Heavy Gear vs Battletech.

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The Dark
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Post by The Dark »

Oddly enough, it actually is possible to convert the damage done by BattleTech weapons to Heavy Gear armor penetration. This is done through a game mechanics comparison, taking similar-type weapons (AC/2 and LAC, for example) and comparing their damage capabilities, taking into account that BT has a linear damage progression, while HG is exponential (double damage rating is four times as powerful). It turns out that the Damage Multiplier of a BT weapon is equal to SqRt (33.25(BT damage)+2.75), meaning an AC/20 is a x26 weapon. Armor is a bit harder to calculate, but it is possible to find the effective protection granted through finding the total HP of a 'Mech (armor plus structure) and then dividing through a formula based off tonnage (since a larger size necessarily means thinner armor per ton, although enough extra mass of armor may be carried to offset such thinning). Running through the formula, an Atlas (100 ton assault-class 'Mech) carries slightly more armor than a Sagittarius (24.8 tons fire support strider). A Stinger (20 ton light 'Mech) is roughly equivalent for armor protection to an Iguana (5.1 ton scout Gear). Admittedly, this is all strictly non-canon (as is any direct comparison of different universes), but the conversion isn't that difficult, simply taking a linear system and figuring a baseline to convert to an exponential system.
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Post by Hotfoot »

By the way, since Painrack won't give up on the Mackie Trial, I might as well subject it to some serious review. Perhaps this will prevent others from abusing it as well.

Here is a link to the story. You can find it yourself on Google easily enough. For this link, scroll down to the section entitled "First Combat Run". It's in red, which should make finding it easy.

First off:
What follows is a transcript of a verbal report filed by Professor Htov Gbarleman, chief research scientist for Karena's Fiber Optic Interstellar, manufacturer of the BattleMech's sensor system.
The part I have put in bold is telling. This man is a researcher on sensor systems, not an expert on any other aspect of the mech. He is not qualified to comment on ballistics, armor protection, powerplant generation, or, frankly, anything other than the sensor suite he helped design. Using him as a reference for describing anything in fields not his own is highly suspicious.
One of the tanks opened fire. Its shot was true and hit the 'Mech just above the right hip. Everyone in the brightly lit bunker seemed to hold his breath as all the readouts fuzzed into snow at the blast interference. No damage! A piece of steel no thicker than my finger, strengthened by radiation casting techniques and impregnated with a sheet of woven diamond fibers, has stopped cold an armor-piercing shell. That same shell would have gone straight through a third of a meter of normal steel.
This in itself is the quote most in contention. Note that despite being a scientist, he is speaking in very broad terms, something that would be expected of someone describing something outside his field. "No damage!" is in itself silly. Even using Painrack's model, the armor itself should have been horrifically cracked. No post-trial tests were done, or at least reported here. He did not confer with any other experts at the trail, and instead seems to be talking from a largely emotional, rather than rational voice.
I watched as Colonel Kincaid used his sensors - my sensor - to pick out the tank hidden behind a group of small trees and bushes
Why is there no mention of the technologies he used to create his sensors? This is odd, but not damning. However, on the most triumphant day of his life, you'd think he'd be babbling on about how he knew X, Y, or Z worked perfectly in his design, or something.
He fired both his PPC and autocannon. Both shots were direct hits and the tank erupted into a ball of flame.
No timescale between the shots is given, no location of where they landed, unlike the very precise mention of where the tank shell hit. This is very strange, especially since canonically a PPC bolt would be much easier for the eye to track than a tank shell.

Also, there are four tanks in the trial. He only mentions the destruction of two, the first and the last. No mention is made of the second and third tanks. When the first tank was destroyed, did the remaining tanks open fire? Did those shots do any damage? Were they manuevering in any way, or were they sitting still and waiting to be destroyed. No mention is made to any of these factors. One would think that the researcher would be very interested in knowing how his sensors reacted to all the various cconditions of the battle, yet none of it is mentioned. Instead, we see grevious overreactions on the parts of the tank crew, who are all piloting remotely, pissing themselves and crying.

Compare this to descriptions of the Manhattan project researchers reacting to the first test firing of an atomic bomb. An example of such a report can be found here
Take in mind that this report wasn't even made by a scientist, but rather, a general who was witnessing the event. See how much more actual, useful information is given concerning the event, rather than vague details with the core of the event left undescribed.

It seems to me that the Mackie Trial can hardly be used as proper scientific evidence, and given the raw lack of data, and evidence of data contradicting current knowledge, it should most likely be excluded from further discussion as revisionist history, fraud, or extremely poor science. This is especially true since there is no laboratory data to consider with the event in question.
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Post by Nephtys »

That sounds like a fun way to import mechs/gears for playing a fun custom game, but doesn't really have much validity in any kind of comparison...
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Post by Hotfoot »

The Dark wrote:Oddly enough, it actually is possible to convert the damage done by BattleTech weapons to Heavy Gear armor penetration. This is done through a game mechanics comparison, taking similar-type weapons (AC/2 and LAC, for example) and comparing their damage capabilities, taking into account that BT has a linear damage progression, while HG is exponential (double damage rating is four times as powerful). It turns out that the Damage Multiplier of a BT weapon is equal to SqRt (33.25(BT damage)+2.75), meaning an AC/20 is a x26 weapon. Armor is a bit harder to calculate, but it is possible to find the effective protection granted through finding the total HP of a 'Mech (armor plus structure) and then dividing through a formula based off tonnage (since a larger size necessarily means thinner armor per ton, although enough extra mass of armor may be carried to offset such thinning). Running through the formula, an Atlas (100 ton assault-class 'Mech) carries slightly more armor than a Sagittarius (24.8 tons fire support strider). A Stinger (20 ton light 'Mech) is roughly equivalent for armor protection to an Iguana (5.1 ton scout Gear). Admittedly, this is all strictly non-canon (as is any direct comparison of different universes), but the conversion isn't that difficult, simply taking a linear system and figuring a baseline to convert to an exponential system.
This is true, and I believe it's the method used in the BTech conversion over at the DP9 forums (plus with Mechs having ablative armor perk as standard, and all that). I'm just trying to come up with a physical, "as-canon-as-possible" description myself, since it is that sort of debate. ;)
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Post by Nephtys »

What follows is a transcript of a verbal report filed by Professor Htov Gbarleman, chief research scientist for Karena's Fiber Optic Interstellar, manufacturer of the BattleMech's sensor system.
The part I have put in bold is telling. This man is a researcher on sensor systems, not an expert on any other aspect of the mech. He is not qualified to comment on ballistics, armor protection, powerplant generation, or, frankly, anything other than the sensor suite he helped design. Using him as a reference for describing anything in fields not his own is highly suspicious.
Whose to say he's totally unqualified? He's monitoring the test, and mechs have damage sensors. It's not like he was specifically mentioned what kind he specializes in.
One of the tanks opened fire. Its shot was true and hit the 'Mech just above the right hip. Everyone in the brightly lit bunker seemed to hold his breath as all the readouts fuzzed into snow at the blast interference. No damage! A piece of steel no thicker than my finger, strengthened by radiation casting techniques and impregnated with a sheet of woven diamond fibers, has stopped cold an armor-piercing shell. That same shell would have gone straight through a third of a meter of normal steel.
This in itself is the quote most in contention. Note that despite being a scientist, he is speaking in very broad terms, something that would be expected of someone describing something outside his field. "No damage!" is in itself silly. Even using Painrack's model, the armor itself should have been horrifically cracked. No post-trial tests were done, or at least reported here. He did not confer with any other experts at the trail, and instead seems to be talking from a largely emotional, rather than rational voice.
Speaking in broad terms? That doesn't indicate lack of knowledge. That indicates he doesn't feel a need to speak like Data, and assumes that the test is being recorded carefully anyway.
I watched as Colonel Kincaid used his sensors - my sensor - to pick out the tank hidden behind a group of small trees and bushes
Why is there no mention of the technologies he used to create his sensors? This is odd, but not damning. However, on the most triumphant day of his life, you'd think he'd be babbling on about how he knew X, Y, or Z worked perfectly in his design, or something.
It works. He doesn't need to explain his own mechanisms to himself or others. The mech was also a secret project, and keeping details hush hush on such accounts was prefered.
Compare this to descriptions of the Manhattan project researchers reacting to the first test firing of an atomic bomb. An example of such a report can be found here
Take in mind that this report wasn't even made by a scientist, but rather, a general who was witnessing the event. See how much more actual, useful information is given concerning the event, rather than vague details with the core of the event left undescribed.
Irrelevant. Whose to say other scientists didn't write long and detailed reports? The guys who built the armor, computer systems and power plant could have been writing shelves of material for all we know.
It seems to me that the Mackie Trial can hardly be used as proper scientific evidence, and given the raw lack of data, and evidence of data contradicting current knowledge, it should most likely be excluded from further discussion as revisionist history, fraud, or extremely poor science. This is especially true since there is no laboratory data to consider with the event in question.
You're equating the account with a fraud because there's some holes? It's not a totally scientific report, no. But it indicates the only comparison between RL-ish stuff and Btech. You don't have enough information to discredit the account, and no, questioning the writer's credentials as 'only a 'sensor' designer' or comparing to extensive RL accounts of stuff doesn't count.
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Post by Hotfoot »

Nephtys wrote:Whose to say he's totally unqualified? He's monitoring the test, and mechs have damage sensors. It's not like he was specifically mentioned what kind he specializes in.
The name of the company is "Karena's Fiber Optic Interstellar". What sort of optics report back damage done to armor? More to the point, he DOES specifically mention which sensors he created, the sensors the pilot used to find the tank.
I watched as Colonel Kincaid used his sensors - my sensor - to pick out the tank hidden behind a group of small trees and bushes.
Clearly, he does sensor research. I don't know if you've had much contact with people in highly specialized fields, but they tend to be very inept when dealing with fields outside their area of expertise. It's not surprising for an optical engineer to be ignorant of ballistics and armor protection. In fact, one would argue that it tends to be expected. He wouldn't know what factors are involved in such things, because it's not his job. Nor does he go into any level of detail to indicate to us that he is knowledgable of such things.
Speaking in broad terms? That doesn't indicate lack of knowledge. That indicates he doesn't feel a need to speak like Data, and assumes that the test is being recorded carefully anyway.
This is recorded from a debriefing, not a press release. One would assume a certain level of detail would be requested. Odd, though, since he doesn't give any details from his specific field. Perhaps evidence of his being floored by the final product of all the research. In any case, the lack of any sort of quantifiable data makes his statements virtually worthless.
It works. He doesn't need to explain his own mechanisms to himself or others. The mech was also a secret project, and keeping details hush hush on such accounts was prefered.
Um, this was a debriefing. Why would they not want his feedback on his part of the test, given that whoever was debriefing them would clearly have the appropriate clearance to the information.
Irrelevant. Whose to say other scientists didn't write long and detailed reports? The guys who built the armor, computer systems and power plant could have been writing shelves of material for all we know.
No, not irrelevant. I'm attempting to show that using this short story as an example of mech firepower, armor strength, and so on is a fallacy because the only recorded information comes from an unreliable source so overcome with emotion as to not look at it objectively. On top of that, given the complete and utter lack of any other information concerning the trial, for all we know, it never actually happened. The only available recounting is an overemotional fluff piece describing grown men crying and wetting themselves over a simulated death.

Meanwhile, I give a real example of how a top-secret project debriefing by a nontechnical officer was given, rife with explicit details, and it's called irrelevant. Come on, that's just not fair. At the very least, using General Grove's description, we can glean some qualitative data concerning the power and strength of the blast.
There were tremendous blast effects. For a brief period there was a lighting effect within a radius of 20 miles equal to several suns in midday; a huge ball of fire was formed which lasted for several seconds. This ball mushroomed and rose to a height of over ten thousand feet before it dimmed. The light from the explosion was seen clearly at Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Silver City, El Paso and other points generally to about 180 miles away. The sound was heard to the same distance in a few instances but generally to about 100 miles. Only a few windows were broken although one was some 125 miles away. A massive cloud was formed which surged and billowed upward with tremendous power, reaching the substratosphere at an elevation of 41,000 feet, 36,000 feet above the ground, in about five minutes, breaking without interruption through a temperature inversion at 17,000 feet which most of the scientists thought would stop it. Two supplementary explosions occurred in the cloud shortly after the main explosion. The cloud contained several thousand tons of dust picked up from the ground and a considerable amount of iron in the gaseous form. Our present thought is that this iron ignited when it mixed with the oxygen in the air to cause these supplementary explosions. Huge concentrations of highly radioactive materials resulted from the fission and were contained in this cloud.
Now, using what was even then known about explosions, we could estimate from that description alone (which was not the end of it) what the total power of the blast was. Nothing of even remotely similar quantitative quality comes from any part of the Mackie Trial, and it was a researcher giving the report!
You're equating the account with a fraud because there's some holes?
Several, actually. He completely misrepresents the RHA penetration power of the Merk's main cannon as 333mm, when we know it's much higher than that. We know for a fact that weapons of similar caliber and lower are commonly used in the "Modern" BTech cannon and are capable of much greater feats of mech destruction than "No Damage!"

Additionally, the focus on exaggerating the emotional aspect of the piece causes it to go from being something that a scientist could take seriously to something more of a fluff piece. Add in the fact that the details of the test are seriously lacking, and one has to wonder, what, if anything, actually happened here?
It's not a totally scientific report, no. But it indicates the only comparison between RL-ish stuff and Btech. You don't have enough information to discredit the account, and no, questioning the writer's credentials as 'only a 'sensor' designer' or comparing to extensive RL accounts of stuff doesn't count.
It's not scientific at all, actually. There is literally no science to work with here. No hard data, no conclusions, the only thing that comes close are rough estimations made by a man completely out of his field. Scoff if you want, but there are many better examples to use than the Mackie trial for determining effective Mech firepower and subsequent armor protection, like destruction/deformation of normal objects. Crater sizes in the dirt/rock left by LRM/SRM/MRM missiles and/or autocannons. How many trees can a laser burn through before stopping? These are simple tests that can be verified by most books when they describe what happens to the terrain during the course of a battle.

The Mackie Trial makes too many assumptions, most of which don't seem to hold up to scrutiny. There is no way of knowing if the tanks stood there and took it, there is no way of knowing if they were accurate replicas, we have no way of knowing if the whole thing was staged to get more grant money (were, for example, the tanks firing blank/dummy shells)? What was the state of the mech under repeated firings? Was the armor at all damaged? Did the mech get pushed back by the shell, and if not, where did the KE go? If modern mech armor is better, why doesn't it similarly shrug off all shells of 120mm on down?
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Post by Stark »

The difference in detail and attitude between Groves' report and the Mackie Test is amazing. Certainly Groves had been briefed, but I don't believe he's a scientist: yet he gives a sequence of extremely detailed, data-packed events for the test, including pre- and post- test analysis and expectiations. As Hotfoot says, using only fragments of his account provides enough *actual data* to estimate the yield of the weapon used and it's effects. The Mackie account has almost no valuable data, some data included is wrong, and much of the test is simply glossed over.

Out-of-universe, it's clearly a bit of mech-wanking. Regardless, it doesn't seem to be particularly reliable, certainly not reliable enough to throw out all conflicting examples.
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Post by PainRack »

Hotfoot wrote:Check yours, you fucking moron. Never mind you claim NOT to be falling for no limits claims, but any time I show where the force of RECOIL is greater than YOUR OWN CALCULATIONS FOR GYRO COMPENSATION, MUCH LESS THE FORCE OF IMPACT, you claim that all I've done is shown how much better mechs are. God you're fucking stupid. First you ask for proof that recoil is greater than the values you put forward, and then you try and use it as further proof of your point, never minding the speed which the force would accelerate the mech in the opposite direction.
Except for one thing.

I asked for the math to show that high velocity autocannons EXCEED the ability of the gyro to COMPENSATE. The very fact that a mech can remain standing after it been hit by a gauss rifle means that it can withstand that kind of recoil.

You're just choosing to take the debate personally, as opposed to arguing the point.
As I said before, even an inelastic collision is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE GREATER in force. We're talking launch the fucking mech into orbit forces here.
So fucking what?
What the hell? Are you fucking RETARDED? NO! Recoil and impact are NOT the same forces. Recoil happens over time and distance far in excess of impact!
So, you're arguing that momentum is not conserved?
Fine. Then pray tell why the fuck are you saying that Mechs can fire a gauss rifle and remain staninding....... b ut the recoil will force them to fall down?
Noise and heat. Yes. These would be created. However, the heat would be enough to fry the mech, ripping/melting off even MORE armor, and despite all of this, the force applied is not diverted by any mechanism in what you have described. You can't simply snap your fingers and turn kinetic energy into heat. It doesn't work like that.
WOW!!!

Guess fucking what? Where has I constantly preached that mech armour don't follow physics in? Yup. This fucking particular example!

Again you dipshit. Override the canonical example of the 50mm autocannon first. Not to mention MGs scattergun example, ignoring the physical calcs and other examples that are teased out through logic.


Are you able to understand something called ORDER OF MAGNITUDE? You can't explain away all the extra energy as waste energy, you little sack of shit.
Then pray tell, if no work is done, what do you call it?
Nope, I'm talking about an actual instance where someone fired his autocannon so many times that it actually warped the barrel. I forget the book, but I'm sure I can find another instance somewhere. Unfortunately, all my books are an hour away, so I can't check. All I can do, really, is show just how pathetically wrong your calculations are.
That will be odd, because we're discussing laser and other energy weapons. Can I say red herring?

The source you're talking about is the Enforcer TR 3025 rev, where the commander orders his troops to fire their weapons until it explodes. His did.
Here's a tip. I know a hell of a lot more physics than you do. Your only strength right now is that you have references from the source material in front of you. That is your only use in this discussion at this point. I suggest you learn that and leave the actual physics to the people who know what the fuck they're talking about, or at least have a fucking clue.
Fine. I'm aware that I returned most of my knowledge back after the A levels.

In that case. Show me why the medium lasers, that can engage in 6km in AT, can't be applied to HG.
Oh, so it's five seconds now, not three? Wonderful.
No. THe entire Solaris duel is 5s. Movement is a complex action, that takes 2-3 s to accomplish.
Listen. Do you understand how we can determine an upper limit? We find events that have canonically knocked mechs down, calculate the forces applied, and use them as an upper fucking limit. Any numbers from that point on that don't agree with that limit are, in fact, in error. THIS IS HOW WE CAN DETERMINE THE FIREPOWER OF THE BATTLETECH WEAPONS.

If a force of X newtons can reliably knock a mech on its ass, and a force of 10X newtons can't, we have to assume that the values that caused us to end up with a result with 10X newtons is, in fact, in error, and scale them down to a more reasonable number.

This is simple observation and logic. It makes no sense at all for a larger force to NOT knock a mech down, while a smaller force can. It is blantantly inconsistant with reality. Get that through your fucking head.
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Now, you're trying to preach upper limits, when you don't understand it?

An upper limit is one where it cannot, possibly, be higher. Explain why the fuck that a mech can still remain standing sometimes, even when hit by energies above your upper limit.

Are you seriously unable to understand that if a mech can remain standing sometimes, the figure you give isn't the upper limit of the gyro compensatory ability?
1. Since the Mech can fire a Gauss Rifle, it can handle any forces below that without any concern whatsoever, using the Gauss Rifle as the upper limit of forces it can handle.
As Mike Wong has said on turbolasers, that's a lower limit.
2. Since a Mech can fire a Gauss Rifle, the Gauss Rifle must be under the limit of forces a mech can safely handle. This limit can be derived by looking at other instances and determining how much force is canonically required to topple a mech.
Good. However, can you show a single example where a force is so great, that mechs MUST fall over?

The only known example are the use of nukes on mechs...... and even then, its still questionable considering the example of the Royal Black Watch and the Court of the Star League.
Conclusion one is violated by instances of lesser amounts of force toppling a mech. Therefore, we can safely discard it, as any additional addendums to it would be making more assumptions than Conclusion two, and thus violate Occam's Razor.
Occam's razor is nice and all, but it requires you to explain all the observations. In this case, you fail one primary clause.

If the figures you give are an upper limit, why on earth can the mech remain standing sometimes when this upper limit was hit?
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Post by PainRack »

Gunhead wrote:On impact the round caused blast interferece, indicating it had some sort of explosive filling. If it was APHE, it is a full calibre round and is low velocity.
If it was HEAT, velocity doesn't matter.
There is nothing in the mackie quote that points towards the round being a SABOT or other solid shot. APHE is still used in BT, and otherwise their projectile tech doesn't really dazzle me.
Sure, HEAP is still used in BT. It may very well be a low velocity round. I'm not going to dispute that.
Which brings me to the bit about the 50mm shells. This can be easily explained by variations in ammunition material. 30mm APDS we use today puts any older 50mm shell to shame. Or it was primarly meant to be an HE round therefore would not work against armor. Weapons in BT are generic, but show a lot of variation in fluff (calibre, ammo load, ROF to name a few.)
Technically, all BT autocannons are either HE or HEAP, depending on the source you use. So, a 50mm HE and 40mm HE isn't going to solve that hook.

HE is another problem for mechs armour altogether, as the payload of the LRMs and even SRMs is absurdly small, even when comparing known damage to structures.

That armor model I made does make sense even if range factors are taken into account. If it's true, it would mean that BT weaponry should have longer ranges, and your theory about engament ranges being shortened by targeting difficulties and the need to attain multiple hits is true.
However, if that is so, why is the Scattergun range still 90m? Despite having a higher velocity?
Even if the gauss is 5.5 mach, it still isn't fast enough when ranges are 6km. This would limit space combat to lasers and PPCs only. Well, against moving targets anyway.
True.
I don't remember the exact quotes, it's been years since I read BT novels.
It really doesn't matter. If gauss is rated at 5.5 machs and has the highest velocity around (it's lesser range to AC/2's comes from the projectile being a ball). It would indicate that AC rounds in general are of lower velocity.
How would you tell whether the range of the AC/2 and the gauss rifle emerges from its aerodynamic profile?

The very fact that it can reach out to 1klick almost demands Mach 3 speeds.

The problems of ballistic speeds and the AT range is a factor, as published data speeds aren't fast enough.
When talking about armor in general. All armor deflects shots if the angle of impact is bad. Here most mechs have a huge disadvantage to vehicles.
They have large vertical surfaces, and most of the time they need to have it facing towards the enemy so they can bring their maximum firepower to bear on the target.
Phoenix Hawk IIC states that the armour is sloped so as to deflect away blast, to reduce stress on the frame. Furthermore, the existence of sloped armour isn't just solely on the PH IIC, the Stalker has it and so do other mechs like the Grizzly.
I'm pretty sure I'm on the money on the armor model I've made. BT armor is about soaking shots rather than deflecting them. (Was in some BT book can't remember which). The most effective way for it to do that due to it's thinnes is to a) shatter the incoming round b) Deform c) Both.

-Gunhead
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Post by PainRack »

Hotfoot wrote: The part I have put in bold is telling. This man is a researcher on sensor systems, not an expert on any other aspect of the mech. He is not qualified to comment on ballistics, armor protection, powerplant generation, or, frankly, anything other than the sensor suite he helped design. Using him as a reference for describing anything in fields not his own is highly suspicious.
And? You're using the very same argument I used to argue that the reason why the RHA penetration is so low, is because the man took figures comparing it to armour and called it steel because of his non-speciality.

The fact is however, he calls it no damage! And his very lack of expertise means that he's echoing what the monitors say.
Why is there no mention of the technologies he used to create his sensors? This is odd, but not damning. However, on the most triumphant day of his life, you'd think he'd be babbling on about how he knew X, Y, or Z worked perfectly in his design, or something.
This is just nitpicking. Its a personal report. Not a scientific paper.
No timescale between the shots is given, no location of where they landed, unlike the very precise mention of where the tank shell hit. This is very strange, especially since canonically a PPC bolt would be much easier for the eye to track than a tank shell.
However, Professor Kincaid was monitoring the monitors for the Mackie, and not the Merkava.
Also, there are four tanks in the trial. He only mentions the destruction of two, the first and the last. No mention is made of the second and third tanks. When the first tank was destroyed, did the remaining tanks open fire? Did those shots do any damage? Were they manuevering in any way, or were they sitting still and waiting to be destroyed. No mention is made to any of these factors. One would think that the researcher would be very interested in knowing how his sensors reacted to all the various cconditions of the battle, yet none of it is mentioned. Instead, we see grevious overreactions on the parts of the tank crew, who are all piloting remotely, pissing themselves and crying.
So, you're taking a personal report to indicate that no useful evidence can be garnered...... why?

Do we have to go to Styx?
It seems to me that the Mackie Trial can hardly be used as proper scientific evidence, and given the raw lack of data, and evidence of data contradicting current knowledge, it should most likely be excluded from further discussion as revisionist history, fraud, or extremely poor science. This is especially true since there is no laboratory data to consider with the event in question.
Who said anything about proper scientific evidence? As for evidence of data contrindicating current knowledge? Like? You mean the AC/20s, which fire multiple 120mm rounds?
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Post by PainRack »

Hotfoot wrote:Gee, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that asking for quantitative data was irritating. Perhaps you'd like to just avoid using quantitative data, maybe go back to using vague generalizations?
because some of the data you ask for is irrelevent?
Melting point of the armor, unfortunately, is something that has to be quantitatively derived from other factors if it is not known or stated.
And why would using steel, a major component of mech armour be inapproiate?

Are you going to claim that because we don't know the exact composition and properties of the asteroids, we can't get a rough figure of firepower by simply subbing in nickel-iron?
What are the buildings constructed of? Was it wood burning, or was it another material with a much higher point of combustion?
Wooden buildings were described as burning, after elementals upped the power on their small lasers.

There are examples of brick and mortar buildings burning down and PPCs slagging....... however, those examples are the effects from a mech combat itself. We can't tell exactly which weapon caused what and how many shots were fired. The Prosperina example where two 65 storey buildings were destroyed during the dracs rampage through the city is a good example. While no aerospace and its unlikely that artillery was involved, its impossible to collate weapon to effect.
What 1s rule are you talking about? Where are you getting the energy values?
The 1s rule is applying the Gauss rifle Mach 2.2 speed(Yellow Jacket TR) and applying it to the range of the weapon. Using simple speed, distance, time equation, you come up with one sec.

As for energy values, the values were done by simply subbing in half a ton of steel and the specific heat of iron.
I have several final questions you're not addressing. Is this about the amount of power it pulls from the reactor, or about the diameter of the apereture? All of what I asked provides useful information which can be used to corroborate the claimed firepower of said laser weaponry. Admittedly, power drain + array length + apereture is highly technical, but it can give us a high end value.
Except why do that, when we have the known effects?
Because they are being used in the same conditions as they are used in BTech. On a planet, in atmosphere. You can't GET larger range out of a laser just by increasing the amount of time the pilot gets to aim it, the universe just doesn't work like that. In space, a laser can retain its lethal energy for a much longer distance than it can in atmosphere, because there's no air to superheat (loss of energy) or cause dispersion (loss of coherance).
Except that in AT, the range is still 6km, when used in atmosphere.
This is what I'm trying to figure out. You see, by coming up with a reasonable firepower level for BTech, I can figure out IF the BTech weapons are somehow superior or inferior. The only way to reasonably do this is to observe the effects of the lasers on materials common between the two settings (wood, cement, human flesh, what have you), not on materials with special properties that interact in special ways. Meanwhile, you seem content to say, "well, since it gets rid of half a ton of BTech armor, it will clearly punch a hole in HG armor". This conclusion is sketchy unless it is somehow supported by some bit of corroborating evidence.
So, despite being able to simply sub in the known melting points of iron or steel, you choose to say that the above figures are "unknown", all because mech armour is able to conduct and radiate heat away? What happened to the concept of lower limit? We can easily get a lower limit on Btech firepower using the large laser as a gauge. It may only apply to energy weapons, but its workable.

I lost the calcs a long time ago, and I know very well that I'm incapable of teasing my way through the works now, especially since I threw away my notes. The figures isn't fantasically high.
It's clear that armor in Heavy Gear is quite capable of standing up to lasers and particle accelerators (the Heavy Particle Accelerator is almost incapable of doing any damage to an Aller Main Battle Tank), the question is, what's the difference in power here. Remember, the power of a laser isn't just putting joules into a target, but rather putting joules into a target focused into a point.
Yet..... you decide to figure out the power of the laser by calculating its output, instead of examing its effects?

Are you aware of how weird that sounds?
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Post by PainRack »

Hotfoot wrote:The name of the company is "Karena's Fiber Optic Interstellar". What sort of optics report back damage done to armor? More to the point, he DOES specifically mention which sensors he created, the sensors the pilot used to find the tank.
Depending on the era........ MWC reports that sensors are used to report damage done to the armour in CBT like Grand Titan battlemechs....... whether this technology was used on the Mackie is unknown.
This is recorded from a debriefing, not a press release. One would assume a certain level of detail would be requested. Odd, though, since he doesn't give any details from his specific field. Perhaps evidence of his being floored by the final product of all the research. In any case, the lack of any sort of quantifiable data makes his statements virtually worthless.
Its part of a transcript, of a VERBAL report. You know, an interview?

While its certainly can be wrong, you need to OVERRIDE it, not say it doesn't work.
Several, actually. He completely misrepresents the RHA penetration power of the Merk's main cannon as 333mm, when we know it's much higher than that. We know for a fact that weapons of similar caliber and lower are commonly used in the "Modern" BTech cannon and are capable of much greater feats of mech destruction than "No Damage!"
Weapons which fire multiple rounds, instead of single shot. That's a gross mistake.
Crater sizes in the dirt/rock left by LRM/SRM/MRM missiles and/or autocannons. How many trees can a laser burn through before stopping? These are simple tests that can be verified by most books when they describe what happens to the terrain during the course of a battle.
So, on one hand, you have large pulse lasers bouncing off roads and on another, you have gauss rifles digging IIRC meter long trenches........

I think i stick with melting half a ton of steel. Of course, there is the LRMs, where a single missile can't destroy a wooden shack.
there is no way of knowing if they were accurate replicas, we have no way of knowing if the whole thing was staged to get more grant money (were, for example, the tanks firing blank/dummy shells)?
Just one nitpick, a dummy round shouldn't have blast interference.
What was the state of the mech under repeated firings? Was the armor at all damaged? Did the mech get pushed back by the shell, and if not, where did the KE go? If modern mech armor is better, why doesn't it similarly shrug off all shells of 120mm on down?
You mean despite the repeatedly assertion that it takes multiple 120mm rounds to damage mech armour?
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Post by Hotfoot »

PainRack wrote:Except for one thing.

I asked for the math to show that high velocity autocannons EXCEED the ability of the gyro to COMPENSATE. The very fact that a mech can remain standing after it been hit by a gauss rifle means that it can withstand that kind of recoil.

You're just choosing to take the debate personally, as opposed to arguing the point.
You offered compensation values. I exceeded them. You respond by saying that clearly this shows that the compensation values are higher. This is called moving the goalposts. We know that there are repeatable events that can and WILL knock a mech over. If those are shown to be lower than the events of recoil or impact, then clearly the recoil and impact values are in error and need to be reworked to a more reasonable number. Unless you're seriously going to claim that a force that could launch a mech into the air wouldn't realistically knock it over.

Also, we KNOW that mechs can be launched into the air, because they consistantly do it themselves thanks to the jumpjets mounted on many mechs, so there's no excuse for saying that some force or another keeps them anchored to the ground.
As I said before, even an inelastic collision is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE GREATER in force. We're talking launch the fucking mech into orbit forces here.
So fucking what?
I'm leaving my original remark intact in this case for posterity. This clearly shows how far gone you are.
So, you're arguing that momentum is not conserved?
Fine. Then pray tell why the fuck are you saying that Mechs can fire a gauss rifle and remain staninding....... b ut the recoil will force them to fall down?
Fucking hell...

Acceleration of a shell occurs through the length of the barrel. We'll say 2 meters for your average mech (they seem to range between 1-3 most commonly, with a few 4-6 meter barrels every so often). Over the course of the barrel, they undergo an average acceleration. This acceleration times the mass equals the force required to accelerate the bullet to the said speed.

In an impact, the acceleration process happens in reverse, over a much shorter distance (I was using one centimeter to give you an extra zero in your favor, but since mech armor is in millimeters and rarely centimeters, well use 0.002 meters (2mm) for the deceleration distance). The amount of force required to accelerate an object moving at a given velocity is much greater in this case, because it is undergoing acceleration over the course of a much shorter distance.

By the way, the test of this very basic principle can be done with a simple egg toss. When you throw the egg, it doesn't break. When it hits a soft surface, it decelerates at a much lower rate, preventing it from breaking. When it hits a hard surface with very little "give", it undergoes very rapid deceleration, and the shell breaks, causing quite a mess.

I can't believe I'm having to explain this to you, as I am not being paid to do so as your tutor. By the way, as far as conservation of momentum is concerned, nothing is violated here. The entire system is contained:
m1v1+m2v2+m3v3+.....mnvn=P (constant). All that's considered in conservation of momentum is relative velocities, not the forces required to accelerate a given object to a given velocity.

As has been stated numerous times before, your physics is wretched, and you need to take a college level mechanics course. One with a lab. One where you have to do work.
WOW!!!

Guess fucking what? Where has I constantly preached that mech armour don't follow physics in? Yup. This fucking particular example!
"Gee, regular physics doesn't like my example, so I'm going to make up bullshit to explain it away, never mind that physics CAN come up with a better model, I'm too lazy to do it myself so here's some more bullshit for you to play with!"
Again you dipshit. Override the canonical example of the 50mm autocannon first. Not to mention MGs scattergun example, ignoring the physical calcs and other examples that are teased out through logic.
It's hit the point where I don't need to override any of your canon values, but rather where you need to show that my physical equations of your values is incorrect. You have repeatedly refused to do that (largely through ignorance of physics). I'm perfectly willing to accept that you've found sources that say one thing, but I'm also perfectly within my rights to say such incredible variation on one part but no variation on the other is inconsistant and that the incredible variation you cite is unrealistic and improbable, and quite possibly an outlier. By the way, I will point out that you did cite 80mm AC/2s.

By the way, no comments on the ballistics equations I worked out, or would you still like to claim that a 20mm cannon, a 50mm cannon, and an 80mm cannon all share similar ballistic properties?


Then pray tell, if no work is done, what do you call it?
So far, I see me as the only one doing any work on these equations. Your own values are full of shit, and the only use you have right now is pulling up bits and pieces of canon that support your position (badly, I should add) and ignoring everything else.
Nope, I'm talking about an actual instance where someone fired his autocannon so many times that it actually warped the barrel. I forget the book, but I'm sure I can find another instance somewhere. Unfortunately, all my books are an hour away, so I can't check. All I can do, really, is show just how pathetically wrong your calculations are.
That will be odd, because we're discussing laser and other energy weapons. Can I say red herring?
Nope. Because YOU specifically brought up badass heat dissipation technology in the armor. If that is the case, the barrel (which is armored) should not have deformed, even after repeated firings, unless the thermal dissipation factor is rather low.

Your ability to see the larger picture is almost as bad as your grasp of science. I'm surprised more threads with you haven't been shoved in the HoS.
The source you're talking about is the Enforcer TR 3025 rev, where the commander orders his troops to fire their weapons until it explodes. His did.
That's one example, thank you, though I was specifically going for one where the barrels deformed, I think it's in a book somewhere, but sadly, the last time I read a BTech book I was still in high school. See, we can work together on this, in fact it's what I've been trying to get across for some time now. Now, if you could just find a few examples of mechs being knocked down, I can move on to the next part.
In that case. Show me why the medium lasers, that can engage in 6km in AT, can't be applied to HG.
AT? Aerotech? Fact that Aircraft tend to have much lower respective armor values in order to stay airborne might have something to do with it. Heck, for all we know they're a specific frequency of light that is designed to be more effiecient in atmosphere, but for some reason costs more. Or you could explain it that as you increase altitude, the atmosphere gets thinner (weaker, but plausible) or that the dust and particulates kicked up by ground units moving (especially mechs) causes additional attenuation of the beam. If you wanted to have increased range lasers to fire at aircraft in HG, that's fine, there are similar conversions for ground-based anti-aircraft guns in HG, both laser and kinetic. However, when used against ground-level targets, face normal ground-based range limitations.
No. THe entire Solaris duel is 5s. Movement is a complex action, that takes 2-3 s to accomplish.
Wait, they actually cut up what you could do in a turn into seconds? Wow, that's a bad abstraction if I ever saw one, especially given that no mech battle I've ever heard of is move, then fire, or fire, then move, but rather moving while firing. :?
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Now, you're trying to preach upper limits, when you don't understand it?

An upper limit is one where it cannot, possibly, be higher. Explain why the fuck that a mech can still remain standing sometimes, even when hit by energies above your upper limit.

Are you seriously unable to understand that if a mech can remain standing sometimes, the figure you give isn't the upper limit of the gyro compensatory ability?
Yes, clearly, I'm the one who doesn't understand upper limits. When force X RELIABLY knocks a mech on to the ground, and force 10X NEVER knocks a mech on to the ground, clearly, this means that forces below 10X (and some above) cannot possible knock a mech on to the ground, and the instances of reliably knocking a mech onto the ground with force X are abberations.

Wow. That's fucking brilliant. :roll:
1. Since the Mech can fire a Gauss Rifle, it can handle any forces below that without any concern whatsoever, using the Gauss Rifle as the upper limit of forces it can handle.
As Mike Wong has said on turbolasers, that's a lower limit.
Great. So why do they reliably fall down when presented with a lower force?
2. Since a Mech can fire a Gauss Rifle, the Gauss Rifle must be under the limit of forces a mech can safely handle. This limit can be derived by looking at other instances and determining how much force is canonically required to topple a mech.
Good. However, can you show a single example where a force is so great, that mechs MUST fall over?
I don't have the sources, and you do. However, it should be noted that the force required to cause a mech to SOMETIMES fall over MUST be GREATER than a force that NEVER causes a mech to fall over.

Never < Sometimes < Always

All I have to do, ALL I have to do, the ONLY thing I have to do, is show a force that SOMETIMES knocks a mech over, without any other major mitigating circumstances (unstable ground/footing, for example). Any greater force would logically knock a mech clearly on its ass, no question. If you can't understand that very simple concept, you sir, are truly beyond salvation.
The only known example are the use of nukes on mechs...... and even then, its still questionable considering the example of the Royal Black Watch and the Court of the Star League.
Nukes would almost certainly annihilate mechs. I don't think that a Mech surviving a nuke is really a viable consideration here.
Occam's razor is nice and all, but it requires you to explain all the observations. In this case, you fail one primary clause.

If the figures you give are an upper limit, why on earth can the mech remain standing sometimes when this upper limit was hit?
Look, the primary thing in contention here is the firepower calculations, right? We know, for a fact, that the designers fudged a lot of numbers when it came to firepower. As a result, we have to try and work from the ground up to get a good idea of what's realistic and what's not. So we take values that aren't in contention, size, mass, and so on, and work from there. We make a few basic assumptions:

-Movement works as is described, with some variance allowed as an aberration of the simulation
-Firing a weapon does not cause noticable instability (with some rare exeptions), and can be done perpendicularly to the direction of movement.
-Only the largest kinetic weapons can cause a mech to stagger and maybe fall due to the force of impact
-Weapons do not overpenetrate armor, collisions must either be elastic or inelastic as a result
-Gyros can provide some addition force, but are not perfect, as mechs do fall. However, without Gyro support, a Mech cannot effectively stand up, and falls to the ground (this is canon).

Given all of these factors, we can calculate given collisions between mechs that have caused toppling, figure out the rough force required, and establish a rough limit. Impacts need to be around this limit in order to be believable, and recoil should be, for the most part, considerably lower.

This method makes the fewest assumptions and works within the canon, only making changes to unrealistic values that would destroy continuity.
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Post by Hotfoot »

PainRack wrote:And? You're using the very same argument I used to argue that the reason why the RHA penetration is so low, is because the man took figures comparing it to armour and called it steel because of his non-speciality.

The fact is however, he calls it no damage! And his very lack of expertise means that he's echoing what the monitors say.
Yes, because the monitors are just flashing "No Damage!" rather than a highly technical readout that he has virtually no idea of what it means, but figures since everything is working okay, everything's great. Or maybe someone else said no damage, and he assumed they knew what they were talking about. It's still incredibly imprecise, and if taken literally, confounds all manner of kinetic combat in the battletech universe.

The idea, by the way, of monitoring how much armor you've got left in a given area, very silly. How do you know, is your armor littered with sensors? That would drastically reduce the effective protection of the armor.
This is just nitpicking. Its a personal report. Not a scientific paper.
Correction: It is a debriefing of a combat run of a military project, in which the lead researchers in the various fields of development were brought along in case something went wrong or to explain what went right. It's not a scientific paper, but even a non-technical person at one of these events wants to know the specific capabilities of this amazing new technology more than he wants to know some poor bastard pissed himself because his video screen said "game over".
However, Professor Kincaid was monitoring the monitors for the Mackie, and not the Merkava.
Still doesn't explain the lack of a timescale between the shots. Were they simultaneous? Did he fire the PPC first, second, or what? Why were there readouts on the Mackie and not the Merkavas. In fact, there were most likely readouts on the Merkavas, given that they were being remotely controlled, and the drone controllers needed to have situational awareness, and having data on the destructive power of the Mech weapons would have been invaluable.
So, you're taking a personal report to indicate that no useful evidence can be garnered...... why?
No, I'm saying that because it was a personal report, and holds no useful evidence, it shouldn't be used by itself to provide firepower/armor protection comparisons, as it is inherantly flawed as a source.
Do we have to go to Styx?
Hey, if you've got better examples, I'm all ears.
Who said anything about proper scientific evidence?
In order to make an informed conclusion about the subject, we have to try and learn as much concrete information as possible. Which means evidence has to be as scientific as possible. Anything less than that which contradicts something we already have can be safely excluded. It's the old Visuals > Dialog. The Mackie trial is essentially nothing but dialog, it's one man's description of what happened, and it is itself not terribly good when it comes to useful information.
As for evidence of data contrindicating current knowledge? Like? You mean the AC/20s, which fire multiple 120mm rounds?
If a single 120mm shell bounces off with "No Damage", multiple 120mm shells should also bounce off with "No Damage". In order for multiple 120mm shells to do the grevious amount of damage we see them doing in the "Modern" system, they have to noticably damage the armor in some way, one at a time. We never see the Mackie in the trial shot with more than one, but clearly combat was much longer than was talked about by the researcher. We never see the after action report, or the maintainence logs, or the stuctural analysis of the armor. Additionally, we never get the proper specifications of the Merkavas, how they were used, or even if they were actually firing live rounds. For all we know, they were on the verge of making a functional Battlemech, but the higher-ups wanted a demonstation and wanted it NOW, or they were going to cut funding and scrap the project, so the team set up an easy win scenario for the Mackie, and rigged it in their favor. With continued support, they finally got the Mackie fully operational, and went live with the entire program.

Of course, there could be a lot more data to it, and potentially some of it could be useful, but in the end we just don't know, because we're never told. The Mackie Trial is a horrible example to pull evidence from, and that is what I have been trying to show.
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Post by Hotfoot »

PainRack wrote:Depending on the era........ MWC reports that sensors are used to report damage done to the armour in CBT like Grand Titan battlemechs....... whether this technology was used on the Mackie is unknown.
It's a stretch to apply it to the Mackie. The guy specifically said he made the sensors capable of finding a tank, not of giving a damage readout. Given that he has no idea what happened to the tank, it's pretty safe to say the Mackie didn't have it.
Its part of a transcript, of a VERBAL report. You know, an interview?

While its certainly can be wrong, you need to OVERRIDE it, not say it doesn't work.
Fine. We know that he's wrong on one aspect of his equation, thus, the entire equation fails, since the proposed result fails.
Weapons which fire multiple rounds, instead of single shot. That's a gross mistake.
As has been noted multiple times, weapons in Battletech exist which tear off tons of armor with a single shot. It would also be rather silly to assume that the damage done by an AC is done entirely by the last shell in a salvo, with the other nine shots just softening up the armor. Instead, it seems much more plausible to assume that each part of the salvo rips off a part of the armor as it goes. Thus, even a single shell from an AC should take down some of the armor.

This mechanic, by the way, was shown by your own example of a single shard from an LBX blast tearing apart armor in the head of a mech.
So, on one hand, you have large pulse lasers bouncing off roads and on another, you have gauss rifles digging IIRC meter long trenches........
Um, I suggested showing craters of impact and explosive weapons, and the total energy distribution power of the lasers. But thanks for the strawman. I've got a nice collection now.
I think i stick with melting half a ton of steel. Of course, there is the LRMs, where a single missile can't destroy a wooden shack.
Gives us a nice lower limit for explosive force then, thanks. But unfortunately, your melting half a ton of steel doesn't apply. You can't assume the thermal properties of the armor are equal to steel when you don't assume the protective qualities are as well. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Materials science shows us that creating new compounds, alloys, and the like, drastically change the properties of a metal.

I mean, you could stick to it, but it would be very unscientific of you.
Just one nitpick, a dummy round shouldn't have blast interference.
Might not, but if they were planning a bogus showing, they probably would have gone all out on the deception. Include enough of a "blast" to look authentic, supply fake "interference", and so on. Just sayin'.

[quoteYou mean despite the repeatedly assertion that it takes multiple 120mm rounds to damage mech armour?[/quote]Clearly each shot does damage, otherwise the model falls apart. However, we never get to see the mech under continuous fire, so we can't tell what the threshold is for noticable damage, or if the report is bogus, or what.
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Post by Hotfoot »

PainRack wrote:because some of the data you ask for is irrelevent?
Such as? Oh this will be a good list.
And why would using steel, a major component of mech armour be inapproiate?
Because mech armor isn't steel, it's some strange, specially treated alloy. Its thermal properties clearly change, as you've noted yourself, from normal steel. Otherwise, we could use RHA penetration easily for mechs, as they'd be using, well, steel as armor. Because the nature of the steel has been drastically changed, we can't assume that any of the original properties remain the same.
Are you going to claim that because we don't know the exact composition and properties of the asteroids, we can't get a rough figure of firepower by simply subbing in nickel-iron?
Asteroids are commonely made up of a simple nickel-iron or silicate composite. Not specially treated diamond-laced steel that has tremendous other properties and is the result of future materials science.
Wooden buildings were described as burning, after elementals upped the power on their small lasers.
Okay, that gives us a lower limit...a very lower limit, but hey.
There are examples of brick and mortar buildings burning down and PPCs slagging....... however, those examples are the effects from a mech combat itself. We can't tell exactly which weapon caused what and how many shots were fired. The Prosperina example where two 65 storey buildings were destroyed during the dracs rampage through the city is a good example. While no aerospace and its unlikely that artillery was involved, its impossible to collate weapon to effect.
Okay, well, this gives us an absolute upper limit, if we allow for one shot causing critical structural failure in brick and mortar buildings. The truth usually lies in the middle ground anyway.
The 1s rule is applying the Gauss rifle Mach 2.2 speed(Yellow Jacket TR) and applying it to the range of the weapon. Using simple speed, distance, time equation, you come up with one sec.
Uh, so you're saying that the weapon itself will travel from firer to target at max range? I'm a little confused.
As for energy values, the values were done by simply subbing in half a ton of steel and the specific heat of iron.
Unfortunately, while convenient, that isn't exactly going to be accurate. The specific heat of iron, steel, and various steel alloys/variations are all different values. I'm not an expert on materials science, but I do know that when you make a new alloy, it tends to have different physical properties as a result.
I have several final questions you're not addressing. Is this about the amount of power it pulls from the reactor, or about the diameter of the apereture? All of what I asked provides useful information which can be used to corroborate the claimed firepower of said laser weaponry. Admittedly, power drain + array length + apereture is highly technical, but it can give us a high end value.
Except why do that, when we have the known effects?
If the known effects are in question for any reason, they give us additional corroboration in order to locate the more realistic values.
Except that in AT, the range is still 6km, when used in atmosphere.
As mentioned in a previous post, this can be explained several ways. In addition, we could simply rule it out as game mechanics/balance, if there are no canon examples.

However, I would like to know the specifics of what you're talking about. We talking about Air to Air? Air to Ground? Ground to Air? Or what?
So, despite being able to simply sub in the known melting points of iron or steel, you choose to say that the above figures are "unknown", all because mech armour is able to conduct and radiate heat away? What happened to the concept of lower limit? We can easily get a lower limit on Btech firepower using the large laser as a gauge. It may only apply to energy weapons, but its workable.
As explained above, using base iron or steel as a starting point is unrealistic, since we don't use that measure for any other calculation. Just because something is made up of steel, doesn't mean any particular part of it acts exactly like steel. For all we know, the process of hard radiation and diamond interweaving increased the conductivity of heat (as your model describes) but in fact lowers the melting point.
Yet..... you decide to figure out the power of the laser by calculating its output, instead of examing its effects?

Are you aware of how weird that sounds?
I've suggested we do both, actually. Much more accurate that way.
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The Dark
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Post by The Dark »

PainRack wrote:Wooden buildings were described as burning, after elementals upped the power on their small lasers.
Wait...they had to up the power on their lasers to get a wooden building to burn?

Assumption:
A wood building is made of seasoned wood (since greenwood is damn hard to assemble, and is inferior to drywood for construction purposes. Besides, it rots)

The temperature for spontaneous combustion of wood via radiated energy is roughly 600 degrees Celsius. Assuming a standard temperature of 20 degrees prior to the firing, this means they had to up their power to heat wood by 580 degrees C. By logical reasoning, the fact that they had to specifically increase output means their standard laser shot is incapable of heating wood by 580 degrees. Admittedly, we don't know the mass of the wood, but for sake of argument 100 kilograms (0.1 tonnes) is a nice round number, and sufficient for starting a rather large blaze. The specific heat of wood is ~0.327 (Forest Service Bulletin No. 110). For sake of establishing an upper limit, I'll be kind and use 0.4, since the wood may be slightly damp. Now then:
Q=cm*deltaT
deltaT=580
m=100,000
c=0.4
This gives an upper limit of 23.2 megajoules for a Clan Small Laser, or the equivalent of 0.0000055 kilotons of TNT.

Of course, you could argue that that's not nearly enough wood. After all, it's possible the entire structure burst into flames simultaneously. Very well, I'll grant you a ten-tonne structure, just because I'm feeling generous. The same equation holds, but m is increased by a factor of 100 to 10,000,000. It (duh!) increases output to 2320 megajoules, or .0005545 kilotons TNT equivalent. Pardon me if I'm less than overwhelmed by laser output
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Post by The Dark »

Damn lack of edit button.....

It should be noted that the above equations assume a single shot causing the blaze. If it took multiple shots, then the Small Laser is proportionately less powerful.
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Post by Nephtys »

AT? Aerotech? Fact that Aircraft tend to have much lower respective armor values in order to stay airborne might have something to do with it. Heck, for all we know they're a specific frequency of light that is designed to be more effiecient in atmosphere, but for some reason costs more. Or you could explain it that as you increase altitude, the atmosphere gets thinner (weaker, but plausible) or that the dust and particulates kicked up by ground units moving (especially mechs) causes additional attenuation of the beam. If you wanted to have increased range lasers to fire at aircraft in HG, that's fine, there are similar conversions for ground-based anti-aircraft guns in HG, both laser and kinetic. However, when used against ground-level targets, face normal ground-based range limitations.
Dead wrong. Battletech Aerospace fighters have powerful engines and weigh as much as mechs. Their armor is just as bulky, and their weapons are physically interchangable between mech weaponry, given enough time to fit the mountings properly.

Also, atmospheric effects on lasers certainly won't give higher altitude weapons /ten/ times their range at ground level. That seems damned far fetched to me, and AT game ranges start only a few hundred meters off the ground IIRC.
This mechanic, by the way, was shown by your own example of a single shard from an LBX blast tearing apart armor in the head of a mech.
Game mechanics for the most part, the only book example of LBX doing damage is when a submunition hits a vulnerable part. The mech equivilent of the turret ring. LBX rounds really wouldn't be ripping up armor.
Nukes would almost certainly annihilate mechs. I don't think that a Mech surviving a nuke is really a viable consideration here.
The battletech-scale Alamo nuclear artillery certainly destroys mechs. In droves. Unofficial(?) rules are something like 100 Hex diameter, game terms, I think take damage. Of course, it's a strategic orbital bombardment warhead...
Depending on the era........ MWC reports that sensors are used to report damage done to the armour in CBT like Grand Titan battlemechs....... whether this technology was used on the Mackie is unknown.
Not beyond reason. Grand Titan was a contemporary of the Mackie.
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Post by LordShaithis »

In the novel Ideal War, guerilla forces use what are explicity stated to be sixties-era Davey Crockett mini-nukes to take out lances of heavy 'Mechs.
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Post by Xon »

For the space battles, Battletech is going to get owned hard. A multi-kiloton/megaton nuke will completely destroy a spaceship. And ftl ships in battletech are relatively rare & valuable

Given Heavy Gear's space fleets chuck lots of nukes around, this is not a good sign for the battletech space forces.
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Post by Hotfoot »

Nephtys wrote:Dead wrong. Battletech Aerospace fighters have powerful engines and weigh as much as mechs. Their armor is just as bulky, and their weapons are physically interchangable between mech weaponry, given enough time to fit the mountings properly.

Also, atmospheric effects on lasers certainly won't give higher altitude weapons /ten/ times their range at ground level. That seems damned far fetched to me, and AT game ranges start only a few hundred meters off the ground IIRC.
My knowledge of the Aerospace mechanic is certainly limited, though I have to question the mechanic involved here to describe aerospace forces. It could simply be reasonable to assume that due to mass restrictions, the scale changed, but the notations did not.

At what altitudes is the aerospace model assuming combat is taking place? I remember someone mentioning that once they attempt to attack mechs, their range once again decreases to ground scale.
Game mechanics for the most part, the only book example of LBX doing damage is when a submunition hits a vulnerable part. The mech equivilent of the turret ring. LBX rounds really wouldn't be ripping up armor.
I do believe his example was an LBX submunition hitting the cockpit (a fairly reinforced area for what it is) and bouncing around inside killing the pilot or something like that, but I don't recall it exactly. In any case, it still seems as though individual shells/munitions do damage to the armor, as opposed to weakening and then destroying. In fact, a gradual shearing of the armor with each shot is what one might expect with the "layers of the onion" approach to mech armor.
The battletech-scale Alamo nuclear artillery certainly destroys mechs. In droves. Unofficial(?) rules are something like 100 Hex diameter, game terms, I think take damage. Of course, it's a strategic orbital bombardment warhead...
Fair enough. Still, this gives us certain knowledge that nukes can and will annihilate mechs. Next step is just finding out what the smallest yield is that will destroy them (giving us an absolute upper limit to the heat/explosion capabilities of the armor).
Not beyond reason. Grand Titan was a contemporary of the Mackie.
Still, doesn't seem likely given that the trial was a prototype, and the general lack of information. Maybe in full production models, however.
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Post by Hotfoot »

LordShaithis wrote:In the novel Ideal War, guerilla forces use what are explicity stated to be sixties-era Davey Crockett mini-nukes to take out lances of heavy 'Mechs.
Any idea on what the yield on those are?
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Post by Nephtys »

LordShaithis wrote:In the novel Ideal War, guerilla forces use what are explicity stated to be sixties-era Davey Crockett mini-nukes to take out lances of heavy 'Mechs.
A crocket is 2KT. That's plenty to take out a lot of things, you know.
For the space battles, Battletech is going to get owned hard. A multi-kiloton/megaton nuke will completely destroy a spaceship. And ftl ships in battletech are relatively rare & valuable

Given Heavy Gear's space fleets chuck lots of nukes around, this is not a good sign for the battletech space forces
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Nuke-spamming during the first and second succession wars did do that, in fact. That's why WarShips were extinct outside of the clans until 3056.
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Post by Hotfoot »

I don't have any of my books with me, sadly, HG or BT. I'll be attempting to remedy that when it's convenient for me to do so, but until then, I'm working largely from memory. Fortunately Marcao has many books I can use to reference in the near future.

Concerning Heavy Gear:

There are several planets in the setting, only perhaps a half dozen or so of which have significant military force of which we are aware right now. Earth, which controls all of Sol, currently seems to have one of the largest militaries available for some reason. Their troops are largely made up of artificially created humanoids called GRELS, with new SLEDGE humanoids having been created recently as an "upgrade". Humans, by the way, still being officers.

Due to the peculiarities of FTL travel in Heavy Gear, mass and volume must be optimized when travelling through a Tannhauser gate, as more mass and volume = more energy required to keep the gate open. As such, the Coloniel Expeditionary Force (CEF) opts for lighter, faster vehicles and energy weapons. I think they have roughly twelve fleets or so, but that's just an estimate. One fleet was defeated by Terra Nova in the War of the Alliance. Another fleet was lost in New Jerusalem due to a massive mutiny caused by unknown forces. New Jerusalem is of entirely unknown strength as of this time. Utopia favors heavy drones and automation, and apparently has phenomenally efficent plasma engines. Caprice is less militarily inclined, though they do have some native forces. Largely, though, they have been conquered by CEF and are being used as a forward command base for the CEF expansions to the other colonies, as they are the gate hub in the HG universe. Currently there is a covert battle between CEF occupying forces and a native resistance, funded and aided by a covert Terra Novan military force known as the Black Talons. Atlantis has an unknown space force, but large amounts of submarines and the like, plus standard naval forces. They have since been given Gear Technology by advance Terra Novan Black Talon teams.

I honestly don't remember the rest, but that's the knowledge of the system around TN 1948 or so. War of the Alliance was roughly 1915, Interpolar War was 1934-ish. Knowledge of Earth itself is somewhat limited.
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