Don't HVACs also explode some of the time?
How Hard Can It Be? A Battletech Arms Manufacturer Quest
- Thread starter Vanigo
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- battletech
- Location
- The internet
Yes. There is a reason why the HVAC's never got their time to shine, and its not just because their stats are frankly quite bad for L2
More seriously, I figure its at least plausible that we could manage something less memetically bad than the canon HVACs, because they're just unusably awful.
- Location
- not telling
A AC/5 tank has a big enough gun with enough range that it actually has to be treated as a threat unlike an AC/2 or single ML or MG armed scout being almost ignorable. The thing the Scorpion does is Quikscell pumps out a shit ton of them but you need to buy 5 to make 4 working ones from all the missing parts. But it's the only thing on the market both made in bulk and cheap enough that every militia can scrap together full companies or regiments of them and with whatever salvage they get filling in holes. A good "Better Scorpion" would be noticeably cheaper becuase you can buy 4 that all work not 5 or 6 to fix up 4 that work. From there it's just expanding volume of production and earning a reputation. Give it 20 years and a WHI "Better Scorpion" would be the tank of choice for the better off planetary militias and the reliable core of the poorer ones that use Scorpions to bulk up numbers on the cheap.
Last edited:
Yes. There is a reason why the HVAC's never got their time to shine, and its not just because their stats are frankly quite bad for L2
More seriously, I figure its at least plausible that we could manage something less memetically bad than the canon HVACs, because they're just unusably awful.
I think the multi-use self defense smoke discharge me and Silversum were kicking around in the past would be a better project, mostly because it would take a small amount of effort as it is reusing existing materials in a new format rather than... Whatever it is that HVACs actually do to get their slightly better performance and critical fail chance. But also because it synergies nicely with anyone who has a vehicle they want to be able to add a +2 penalty to being shot. A Sloop, because its pretty fragile, or a Demolisher, to survive the counterstrike after its ambush.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, a Katyusha, then, something a bit more tactical rather than operational. Still, I get what you're saying.
Well, it's likely that our defenses will grow commensurate with our reputation. We're unlikely to attract attacks by the most skilled and deadly of raiders who can perform the most daring or even reckless of attacks reliably, when all we do is manufacture adequate militia LRM tanks and we've only been doing that for a year or three.
Well yes, and it's always going to be the car, because a jet ski is impractical except as a recreational vehicle.
A howitzer is not impractical, even for low- to mid-tier planetary militias, and a self-propelled howitzer is not entirely impractical either. If nothing else, it makes it a lot easier to react to a highly mobile force without getting caught out of position by misfortunes, or to relocate to a more advantageous position in a hurry if enemy scouts are headed in your general direction but still several kilometers out.
The trouble here is the way BattleTech armor works- it's ablative rather than "all or nothing." The usual result of hitting something with a weapon that isn't powerful enough to just blow through all the armor on that part of the vehicle is that you knock off a chunk of armor, and the target is still standing and fighting.
And gunnery usually isn't good enough to make it easy to repeatedly hit the same location on a target. So if you repeatedly hit the same target with a relatively light weapon, the usual result is to repeatedly "scratch" it without ever inflicting critical damage on any part of it. To oversimplify things a bit in the name of clarifying the situation...
With an AC/5 or other light weapons, you're likely to wind up having to laboriously sandblast every last ton of armor off the target one chunk at a time, rather than having some reasonable chance to seriously weaken if not incapacitate the target with your first shot.
The general thread consensus- and this is coming from people who've played tabletop and so are about as close to "real world combat experience in BattleTech" as we can get- is that the greater per-shot firepower of the AC/10 is worth the increased tonnage cost, reduced ammunition capacity, and decreased range when compared to the AC/5.
If the primary threat our buyers usually faced was, say, infantry dug into bunkers, then the AC/5 tanks might be more desirable. If we were selling to a sub-continental government planning to fight a war on its own continent with another nation that held another part of that continent, AC/5 tanks to increase the sheer number of mechanized vehicles available and spread the enemy's antitank capabilities thin (as Shermans and T-34s did to the WWII Germans) might well make sense.
We're not.
The typical militia is most worried about space-mobile raiding units who arrive in dropships from outer space, drop a modest number of very mobile, reasonably well protected battlemechs, hit one or a few planetary land targets, and then leave. Sort of like the pirates who hit us just recently. These pirates and state-employed raiders will usually prefer to hit targets they expect to be relatively soft, because their battlemechs use expensive parts that are hard to replace, and because the ability to go on operating those mechs is the only thing that keeps them functional and relevant so that they don't have to go find honest work.
In that situation, it makes a very large difference whether you are known to have the ability to scratch up a battlemech with your weapons, or to take a battlemech and knock it the fuck out.
Knocking a battlemech the fuck out takes a fairly big gun, and the AC/10 is close to the minimum capable of passing the "you must be this tall to enter" bar.
...
EDIT:
Now that doesn't mean we couldn't rationally choose to go digging into the "design an AC/5 tank" market, since that market certainly exists. The catch is that others point out that we'd be specifically competing with established suppliers. This immediately means we have to raise the level of our marketing game higher to start selling the tanks than if we're selling to something that meets a 'hole' in the market.
And it also occurs to me that competing in the AC/5 light tank bracket against established competitors means that those established competitors have an incentive to knock us out... and almost by definition, a major well established arms supplier probably has enough money to hire some pirates or more legal mercenaries.
Last edited:
There is also the Pilot Skill Roll caused by taking twenty points of damage in a round, which is easier with weapons that do double the damage of an AC5 and vehicles tend to operate in teams of four.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
(To be clear, the proposition here is that a squadron of AC/10 tanks is able to focus-fire on an enemy mech and be much more likely to give the pilot a Very Bad Day where they have to save-or-get-screwed over, as compared to a squadron of AC/5 tanks, right?)
That seems correct. The heavier guns are just better at dealing with targets than an AC5. Particularly since the most common mechs, Locust/Stinger/Wasp, will tend to lose entire limbs to one shot.
- Location
- USA
Yep, and all the damage from a shot going into one spot helps a lot, more so if you have sandblasted some of the armor with LRMs as they close as at that point an AC/10 might just punch through the armor where an AC/5 at half the damage might miss
Realistically in a merc or militia setting the AC5 tanks already exist.
We're just giving them a bigger tougher and meaner brother to help them out if we got with a AC 10 MBT
We're just giving them a bigger tougher and meaner brother to help them out if we got with a AC 10 MBT
Last edited:
What exactly is covered by "military engineering"? Now that we have an established revenue stream this could be relevant.
A chunk of the team came over from the militia's main repair base, so they have lots of experience maintaining and repairing the kinds of tanks the militia uses; they're the ones who rebuilt that Vedette from almost-scratch in the intro post. So, they're good at that kind of thing.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Ahhh. That's promising for our ability to design a punchier Vedette-analogue.
Oh that's easy to do.
Engineer: well, we replaced the main gun on the Vedette with a giant fist.
Customer: A giant fist? Why?!
Engineer: We want it to punch through stuff.
Everyone: Groan
Engineer: Next we add the googly eyes on the next product we do.
- Location
- Denmark
I do want to point out that we should not be too worried about being able to sell the tanks that we make, as long as they are somewhat decent.
The more interesting question might be whom we can sell our tanks to, since it is likely easy to find militias willing to buy our tanks, but it will likely be harder to get the actual military units of the FWL to become our customers.
For example, the Sloop was considered great by militia but the Militia preferred Harasser hovercraft. I am assuming part of this is institutional inertia, ie Harassers are a known quantity and some amount of lobbying. And a little bit of their higher top speed but hovercraft have a lot of drawbacks compared to a wheeled vehicle.
No, you can't stop me from making that joke every time. It is impossible.
No, you can't stop me from making that joke every time. It is impossible.
I tried my hand at a basic 50t AC/10 tank.
Grizzly Tank 50T
Mass: 50 tons
Movement Type: Tracked
Power Plant: Whiterock 200
Cruising Speed: 43.2 kph
Maximum Speed: 64.8 kph
Armor: StarSlab-3
Armament:
1 Machine Gun
1 AC/10
Manufacturer: Whiterock Heavy Industries
Primary Factory: Aylmer
Communication System: Salamander Systems CommPhase Unit
Targeting & Tracking System: Exeter LongScan w/ReconLock
Introduction Year: 2916
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-D-D-D
Cost: 829,000 C-bills
Type: Whiterock 50T
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Tonnage: 50
Battle Value: 608
Features the following design quirks: Anti-Aircraft Targeting
Mass: 50 tons
Movement Type: Tracked
Power Plant: Whiterock 200
Cruising Speed: 43.2 kph
Maximum Speed: 64.8 kph
Armor: StarSlab-3
Armament:
1 Machine Gun
1 AC/10
Manufacturer: Whiterock Heavy Industries
Primary Factory: Aylmer
Communication System: Salamander Systems CommPhase Unit
Targeting & Tracking System: Exeter LongScan w/ReconLock
Introduction Year: 2916
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-D-D-D
Cost: 829,000 C-bills
Type: Whiterock 50T
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Tonnage: 50
Battle Value: 608
| Equipment | Mass | |
|---|---|---|
| Internal Structure | 5 | |
| Engine | 200 ICE | 17 |
| Cruising MP: | 4 | |
| Flanking MP: | 6 | |
| Heat Sinks: | 0 | 0 |
| Control Equipment: | 2.5 | |
| Power Amplifier: | 0 | |
| Turret: | 1.5 | |
| Armor Factor: | 128 | 8 |
| Internal Structure | Armor Value | |
|---|---|---|
| Front | 5 | 33 |
| R/L Side | 5/5 | 25/25 |
| Rear | 5 | 20 |
| Turret | 5 | 25 |
Weapons and Ammo | Location | Critical | Tonnage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Machine Gun | Turret | 1 | 0.5 |
| AC/10 | Turret | 7 | 12 |
| AC/10 Ammo (30) | Body | 3 | 3 |
| Machine Gun Ammo (100) | Body | 1 | 0.5 |
Features the following design quirks: Anti-Aircraft Targeting
- Location
- Denmark
Yeah, the frontline units can afford to be picky compared to the different militias, since the frontline units probably get to stand first in line for new tanks, while the militias are just happy to be offered the opportunity to buy a tank.
That would likely mean that there is a lot of prestige and influence in being a weapon supplier to the frontline units compared to just being a supplier for militias.
That would likely mean that there is a lot of prestige and influence in being a weapon supplier to the frontline units compared to just being a supplier for militias.
- Location
- not telling
This is all find and dandy but runs face first into one simple fact. Why is the most common tank, nevermind militia tank, by far the AC/5 armed Scorpion if the AC/10 is the minimum bar? The obvious answer is availability. Everyone would love a full regiment of Battlemechs in every city of every world but the feds can barely replace losses with crap Locusts nevermind anything good.
Like lets take a normal backwater world. A population of around half a million, no HPG, and traffic is a jumpship every month or so with once every three or four a Mule swings by to trade consumer goods for processed materials. You got one big capital city of 200,000; two or three small cities of ~50,000; and some towns that don't break passed 10,000 along with some resource extraction sites.
Now let's wipe the slate clean. They just got hit by one of those big pirate bands that decide to go kingdom building in the periphery. So they raid this world specifically to steal their tanks and whatever family mechs they have along with technial experts and pleasure slaves. Now they have to rebuild their entire militia. How many tanks does such a world need to secure their world? At bare minimum I'd say a Regiment. That give you a Battalion in the big city, a company in the small ones, and a lance in the more important minor sites to see off the typical lance sized pirate attack. A Brigade would be a lot more in line with what they would want but if wishs where fishs.
So where are you going to find a full 108 strong Tank Regiment fast and on the cheap? Most makers of AC/10 or better tanks only product a full Battalions a year for the whole realm. Quikscell shits out the Scorpion by the Brigade every quarter each of which cost a third of a better tank. If you need numbers and are on a budget it's Quikscell or bust. A AC/5 tank that can made almost as cheap as Scorpion and none of Quikscell's problems would be absuredly popular especially once production is ramped up to notable levels. Paired with the Sloop and a IFV you have the backbone of a good militia force.
Last edited:
Rockeye
Plausible Engineer
- Location
- Midwestern U.S.
Hmm, probably just outdated info but didn't we build a wall and a vehicle bay for the mercs?
Yeah, plus I need to update the factory descriptions now that the Sloop is in production.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah. So the question is, do we want to offer a product in that category of "only a small number of these are manufactured in the realm and they're in high demand?"
Or do we want to try to compete directly with Quikscell by marketing AC/5 light tanks of a category where they can already beat us bloody on economies of scale and where they are notorious for undercutting literally everyone on price?
The reason we started with the Sloop is precisely because it does something that isn't exactly like what can easily be bought off the open market in our region of space, since apparently the Scorpion LRM variant isn't as "all over" in our region of space as its AC/5 siblings. Trying to sell a copy of something else, or trying to carve out a reputation for "something that does a Quikscell Scorpion's job, but better, but at a cost premium," is inherently more of a struggle. It's going to be just plain harder, especially for a new company with no reputation, than trying to sell something the customer can't buy somewhere else but that still fills a clearly recognizable role.
If we're marketing AC/5 light tanks in the 25-30 ton range, people are looking at our tank and asking "why should I not just buy Scorpions," and the answer is "product reliability and maybe a little extra armor plate," but they're paying a sizeable premium for those things (we cannot plausibly match Quikscell on unit price for similar tanks because they have huge economy of scale). If, as you point out, they're desperate and just want to say "I have purchased 108 tanks" and aren't fussy about the details of whether the tanks run reliably or can actually put down enemy light battlemechs, then they will just shop with Quikscell anyway and we're left in the dirt.
If we market 40-ton mediums whose armament is "AC/5 and something else," then they'll look at our tank and ask "why should I not just buy Scorpions," and we at least have an answer ("secondary weapon heavier than a machine gun"). But we're no longer competing in anything remotely like the same price bracket as the Scorpion anyway...
At which point we might as well go whole hog and market a 50-ton 'heavy medium or main battle tank, at which point yes the tank is explicitly more expensive than a Scorpion, but the answer to the question "why not just buy two Scorpions" becomes very easy to answer: "because this thing has a big fucking gun, and two little guns do not add up to one big one."
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'd like to come at this from another angle.
The Sloop actually costs less than a Scorpion (Sarna.net says the price tag on a Scorpion is around 327k C-bills, whereas Sloops cost 306k according to a recent update). Why can't we get in on the same market of "oh shit gotta replace the entire planetary defense force's order of battle pronto?"
Because we simply do not have the scale of production. Our CEO expects yearly production of Sloops at the current factory to stabilize in the "mid-double-digits," so figure something like 40-60 Sloops per year. Anyone in the kind of position you describe isn't going to wait two years for us to build their tanks for them, and that's a minimum since realistically much of our production at any given time would be going to fulfill existing orders that are already placed. Sure, we could eventually scale up our production line to churn out a few hundred of Sloops a year, at which point we can fill that kind of order... but that's way, way in the future for the company.
Having seen how much investment capital it took us to build one factory, we would be unwise to be thinking about immediate transition a business model that's only going to be viable when we have five or more similar factories running at once.
...
Since the Sloop and Scorpion already occupy similar tonnage and price points, we face similar obstacles if we're trying to specifically compete with Quikscell in their favorite market niche (large orders of very cheap vehicles). Quikscell has Scorpion-building factories on [checks Sarna] Ares, Kalidasa, Layover, Oliver, Pandora, and Richvale, and it's quite possible, even likely, that each of these six production lines produces as many or more Scorpions in a month as we make of Sloops in a year.
Quikscell's Scorpion production is at a level where if they get a panic order for 100 of the things, they can literally just shout "MINION! To the parking lot!" and drive 100 of the things already in storage to the spaceport, then have their expert-level IndustrialMech Tetris squad fit the things into the DropShip somehow (with the result that by the time you somehow wiggle all the tanks out of the bay at the other end, 20% or so of them are broken 'fresh out of the box,' but what can you do).
To compete in the "panic-order 100 of something, I don't care what, make it cheap" market niche, we'd need to be able to produce 100 of something (even Sloops) fast enough to be able to keep that kind of inventory sitting around. We're not there yet and we probably won't be in the current CEO's lifetime unless BattleTech has some kind of life extension shenanigans, which seems doubtful to me.
...
This further underlines the need to market something that fills a need our biggest competitors aren't properly filling, or at any rate do not actively specialize in filling better than we can. Thus the idea of building a fifty-ton tank to compete with the Vedette, only with a heavier armament.
Tasoli
Life is for Living
- Location
- Behind the Keyboard.
Exactly this, Hell it might make more sense to just buy Scorpions repair them and sell the fowards as used Scorpion. So that buyer knows that their tanks work since they are
Last edited:
Sir_Travelsalot
Never wakes up tired.
- Location
- At Home
Actually, how is there a Vedette for us to compete against in the medium tank market (or to get fixed up in the prologue)? According to the tank's Sarna page, it only began production in 2943. There was an SLDF cavalry tank by the same name and roughly similar design during the Star League, but that model is Lostech; the Helm Memory Core Cache notably contained two working examples of it, explicitly mentioned as being the last examples of their kind.
Last edited: