you'd need an extra ton of ammo to use all three range bands for the ATM but the ATM gives you a SRM, MRM, and LRM launcher in one. And the SRMs are more powerful and the LRMs have greater range. I can't see the Clans developing their own MML when all they need to do is to mount an SRM and LRM with a ton of ammo each and they'd fire more missiles. It'd make more sense for themo to develop more ammo types than take a step backwards to develop a system that doesn't improve things over their currant launchers.

Yes, BT is blatantly unrealistic in many ways.  Many of them I like, but some of them I'm inclined to change when we're talking about custom rules and equipment, and a lot of things "feel wrong" because they're so jarringly at odds with both everyday intuitition and our best understanding of what's realistic, for no gain IMO in terms of "cool" or fun. 

If a "step sideways" opens up new possibilities, doesn't that make it also a step forward?  The interpretation of "clan MML" which I find most "obvious" looks pretty shiny, IMO.  Since clan SRM and LRM launchers are half the weight of I.S. launchers, and many tournament-level weapons have quarter-ton weights, I thought the "obvious" stats would have clan MML be half the weight of their I.S. counterparts.  Personally, I'd do something I'm afraid is a bit less obvious by keeping the weight of I.S. MML, doubling the tube count and heat burden, and probably making them a bit bulkier, but either way the result looks pretty worthwhile from an in-universe perspective, barring of course real-world decision that it doesn't work that way because the weapons would be too good. 

Your response to my proposed ATM ammo draft suggests that you misread it, in a way I apologise for not anticipating because it's easy for me to see.  The first item is an outline, explicating the idea behind and shared properties of the following items, which are the rest of the info for those ammo types. 

As I said earlier in the same post, I think ATM ammo is too heavy.  As such, the proposed ammo types have 90 rockets per ton of ammo rather than 60.  It's still not quite caught up with SRMs and LRMs in terms of payload and range, so I figured it's easy to swallow as maturation of the relatively new ATM system, which still has some way to go there.  It's also less impressive than the iATM, so there's that, too. 

The first two, ATM Cluster and ATM Dual-Purpose, have about SRM-level payload per missile, which is intermediate between HE and Standard.  They also reach as far as clan Streaks, and have the same number of missiles per ton as the Streak-6, so I figured it looks about right. 

The third, ATM LR, is intended to fall somewhere between LRM and ATM ER.  I guess I could have simply had it retain the full performance of ER ammo, but I kinda like how in BT new equipment offers new options in addition to the old rather than simply rendering the old obsolete, so I shaved a bit off from the range and added a minimum, fluffing this as the result of a less thrust-intensive flight path in order to lighten the missile. 

For the fourth ammo type, Thunder, now that I've slept on it I also think it shouldn't have to be less potent than LRM; they reach a bit farther, but pay for that with a minimum range and only 3/4 the missiles per ton, my ATM LR already has as much payload anyway, AND the whole point of my second-gen ammo types was to illustrate what it would take for me to consider ATM even close to equivalent to a clan version of MML.  Dang, it would have been much more on-topic to just say that second-gen ammo types mimic all available SRM and LRM ammo in capability, rather than cooking up more wacky stuff as I am wont to do. :-\

Metal Storm was the one I was thinking of. Thanks. :) I would think it'd take a while to load all the rounds into all the tubes. A pepperbox shouldnt' be too hard to load. You just put a round in to the empty barrel when it rotates into position. A Volley Gun though is hard to reload but I could see it being used too. It'd be like a Rifle Cannon the way the Metal Storm would be an Autocannon. The Pepperbox, and Gattling gun seem like variant of autocannons to me. I think it'd be nice if there were some advantages to multi-barrled autocannons that aren't quite Rotaries.

It does take a while to load existing stacked-charge designs, but Metal Storm intended to develop rounds that were stuck together so they could be loaded like a single munition or magazine, which is one of the schemes I described as examples of ways to make loading faster. 

Gatling gun doesn't just seem like a variant of autocannon, it literally is a form which a lot of autocannon do take IRL.  Revolver cannon is also a common real-world AC type, not merely a popular scifi concept or even a "maybe" near-future thing like superposed loads.  AFAIK, loading and ejecting like a machine gun is exactly the mechanical difference between a pepperbox and a gatling gun, so a pepperbox would probably have to be stacked-load in order to be an autocannon. (I say "probably" in case there's some other way.)  The same goes for revolver vs. revolver cannon.

Have you tried Pepperboxing Plasma Rifles? That would give you a plasma cluster wouldn't it?  I don't know about the Marauder but the Parti-Kill fires an energy shell. So it's an energy cannon. To me an energy autocannon version would be firing several smaller energy shells instead of one.

I have pondered a Rotary Plasma Rifle.  I didn't keep the stats I drew up, but it's mostly pretty straitforward: basically an RAC/5 with type changed to "DE," the heat per shot increased to 5, and a weaker version of the Plasma's bonus effects added. (With no canon Light PR, I can simplify things by imagining that they follow PPC rather than AC in terms of range bands for the Light version.)  The heat infliction on target is a sticking point, as I thought about a few different ways of determining how much it inflicts and didn't settle on something that seemed "right" enough for me to remember. 

What I meant earlier is, "energy cannon," "energy shell," etc. are not terms used to describe any real or theoretical things.  The phrases are comparable to "Lightsabre" and "Phaser," in the sense that what they're like is whatever the heck you want, because there's no way to apply the concept of "realistic" to an inherently meaningless bit of technobabble.  IF there's something in the fluff for the Parti-Kill model that you choose to interpret as being such that the PPC rules aren't appropriate, then go ahead and draw up rules for "energy cannon" and "energy shell," to fit whatever the heck behaviour you like them to have. 

By contrast, laser beams and kinetic beams and even MARAUDER projectiles are actual phenomena which we know to exist, as well as some other things about them, which means that there is such a thing as a "realistic" interpretation, even if our understanding is still not complete.  Speaking of completeness, when you write up fluff and/or stats, you might want to look up the velocity of a lightning bolt, the velocity of MARAUDER bolts, and the velocity of a kinetic beam, and see if you can find terms to express them that YOU can understand, as opposed to just numbers that are way outside our everyday experience.  For ground combat distance and time scales, they're all effectively the same as laser beams. 

I'm making a point of including at least one weapon idea every time I post here, so...  Sonic Cannon (also known by other names, such as Sonic Crushers, Sub Cannon, etc.) are underwater weapons, like Torpedoes.  SC are actually an adaptation of less-lethal crowd-control weapons, modified to function underwater.  A chemical charge powers a device which generates a powerful pressure wave which is shaped into a soliton-like form with minimal bloom, allowing projection of energy to great distances.  Due to the much higher density and viscosity of water compared to air, the weapon is nearly a thousand times as effective, making it comparable in purpose to Torpedoes rather than riot control devices. 

Sonic Cannon have a lot of performance stats in common with AC but are actually very different technologies, much like torpedoes versus missiles.  SC are available in 4 models mirroring the standard AC and, just in case you run into Undine armor, also in a more primitive model which mirrors the MG, called the Acoustic Disruptor.  That's right, it's an underwater AI weapon. :D

[FedComGirl]

It's not transitional any more, it's ROPLDM now, remember?  It's a weapon which is ideal for transitioning -dangit, ROPLDMing from not using Streak tech, to using Streak tech, because easy refits of existing units, perhaps even just replacing old weapons as they wear out or get totalled, is an easier starting point for adopting a new technology than heavy modification of those vehicles, or designing and building whole new ones.  I explicitly stated that I was describing an alternate universe specifically and only for the purpose of illustrating this concept which you seem to be having a bizarrely difficult time grasping.  What does my preference have to do with it?  If some one in-universe is new to Streak technology, the easiest way to start using it is likely to be by starting with the Streak-4 rack, because of the 3 sizes of Streak weapon, the -4 is the easiest to integrate into existing designs since it happens to fit anywhere the standard SRM-6 does.  Similarly, if some one is ROPLDMing from not having much experience with and logistical support for Gauss weaponry, then maybe the LGR is a logical first step for some one who has a bunch of old AC/10 in service.  Why is this hard to grasp?  At this point, I'm almost sure you're actively trying really hard to miss the point, so I might lose interest soon in answering your bizarre questions.

I'm trying very hard not to be upset.  >:( You've gone from seemingly obvious weapons technologies to "transitional" weapons and now you're talking about preferences in upgrades and which size of new technological weapon innovation should have been introduced first in an alternative universe. And then you insult me. Pardon me for not knowing where you're going or being very happy at the moment.

So a Streak SRM-4 will fit in a SRM-6 slot. A Streak SRM-2 will fit in a SRM-4 slot and gain you a half a ton. Which is a logical upgrade?    And yes the LGR is a nice replacement for an AC/10 if someone doesn't have the logistical support for it why are they getting it? Wouldn't the standard Gauss Rifle be the logical starting point since it's been around longer? Or are we still in your alternative universe where you can introduce whatever you want first?

If the Heavy Rifle happened to be a commonplace weapon, then yes, the AC/5 is another example of a weapon whose stats works for this.  In this case the older tech is probably abandoned once AC are more common, which is different from what I had in mind earlier, but that difference is an independent thing. 

When did a different weapon being abandoned come into this? I thought you wanted first introduced weapons? The AC/5 was the first autocannon introduced.

The lowest amount a canon laser weapon does generate is either 1 or 0, depending on whether you count things like TAG as laser weapons.  The lowest that any laser item I'm aware of generates is negative two, but there's no reason other than author's preference that either of those 3 numbers is the lowest amount a laser can generate.  I'll say it again: if you like the idea, quit repeating yourself about how the fiction can be interpreted as having it exist, and throw up some stats.  I've already acknowledged that the fiction allows your chosen interpretation, and neither I nor any one else here has shown sign of not understanding what you said.

TAG isn't a laser weapon as a laser pointer. And what Laser generates -2 heat? Are you referring to the Laser Heat Sinks? Those aren't a weapon. Unless you consider the light show distracting.

There's a precedent for bypassing that obstacle, in the fiction for the Mercury's laser fitting being the inspiration for Omni tech.

How is that a precedent for bypassing an obstacle? The Mercury has always been fluffed as modular and being the basis of OMNI Technology.

Yes, BT is blatantly unrealistic in many ways.  Many of them I like, but some of them I'm inclined to change when we're talking about custom rules and equipment, and a lot of things "feel wrong" because they're so jarringly at odds with both everyday intuitition and our best understanding of what's realistic, for no gain IMO in terms of "cool" or fun. 

I'd ask for an example but that'd be going further off topic so never mind.

If a "step sideways" opens up new possibilities, doesn't that make it also a step forward?  The interpretation of "clan MML" which I find most "obvious" looks pretty shiny, IMO.  Since clan SRM and LRM launchers are half the weight of I.S. launchers, and many tournament-level weapons have quarter-ton weights, I thought the "obvious" stats would have clan MML be half the weight of their I.S. counterparts.  Personally, I'd do something I'm afraid is a bit less obvious by keeping the weight of I.S. MML, doubling the tube count and heat burden, and probably making them a bit bulkier, but either way the result looks pretty worthwhile from an in-universe perspective, barring of course real-world decision that it doesn't work that way because the weapons would be too good. 

It can be. Or it could lead you to no where or even backwards. Why would the weight of Clan Launchers go down? Any weight lost is because of the reduction in tubes which is partially made up by firing more than one size missile and the doubling of the weapons bulk. How is that superior than the ATM? If they stay the same weight but with more tubes and double the heat and bulk (Which is the only way I could see the Clans using them.) how is that any different from using standard Clan launchers? At least using standard launchers doesn't mean your entire weapon is lost when it gets a critical hit. You'd still have the other launcher type to use.

Your response to my proposed ATM ammo draft suggests that you misread it, in a way I apologise for not anticipating because it's easy for me to see.  The first item is an outline, explicating the idea behind and shared properties of the following items, which are the rest of the info for those ammo types. 

As I said earlier in the same post, I think ATM ammo is too heavy.  As such, the proposed ammo types have 90 rockets per ton of ammo rather than 60.  It's still not quite caught up with SRMs and LRMs in terms of payload and range, so I figured it's easy to swallow as maturation of the relatively new ATM system, which still has some way to go there.  It's also less impressive than the iATM, so there's that, too. 

Ah. No worries on my end, about this, but I think you might have missed something. ATMs weigh more because they do more. The standard ATM has the range of MRM with twice the damage. HE ATMs have 50% more damage than SRMs and ER ATMs have a longer range than LRMs. The extra explosives and fuel translates into increased weight.

The first two, ATM Cluster and ATM Dual-Purpose, have about SRM-level payload per missile, which is intermediate between HE and Standard.  They also reach as far as clan Streaks, and have the same number of missiles per ton as the Streak-6, so I figured it looks about right. 

The third, ATM LR, is intended to fall somewhere between LRM and ATM ER.  I guess I could have simply had it retain the full performance of ER ammo, but I kinda like how in BT new equipment offers new options in addition to the old rather than simply rendering the old obsolete, so I shaved a bit off from the range and added a minimum, fluffing this as the result of a less thrust-intensive flight path in order to lighten the missile. 

For the fourth ammo type, Thunder, now that I've slept on it I also think it shouldn't have to be less potent than LRM; they reach a bit farther, but pay for that with a minimum range and only 3/4 the missiles per ton, my ATM LR already has as much payload anyway, AND the whole point of my second-gen ammo types was to illustrate what it would take for me to consider ATM even close to equivalent to a clan version of MML.  Dang, it would have been much more on-topic to just say that second-gen ammo types mimic all available SRM and LRM ammo in capability, rather than cooking up more wacky stuff as I am wont to do. :-\

I'm sorry but you're going backwards technologically. ATM ammos are superior to standard LRM, MRM, and SRMs. To make them equivalent to those is to diminish their capabilities. Yes, standard launchers get more rounds per ton but they do less than their equivalent ATM missile. I think there should be more ammo types for the ATM made available but they're still going to be better than standard missiles.

It does take a while to load existing stacked-charge designs, but Metal Storm intended to develop rounds that were stuck together so they could be loaded like a single munition or magazine, which is one of the schemes I described as examples of ways to make loading faster. 

Ah okay.

Gatling gun doesn't just seem like a variant of autocannon, it literally is a form which a lot of autocannon do take IRL.  Revolver cannon is also a common real-world AC type, not merely a popular scifi concept or even a "maybe" near-future thing like superposed loads.  AFAIK, loading and ejecting like a machine gun is exactly the mechanical difference between a pepperbox and a gatling gun, so a pepperbox would probably have to be stacked-load in order to be an autocannon. (I say "probably" in case there's some other way.)  The same goes for revolver vs. revolver cannon.

I meant in game terms. There aren't any rules to differentiate between them. It'd be nice if a multiple barreled standard AC could unjam itself. A Pepperbox AC could elect not to fire all of its rounds per turn reducing damage but saving ammo and so on. Nothing that would change things in tournament games. Just optional things to bring more differences and flavor to ACs.

I have pondered a Rotary Plasma Rifle.  I didn't keep the stats I drew up, but it's mostly pretty straitforward: basically an RAC/5 with type changed to "DE," the heat per shot increased to 5, and a weaker version of the Plasma's bonus effects added. (With no canon Light PR, I can simplify things by imagining that they follow PPC rather than AC in terms of range bands for the Light version.)  The heat infliction on target is a sticking point, as I thought about a few different ways of determining how much it inflicts and didn't settle on something that seemed "right" enough for me to remember. 

I would think the range would get shorter than longer. There's also the possibility of getting hit by some of the plasma that gets out from the rotating barrels. That's why I suggested pepperbox. Everything's contained in the barrel until you need to reload.

What I meant earlier is, "energy cannon," "energy shell," etc. are not terms used to describe any real or theoretical things.  The phrases are comparable to "Lightsabre" and "Phaser," in the sense that what they're like is whatever the heck you want, because there's no way to apply the concept of "realistic" to an inherently meaningless bit of technobabble.  IF there's something in the fluff for the Parti-Kill model that you choose to interpret as being such that the PPC rules aren't appropriate, then go ahead and draw up rules for "energy cannon" and "energy shell," to fit whatever the heck behaviour you like them to have. 

So? We know what those things are because we've seen them in use and have been told how they work. It doesn't matter that it's realistic or not.  They've been said to work this way so they do. Some versions of weapons do the same thing but actually work that way.

By contrast, laser beams and kinetic beams and even MARAUDER projectiles are actual phenomena which we know to exist, as well as some other things about them, which means that there is such a thing as a "realistic" interpretation, even if our understanding is still not complete.  Speaking of completeness, when you write up fluff and/or stats, you might want to look up the velocity of a lightning bolt, the velocity of MARAUDER bolts, and the velocity of a kinetic beam, and see if you can find terms to express them that YOU can understand, as opposed to just numbers that are way outside our everyday experience.  For ground combat distance and time scales, they're all effectively the same as laser beams. 

True but there are partial cannons now. They're just close ended and miles long. But we can get creative and make them smaller. I'm also not sure why I'd need to look up speeds or list them either. All I need is weight of weapon, how many crits it takes, its range, damage, heat, and any ammo it requires, and some creative fluff. Eventually, I'm going to have to write down my House Rules for these weapons. A lot of it's already in the fluff or existing rules but I'm still weighing balance issues. If I have time I'll try an work on them this weekend.

I'm making a point of including at least one weapon idea every time I post here, so...  Sonic Cannon (also known by other names, such as Sonic Crushers, Sub Cannon, etc.) are underwater weapons, like Torpedoes.  SC are actually an adaptation of less-lethal crowd-control weapons, modified to function underwater.  A chemical charge powers a device which generates a powerful pressure wave which is shaped into a soliton-like form with minimal bloom, allowing projection of energy to great distances.  Due to the much higher density and viscosity of water compared to air, the weapon is nearly a thousand times as effective, making it comparable in purpose to Torpedoes rather than riot control devices. 

Sonic Cannon have a lot of performance stats in common with AC but are actually very different technologies, much like torpedoes versus missiles.  SC are available in 4 models mirroring the standard AC and, just in case you run into Undine armor, also in a more primitive model which mirrors the MG, called the Acoustic Disruptor.  That's right, it's an underwater AI weapon. :D

They sound cool. I'm not really sure how they work though or how balanced they are but they sound cool.

[HazMeat]

I'm trying very hard not to be upset.  >:( You've gone from seemingly obvious weapons technologies to "transitional" weapons and now you're talking about preferences in upgrades and which size of new technological weapon innovation should have been introduced first in an alternative universe. And then you insult me. Pardon me for not knowing where you're going or being very happy at the moment.

"Obvious" is a very subjective thing, and for me it includes the idea of some ER weapons being engineered to sacrifice a bit of damage for range instead of generating gobs more heat to get it, so that they can swap in for older lasers and PPC in a "drop-in" manner rather than requiring a rebuild or redesign.  You seemed to misinterpret my intent as a fluff-only item which is statistically identical to the canon item, (as with the Clan Prototype ERML) or slightly but unambiguously inferior,(as with the Clan Interim ERML) so I gave examples of canon weapon swaps to illustrate the sort of thing I was going for, and I think I was abundantly clear about why I was talking about them: "Such drop-in components for upgrading or otherwise reconfiguring machines are common IRL, being the intended point of a lot of aftermarket replacement parts, so it kinda bugs me when new tech in BT looks like it should be able to take such a form but doesn't: the TR weapons are to be read as "real" ER tech, not immature prototype suff, but engineered/calibrated/whatever for a slightly different balance between performance and energy efficiency, for the specific purpose of being more suitable as a field refit, because stuff like the "upgraded" Panther 10K is just masochistic.  For another example, a Trans-Pulse ML could be 1 ton, 1 crit and 3 heat to swap in for older ML and have reduced performance compared to a full-size MPL: less damage and/or only getting a -1 TN bonus instead of the full -2 bonus." 
As for the Alternate Universe, that was another attempt to help your not knowing where I was going, and again I was being very clear[/color] about that: "As for long-term viability, nowhere did I say that transitional weapons are supposed to be "not as good as," and in fact clarified that the idea is NOT an immature version of later equipment, it's just the models and configurations that make the most sense to develop first.  I'll try illustrating with an analogy.  Would you have the same objection if, hypothetically, the Streak-4 were not canon but the Streak-6 were, and I were suggesting the smaller launcher as a transitional Streak weapon?  That's the entire idea behind transitional weapons; slightly different implementations that happen to be more interchangeable with existing popular equipment."
If by "insulting," you are referring to my stoopid joke, I apologise for that.  I meant to come off as playful, not cruel, and my intent was to very conspicuously call attention to my use of the term, "transitioning," because I was getting desperate to help you know where I was going with that subthread. 

When did a different weapon being abandoned come into this? I thought you wanted first introduced weapons? The AC/5 was the first autocannon introduced.

It "came into this" when you brought up the AC/5, asking me whether it might be an example of what I am talking about.  Such an example pooped into my head, so I gave it, and when I did so I explicitly specified that the fact that the Heavy Rifle becomes obsolete makes the example different from what I was going for, and that said difference was not relevant to what I was explaining. 

TAG isn't a laser weapon as a laser pointer. And what Laser generates -2 heat? Are you referring to the Laser Heat Sinks? Those aren't a weapon. Unless you consider the light show distracting.

My wording is very clear about the fact that I was giving the number -2 for the group "any laser item," which I think is easy to imagine including laser items which are not weapons, especially for some one able to guess (correctly) that I was referring to the Laser Heat Sink.  You said, and your exact words were, "1 is the lowest amount of heat a laser can generate," which is incorrect unless I take some liberties by interpreting your words as something unambigously different from what you literally said, so I pointed that out in order to let you clarify what you meant.  I have no firm semantic position on whether a device whose sole purpose by both design and use is to light up targets for various destructive warheads is a weapon, a part of a weapon, not a weapon or whatever, but I do have a headcanon position that TAG is an awful lot more than a laser pointer.  It weighs a ton, provides functionality that most 'mechs lack, and is higher-tech than many weapons, and requires special versions of ammo unable to also fit standard guidance mechanisms, so it probably has at least a pair of laser pointers, for both rangefinding and its ultimate purpose of target illumination, as well as redundant other means like a radar suite capable of the same functions so it can function with either subsystem compromised, and probably has its own dedicated computational and communications faculties in order to securely negotiate illumination signal parameters so that spoofing the system requires sophisticated means like a Nemesis pod rather than being a trivial thing achievable by any enemy with another TAG system, without any privileged access. 

How is that a precedent for bypassing an obstacle? The Mercury has always been fluffed as modular and being the basis of OMNI Technology.

Yes, the Mercury and its laser is fluffed as a precursor to Omni tech, which does not give the Mercury the full functionality of Omni tech, at least in the aspects modeled by the rules.  It's a clear precedent for bypassing the retcon-aversion obstacle you brought up, since it's the same situation as with the Hermes and its laser as a precursor to your hypothetical Streak lasers; it enjoys some benefits like reducing collateral damage from stray shots, but no benefits which are modeled by the rules.  You can insist that the Hermes' ML "really" builds up one point of heat when it misses, in contradiction to the rules, and you have every right to choose that interpretation, but not to pretend it wouldn't be at least as easy to interpret the fluff as agreeing with both the canon rules for the Hermes and any house rules for Streak lasers.

It can be. Or it could lead you to no where or even backwards. Why would the weight of Clan Launchers go down? Any weight lost is because of the reduction in tubes which is partially made up by firing more than one size missile and the doubling of the weapons bulk. How is that superior than the ATM? If they stay the same weight but with more tubes and double the heat and bulk (Which is the only way I could see the Clans using them.) how is that any different from using standard Clan launchers? At least using standard launchers doesn't mean your entire weapon is lost when it gets a critical hit. You'd still have the other launcher type to use.

What I was talking about "could be" a step in the particular direction I clearly specified for a hypothetical step when I said that clan MML could be half the weight of I.S. MML, because clan SRM and LRM are half the weight of their I.S. precursors, so that [clan MML] : [I.S. MML] :: [clan SRM and LRM] : [I.S. SRM and LRM] and, maybe to a lesser extent, [clan MML] : [clan SRM and LRM] :: [I.S. MML] : [I.S. SRM and LRM].  I don't know why clan launchers are half the weight of I.S. launchers and more compact if possible, but since they are I think that's the default assumption for MML unless a particular reason exists for MML to not follow the clearly-established pattern. 

FWIW, I think the "obvious" thing is for clan MML to be a tradeoff that's often desirable when you want both SRMs and LRMs in a somewhat SRM-heavy mix, and not so often desirable when you don't want that particular thing, just like I.S. MML.  Yes, separate launchers for each ammo type are harder to disable with crit hits, which is part of the tradeoff for ATM as well.

Ah. No worries on my end, about this, but I think you might have missed something. ATMs weigh more because they do more. The standard ATM has the range of MRM with twice the damage. HE ATMs have 50% more damage than SRMs and ER ATMs have a longer range than LRMs. The extra explosives and fuel translates into increased weight.

When I say the ammo is too heavy, I don't mean that I expect them to weigh the same on a per-missile basis as the cheaper, retrotech-fluffed weapons that are launched in much larger volleys from lighter launchers, and of a different tech base which is supposed to be less potent and not directly comparable to clan tech in terms of potency per ton.  I mean exactly what I said, which is that they're too heavy for what they do when compared to other clan missile weapons, which is the reason I gave for inflating their capabilities, including shrinking their weight to 2/3.  They look distinctly less impressive than the older clan Artemis-IV SRM and LRM munitions, which I'll clarify below since apparently my perspective isn't as obvious as I thought.  The launchers are small and light enough to just barely make up for the ammo's inefficiency, so that ATM are an awkward option but can be made to work alright if you enjoy their character.  IMHO, what they do look like is a technologically crude (by clan standards, at least) industrial and logistical stepping stone toward the very superior, overpowered even, iATM.  I'd like to remind you that this whole subtopic spawned from my suggesting ATM ammo to offer a bit more MML-like functionality, as a possible interpretation of "clan MML."  That was done because I see people comparing ATM to MML so often, while IMO the former doesn't come anywhere close to offering what I like the latter for.  If any one else is interested in that line of thought, I think Narc is one of the more powerful options which ATM tech is lacking vs. MML, after Inferno/Incendiary and Thunder/FASCAM. 

To me, ATM HE and Standard ammo look like a technological step backward, when compared to older Artemis-IV munitions, and ATM ER like a poor imitation of I.S. Extended LRM technology.  ATM HE just matches SRM-6 (Artemis IV) ammo in range and raw damage per ton, while the SRM-4 and SRM-2 versions offer a ninth more damage per ton.  ATM HE delivers fewer, bigger warheads, losing about a third of its critseeking power.  How is this "superior?"  Next, ATM Standard ammo just matches the damage per ton of LRMs, has only 5/7 the range, and reintroduces most of the minimum range limitation which clan LRMs lost.  Last, ATM ER boasts an impressive 9/7 that of LRM ammo, but again with a minimum range and now the damage per ton is half that of LRM.  None of those come in Inferno, Narc, Smoke, Frag, Artemis-V or anything other than standard warheads with Artemis-IV guidance. 

As for launchers, I think clan MML would look just fine considering that they'd be using older ammo options with their "diminished capabilities," like better SRM critseeking, much better mid-long range damage with only one more ammo type needed, with options for augmenting both types with Narc guidance, or adding powerful capabilities like Inferno or FASCAM.  Here are the stats for hypothetical clan MML launchers, both the half-weight versions of I.S. launcher sizes and double-tube-count versions, with the canon ATM launchers for comparison.  Following the convention for clan half-weight SRM and LRM racks, everything is smaller by one crit slot than its I.S. counterpart unless said counterpart is already one crit, which I interpret least generously for the double-size ones by not doubling the savings.  Heat cost is doubled for double-size launchers.Tons----Crit----Heat----Name-
1.5     2       2       ATM-3
3.5     3       4       ATM-6
5       4       6       ATM-9
7       5       8       ATM-12
-----------------------------
 .75    1       2       MML-3
1.5     2       3       MML-5
1.5     2       4       MML-6
2.25    3       4       MML-7
3       4       5       MML-9
3       5       6       MML-10
4.5     7       8       MML-14
6       9       10      MML-18
-----------------------------
1.75    2       2       MML-3 Artemis-IV
2.5     3       3       MML-5 Artemis-IV
2.5     3       4       MML-6 Artemis-IV
3.25    4       4       MML-7 Artemis-IV
4       5       5       MML-9 Artemis-IV
4       6       6       MML-10 Artemis-IV
5.5     8       8       MML-14 Artemis-IV
7       10      10      MML-18 Artemis-IV
-----------------------------
I'm not a fan of Artemis myself, except on non-'mech vehicles, but those are included because ATM includes Artemis-IV. 

I'm actually leaning more toward something explicitly described as working the way almost all missile weapons do in my headcanon: a single large projectile efficiently carries the payload to just outside typical countermeasures' engagement range, whereupon it dispenses multiple submunitions in manner similar to LB-X Autocannon so that it's harder to shoot down or avoid the attack.  This is why different-sized weapons of same type can't share ammo bins, nor can MML share with SRM or LRM launchers, and why Thunder/FASCAM isn't a hideously difficult and expensive development from standard LRM payloads.  Hm... "Monolithic-Missile Launcher?" >:)

That could be just purely fluff, but it could also have rules consequences: this fiction model lends itself to incorporating Narc or iNARC technology similarly to how ATM and iATM incorporate Artemis technology.  It sounds like a terrible pain to find balanced stats for, as its extreme "Swiss Army Knife" nature just screams "unintended consequences" to me, but it's also a huge benefit to me because Narc is my favourite missile guidance upgrade.  Maybe it could kinda mirror the GR and SBGR, having two variants identical in stats except that one fires just Narc Homing Beacons and Narc-homing warheads, while the other fires just the other, special payloads like Inferno, Thunder, and all the wacky new iNarc pods... 

I meant in game terms. There aren't any rules to differentiate between them. It'd be nice if a multiple barreled standard AC could unjam itself. A Pepperbox AC could elect not to fire all of its rounds per turn reducing damage but saving ammo and so on. Nothing that would change things in tournament games. Just optional things to bring more differences and flavor to ACs.

I'm not sure, but I think that kind of variety is by default assumed to be canon by BT convention, and I like it. O0

I would think the range would get shorter than longer. There's also the possibility of getting hit by some of the plasma that gets out from the rotating barrels. That's why I suggested pepperbox. Everything's contained in the barrel until you need to reload.

Are you talking about the cylinder gap for a revolver or revolver cannon?  If so, that's only an issue if you want it to be.  Otherwise, just position it so it doesn't spray the user, use a simple protective cover and/or, my favourite on "rule of cool" grounds, say the barrel and chamber engage via a socket instead of just floating near each other, opening for rotation and closing for firing with a short sliding motion of either part along the bore axis.  This is not a futuristic fantasy solution I made up, BTW, it's something done by a few handheld revolvers that are old today, for the purpose of making them compatible with sound suppressors...  Back on-topic, I'm vaguely picturing R/PR as being more like a bizarre radial arrangement since PR would need possibly-bulky heating systems around the chamber but would not have any problem with pointing cylinders in arbitrary directions since the munitions are totally inert.  The power connection to the heater is completed by the locking of the barrel to the chamber.  Rules-wise, I have a mild preference for a new weapon to offer some reach unless there's a particular reason otherwise, since close-combat has more diverse weapons options right now than longer-range fire has, but Rotaries aren't my thing so I'm not gonna be the one using it...  Fiction-wise, though, since it's kinda backwards how BT guns decrease in range with size, I rather like "fixing" it by having these guns behave in a more intuitive way.  How much shorter are you thinking, and for what mass and bulk of weapon? 

So? We know what those things are because we've seen them in use and have been told how they work. It doesn't matter that it's realistic or not.  They've been said to work this way so they do. Some versions of weapons do the same thing but actually work that way.

Okay, where can I see them in use and/or otherwise get an idea of how they canonically function, so that I can have an idea of how they might translate to BT?  (Or are they native BT items I just don't know by those names?)  If no such canon exists for these items, then I maintain that it's entirely up to you what BT's incarnation is and how they work, so asking how they would work is meaningless if it's your fiction. 

True but there are partial cannons now. They're just close ended and miles long. But we can get creative and make them smaller. I'm also not sure why I'd need to look up speeds or list them either. All I need is weight of weapon, how many crits it takes, its range, damage, heat, and any ammo it requires, and some creative fluff. Eventually, I'm going to have to write down my House Rules for these weapons. A lot of it's already in the fluff or existing rules but I'm still weighing balance issues. If I have time I'll try an work on them this weekend.

Yeah, "we can get creative and make" anything happen in fiction that you want, but some people are into "suspension of disbelief," and I try to be respectful of that.  FWIW, what seems "creative" and "clever" to me is fiction which is solidly consistent under "fridge logic," or shows humour which jumps out at me when I've let my guard down, or in any other way shows that loving thought went into it.  I suggested looking into some velocity numbers to get a feel for what such weapons might look like because you told me you preferred specifying unnecessary details for some autocannon because it makes the item more, to use your exact word, "real."  I like to imagine such details too, as I've demonstrated, but I usually (but not always) try to adhere to what little I know about physical properties and limits, in part because it makes the fiction more accessible to people who are into the "suspension of disbelief" thing. 

I mean, that's part of why I lean toward vagueness outside BT, and part of why I like BT: here I feel like I can get away with a lot more detail than usual, because this setting tolerates a lot of my ignorant unrealism which is almost certainly laughably demonstrative of "anything is possible when I don't know what the heck I'm talking about" to most scientists, engineers and even science fiction writers.  It means I can be more liberal with fantastic imagery, but trying to avoid inconsistencies is a "never too much" thing; any extra thought or research is unlikely to cause regrets while not bothering might be likely to.  It's like the cliché about ammo, I guess; "Nobody ever complained in a gunfight, 'Oh, no, why did I bring so much ammo?!,' so the right amount is however much you can bring."  If you prefer to load light, go ahead and skip the next paragraph. 

I think what you were trying to refer to are titanic research accelerators, which are very unlikely to be the basis for weaponised accelerators because the design challenges are very different.  For pushing physics research, the main goals are probably highest possible velocity and beam quality.  It doesn't matter how portable or efficient the equipment is, as long as you can operate it safely at all.  For a weapon, the main goals are probably just total beam energy, in proportion to how difficult it is to wield the weapon.  You also now have the challenges, just as with laser weapons, of getting through all the air between your emitter and target, and of producing a beam capable of destroying whatever armor technology you're facing, but not destroying the weapon handling that energy.  For example, a laser will probably use a conical beam so that luminous flux at the user's end is handleable but flux on-target is not.  A kinetic beam might be much harder to spatially manipulate like that, so instead I find it easier to imagine it being manipulated temporally by starting at maximum mass flow and minimum specific impulse and gradually trading current for voltage during the discharge cycle in order to compress milliseconds of safe output power at the user end of the beam into microseconds of unsafe power at the target end. (or whatever time scales are realistic) 

They sound cool. I'm not really sure how they work though or how balanced they are but they sound cool.

Hehe, sound cool.  Thanks!  O0 It's just the idea behind SRT and LRT, applied to AC; copy all the stats for AC, change the name, and say that it works in water rather than in air.  If by "how they work," you mean something more fluffy, they use an explosive charge and perhaps other consumable supplies to perturb the water violently enough to damage even military-hardened machinery.  The wave is focused into a form with relatively little spatial dispersion, maybe but probably not like this. (Imagine the segment is filmed underwater, and those cups are made of ultra-dense supermaterials, weighing 9/16 of a megagram each.)

I'm rather liking how "Pulse PPC" looks like an "obvious" thing for Kurita to make, so hope I can do something similar for other great houses.  It's based on Light PPC because I like it smaller, and because it's not called "Lord's Heavy."  The farther-reaching version imitates ER Pulse rather than X-Pulse by losing half of the Pulse bonus, partly because I think the Combine might be the most clan-like Successor State, but mostly because I like having them differ that way.

The stats are starting to gel for me, so this might be where I decide to call it good.  The main changes are that damage effect invokes the two cluster columns which I suspect a Kurita player is most likely to know by heart first.  For clarification, C6 for 1-damage hits and C4 for heat, using one roll of 2d6 for both cluster lookups rather than making two separate rolls.  IOW, an LB-6 hit and an Incendiary LRM-6 LRM-4 [derp] hit, sharing a cluster roll.  Ah-tchoo!  [nerfed 12 Jun]

Dragon's Knees type: P tons: 5 7 crit: 2 3 heat: 8 10 range: [2] 4-8-12 other: -2, flak, no Tarcomp damage: 1 * C6 + 1H * C4  (roll once for both results) common models:  Donal Quicksilver  Magna MorningStar  MMM Venus Fire  DOI Light Bringer  VMI Prometheus  SDI Pepper Spray

SuperDragon's Knees type: DE tons: 5 7 crit: 2 3 heat: 12 15 range: [3] 6-12-18 other: -1, flak, no Tarcomp damage: 1 * C6 + 1H * C4  (roll once for both results) common models:  Donal Apollo  Magna ShootingStar  MMM Venus DSR  DOI Lucifer  VMI Ignifer  SDI Hotsnot

[FedComGirl]

"Obvious" is a very subjective thing, and for me it includes the idea of some ER weapons being engineered to sacrifice a bit of damage for range instead of generating gobs more heat to get it, so that they can swap in for older lasers and PPC in a "drop-in" manner rather than requiring a rebuild or redesign.  You seemed to misinterpret my intent as a fluff-only item which is statistically identical to the canon item, (as with the Clan Prototype ERML) or slightly but unambiguously inferior,(as with the Clan Interim ERML) so I gave examples of canon weapon swaps to illustrate the sort of thing I was going for, and I think I was abundantly clear about why I was talking about them:

To me that sounds like customized weaponry or having a huge number of lasers to choose from. I don't see your weapons as fluff only and when I mentioned Clan prototypes you said

Inferior prototypes that are quickly rendered completely obsolete is not at all the type of thing I was illustrating.

Now you are advocating them? I'm sorry but you're not being all that clear.

It sounds like you want to be able to use a weapon customized the way you want it and then easily install it. Is that right?  To an extent I can agree with customizing weapons. We already can to an extent. There would need to be limits though. I don't think they should replace an existing weapon. For example I don't think you should be able to customize an IS ERPPC to do 12 points of damage since there is already the Enhanced PPC.

There should also be a monetary cost to the weapon. I've been going with an extra 10% for each positive quirk and -10% for each negative. Converting weapons for OMNI pods costs 25% so depending on all you do with it it could cost up to twice as much. There should also be rolls  to determine if the techs available can even do the customization. If it gets screwed up by A rated techs you have to buy a new weapon and start all over again. And if they do manage it there should be a roll for how successful they were and how well the weapon operates.

"Such drop-in components for upgrading or otherwise reconfiguring machines are common IRL, being the intended point of a lot of aftermarket replacement parts, so it kinda bugs me when new tech in BT looks like it should be able to take such a form but doesn't: the TR weapons are to be read as "real" ER tech, not immature prototype suff, but engineered/calibrated/whatever for a slightly different balance between performance and energy efficiency, for the specific purpose of being more suitable as a field refit, because stuff like the "upgraded" Panther 10K is just masochistic.  For another example, a Trans-Pulse ML could be 1 ton, 1 crit and 3 heat to swap in for older ML and have reduced performance compared to a full-size MPL: less damage and/or only getting a -1 TN bonus instead of the full -2 bonus." 

Let's break this down a little, just to be sure I understand. Okay?  You want drop in easy to replace parts.  OMNI Tech is the easiest it gets. Then there's Modular Quirk, followed by Refit Kits and Customization. There is some overlapping with Fixed Items on OMNIs and Modular Tech speeding up Refit and Customizing but the further you go the longer it takes and the more chances of something going wrong. Obviously the best you want is either an OMNI or unit with the Modular Quirk with a Refit Kit. But there may not be a refit kit for that unit. For example you can by aftermarket spoilers, CB radio, various types of entertainment systems, GPS systems, rear view cameras, etc but where do you mount them on a Model T Ford?

Now lets get to the TR weapons. You say these are mature tech items. That rules out customizing and now you need a list of every possible weapon. And it should be balanced. Why would I use a MPL when I could use your Trans-pulse MPL with the Improved Accuracy Quirk and do the same same -2 bonus?  Granted such a weapon could exist but it has to be exceedingly rare or it would be the standard MPL. That's also why I would think that it would either be a customized weapon or a prototype stepping stone between the standard medium laser and medium pulse laser. And I'm not sure I'd see it being reintroduced like the pulse lasers were. I suppose it's possible but then again there's very little time between pulse technology is reintroduced and prototyped and production quality are manufactured. That would make Transitional Weapons even rarer as they're centuries old.

As for the Alternate Universe, that was another attempt to help your not knowing where I was going, and again I was being very clear[/color] about that: "As for long-term viability, nowhere did I say that transitional weapons are supposed to be "not as good as," and in fact clarified that the idea is NOT an immature version of later equipment, it's just the models and configurations that make the most sense to develop first.  I'll try illustrating with an analogy.  Would you have the same objection if, hypothetically, the Streak-4 were not canon but the Streak-6 were, and I were suggesting the smaller launcher as a transitional Streak weapon?  That's the entire idea behind transitional weapons; slightly different implementations that happen to be more interchangeable with existing popular equipment."

I did understand your questioning why was the Streak-2 the first Streak Launcher. Why was it? Why not a 4 or 6 tube Streak Launcher being introduced first? That is also a completely different question from why there wasn't a Transitional Streak Launcher where only half the missiles locked on?

And again if these "Transitionals" were standard weapons and more mass produced than prototype equipment was then many standard weapons probably wouldn't exist or at the very least there'd be a lot less. You're Trans-MPL is about just as good as the standard MPL for half the weight and can be tweaked to be as good as. Would you go with the Trans-MPL or the MPL for mass production? Would an AC/4 doing 4 points of damage weighing 7 tons with 3 critical slots with a range of 3/7/14/21 with 32 rounds of ammo keep the AC/5 from being as wide spread as it was? Or the AC/2? I would think in most cases it would.

If by "insulting," you are referring to my stoopid joke, I apologise for that.  I meant to come off as playful, not cruel, and my intent was to very conspicuously call attention to my use of the term, "transitioning," because I was getting desperate to help you know where I was going with that subthread. 

Apology accepted.

It "came into this" when you brought up the AC/5, asking me whether it might be an example of what I am talking about.  Such an example pooped into my head, so I gave it, and when I did so I explicitly specified that the fact that the Heavy Rifle becomes obsolete makes the example different from what I was going for, and that said difference was not relevant to what I was explaining. 

I'm hoping you mean popped. I also still don't see when a weapon being declared obsolete makes a difference to when the first of a weapon class is introduced. I also think the Heavy Rifle Cannon soldiered on until the AC/10 became wide spread. Until then it was still more effective than the AC/5 in some areas. After the introduction of the AC/10 the HRC couldn't really compete any more. None of which changes that the AC/5 was the first Autocannon or the Streak SRM-2 being the first Streak.

My wording is very clear about the fact that I was giving the number -2 for the group "any laser item," which I think is easy to imagine including laser items which are not weapons, especially for some one able to guess (correctly) that I was referring to the Laser Heat Sink.  You said, and your exact words were, "1 is the lowest amount of heat a laser can generate," which is incorrect unless I take some liberties by interpreting your words as something unambigously different from what you literally said, so I pointed that out in order to let you clarify what you meant.  I have no firm semantic position on whether a device whose sole purpose by both design and use is to light up targets for various destructive warheads is a weapon, a part of a weapon, not a weapon or whatever, but I do have a headcanon position that TAG is an awful lot more than a laser pointer.  It weighs a ton, provides functionality that most 'mechs lack, and is higher-tech than many weapons, and requires special versions of ammo unable to also fit standard guidance mechanisms, so it probably has at least a pair of laser pointers, for both rangefinding and its ultimate purpose of target illumination, as well as redundant other means like a radar suite capable of the same functions so it can function with either subsystem compromised, and probably has its own dedicated computational and communications faculties in order to securely negotiate illumination signal parameters so that spoofing the system requires sophisticated means like a Nemesis pod rather than being a trivial thing achievable by any enemy with another TAG system, without any privileged access. 

You did say any laser item, except that we are discussing weapons here not all systems. Laser heat sinks are not weapons. They are heat removers. TAG is not a weapon. TAG is a targeting system. Laser weapons generate heat. The least amount of heat laser weapons generate is 1. That's in the rules. TacOps page 102. At least in my book.

Yes, the Mercury and its laser is fluffed as a precursor to Omni tech, which does not give the Mercury the full functionality of Omni tech, at least in the aspects modeled by the rules.  It's a clear precedent for bypassing the retcon-aversion obstacle you brought up, since it's the same situation as with the Hermes and its laser as a precursor to your hypothetical Streak lasers; it enjoys some benefits like reducing collateral damage from stray shots, but no benefits which are modeled by the rules.  You can insist that the Hermes' ML "really" builds up one point of heat when it misses, in contradiction to the rules, and you have every right to choose that interpretation, but not to pretend it wouldn't be at least as easy to interpret the fluff as agreeing with both the canon rules for the Hermes and any house rules for Streak lasers.

The Mercury's being modular and the basis for OMNI technology is not a retcon. As it is not a retcon I don't see how it can be a bypass for retcon aversion. Nothing has been changed. For the Hermes to have it's lasers function according to the fluff the rules would need to be changed some how. Retconned. The easiest would be to make the Alexis Photon Targeting Acquisition System a Quirk Targeting System. *  Then the standard rules and fluff abilities would both be legal depending on the rules you choose to use. Of course to really have the Hermes HER-1S by the fluff it must be retconned as it uses a vehicular flamer. That would require retconning record sheets and TRO:3039. TRO3039's would need to be retconned any way as the HER-1S Hermes was not the first variant produced. The HER-1S Hermes was an upgrade.


*Note:
I think many quirks should have costs and availability listed for them, as well as take up weight and crits.  The Alexis Photon Targeting System was lostech for a while and as far as I know only available on the Hermes. I'd put it's availability at (F-X-F) and it's cost high.

As for the Streak Lasers. I imagine they'd be less advanced than the Alexis Photon since each laser would have it's own streak system instead of one targeting system for all. I also imagine that it didn't get developed (In universe) because of weight issues, and the unpopularity of the Hermes and the Streak SRM-2. I would also think not being able to hit high density targets could be a problem. A large laser weighing 7.5 tons but then I'm not sure the Streak part would need to weigh 50% of the laser the way it does on Missile. Maybe just a fixed additional weight like the Artemis.

What I was talking about "could be" a step in the particular direction I clearly specified for a hypothetical step when I said that clan MML could be half the weight of I.S. MML, because clan SRM and LRM are half the weight of their I.S. precursors, so that [clan MML] : [I.S. MML] :: [clan SRM and LRM] : [I.S. SRM and LRM] and, maybe to a lesser extent, [clan MML] : [clan SRM and LRM] :: [I.S. MML] : [I.S. SRM and LRM].  I don't know why clan launchers are half the weight of I.S. launchers and more compact if possible, but since they are I think that's the default assumption for MML unless a particular reason exists for MML to not follow the clearly-established pattern. 

Clan missile launcher are lighter because they used advanced miniaturization techniques and advanced materials. MMLs are slightly lighter because they drop missile tubes. Clan MMLs wouldn't drop that much weight over their standard launchers. They would however be dropping the number of missiles that could be launched while gaining in bulk making for a less effective weapon. You could mount a Clan LRM-5 and a Clan SRM-2 in the same space as a MML-3 and do the exact same job. And then it gets worse for the MML as the weights and crits are in the Clan Launchers favor.

FWIW, I think the "obvious" thing is for clan MML to be a tradeoff that's often desirable when you want both SRMs and LRMs in a somewhat SRM-heavy mix, and not so often desirable when you don't want that particular thing, just like I.S. MML.  Yes, separate launchers for each ammo type are harder to disable with crit hits, which is part of the tradeoff for ATM as well.

I understand that except there's no reason for the Clans to develop a MML. Not only can their launchers do the same job better but they have the ATM which is an improvement.

When I say the ammo is too heavy, I don't mean that I expect them to weigh the same on a per-missile basis as the cheaper, retrotech-fluffed weapons that are launched in much larger volleys from lighter launchers, and of a different tech base which is supposed to be less potent and not directly comparable to clan tech in terms of potency per ton.  I mean exactly what I said, which is that they're too heavy for what they do when compared to other clan missile weapons, which is the reason I gave for inflating their capabilities, including shrinking their weight to 2/3.  They look distinctly less impressive than the older clan Artemis-IV SRM and LRM munitions, which I'll clarify below since apparently my perspective isn't as obvious as I thought.  The launchers are small and light enough to just barely make up for the ammo's inefficiency, so that ATM are an awkward option but can be made to work alright if you enjoy their character.  IMHO, what they do look like is a technologically crude (by clan standards, at least) industrial and logistical stepping stone toward the very superior, overpowered even, iATM.  I'd like to remind you that this whole subtopic spawned from my suggesting ATM ammo to offer a bit more MML-like functionality, as a possible interpretation of "clan MML."  That was done because I see people comparing ATM to MML so often, while IMO the former doesn't come anywhere close to offering what I like the latter for.  If any one else is interested in that line of thought, I think Narc is one of the more powerful options which ATM tech is lacking vs. MML, after Inferno/Incendiary and Thunder/FASCAM. 

Got to break this up a bit.

ATM HE compared to Dead Fire SRMs which are the closest in terms of damage. They're heavier, do the same damage, but they don't lose targeting capabilities.
The Standard ATM missile compared to the MRM is heavier, does twice the damage, and doesn't lose targeting capabilities.
The ER ATM compared to LRMs is heavier but has greater range.

Since the ATM as is is more effective than the other missiles, I'm not having a problem with their weight. And they are technically a stepping stone to the iATM. It isn't crude though. It's more advanced than the standard launchers.

You weren't the first person to bring up ATMs. That was Martian. And I agree there should be more ammo types for the ATM. There should be for the Thunderbolt too. The ATM and MML are comparably only because the MML is an imitation of the ATM.

To me, ATM HE and Standard ammo look like a technological step backward, when compared to older Artemis-IV munitions, and ATM ER like a poor imitation of I.S. Extended LRM technology.  ATM HE just matches SRM-6 (Artemis IV) ammo in range and raw damage per ton, while the SRM-4 and SRM-2 versions offer a ninth more damage per ton.  ATM HE delivers fewer, bigger warheads, losing about a third of its critseeking power.  How is this "superior?"  Next, ATM Standard ammo just matches the damage per ton of LRMs, has only 5/7 the range, and reintroduces most of the minimum range limitation which clan LRMs lost.  Last, ATM ER boasts an impressive 9/7 that of LRM ammo, but again with a minimum range and now the damage per ton is half that of LRM.  None of those come in Inferno, Narc, Smoke, Frag, Artemis-V or anything other than standard warheads with Artemis-IV guidance. 

I don't see them as a step backwards. They're an advancement. ATM includes Artemis-IV. True the ATM ER isn't as long range as ELRM however they have slightly more ammo, take less critical slots and weight a whole lot less, and has Artemis-IV.

Yes, the ATM loses out on crit seeking, however, as they're doing more damage, or striking at greater range, I'm not seeing a problem. If you destroy all the armor before the target gets to you, you're going to be getting crits. The Launchers are also lighter that gives you more ways to be able to get crits.

Yes the Standard ATM has 5/7 the range of the LRM and has a minimum range. However, they do twice the damage of MRMs at that range. Fair trade I think. And again it's lighter.

Yes, the ER does less damage per ton than LRMs but it does so at a greater range. It also does more damage than ELRMs and, again, launchers are lighter. That means I can carry more ammo.

And again I do agree there should be more ammo types for the ATM. But I think if there were SRMs, MRMs, and LRMs would become obsolete.

As for launchers, I think clan MML would look just fine considering that they'd be using older ammo options with their "diminished capabilities," like better SRM critseeking, much better mid-long range damage with only one more ammo type needed, with options for augmenting both types with Narc guidance, or adding powerful capabilities like Inferno or FASCAM.  Here are the stats for hypothetical clan MML launchers, both the half-weight versions of I.S. launcher sizes and double-tube-count versions, with the canon ATM launchers for comparison.  Following the convention for clan half-weight SRM and LRM racks, everything is smaller by one crit slot than its I.S. counterpart unless said counterpart is already one crit, which I interpret least generously for the double-size ones by not doubling the savings.  Heat cost is doubled for double-size launchers.Tons----Crit----Heat----Name-

Sorry the green is hard to read. :(

Reducing the weight of the missile racks because the Clan Launchers are lighter isn't the way to reduce the MML weight. MML's weight is reduced because they have fewer tubes not because they use more advanced technology. A Clan MML-3 would weigh .75 tons, a MML-5 1.5 tons, a MML-7 2.25, a MML-9 3 tons. And I don't see how that would help anything. Again, you can mount Clan LRM and SRM launchers in the space of a MML and do far more damage since you're not only firing more missiles but can fire both launchers at the same time. And you can keep firing the other launcher even if the other gets knocked out? How's the MML an improvement on that?

I'm not a fan of Artemis myself, except on non-'mech vehicles, but those are included because ATM includes Artemis-IV. 

I'm actually leaning more toward something explicitly described as working the way almost all missile weapons do in my headcanon: a single large projectile efficiently carries the payload to just outside typical countermeasures' engagement range, whereupon it dispenses multiple submunitions in manner similar to LB-X Autocannon so that it's harder to shoot down or avoid the attack.  This is why different-sized weapons of same type can't share ammo bins, nor can MML share with SRM or LRM launchers, and why Thunder/FASCAM isn't a hideously difficult and expensive development from standard LRM payloads.  Hm... "Monolithic-Missile Launcher?" >:)

 Well... I can see there being a missile type like that. I would think it'd fit in the Thunderbolt best. I'm pretty sure weapons of different sizes can't share ammo because they're different sizes. I'm not sure why MMLs can't share ammo from LRM and SRM bins. Maybe it'd get confused because it already is switching between LRMs and SRMs.

That could be just purely fluff, but it could also have rules consequences: this fiction model lends itself to incorporating Narc or iNARC technology similarly to how ATM and iATM incorporate Artemis technology.  It sounds like a terrible pain to find balanced stats for, as its extreme "Swiss Army Knife" nature just screams "unintended consequences" to me, but it's also a huge benefit to me because Narc is my favourite missile guidance upgrade.  Maybe it could kinda mirror the GR and SBGR, having two variants identical in stats except that one fires just Narc Homing Beacons and Narc-homing warheads, while the other fires just the other, special payloads like Inferno, Thunder, and all the wacky new iNarc pods... 

That does sound very hard to balance.

I'm not sure, but I think that kind of variety is by default assumed to be canon by BT convention, and I like it. O0

Thanks. :)

Are you talking about the cylinder gap for a revolver or revolver cannon?  If so, that's only an issue if you want it to be.  Otherwise, just position it so it doesn't spray the user, use a simple protective cover and/or, my favourite on "rule of cool" grounds, say the barrel and chamber engage via a socket instead of just floating near each other, opening for rotation and closing for firing with a short sliding motion of either part along the bore axis.  This is not a futuristic fantasy solution I made up, BTW, it's something done by a few handheld revolvers that are old today, for the purpose of making them compatible with sound suppressors... 

That's the term! Thanks. :) I haven't heard of revolvers that could do that. That's cool.

Back on-topic, I'm vaguely picturing R/PR as being more like a bizarre radial arrangement since PR would need possibly-bulky heating systems around the chamber but would not have any problem with pointing cylinders in arbitrary directions since the munitions are totally inert.  The power connection to the heater is completed by the locking of the barrel to the chamber.  Rules-wise, I have a mild preference for a new weapon to offer some reach unless there's a particular reason otherwise, since close-combat has more diverse weapons options right now than longer-range fire has, but Rotaries aren't my thing so I'm not gonna be the one using it...  Fiction-wise, though, since it's kinda backwards how BT guns decrease in range with size, I rather like "fixing" it by having these guns behave in a more intuitive way.  How much shorter are you thinking, and for what mass and bulk of weapon? 

I have the range decreasing because the amount of propellant is reduced to get as many rounds in as possible. In my head canon internal space isn't infinite. As for the PR? I think a pepperbox arrangement might be best if the damage is going to be the same. Maybe 15 tons and 6 critical slot and 10 heat per shot and up to 3 shots per round.

Okay, where can I see them in use and/or otherwise get an idea of how they canonically function, so that I can have an idea of how they might translate to BT?  (Or are they native BT items I just don't know by those names?)  If no such canon exists for these items, then I maintain that it's entirely up to you what BT's incarnation is and how they work, so asking how they would work is meaningless if it's your fiction.

 

If there's nothing that says how an item works then yes it is up to us. Sometimes it is even when there is canon examples of how they work. As for where examples of where they work, novels, TROs, Rule Books, etc.

Yeah, "we can get creative and make" anything happen in fiction that you want, but some people are into "suspension of disbelief," and I try to be respectful of that.  FWIW, what seems "creative" and "clever" to me is fiction which is solidly consistent under "fridge logic," or shows humour which jumps out at me when I've let my guard down, or in any other way shows that loving thought went into it.  I suggested looking into some velocity numbers to get a feel for what such weapons might look like because you told me you preferred specifying unnecessary details for some autocannon because it makes the item more, to use your exact word, "real."  I like to imagine such details too, as I've demonstrated, but I usually (but not always) try to adhere to what little I know about physical properties and limits, in part because it makes the fiction more accessible to people who are into the "suspension of disbelief" thing.

I mean, that's part of why I lean toward vagueness outside BT, and part of why I like BT: here I feel like I can get away with a lot more detail than usual, because this setting tolerates a lot of my ignorant unrealism which is almost certainly laughably demonstrative of "anything is possible when I don't know what the heck I'm talking about" to most scientists, engineers and even science fiction writers.  It means I can be more liberal with fantastic imagery, but trying to avoid inconsistencies is a "never too much" thing; any extra thought or research is unlikely to cause regrets while not bothering might be likely to.  It's like the cliché about ammo, I guess; "Nobody ever complained in a gunfight, 'Oh, no, why did I bring so much ammo?!,' so the right amount is however much you can bring."  If you prefer to load light, go ahead and skip the next paragraph.   

I prefer to be respectful of "suspension of disbelief" too. I try to stay away from too hard science to keep from being totally wrong and to let readers fill in the blanks on their own.

I think what you were trying to refer to are titanic research accelerators, which are very unlikely to be the basis for weaponised accelerators because the design challenges are very different.  For pushing physics research, the main goals are probably highest possible velocity and beam quality.  It doesn't matter how portable or efficient the equipment is, as long as you can operate it safely at all.  For a weapon, the main goals are probably just total beam energy, in proportion to how difficult it is to wield the weapon.  You also now have the challenges, just as with laser weapons, of getting through all the air between your emitter and target, and of producing a beam capable of destroying whatever armor technology you're facing, but not destroying the weapon handling that energy.  For example, a laser will probably use a conical beam so that luminous flux at the user's end is handleable but flux on-target is not.  A kinetic beam might be much harder to spatially manipulate like that, so instead I find it easier to imagine it being manipulated temporally by starting at maximum mass flow and minimum specific impulse and gradually trading current for voltage during the discharge cycle in order to compress milliseconds of safe output power at the user end of the beam into microseconds of unsafe power at the target end. (or whatever time scales are realistic) 

Those are the ones and its possible they could be miniaturized enough to be weaponized. Then again... I'm not really sure what you're saying for the rest. I don't know if its science fiction or science.

Hehe, sound cool.  Thanks!  O0 It's just the idea behind SRT and LRT, applied to AC; copy all the stats for AC, change the name, and say that it works in water rather than in air.  If by "how they work," you mean something more fluffy, they use an explosive charge and perhaps other consumable supplies to perturb the water violently enough to damage even military-hardened machinery.  The wave is focused into a form with relatively little spatial dispersion, maybe but probably not like this. (Imagine the segment is filmed underwater, and those cups are made of ultra-dense supermaterials, weighing 9/16 of a megagram each.)

I can't get it to play and I'm not sure how workable it is. I have heard of sound weapons but I'm not sure how workable they'd be in water. Right now I'm thinking that a torpedo version of the Shillelagh missile might be more workable. Of course that means there'd need to be Shillelagh missiles available in Battletech. Maybe they'd be the improvement needed to make Rifle Cannons effective against modern targets?

I'm rather liking how "Pulse PPC" looks like an "obvious" thing for Kurita to make, so hope I can do something similar for other great houses.  It's based on Light PPC because I like it smaller, and because it's not called "Lord's Heavy."  The farther-reaching version imitates ER Pulse rather than X-Pulse by losing half of the Pulse bonus, partly because I think the Combine might be the most clan-like Successor State, but mostly because I like having them differ that way.

I suppose they are more Clanlike in a way but I don't think that reason to give them a pulse PPC. It'd be more because they favor PPCs and have done more to develop that technology than the other IS states.

The stats are starting to gel for me, so this might be where I decide to call it good.  The main changes are that damage effect invokes the two cluster columns which I suspect a Kurita player is most likely to know by heart first.  For clarification, C6 for 1-damage hits and C4 for heat, using one roll of 2d6 for both cluster lookups rather than making two separate rolls.  IOW, an LB-6 hit and an Incendiary LRM-6 hit, sharing a cluster roll.  Ah-tchoo! 

Bless you and what?   ???

[Khymerion]

I can't get it to play and I'm not sure how workable it is. I have heard of sound weapons but I'm not sure how workable they'd be in water. Right now I'm thinking that a torpedo version of the Shillelagh missile might be more workable. Of course that means there'd need to be Shillelagh missiles available in Battletech. Maybe they'd be the improvement needed to make Rifle Cannons effective against modern targets?

I would really enjoy a BT verison of a Shillelagh missile or the AT-11 Sniper/9M119 Svir.   Definitely would be a nice surprise/something to resurrect to catch someone off guard.

[FedComGirl]

I would really enjoy a BT verison of a Shillelagh missile or the AT-11 Sniper/9M119 Svir.   Definitely would be a nice surprise/something to resurrect to catch someone off guard.

So would i. :) I know these missile cannon ammos have been talked about before but I've never really been able to see the autocannon using them. The Rifle Cannon though, I can see using it since they or the predecessors (Tank Cannons) did. I think it'd help keep them viable. One missile type for full damage and another for extended range. Of course I think the Rifle Cannons should have more ammo types anyway.