- Location
- America
This is very important.
Much money must be spent on this.
Take notes.
Shepard Quest Mk VI, Technological Revolution
- Thread starter Hoyr
- Start date
Much money must be spent on this.
Take notes.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Okay, assuming ROF of the missiles is less than 1 hertz, than a single GARDIAN tower with ME-powered targeting capabilities will require hundreds of Tigers to take down from safe ranges. Yeah, that's expensive.
In sufficiently large armies and economies of scale, even a ratio of 10:1 of Tiger vs example MBT* would make it justifiable.
And from recent discussion, I'm thinking I've been abusing the term "MBT" for what's really a heavily modified Tiger optimized for bombardment rather than transport.
Ah, here I was thinking we could just design a MBT without further research.
What we can design right now is mobile artillery. Screw the armoring and shielding required for a proper tank; just have bombardment outside the range of GARDIAN towers. In the admittedly uncommon cases where that bombardment can't be done from orbit, this can be done with an overwhelming (and costly) barrage of Pilums, or more simply (and cheaply) a huge fusillade of MAC fire.
I think we're getting too hung up on military terms like "MBT" and "gunship" and even "tank", when the distinctions are blurring in the current setting.
I now agree with Chargone that we don't need a strict MBT analogue. That is, we don't need something that can BOTH defend itself against a GARDIAN tower and also take it down.
A MBT is still a nice-to-have, and with coming technologies, it would be possible. But if the immediate problem is simply taking out GARDIAN towers, then we should stick with bombardment whether from orbit, air, or ground. We already have ample fleet bombardment capability, but lack similarly reasonable capabilities for marines, and that's something that shouldn't be hard to rectify even without further research or much expense.
And later with transformation systems, whether on vehicle carriers or on the vehicle itself, the next-gen Tiger could potentially fill both armored infantry transport and fortification bombardment roles.
Technically, missiles can count as indirect fire, although in ME, they're typically fired directly at targets.
Mako is less APC and more IFV ("infantry fighting vehicle"), which is a basically an APC with a significant gun.
We've been classifying Tigers as IFVs as well, but again, it's getting hard to classify vehicles along modern terminology, since a Tiger would fit in both IFV and gunship categories. Heck it can even serve as a bootleg bomber.
edit: typos
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Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
Ahh, yes. IFV. That's the one i was forgetting. For when your troop transport doesn't need so much armour*, but could Really do with a nice big gun 
*IRL, these are still armoured, but not typically the heavy, armoured, tracked things of the cold war era. They typically have wheels and go Fast.
Actually, at this point the Tiger could probably be called a Mobile Assault Dropship (MAD). Hehe. With it's shields and everything, it is/was kind of a troll, too
*IRL, these are still armoured, but not typically the heavy, armoured, tracked things of the cold war era. They typically have wheels and go Fast.
Actually, at this point the Tiger could probably be called a Mobile Assault Dropship (MAD). Hehe. With it's shields and everything, it is/was kind of a troll, too
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- Location
- Australia
We keep trying to come up with a one size fits all solution but that is never going to happen. We need different vehicles for different roles
Anti tank/infantry/power-armour
A gunship would be best. Thanks to repulsors and arc reactor powered ezzo cores weight isn't an issue so we can make a fast, heavily armed and armoured vehicle to annihilate ground forces
Anti-fortification
One of three options:
Some form of artillery so that we can hit outside their defences range. That is if kinetic barriers wouldn't stop this
A special armoured anti-fortification missile that can survive a short amount of guardian array fire just long enough to hit the tarket.
A laser with an incredibly long range and precision so we can hit forticications through shields from orbit
Mobile fortress
Also discussed is the idea of some kind of mobile base we can use for defence/medical/repair-resupply. Honestly if we want something like this then it would be best to just design a small frigate that's specialised towards ground warfare (but has no use in a space based fight)
Lots of shields and armour for defence and switch out the weapons for excess guardian arrays, artillery guns and mega laser arrays for massive damage to ground targets. It could function as either a defendable location or as a massive uber-tank able to shatter enemy forticication and only come out slightly scratched. The trick would be landing it out of range of anti-orbit guns and then have it fly close enough to the ground to be under their firing arc
Anti tank/infantry/power-armour
A gunship would be best. Thanks to repulsors and arc reactor powered ezzo cores weight isn't an issue so we can make a fast, heavily armed and armoured vehicle to annihilate ground forces
Anti-fortification
One of three options:
Some form of artillery so that we can hit outside their defences range. That is if kinetic barriers wouldn't stop this
A special armoured anti-fortification missile that can survive a short amount of guardian array fire just long enough to hit the tarket.
A laser with an incredibly long range and precision so we can hit forticications through shields from orbit
Mobile fortress
Also discussed is the idea of some kind of mobile base we can use for defence/medical/repair-resupply. Honestly if we want something like this then it would be best to just design a small frigate that's specialised towards ground warfare (but has no use in a space based fight)
Lots of shields and armour for defence and switch out the weapons for excess guardian arrays, artillery guns and mega laser arrays for massive damage to ground targets. It could function as either a defendable location or as a massive uber-tank able to shatter enemy forticication and only come out slightly scratched. The trick would be landing it out of range of anti-orbit guns and then have it fly close enough to the ground to be under their firing arc
This is probably one of those things Medium Armor is going to be necessary for, if only so we can spend some RPs designing real, laser-resistant armor. Another consideration: one thing @Hoyr has mentioned before is that although our Tigers can fly, they're really not built to be serious atmospheric gunships in the ME era, where eezo cores allow high-speed, high-maneuverability flight in atmosphere by charging the air with negative mass effect (NME), reducing many of the different sources of drag, especially at supersonic velocities. Those atmospheric fighters the Batarians were using could probably dogfight at Mach 2-3 and have a max speed of Mach 8-10; there's no way a Tiger can go that fast in atmosphere.
Kinetic barriers are pretty much build to stop this. Over-the-horizon artillery by definition need to be firing at significantly less than escape velocity, which means large, relatively slow-moving shells; that's the kind of thing kinetic barriers are best at deflecting.
Once we have TIR technology and Dark Matter Missiles this will be relatively straightforward, but until then we might need to be creative. One idea I had was to have a rotating cylinder of armor, think UFO-shaped, so that the side of the armor facing forward is constantly being replaced, with thermal superconductors laced throughout the armor plate to dissipate the heat. Alternatively we put this rotating shield on our MBT, and use it to close with the GARDIAN tower, reducing the number of missiles and ammunition we need to fire, basically turning the MBT into an armored missile bus.
Also has been previously discussed. Will require variable wavelength lasers to accomplish, so we can use a high-frequency laser to turn the atmosphere into a plasma, then a low-frequency laser to transmit power along the new plasma corridor to the target.
In other words, all of these (except the over-the-horizon artillery idea, which is just obsolete in the world of kinetic barriers) are different solutions to the problem of GARDIAN towers:
- Use Medium Armor along with our Superalloys tech (and maybe Stasis Plate) to give our tanks the ability to close with the target and hit it with impunity,
- Pick up TIR and Dark Energy Missiles to no-sell lasers entirely,
- or pick up Variable Wavelength Lasers and nuke it with laser light from orbit.
In-universe experts consider the fucking Mantis the pinnacle of 2180s technology. We've been schooling the so-called "experts" since we were 15.
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
Actually, given the effects of HE rounds in a snipe rifle in ME...
It certainly Seems like bombarding things with HE is the way to go.
Just... probably saturate it with missiles rather than shells. (I like tube artillery, but i can see where lasers + ME shields render them useless in the indirect fire role, and railguns (or coilguns, or whatever ME actually uses) are a better option for direct fire.)
Basically, the Shell may not get through the shield, but the Explosion should certainly have an effect. Though to be fair, i think it does as much damage as it does in ME mostly from the sudden acceleration of the explosion Throwing the things which get caught in the blast, rather than from any direct impact... so it may not even really interact with the shields or do much of anything, really, against fixed emplacements.
Still, we should probably run some test/hunt down existing data on how things which go Boom interact with shields.
It certainly Seems like bombarding things with HE is the way to go.
Just... probably saturate it with missiles rather than shells. (I like tube artillery, but i can see where lasers + ME shields render them useless in the indirect fire role, and railguns (or coilguns, or whatever ME actually uses) are a better option for direct fire.)
Basically, the Shell may not get through the shield, but the Explosion should certainly have an effect. Though to be fair, i think it does as much damage as it does in ME mostly from the sudden acceleration of the explosion Throwing the things which get caught in the blast, rather than from any direct impact... so it may not even really interact with the shields or do much of anything, really, against fixed emplacements.
Still, we should probably run some test/hunt down existing data on how things which go Boom interact with shields.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Dogfighting shouldn't be a thing in ME with the weapon ranges and speeds involved. It's already obsolete in modern warfare. Really, the main benefit of speed is simply getting somewhere fast, rather than evasion, at least in planetary scale combat.
I'm not sure we need a dedicated gunship design that slots between flying IFVs/tanks and fighters/bombers.
Artillery does not necessarily mean ballistic weaponry. I'm pretty sure when others are talking about "artillery", they mean kinetic/explosive bombardment, which includes MACs.
And Tigers should be able to out-range GARDIAN towers with their MACs. Based off this post, the upper limit of conventional 200MW GARDIAN towers is around 100km, less if firing at ground targets (due to more atmosphere), and Tiger MACs surely have greater range than that. There's also no firing below horizon problem, since GARDIAN towers are tall and if needed Tigers can simply fly up a bit.
So the question is how well a decent GARDIAN tower-rated shield will handle massed MAC fire from Tigers with warp rounds. I don't know how to calculate that.
Also, I totally forgot about Hydras and Sagittari and Sagittas - wasn't one of their use cases (besides anti-infantry) overwhelming GARDIAN defenses to allow a couple Pilums to get through? Though Sagitta range of 2km sucks so the vast majority of Hydras and Sagittari may not reach the tower before MIRVing, so it may actually be more expensive. Hmm...maybe we just need dummy missiles for cost efficiency.
While a good idea, I don't think we need something like this in the next two quarters before we research and deploy TIR shielding. Depending on how effective TIR shielding is, this tech alone may be enough to let drones and Tigers close within cost efficient distance. Or even better, if we can have TIR shielded missiles.
Now, this would be a great scheme against GARDIAN-ranged particle weapons, but I don't think our enemies are going to have those for a long while.
It's nice that we have plenty of opportunities to revamp combat paradigms throughout the course of this war, so that it shouldn't be hard to always keep at least a step ahead of the enemy.
I'm pretty sure non-nuclear explosives are considered obsolete in ME, with kinetic energy (MACs) and ME effects (disruptor torpedoes, ME weapon mods) ruling the day. That is, the relatively minuscule extra energy available in conventional explosives is not worth the complexity and cost.
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
Which is weird, (if you ignore gameplay/story segregation), because loading up HE rounds in a sniper rifle with a couple of rail exentions in ME1 has a higher damage output than the Mako's main gun. Most of that damage is from the Explosives. note that the HE round it's firing is being shaved off a block and fired down a barrel Exactly the same way as the standard ammunition, which makes the Downsides (massively excessive additional heat in the Gun, though the rail extensions are certainly contributing to that) kind of ... strange.
Point is, Tiny amount of explosive, Light Artillery level damage.
Now, consider missile with that type of explosives as it's payload. Somewhere between a tennis ball and a soccer ball's (depending on the exact missile in question) worth of the stuff, where a Single Grain is enough to boost a sniper rifle's damage out put to be equivalent to a light artillery piece (the mako's main gun). That's a Lot of boom.
Now consider that you're going to use Tonnes of these in a saturation bombardment.
Again, the issue really comes down to exactly how the damage is imparted. Some ways mean that a shield which is far enough out and/or a sufficiently strong structure would nullify it entirely, others that it'd utterly shred the shields and then the gun emplacement behind them. And various other things in between.
Granted, dedicated explosives as Propellant are clearly obsolete.
(also, it's 6am-ish and i haven't slept yet, so I'm losing focus and coherency and stuff here... ... )
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
First: I find it interesting that HE rounds only exist in ME1 and not in ME2 or ME3 (I think).
Second: There's no way a sniper rifle should have more energy potential than a Mako MAC. That's ridiculous.
Third: I'm going to assume that ME rifles have at least comparable energy potential as modern rifles (most likely far greater, especially with ME inertial dampening), and a ME ammo block can contain thousands of rounds. That means you have extremely high muzzle velocity (far greater than railguns), but also extremely tiny rounds, definitely far less than a gram. You are not going to be able to fit much explosive mass in there.
So unless the explosive approaches nuclear levels of energy density, I'm going to call BS on the game. Or "high explosive" actually has some different ME-based mechanism.
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- Location
- Budapest, Hungary
They are merely game mechanics, just ignore them lorewise, if they do not make sense.
Chargone
Invisable operator
- Location
- New Zealand
I'm pretty much ignoring the rest on the basis that it's all perfectly legitimate, or, if not, beyond me. but this one:
There's a bunch of reasons for that which have nothing to do with the Lore (and ME2 and 3 pissed all over a bunch of lore which was established in 1 anyway.). The HE rounds were a bit out of the way and end game stuff in 1. Very easy to miss entirely and not know they were there so no one would miss them. Further, 2 had Actual heavy weapons which you got right from the start. Additionally the entire logic of combat in 2 is quite different from in 1. In one, being out in the open and shooting strong enemies from Waaay outside detection range, or clearing an entire room of enemies in one shot were perfectly fine within how the game worked. In 2, it'd destroy the game balance/level design.
It doesn't help that in 2 they decided that infinite ammo was bad so clearly they needed to bring it back (then came up with questionable Lore on the subject to justify it, and Then implemented it in a way that added all the downsides of an ammo system and NONE of the upsides) ... HE rounds existing is (seemingly) incompatible with the Lore which is used to justify the thermal clips.
Basically, I believe that to be more of a symptom of the utter cock-up which was 2's handling of the established setting, rather than in any way indicative of anything regarding the nature of HE rounds within the setting. (that said, For all that ME2 did a LOT of things badly, Combat was not one of those things. the actual "there are enemies in front of me and i must kill them now" bit was done Much better than 1.)
...
...
I just woke up...
...
...
blah.
Anyway, even if you tone it down a bit, (because yes, for all that i love 'em and have strong opinions about the later games, the HE rounds are pretty questionable given how the guns work and thus the size of the bullet <_<) it Does indicate that the larger warhead in a missile Should be significant.
Also note that while 2 removed the HE rounds, a number of the heavy weapons it gave you were just as, if not more, nonsense. (or at least, i remember that being the case. It's been a LONG time...)
Anyway. The important bit is not what stupidity Bioware got up to, it's what the reality is in the quest. If HE warheads, allowing that the HE may well be toned down from what's in the game, are actually going to help in the Quest, then that's a really useful thing we can use! (depending on how they interact with shields.) ... and the later games' ignoring them is irrelevant. If, in the quest, they're Not going to help... then I'll drop it* and the first game's inclusion of them is irrelevant.
@Hoyr do we have a ruling on this one? Is effective HE a thing, is it like ME1 HE, if not what are its limitations, and how does it interact with shields anyway?
(if not, please make one.)
* you know, until the next time it comes up months later and i've forgotten that was a thing
There's a bunch of reasons for that which have nothing to do with the Lore (and ME2 and 3 pissed all over a bunch of lore which was established in 1 anyway.). The HE rounds were a bit out of the way and end game stuff in 1. Very easy to miss entirely and not know they were there so no one would miss them. Further, 2 had Actual heavy weapons which you got right from the start. Additionally the entire logic of combat in 2 is quite different from in 1. In one, being out in the open and shooting strong enemies from Waaay outside detection range, or clearing an entire room of enemies in one shot were perfectly fine within how the game worked. In 2, it'd destroy the game balance/level design.
It doesn't help that in 2 they decided that infinite ammo was bad so clearly they needed to bring it back (then came up with questionable Lore on the subject to justify it, and Then implemented it in a way that added all the downsides of an ammo system and NONE of the upsides) ... HE rounds existing is (seemingly) incompatible with the Lore which is used to justify the thermal clips.
Basically, I believe that to be more of a symptom of the utter cock-up which was 2's handling of the established setting, rather than in any way indicative of anything regarding the nature of HE rounds within the setting. (that said, For all that ME2 did a LOT of things badly, Combat was not one of those things. the actual "there are enemies in front of me and i must kill them now" bit was done Much better than 1.)
...
...
I just woke up...
...
...
blah.
Anyway, even if you tone it down a bit, (because yes, for all that i love 'em and have strong opinions about the later games, the HE rounds are pretty questionable given how the guns work and thus the size of the bullet <_<) it Does indicate that the larger warhead in a missile Should be significant.
Also note that while 2 removed the HE rounds, a number of the heavy weapons it gave you were just as, if not more, nonsense. (or at least, i remember that being the case. It's been a LONG time...)
Anyway. The important bit is not what stupidity Bioware got up to, it's what the reality is in the quest. If HE warheads, allowing that the HE may well be toned down from what's in the game, are actually going to help in the Quest, then that's a really useful thing we can use! (depending on how they interact with shields.) ... and the later games' ignoring them is irrelevant. If, in the quest, they're Not going to help... then I'll drop it* and the first game's inclusion of them is irrelevant.
@Hoyr do we have a ruling on this one? Is effective HE a thing, is it like ME1 HE, if not what are its limitations, and how does it interact with shields anyway?
(if not, please make one.)
* you know, until the next time it comes up months later and i've forgotten that was a thing
- Location
- Australia
Didn't the Cain fire a ridiculously high explosive round?
To quote the ME2 wiki
Considering how it was small enough to be carried yet powerful enough to kill almost anything, a vehicle mounted version would be devastating
Also we have lots of examples of ME fields being used to make things lighter when fired but how about the opposite, teeny tiny couple of grams ezzo core along with a high powered battery in a round/Bullet/Shell to multiply it's weight for the 3 seconds b4 impact. It would be costly but it would be less than a pilums complicated internal components
To quote the ME2 wiki
Considering how it was small enough to be carried yet powerful enough to kill almost anything, a vehicle mounted version would be devastating
Also we have lots of examples of ME fields being used to make things lighter when fired but how about the opposite, teeny tiny couple of grams ezzo core along with a high powered battery in a round/Bullet/Shell to multiply it's weight for the 3 seconds b4 impact. It would be costly but it would be less than a pilums complicated internal components
munchkinomatic
Douchiest of Bags
- Location
- The land of Skepticism
Not nessarily true. There is such a thing as a one size fit all solution, we just need to pack an stupid amount of firepower. For example, a single Hulk is the perfect answer to any and all attempt at groundside invasion. If we can convince him to stay still so we can shoot him at spacecraft with MAC, he would solve most space problem too.
Granted, a Hulk is not something we can get unless we are willing to blast random smucks with gamma ray and pray for the best, but some of the later armors is close.
On the subject of modularity, I suggest we do nanites. Extremely hax nanites. You can't get any more modular than "reassemble particles as needed"
It not being cheap for general use.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
Oh yeah, I forgot about those. I wonder if they actually are completely conventional explosives or if they're "enhanced" by eezo in a similar way MACs are "enhanced" by eezo - I have my doubts.
Well in any case, arc reactor powered kinetic barriers have proven to be effective against both MACs and explosives, and while MACs can also be improved by increased power supply, explosives can't. That's why we had to develop the complex and expensive 3-stage Pilum missile.
Well, we can reason about physics that we know about. Eezo "dark energy" based physics is more...let's say malleable, and lots of those heavy weapons involve non-standard usages of eezo. So we can kinda technobabble our way with them.
ME3 retconned it into some exotic eezo-based weapon:
That's basically disruptor ammo. Or rather, what disruptor ammo is supposed to be - analogous to disruptor torpedo's usage of eezo, rather than the in-game "electric field" explanation which I don't buy.
The advanced metamaterial and superalloy tech we have doesn't help that much. At least for this quest, the FAQ says it'll give a max 20% bonus to whatever the material is designed for.
We can also kinda get something similar with Arcane Blur, which gives a 20% miss chance (for small targets or far away targets only I think) and some defense against lasers, but I'm not sure if it's compatible with the superalloy bonus.
I expect stasis plated armor to be much more effective, given its expense and drawbacks - like maybe an order of magnitude more effective, perhaps more with even more power.
No, Revy has. In this case, the distinction is important.
No, 'stasis' has the harder 'a' sound of 'stay', while 'glacis' sounds much like 'glasses'.