Battletech Story Brainstorming

[S'task]

And so many weapons have such shit range that we could pummel the fuck out of any BT force from far beyond their engagement ranges.

I've pointed this out before: but per the current rules, any weapon with at least a range of 8 actually has a range of "to the horizon", targeting just gets harder and you have some damage dropoff.

So no, per the rules Earth DOESN'T have a range advantage.

Also, my understanding is that Machine Guns in BattleTech are CASELESS, which explains both why they're lighter than modern machine gun rounds and why they hit harder, they have more propellant and potentially a larger projectile. Further, just because they have a similar caliber doesn't mean that the rounds are the same or do the same damage. I mean, in real life we have at leas two different .30 rifle rounds: the .30-30 Winchester and the .30-06 Springfield. Both are .30 caliber, but they do CONSIDERABLY different damage. So just because BattleTech specifies that something is 127mm DOESN'T inherently mean we can assume it's the same round as a 127x108, likewise if it says something is a .50 Caliber that doesn't necessarily mean it's a .50 BMG, it is as likely to be a .50 FIR or something else in universe.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

I've pointed this out before: but per the current rules, any weapon with at least a range of 8 actually has a range of "to the horizon", targeting just gets harder and you have some damage dropoff.

So no, per the rules Earth DOESN'T have a range advantage.

/shrug

Aiight.

But then, per the rules we can already build Clantech Machine Guns. And the ammunition needed to do 2 damage.

Also, my understanding is that Machine Guns in BattleTech are CASELESS, which explains both why they're lighter than modern machine gun rounds and why they hit harder, they have more propellant and potentially a larger projectile.

I don't know why you all capped CASELESS. But yeah that would explain why the ammunition is so light.

So just because BattleTech specifies that something is 127mm DOESN'T inherently mean we can assume it's the same round as a 127x108, likewise if it says something is a .50 Caliber that doesn't necessarily mean it's a .50 BMG, it is as likely to be a .50 FIR or something else in universe.

Okay so.

Almost nothing you said here actually matters. Or has already been covered.

According to Bear Ribs, the 1945 XTRO lists the .50 cal Machine Gun and it does 0.94 damage to BAR 10. That's basic .50 BMG, because that's what a M2 fires in 1945. And it'd be all kinetic damage. But also according to Bear Ribs, explosive is where it's at to deal actual damage to BAR 10.

That means with an explosive round created in 1981, .50 BMG (12.7x99 btw) Mk 211 Mod 0 we are likely to see a M2 exceed at least 1 damage. Since they only need .06 to make it to 1 damage.

Unless, of course, Bear Ribs is wrong about explosives being where it's at. Because I find it incredibly hard to believe an explosive round that according to what I dug up does damage like a 20mm round does less damage against an armor it's stronger against.

All of this means that we have a very direct comparison from the .50 BMG (Which does at least .94 damage) and the Russian 12.7x108 (Which as a very direct competitor to .50 BMG would have to be in the same ballpark) to the M100's 12.5mm (And a lot more actually, but this is the closest in size I think) apparently CASELESS (Does 2 damage) round.

If .50 FIR is a real thing, then we have just another point going from .50 BMG to BT Machine Guns for comparison. It just adds more evidence to the comparison but doesn't actually change anything.

We can build Clantech Machine Guns and their ammo, a weapon designed in 1933 can use ammo invented in 1981 to deal real damage to armor invented some 500 or so years later (couldn't find when BAR 10 rolled off the line), weapons with a range of 8 hexes or more can shoot to the horizon, and Modern Earth would actually be able to do serious damage to the ground force (Mechs, Tanks, Infantry, Battle Armor, non flyhing AFVs and IFVs) of an invading or raiding BT force without artillery, bombs, or nukes.

And the PPC is either dealing waaaaaaay too much energy, or, more likely, FASA cannot into math and physics and weapon technology. Edit: Which means none of this fucking matters and you can write whatever kind of wank you want. But the evidence that has been presented by the rules, XTRO's, etc or gathered by me on IRL stuff suggests that Modern Earth would bloody and inflict casualties on a BT force but loose once that force got large enough.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Yes. After the early 90s. It does change rapidly.

Timeline on Sarna

Relevant bit:
'The earliest events distinct to the BattleTech universe occur after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The United States, Europe and Japan announced in 1994 their intention to jointly construct an orbiting industrial facility named Crippen Station, which was successfully launched eleven years later. A 1997 coup d'état by hardline communists restored a militant, Soviet-style government in Russia and sparked a "Second Cold War" with NATO that lasted until the start of peaceful reforms under premier Oleg Tikonov in 2005. The republic crumbled in 2011, igniting a civil war that drew in NATO and saw the successful use of the Western Orbital Defense Network (WODeN), successor to the earlier Strategic Defense Initiative, to intercept a preemptive Russian missile attack against western targets. The war ended with a Western Alliance victory in 2014.'

The Cold War ended in December 1991. USSR collapsed, war was over. No major changes in the twentieth century until then.

This means that we had the same techbase until the end of the century. A lot happened in only eight years.

Yeah, that's somebody on Sarna playing silly buggers with the timeline because they noticed it didn't match history but didn't realize it's an AU. The Soviet Union didn't collapse in the BT timeline.

At the beginning of the 21st century, life on Terra had not changed much from what it had been at the close of the 20th century. Despite attempts at reconciliation in the 1990s, the planet's two giant superpowers still opposed one another, but now their tangled web of weaponry stretched outward into space. Over the next 100 years, however, the situation changed dramatically. By the end of the 21st century, the people of Terra stood poised in apparent unity on the brink of their first expansion into the stars.
Politically, humanity's new age began in 2011 when the bloody Second Soviet Civil War tore that nation permanently asunder. As the Soviet strife threatened to bring the rest of the planet to the brink of nuclear war, a joint force of North American and Western European troops intervened to end hostilities in 2014. -Mechwarrior 2nd Edition, page 106

So in 2011 the Soviet Union was still around, and both it and NATO had already colonized space and heavily armed it before 1990.

So, what I got out of that was explosive rounds at .6kg over 10s will likely exceed 1 damage but end up rounded down to 1. Since .94 is with non-explosive ammunition, and being explosive is key in dealing damage to BT armor.

The conversion rules for weapons to BattleMech scale damage are on page 211 of A Time of War. They are, however, exceedingly obtuse even by the standards of BattleTech.

The key to doing damage with infantry-scale weapons is more hitting it many, many times in the exact same spot in a space of milliseconds. The standard generic autorifle in the Warrior's Catalogue has a low damage of only 4B/4B, but a burst fire rate of 15 which translates to it doing 0.52 'mech scale damage, while the elephant gun, despite doing far more damage per shot, is incapable of burst fire and does an anemic 0.11. The bolt-action rifle can't burst but still can fire faster than the elephant gun and winds up doing 0.14. The TK Assault rifle has the same base damage as the autorifle but only fires 10-round bursts and winds up doing 0.44 on 'mech scale. Meanwhile, the clan Bearhunter Autocannon can do burst 90 with a base of only about twice an Autorifle (9B/8B) and hits for a full 3 'mech scale damage via throwing down 180 rounds per turn. This is, incidentally, 18kg of bullets.

Note also that the generic autorifle is tech level C if we still want to quibble about that.

And that means for 500kg I can probably do 2-4 damage with 1.2-2.4kg of ammo a round if I strap 2-4 M2s together. 500kg is at least one, if not 2 Oerlikon 20mm autocanno- sorry machine gun, at ~92kg a pop, plus all the bits and bobs you need it to be properly automated and ruggedized.

Actually, with 80kg of M2 (that's two), pretty sure I could build a rugged, military grade, quarter ton gun mount using 80s level machine shops and materials for a hardpoint given that HMMWV's have turrets that with a M2 mounted are only like 150 kg if my napkin math is right (The turret is ~200 pounds). It's not like it has to go 360 degrees, or be armored, like the HMMWV's turret. Need a semi decent cone for aiming, the gun end of the automated ammo feed (pretty sure that exists already so I don't have to try very hard), and maybe set something up to clear jams. That last one might take some thinking.

And I'm not very skilled at that kind of work. But that's clan tech weight and damage on a tech level of B, just not ammo efficiency.

Most of the weight has to be in the controls and ruggedization packages. Armor is counted on the mech. So any armoring should not be weighed against the machine gun... pod.

It's worth noting that all BT 'mech scale machine guns require a power source in order to fire, per TechManual page 228. This suggests that even the lightest machine gun requires significant power beyond just recoil for aim and possibly to cycle it much faster than mere gas pressure can manage. This jives with their huge weight which exceeds what should be reasonable, and also with the fact that rate-of-fire is so vitally important to raising an infantry weapon up to the threshold where it can damage a 'mech.

And naw, I'm not being too rigid about tech levels, FASA just had no fucking clue what they were doing with techlevels because they're all over the fucking place. Like most of their stuff. Their timeline is all kinds of fucking weird, for instance. How old was McKenna again when he did his thing? Like 19? 22?

Hmm? McKenna was born in 2274 and founded the Hegemony in 2314, at age 40. Unless you mean making the rank of Admiral, he did manage that at 21.

It is, however, canon. And using canon to avoid Loki's Wager is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, if I was being too rigid about tech levels, you are being way too rigid about what makes a machine gun do 2 damage. Like it weight exactly 500kg. And using exactly .5kg of munitions over ten seconds.

How rigid are we supposed to hold to the rules? Because mechs have a nigh impossible density. And so many weapons have such shit range that we could pummel the fuck out of any BT force from far beyond their engagement ranges.

Pretty dependent on what you want. Per their canon policy, hard rules trump text and that's what I've been using here. Per the lore in the books, infantry weapons actually can't damage a 'mech and things like machine guns that are man-portable are useless against them. It's actually a plot point in the second Gray Death Legion story that Grayson pioneers a technique using satchel charges to destroy a 'mech's knee joint, and everybody is amazed because it's common knowledge that no infantry-portable weapon can actually harm a 'mech. Grayson figuring out a way for infantry to even do scratch damage to a 'mech is considered so game-changing he's called the father of 31st century warfare.

So yeah, you have to be attached to those rules at the hip, because the second you step away from the concrete game rules the machine guns don't scratch 'mechs, the Merkava can't scratch a 'mech, and per the devs on the official forums, even an Abrams' main gun is incapable of doing any damage whatsoever to a 'mech.

/shrug

Aiight.

But then, per the rules we can already build Clantech Machine Guns. And the ammunition needed to do 2 damage.

No, we can't build Clantech machine guns. Note that, as above, Tech Level B includes building at least orbital weapons platforms and most likely having a viable space navy. Earth in our timeline today is far behind where BT is in 1990 when it comes to weapons and we can't build a lot of their Tech Level B stuff as a result.

Unless, of course, Bear Ribs is wrong

This requires far more suspension of disbelief than FASAnomics.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

NATO had already colonized space and heavily armed it before 1990.

That's not what it says. Not what you typed. It says they attempted to reconcile in 1990 but given surrounding context that weaponization of space happened after that.

At the beginning of the 21st century, life on Terra had not changed much from what it had been at the close of the 20th century. Despite attempts at reconciliation in the 1990s, the planet's two giant superpowers still opposed one another, but now their tangled web of weaponry stretched outward into space.

In a reply box for ease of reading.

My read is that in the 21st century their tangled web of weaponry extended out into space.

Since that would be 'now' with the context of the first sentence giving us the time frame reference of the 21st century. It mentions the attempts at reconcilliation in the 1990s and that the overall situation hadn't actually changed very much, 'but now their tangled web of weaponry stretched outward into space.'

Do you have more stuff locking down when shit in space happened?

'Cause I'm just not reading it the way you seem to be. Position needs more support.

They are, however, exceedingly obtuse even by the standards of BattleTech.

I'm so glad these rules and rulings are not only obtuse but inconsistent with other shit they've done.

Cause:

It's worth noting that all BT 'mech scale machine guns require a power source in order to fire, per TechManual page 228.

Doesn't jive with the unpowered M2 (which pretty much all of them would be in 1945, can't think of one that wouldn't be) being able to .94 damage.

No one has that tight a grouping outside a bench test. Moving at all on either side basically makes it impossible.

Unless you mean making the rank of Admiral, he did manage that at 21.

Completely unreasonable achievement unless he bought that commission, which I'm pretty sure you couldn't do in most buying commission systems I'm aware of. >.<

Can't buy admiral that quickly.

So yeah, you have to be attached to those rules at the hip, because the second you step away from the concrete game rules the machine guns don't scratch 'mechs, the Merkava can't scratch a 'mech, and per the devs on the official forums, even an Abrams' main gun is incapable of doing any damage whatsoever to a 'mech.

Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever.

That would also mean that machine guns don't scratch tanks or IFVs making infantry basically fucking useless the instant anyone rolls up with something in any level of BAR armor.

Infantry might as well not exist anywhere except inside a building after BAR. No field guns, no unpowered weapons, no crew serve weapons. Everyone basically has to be in a vehicle at that point, just to fire a machine gun. No point in having one unmounted.

Just lay down and die at that point.

And it doesn't make Grayson into anything other than a tactical normie while literally everyone else was holding the idiot ball, because there's also no way that no one in 500 years didn't figure out how to throw sticky satchels on weak points from an ambush. We were doing that in World War ONE, and in 2439 they must have had far better explosives.

No, we can't build Clantech machine guns. Note that, as above, Tech Level B includes building at least orbital weapons platforms and most likely having a viable space navy. Earth in our timeline today is far behind where BT is in 1990 when it comes to weapons and we can't build a lot of their Tech Level B stuff as a result.

You have not supported this position well enough. The text you quoted does not read like there was significantly more space infrastructure and incredibly improved technology in 1990 in BT than IRL.

Edit: I'm done with the debate part of this. I jumped in because I agreed with someone, but they've since fucking ghosted me in this, and I'm dealing with like one and two thirds people on the other side of this conversation. I have no support, even after moving to support someone else. Big feels bad man vibes for me. All it's making do is scream into the aether at how fucking stupid and inconsistent FASA and CGL are.

I'd still like to see you better support the point that BT was incredibly far ahead in the 1990s, though. So I'd appreciate that.

 

[Bear Ribs]

That's not what it says. Not what you typed. It says they attempted to reconcile in 1990 but given surrounding context that weaponization of space happened after that.



In a reply box for ease of reading.

My read is that in the 21st century their tangled web of weaponry extended out into space.

Since that would be 'now' with the context of the first sentence giving us the time frame reference of the 21st century. It mentions the attempts at reconcilliation in the 1990s and that the overall situation hadn't actually changed very much, 'but now their tangled web of weaponry stretched outward into space.'

Do you have more stuff locking down when shit in space happened?

'Cause I'm just not reading it the way you seem to be. Position needs more support.



I'm so glad these rules and rulings are not only obtuse but inconsistent with other shit they've done.

Cause:



Doesn't jive with the unpowered M2 (which pretty much all of them would be in 1945, can't think of one that wouldn't be) being able to .94 damage.

No one has that tight a grouping outside a bench test. Moving at all on either side basically makes it impossible.



Completely unreasonable achievement unless he bought that commission, which I'm pretty sure you couldn't do in most buying commission systems I'm aware of. >.<

Can't buy admiral that quickly.



Doesn't make sense to me, but whatever.

That would also mean that machine guns don't scratch tanks or IFVs making infantry basically fucking useless the instant anyone rolls up with something in any level of BAR armor.

Infantry might as well not exist anywhere except inside a building after BAR. No field guns, no unpowered weapons, no crew serve weapons. Everyone basically has to be in a vehicle at that point, just to fire a machine gun. No point in having one unmounted.

Just lay down and die at that point.

And it doesn't make Grayson into anything other than a tactical normie while literally everyone else was holding the idiot ball, because there's also no way that no one in 500 years didn't figure out how to throw sticky satchels on weak points from an ambush. We were doing that in World War ONE, and in 2439 they must have had far better explosives.



You have not supported this position well enough. The text you quoted does not read like there was significantly more space infrastructure and incredibly improved technology in 1990 in BT than IRL.

Edit: I'm done with the debate part of this. I jumped in because I agreed with someone, but they've since fucking ghosted me in this, and I'm dealing with like one and two thirds people on the other side of this conversation. I have no support, even after moving to support someone else. Big feels bad man vibes for me. I feel like I'm losing, regardless of whether I am or not, and all it's making do is scream into the aether at how fucking stupid and inconsistent FASA and CGL are.

I'd still like to see you better support the point that BT was incredibly far ahead in the 1990s, though. So I'd appreciate that.

Hmm, well I don't want you to feel bad, I'm enjoying the debate myself but I also don't want to henpeck so consider everything except the specific point you asked about dropped.

I feel the words I quoted support my position better than yours as far as space in the 90s. Let me lay them out in what I feel is a logical pattern to support that.

Despite attempts at reconciliation in the 1990s, the planet's two giant superpowers still opposed one another, but now their tangled web of weaponry stretched outward into space.

The Soviet Union and the United States still oppose each other and their weaponry is now in space.

Politically, humanity's new age began in 2011 when the bloody Second Soviet Civil War tore that nation permanently asunder.

The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 2011. So logically, the Soviet Union could not have been putting weapons into space after 2011. This indicates the "Web" was up well before that. Notably by 2014 they had a one-world government, the Western Alliance that controlled the entire planet so it's doubly impossible that the USSR was throwing up space weapons by then.

One could make an argument that the entire "tangled web" went up somehow in a very brief span, like 2005-2011 or such, but that's a hideously short timeframe for a setting with build times as long as BattleTech, and not supported in canon as I'll show.

As additional lines of proof I'll note that Ronald Reagan's Star Wars system succeeded in the BT timeline. We know he built the Excalibur laser-defense satellites in 1985:

Excalibur (Satellite)

Excalibur (Satellite)

www.sarna.net

And in 1988, the US had working space fighters in the form of the Liberty:

Liberty Spaceplane

Liberty Spaceplane

www.sarna.net

By 1994 Russia had at least 8 working space stations, one of which was the site of the first major space battle, albeit one that was hand-to-hand rather than with weapons. The US and Japan completed the blueprints to the armed Crippen missile defense station that same year but didn't complete building the station itself until 2005. However, since they did have working plans, this indicates they knew how to build the Crippen with 1994 technology.

Salyut-8

Salyut-8

www.sarna.net

The exact nature of the armaments are unspecified but as they'd been sending up laser-equipped satellites for twenty years at that point, it's likely the station was also laser-equipped. Alternately "Missile defense" could mean it was carrying missiles for defense. Either way, they had armed laser satellites, combat spaceplanes, and stations in 1994, starting around a decade before that.

 

[Skitzyfrenic]

The Soviet Union and the United States still oppose each other and their weaponry is now in space.

The "confusion" was from the previous sentence that you ostensibly deliberately did not include, establishing 'now' as the 21st century, or after 2000. Which wasn't your fault but FASA's.

The other stuff you provided much better supports your position since it doesn't rely on shit authors writing shit words in shit order.

One could make an argument that the entire "tangled web" went up somehow in a very brief span, like 2005-2011 or such, but that's a hideously short timeframe for a setting with build times as long as BattleTech, and not supported in canon as I'll show.

Strangely, that's what the original text you posted actually suggested. (Hence why I disagreed with your later assertions) That between 2000-2011 (Though I could be generous and really say 1990-2011 since that would also fit with the reconciliation attempts failing and the build up happening in response) there was a lot of stuff launched into space. Assuming most of the build actually happened in the 1990s or something.

The rest of the post much better establishes your position than nitpicking over words and ignoring contextual sentences in the same paragraphs that radically change what is said.

Thanks, famalam.

 

[stephen the barbarian]

youtuber Sven van der Plank is starting a vid series on the First Succession War, starting by laying out the status quo of 2786

 

[ShadowArxxy]

BTech explosives are significantly more advanced than our own. They can even make microprocessors out of explosive, which is a key component of their micro-missiles.

Explodium machine gun ammo is a specific, rather silly edge-case quirk of the BTech rules that establishes that exploding machine gun ammo does vastly more damage than any other explosion in the entire game, because ammo explosion damage is flat scaled from the number of shots that are cooking off, and machine gun ammunition gives you far, far more shots per ton than anything else.

It's a game rule quirk to giggle over, not something that anyone seriously argues exists in the BTech universe per se.

 

[stephen the barbarian]

a fan made quad mech
the HSC-1 Horseshoe Crab

Weight: 25 tons

Motive: Quadruped

Internal Structure: Endo Steel

Engine: 200 Light Fusion Engine

Movement: 8/12/8 (UMUs)

Gyro: Standard Cockpit: Small Armour: 5 tons standard

Equipment:

1 Light PPC - LT

1 ER Medium - HD

Full Head Ejection System - HD

Design Quirks

Improved Communications

Difficult Ejection

Cost: 5,406,250 BV: 759

 

[PsihoKekec]

Draconis Combine vs Helghasts

Ghosts from Hell



First we take Omagh then we take Luthien. (popular song on Helghan)



Omagh IV was uninhabited world in the Omagh system. Borderline habitable in theory, but the two tragic failed colonisation efforts discouraged further attempts, with inhabitants of Omagh III giving the world nickname Hell.

As the Alliance of Galedon gave Omagh ultimatum to voluntarilly join the alliance or suffer the consequences of joining involuntarilly, the majority supported joining, but there was a vocal minority opposing what they called capitulation without a fight. With some of the more radical memebers of the resistance faction proposing a coup, leaders of AoG faction reacted swiftly, aresting the leaders of resistance faction and several thousands of most vocal supporters, transporting them into exile on Omagh IV. This ruthless act caused a wave of unrest, which the authorities cracked down on with even more deportations, activity that earned nickname ''ghosting'', with deported becoming ''Ghosts in Hell'' as they were expected to die there, later shorted ''Hellghosts''.

While mortality amongst the exiles was high, for most part they did not perish, but endured. Whatever gear and supplies the government left the first groups of ghosts under pretence that this is really an exile and not an execution, would only prolong the agony, if not for the facility that the radical subfaction had been clandestinely building at the site of an abandoned research station, giving the exiles a badly needed shelter and secret shuttle flights by supporters bringing additional supplies and equipment.

Shiro Kurita greatly approved of such measures and in the following years rulers of neighbouring worlds also joined Omagh in ghosting their detractors to Hell until forced labour replaced ghosting as a more profitable solution.

It was only during the Stare League that Draconis Combine sough to utilise Hell again, this time as a penal colony instead of execution site. Ministry of Justice unofficially partnered itself with several jakuza clans who were to compete to extract most worth from the prisoners. Encountering native population on the world, calling themselves Helghasts, the warders first saw them as a welcome addition to the penal workforce, but were violently disabused of this notion, triggering brutal guerrilla war in an unforgiving enviroment, that jakuza thugs and ministry enforcers were not prepared for. Rather than lose face and ask DCMS to take over pacification, Ministry of Justice cut a deals with Helghast clans, not realising they were dealing with centrally led nation, whose leadership was playing a shell games. Thus for decades the Helghasts were trading with Ministry of Justice, fighting the occasional raids by jakuzas who sought to add natives to penal workforce they were controlling, while also hiring themselves as mercenaries in clashes between compeating jakuza clans.

This, rather fluid, status quo lasted until the mid first Succession War when Procurement Department was looking for out of the way location for production facilities utilising salvaged machinery and tooling from several destroyed factories and a secret penal colony seemed like a right place. As construction of manufacturing sites began, the Ministry of Justice decided it is time bring the recalcitrant natives fully into fold so they could be properly utilised for the glory of Draconis Combine (and career advancement of the leaders of the project). The attempts to turn the supposed clans against each other were a complete fiasco, while direct action by BCP troops and jakuza thugs, went even worse than during first Helghan war. With MoJ making a complete mess of pacification of a (supposed) handful of primitive survivalist tribes, ISF got involved, it's leadership seeing it as a little more than training exercise for it's direct action units, which didn't go as well as planned so in order not to take away from strategic commitments, ISF manipulated several planetary militias to send contingents to assist them in rooting out these persistent pests whose existence they would never admit.

As the haphazard campaign went on the Lyrans somehow learned about the secret industrial center and with Second Succession War flaring up, they moved to destroy it. LCN combat group jumped into Omagh system, destroyed recharge station and all the shipping, then proceeded Omagh IV where they destroyed the orbital station, Dropport and all the surrounding facilities. The few remaining radio contacts reported some contagation, before dropping off, one after another. A salvage mission two decades later found nothing to salvage, encountered no Helghast and contracted a hemoragic fever. This convinced those in charge that Hell really was a dead world and best left this way.

But it wasn't dead and it's inhabitants were seeking for a way to wreak their vengeance.

 

[Aaron Fox]

It should be noted that 2.5 million tons is the limit of the shipyards... so having a ship of more than 2.5 million tons is possible if you've got the shipyards to do it. The thing is, the factions in-setting has no reason to go any larger (as bigger shipyards mean bigger targets). However, you'll have stupidly large transit drives and their ruinous costs before you start slapping on docking collars, weapons, and more.

So, if you want to, you can make warships massing in double-digit millions, though the mass you'll need for structural integrity (and thus armor) will be a bitch. The massive amount of guns you could feasibly fit would be pretty insane.

For a BT idea, how about an alternate universe where the religious crazies weren't in charge of ComStar, that they're more of The Foundation instead? That would be interesting.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

It should be noted that 2.5 million tons is the limit of the shipyards... so having a ship of more than 2.5 million tons is possible if you've got the shipyards to do it. The thing is, the factions in-setting has no reason to go any larger (as bigger shipyards mean bigger targets). However, you'll have stupidly large transit drives and their ruinous costs before you start slapping on docking collars, weapons, and more.

So, if you want to, you can make warships massing in double-digit millions, though the mass you'll need for structural integrity (and thus armor) will be a bitch. The massive amount of guns you could feasibly fit would be pretty insane.

For a BT idea, how about an alternate universe where the religious crazies weren't in charge of ComStar, that they're more of The Foundation instead? That would be interesting.

The out-of-character part of the problem is that anything over 2.5 million rules is simply outside the construction rules. Indeed, no canonical vessel actually reached the 2.5 million ton rule limit; the largest ever made was the Clans' Leviathan superdreadnought at 2.4 million.

 

[Aaron Fox]

The out-of-character part of the problem is that anything over 2.5 million rules is simply outside the construction rules. Indeed, no canonical vessel actually reached the 2.5 million ton rule limit; the largest ever made was the Clans' Leviathan superdreadnought at 2.4 million.

Yes, but it's food for thought.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Yes, but it's food for thought.

The counterpoint is that Kearny-Fuchida drives are more space-fantasy magic than anything resembling technology, so an oversized WarShip is likely to disappear in a horrific jump accident, "Because thinking you can in any way science this is unforgivable hubris".

Remember, this is a world where a ship's drive core has a homeopathy-like ability to sense the *origin* of the electrical power that's being used to charge it and respond to that by magically charging faster from solar power than nuclear power and from external power rather than internal power.

 

[Morphic Tide]

Remember, this is a world where a ship's drive core has a homeopathy-like ability to sense the *origin* of the electrical power that's being used to charge it and respond to that by magically charging faster from solar power than nuclear power and from external power rather than internal power.

Don't at least some of the rules on alternate charging methods have risk of physical damage to the drive? Because I can very much see there being engineering limitations harshly constraining the input size, from which you get harshly limited input charge, from which you're kinda stuck with some level of hard wiring for the charge mechanism if you want it at peak performance.

If the drive is prone to damaging itself by magnetic induction, then the current properties could be necessarily so strict that the engineers usually don't bother including a permanent junction to avoid the possibility of accidentally frying the drive with mains current, so you have intentionally-cumbersome adapters to finagle to try it as an attempt to idiot-proof the issue and even with the not-technically-necessary size they're still "will burn your hands off" inefficient.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

Don't at least some of the rules on alternate charging methods have risk of physical damage to the drive? Because I can very much see there being engineering limitations harshly constraining the input size, from which you get harshly limited input charge, from which you're kinda stuck with some level of hard wiring for the charge mechanism if you want it at peak performance.

If the drive is prone to damaging itself by magnetic induction, then the current properties could be necessarily so strict that the engineers usually don't bother including a permanent junction to avoid the possibility of accidentally frying the drive with mains current, so you have intentionally-cumbersome adapters to finagle to try it as an attempt to idiot-proof the issue and even with the not-technically-necessary size they're still "will burn your hands off" inefficient.

How it works is that the type of power source dictates the maximum safe charging rate; a "better" source permits faster charging and/or lesser risk of misjump.

A JumpShip's solar sails can do a zero-risk recharge in 175 hours, although a star with exceptionally weak solar output can drag this out to 210 hours. When docked to a recharge station, zero-risk recharge can be done in 100-120 hours. Fast recharging off a ship's reactor can fully recharge a core in under a day, but such a short recharge imposes an enormous risk of misjumping and also all but guarantees irreparable damage to the core.

 

[ShadowArxxy]

From an out-of-character perspective, the "real" problem is that the writers need to make up an in-character reason for why their ships have solar sails since they canonically have fusion reactors that produce vastly more power than any solar sail ever can. So what they come up with is pretty much homeopathic-magic reasons that the KF drive can *only* be charged by solar power, but none of their further explanations for it make any sense at all.

Edit: The funny thing is that the official writers have on occasion tried to insist that there *isnt* anything weird going on with the recharging, stating that "electricity is electricity" while simply ignoring all of the contradictions.

 

[Sergeant Foley]

What do you guys think of this TOE for a military?

	Mech	Combat Vehicle	Infantry	Battle Armor	ASF(Active)	ASF (Reserve)
Element	1	2	36	6	1.5	0.5	Element
Lance	6	12	216	36	9	3	Flight
Company	36	72	1296	216	54	18	Squadron
Battalion	216	432	7776	1296	324	108	Wing
Regiment	1296	2592	46656	7776	1944	648	Regiment
Brigade	7776	15552	279936	46656	11664	3888	Brigade

6 Lances made up a single Company, which was deemed to be the minimum combined-arms force to fight a low-scale operation. Each Company is roughly equal to a SLDF reinforced combined arms battalion.

A Reinforced Company is a double Strength formation of 12 Elements, Each of which combines 6 infantry or BA Elements with a mix of six other combat elements. However, these two Companies are treated as a single unit and always deploy together as a fully integrated combined-arms combat group. If a regular Combined Arms force is viewed as two independent soldiers working together, then an Augmented COmpany is trained to act as extensions of a single body.

6 Companies were then combined into a Battalion, which was roughly equal to two to three
standard Star League Regiments. Each Battalion also incorporates a command Lance.

6 Battalions are combined into a Regiment, and 6 Regiments are Combined into a Brigade.

	Element	Lance	Company	Battalion	Regiment	Brigade
Element	1
Lance	6	1
Company	36	6	1
Battalion	216	36	6	1
Regiment	1296	216	36	6	1
Brigade	7776	1296	216	36	6	1

	Element	Flight	Squadron	Wing	Regiment	Brigade
Element	1
Flight	6	1
Squadron	36	6	1
Wing	216	36	6	1
Regiment	1296	216	36	6	1
Brigade	7776	1296	216	36	6	1

Subscribed and following this huge discussion mega-thread very closely with intriguing interest.

Keep up the good work and should be quite intriguing to see what happens.

 

[bullethead]

Here's an idea that can be applied to a wide variety of AUs set in the 3020s to 3050s:
The Crusader Clans, in a bit of cunning that the Wardens didn't expect, decide to constrain their planned invasion of the Inner Sphere to the Draconis Combine, claiming they are the most dezgra of Successor States based on the Wolf Dragoon reports. They also propose an invasion plan that splits the heart of the Combine into a grid, with the borders of each grid section being worlds where the Free Guilds control the main spaceport and all captured civilian JumpShips in the system to provide logistics and free passage corridors.

Naturally, the grid is designed around the idea of a multi-wave invasion, with the intent of minimizing the odds of conflict with the Lyans/FedSuns/FedCom until the third wave is completed:

Here's the list of fun variables that I can think of off the top of my head:

• The number of Clans involved in the invasion. Any number from 9 to 17 is viable.
• Who gets/shares what grid segment, and how any shared segment gets split.
• Which Clans scheme to get specific segments, and for what reasons.*
• What the actual bids are for the invasion of their cut of the Combine.
• Which Clans decide to expand laterally instead of going all in on the ilClan race.
• Can the Wardens get the Free Guilds to fuck with the Crusaders on the down low, or will the Crusaders fuck up their own plan in their race to become ilClan?

*For example, segment 2C is objectively the worst, because it's mostly empty space. But if you look at the systems near the outer border, it's a few jumps from Galedon V, which makes it way more valuable if you're looking to carve out a decent chunk of the Combine for yourself.

(Also, if someone has a nice, high res 3020-3025 map of the Draconis Combine, I could make a better version of the image.)

 

[Blasterbot]

Inciting incident could be that the Dragoons stumble on the information that the Dracs helped Amaris topple the star league. leading to them pulling the trigger earlier but focusing on the Dracs specifically. maybe rather than a grid set up they just have the various clans bid and compete over the various individual worlds after they've conquered them.