Also during urban combat troopers can hide in buildings or on rooftops giving them easier shots.
The Lords of Ruin -- Battletech/Killzone
- Thread starter prometheus110
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KnightofTempest
The Man who would be King
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This ignores the potential for a mech using one of its secondary weapons as a CIWS to shoot down any missiles that come at them.
It'd be easier if it was a gauss gun or a laser weapon.
Quantity has a quality of it's own, yes. And as you would not need to concentrate fire in order to actually bore through the Standard Armor of a target sensor masking paint would probably be a good way for infantry to buy time for heavier assets, be they shoulder fired missiles or vehicles of some sort, to do their thing.
Ah yes, Mechs are so slow that melee combat is not a thing, nor are snap shots, urban combat, or hitting aerospace or hover targets. As for size, that is a loosely defined variable I admit but you are still firing at an evading target over a distance of several hundred meters. Bet you wish you had computer assisted tracking huh?
Hence me saying "someone at the controls", as as soon as they notice the infantry are actually doing something they will respond as best as they can.
...actually this brings up a question. would thunderbolt equivalents, i.e. TBM5 vs LRM5 etc., be useful for PA/BA? I mean if they have an easier time aiming, and they are close enough to take such a shot they should be well within the TBs reduced range and they should be under the AMS envelope or, depending on where the AMS is, in the mech 'shadow' meaning the AMS can't even try.
Would also be affected by how prometheus is handling armor on the backend (whether it is possible to use heavier weapons for more localized damage to then exploit or whether it is Full Tabletop with armor locations taking damage as a whole), but as very few people use AMS at all these days it would be a very useful thing if you don't mind losing total number of shots available.
the way infantry work in BT is that the total number of dudes in the infantry group count as the health meaning a 60 dude squad is actually pretty hardy give everything going against them and due to their size in comparison they are actually pretty hard to hit barring anti-infantry weapons like machine guns, flamers, and A-Pods. Its comparable to an average person trying to kill something roach-sized, doing that with the proper tools? easy, doing with your bare hands? not so much. and this is basic infantry, jumpacked infantry and PA infantry are even worse.
In tabletop yes, though getting shot at by a burst fire HEAT autocannon is probably going to mission kill more than it outright kills.
And for that analogy it's worth mentioning that the Mechs are actually faster than the PBIs. Up to a considerable amount. And they can just bring down the building they are taking cover in to get rid of them.
Crafter of War
The Dorf
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Turians? I didn't know we had a Mass Efeect crossover.
as has been said PBI are run at the platoon level, so you can have one squad with paint round, one packing dedicated SRMs and the last two packing LAWs or VLAWS to just in case.
once we flip to power armor the paint troopers will be packing suit mounted SRMs meaning a squad can follow up on their own.
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The only weapon for that is AMS and Laser AMS. Other weapons on mechs simply lack the ablivity to track and shoot missiles. Plus bullets can't be stopped.
Melee happens because you are hitting something with several tons worth of weight and metal not because of speed. Snap shots are wild shots in the first place and still take time, aerospace and hover are only about clipping a target by sautrating the area it is in because it is easy to lawn dart a ASF and Hover units are so vulnerable that they can be thrown off by even their own weapon firing.
Also they already have that because unless you haven't noticed our infantry is not only extremely well armed and equipmented, they are packing more high tech assistance than anyone else in this universe and it is our computers. Seriously you are acting as if our infantry is a bunch of naked mooks with no idea how to fight. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Our Infantry with less equipment than they now have took out several mechs without taking any damage before. And you know why because mechwarriors completely ignore them unless they are the only target. They have always done this and it is unliley to change. By the time they notice something has happened they would already be out of the fight because they would have been blinded dude.
Because being able to actually hit the target is so unimportant when both entities are running at highway speeds, much less in such a way as to not unbalance themselves whether they hit or not.
If everything has input lag it is essentially impossible to do, yes, as they maneuver to avoid being where the enemy is targeting.
Can't hit them even then if you have a delay between idea and execution, as they move fast enough that fractions of a second are important.
Perhaps in part. I'm not entirely familiar with how Helghan infantry armor works, though I doubt it is power assisted (seeing as power armor is a technology we are researching). Still better than BT PBI, but not as good as having a fully mechanized system due to the error margins of organic systems. And what sensors it does have is limited by scale compared to what is mounted on a vehicle.
Ah yes, because then no one after could possibly have a thought in their head once they hear of such an event. Especially in the fight itself, because that would imply that the enemy has agency and are not just mooks to slaughter through. No, clearly professional militaries would not think ahead in regards to losing highly trained officers and exceedingly valuable war machines, or those who have made a life time out of violence.
So perhaps, good sir, you should stop trying to assume the role of GM with how you are leveling blanket statements with regards to setting information? Such as implying that everyone ever are actually idiots rather than clever people working within their culture.
This does bring up the question of how well antigrav vehicles stand up to being shot at and how they handle lawn dart checks, given that the vast majority of our vehicles are a-grav barring the super cheap ones. Considering the interest the TC seems to have with A-grav I'd expect A-grav vehicles out of them sometime in the future, definitely once we start mass producing high end A-grav stuff. Their pride is to great for them not to. The fact that A-grav tech is not Petrusite bound and how crazy the IS can get in stealing tech, i mean they dogged the TH until they could successfully get the blueprints to the mackie and the TH had every reason to put everything they could into stopping that, they don't have its really a matter of when the tech proliferates rather than if. it would probably take decades if not a century for the majority of the IS to get it though, barring serious events.
As for Infantry, yeah they are effective but they take horrible casualties unless ignored, and the only reason they get ignored in the current era is because the majority of the tools they need to fight mechs effectively are lost tech, i.e. inferno missiles and high end laser weapons etc, and they are not a threat barring crazy numbers, which is rare, specific situations, i.e. ambush, and the few high end infantry that still exist of which ours are a recent member to. This all being said while people ignore infantry right now the more successful we are at using them the more thats going to get noticed and compensated for by tactics and possibly even mimicked. One of my biggest concerns is that the CC remnants gets the memo on how our mass conventional forces works and starts copying it even with pure garbage, because one of the few things can produce in mass is that kind of equipment, i.e. infantry and basic vehicles, and one of the few things they have in abundance is bodies.
Essentially, infantry without power armor does not have the staying power to be relevant on the interstellar battlefield in BT. They can have the weapons to engage Mechs and vehicles but they would be field guns akin to WW2, reliant on thin shields for splinter protection and hastily made dugouts against anything more. Shoulder fired LRMs are a thing, as well as SRM, but infantry are poor at carrying enough to land enough hits on a Mech before they run out and need to send runners for more, let alone before they get killed by return fire by a laser raked over their trench causing flash blindness and scalding. And then there is carrying capacity. With the wackiness of DropShips it is far more useful to bring AFVs than massed infantry as vehicles are bluntly put fast enough to matter on the modern battlefield where Lances are the typical units of maneuver. Mechanized infantry exist yes, but still run into the issue of "staying power" against real resistance.
Yeah i find this a fair assessment, but i think the issue does cause problems for mechs in that it lead to the adoption of lots of mechs and mech variants that lack anti-infantry tools. I have no evidence for this but i strongly assume that the problem with uses lasers and other "mech scale" weapons vs infantry has less to do with the weapons themselves and more do to how they are mounted and their targeting systems. Because it makes total sense to me that weapons built, installed, and tuned to fight mechs would have problems being used against infantry, especially with everything lost post SL. "Raking an infantry unit with lasers" is harder than using MGs or flamers not because lasers can't do it, but because the targeting system for the lasers is speced for mechs and the mounted are designed expecting mech on mech combat where MGs, Flamers, and to a lesser extent SL has always had a double anti-infantry role. But when you are dealing with little to no effective infantry that acceptable, because the mechs are a bigger threat.
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First of off melee happens when they are close in and not moving fast dude. That is the entire point of it. If something is moving at full speed no shit you can't hit them easy but that is not what we are talking about at all.
I never said anything about input lag dude. I said that they are not moving or aiming at extremely fast speed. Because you don't need that kind of speed for these fights.
Yes they are power assisted for the heavy troopers because we have had powered exoskeletons already. But that is not what I am talking about. A Helghan trooper armor kit is of the most advanced quality. As in it is fully integrated into the greater battlenet of the army. And that includes much better sensors that are actually worth a damn. Our infantry is actually an extremely powerful weapon even without power armor not it matter since you seem to have missed the point that our infantry will be all in power armor in the first place.
Yes they wouldn't because they never did. It literally took the Clans coming in with their elementals for people to start taking infantry seriously. And then your comment on agency wouldn't matter when they are unaware of what is happening. In a fight very little is actually passed along and because the military knows about the importance of the flow of information comms and other systems are already being jammed. You are also wrong about me implying that they have no agency since I never said that so don't try and put words in my mouth dude. Everything I said is how things actually are in BT the mechwarriors do not care of pay attention to infantry unless there are no other threats and targets. And since our infantry will never be deployed on their own they are not a target. You seem to be missing the entire point of what silver was also saying. You seem to think we are saying that the infantry will now be fighting mechs fully like this or some shit. That is not what we are talking about what we are talking about is adding another tool to kit for them to deal with any kind of threat.
Except I am not saying they are idiots dude. It is exactly because of their culture and their obsession with Battlemechs that they react like that. It isn't a blanket statement it is simply how things are. That doesn't mean they won't learn but it will take a lot of time for them to do so unless they get a massive hit like the clan Invasion. Not my fault you aren't getting it. This has nothing to do with being a QM since this is information that is already available plus even in game we got told that is the case with mechs ignoring infantry if there was something else around.
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got a link from someone in discord.
skiltao.blogspot.com
How Many BattleMechs Exist in 3025?
[Edit: more exact estimates on Aug 10, 2017 /Edit] I estimate a ceiling of 54 thousand BattleMechs. 383 regiments employed directly by...
skiltao.blogspot.com
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[x] Plan: Frankenstein's Handy Work
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So something I saw discussed before was the swarm robotics line in our automation tree. Please take a look at the ones making the robots, what the look like, and just what that would actually mean when they are all combined together. "Pharoah Automated Solutions" seems pretty clear where it might lead. Best to go with tactical and then robotic workers more effective that way anyways for AP.
honestly we should just outlaw self replicating swarms without human operators to authorize each individual unit. the issue with the Faros swarms was that once the Glitch happened they could just replicate without check. stick a requirement for outside authorization on that and they would have stalled out because with the code changes they would have been unable to get that permission.
*waggles hand*
I am reasonably sure that the mutation they underwent also included circumventing exactly that system.
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Swarm Robotics and intelligence means you can't really control them like that. You might be able to control some hub units but the rest would be out of your control.
sort of they cut themselves off the control system in place. mostly because their massive numbers allowed them to work together to break control.
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Hey a quick question can we get full true true AI's. If so we could get robotic infantry. Or AI of any military equipment like AI ships AI planes you name it we could get AI for it which would be cool.
That brings up what you consider to be AI versus a regular drone capable of fighting. At what point does it become a person rather than a very clever machine, Monster versus Person, etc.
Really the issue was that the swarms had the ability to self fuel and repair to begin with. Removing a denying that ability should prevent the whole replication problem and by prevent I mean making them physically unable to do so. At that point the big issue is commanding the swarm which is where keeping the swarm in limited numbers is important.
The bigger thing however is that this is a quest not RL or HZD, so I doubt rogue swarms will be a problem and that the name is just one the QM pulled because they needed a cool name.