A very good point that I'll need to remember to have a reference to.
As for the rest - well, I never planned to have orbital bombardment come up, so all I have left in the face of the assault of Numbers, Numbers, Math, Math, Math is the unassuaged itch that things like the McKenna are just too big to be in scale to the rest of the universe.
They're either too big, or the people that wrote the fluff for battletech are complete idiots, yep. I go with the latter, mostly. Warships
make sense. And hilariously, if they actually did the weapons closer to right (Let's not discuss blooming and lasers, mkay? I actually understand the logic of not handling weapon effect drop off over range, in a game), Battlemechs would
still be vastly important, as the 'ground component' to the Space Navy, to take planets, since a warship or even a half dozen couldn't realistically hammer a planet into submission sans a Massdriver.
If you mean too big for their mass/size? Perhaps, I haven't calculated out their ratio. (Though I'll admit, calling a McKenna a
battleship, given canon stats makes me laugh. It's a glorified armed transport. One theory is that the ship specs are as of the day they left on the Exodus, stripping all PD/etal for mass and range.)
When in doubt, accept that FASA (and later FanPro and CATLabs just didn't go on to do the work) didn't know what they were doing, and went "Oh, hey, this is cool..."
(While Robotech the RPG and other Palladium systems had similar problems, they introduced several things, that make a hell of a lot more sense than BT's)
Exactly when did I, or anyone else in the convo, bring up Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
More to the point, even the smaller of that famous pair (
Little Boy) is
15kt, the larger (
Fat Man) is
21kt, well above the paltry 2kt the revized calculations claim for the biggest naval weapon.
Those are what's used elsewhere. And by standard calcs of effect (I don't have the time to go get the table) a 15kt blast is only about 5 times (could be off by about .5 or so) more effective. Contrary to popular belief, a nuclear (or thermonuclear) weapon in atm's best use is as an
airburst. Not a ground burst. Due to the shockwaves and heat effects it generates.
I was personally thinking of the
Oklahoma City bombing.
While that "bomb" didn't collapse the building, look at what that functionally-a-groundburst
did do. The building was a total write-off
(were it a navy ship, I think the term "constructive total loss" would apply), and had to be demolished. Note the other buildings mentioned as "destroyed or damaged"
(I personally don't believe that most were more than lightly damaged, but the reports claim destroyed)
Now, I'm given to understand that wasn't even a kiloton.
Instead, it was a mere 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg)TNT equivalent. (so, 2.3 metric tons if my math is right. that's
very sub-kiloton, calling it sub-kiloton is insulting to such weapons as the
Davey Crockett, which
starts at 10 tons, and can go to 20)
Actually, the building was
not. It however was
cheaper to replace than repair and
refit. It wasn't also built to Empire state level. (The US/etal stopped doing that around the late 40's, for several reasons) It wasn't' even a constructive total loss. (Which is actually a term it's
cheaper to replace, than expend the effort to rebuild. In that building's case it wasn't the cost of rebuilding, but refitting it for security that had made it an
effective CTL)
No other building was destroyed, agreed.
Again, I refer you to the Empire State Building. Plus German cities, which were built to a higher level of resistance, than buildings in the late 40's on (Brutalist style seems similar, it's not, not really, and not as tough)
As to "specially shaped shell", what on god's green earth is causing you to think that anyone with a warship they(any great house government) intend to have performing bombardment wouldn't have such shells? (and probably every warship carrying several)
(if you dare to claim "tech regression", then you cannot claim squat about starports armoring fuel tanks, because that very same "tech regression". Comstar went to great effort (operation Holy Shroud I & II) to keep everyone hilariously stupid, and it largely worked. That's why the Helm and New Dallas memory cores are so damnned important.)
First: I should have said specially made shell, refering to materials that could withstand reentry, not shape (Was doing two tasks). Which lessens the speed, to some degree, lessening it's force. It's (side note, while we're getting very close to certain things I'm not going to talk about at
all, suffice it to say that payloads/masses of that size undergoing reentry need certain factors). not impossible, but if you're going to do that, might as well build a nuke shell.
As to "buried fuel tanks", I admit, that is possible. Yes, real-world militaries do it sometimes.
Civillian gas stations do it mostly because "where the hell else are we gonna put it". It is either bury them (and pray they don't develop a leak) or make a second, hardened building for them. (one that must resist the force of a loaded 18wheel tanker hitting it at full speed, because some idiot somewhere would do it)
To be fair, while some US bases
don't have it, they're far the hell away from anything else, and that's usually because there's no place to bury it. Though they tend to start dumping earth on it. Other forces... well.
It is allso unlikely, given all the Canon eveidence to the contrary. (oh, did we all somehow forget the latest videogame, which is canon, in which all the starports I've thus seen, including the military ones, have exposed fuel tanks/refineries? Silly me for reminding you)
The latest videogame is
not officially canon. If it
was, the worlds and nation in it, would have been mentioned in Shattered Fortress. It
might be semi canon, but it's not official. Plus, remember, CATLabs has an
official policy of "unreliable" narrator going on.
If you
honestly expect people to believe that the inner sphere forgot stuff we learned in the frigging
1920's... With a
much more reactive gas...
Uh... (Let's not mention a fair bit of the spaceports were also built DURING and BEFORE the Star Leauge.)
Again: People don't do the research. Hydrogen is
worse than avgas in the 'hi there, I want to blow up' family.
It is even less likely once re-construction cost/time is factored in.
Actually, it'd cost less, contrary to what you think. Not when you factor in replacing what got blown up next to the exposed tanks.
(and reburying it is simply pouring concrete over the tanks, then filling with dirt.) There's also the fact if one tank goes, underground, it is highly unlikely to take others with it, while above ground, not so assured.
Which is easier:
Replacing all the surface crap in the event of an attack on a surface-only port. (and filling in the occasional mid-sized crater)
Or clearing out, then filling in the colossal crater in the practically inevitable event of the underground tanks being hit and/or sabotaged?
Folowed by rebuilding all the surface structures.
Assuming they're smart enough to do what we did in the 30's and 40's, the latter, because most of the surface structures wouldn't have been blown by the tanks going.
Frankly, taking out a base today means you pot the runway, not the tanks, that's how the planning works. Same basic principal would work for spaceports.
And filling in craters is actually
easy. Talk to Yellowhammer about that, he'd know more than I do.
Well, the Fiannese probably had at least some medics of their own; when the job is to go out and shoot at people so uncooperative with your plans that they shoot back (The blighters! How uncivilized!) if you don't have some kind of medical support you very quickly run out of soldiers. That said, I know I'd certainly prefer to have at least one guy in every squad who knows the basics, and preferably two. There's only so much training time in a day, but knowing how to clean and bandage a wound is as fundamental as knowing how to safe and clean your weapon, I think.
Well, when I did AIT (then decided common sense wasn't, and went OCS...) for Infantry, we spent two days learning how to do that, plus a few other basic medical tasks, yep, and while in unit, practiced that skill.
