Let's build a proper futuristic VTOL without the dinky back rotor. Something like Combine Gunship that has its rotor covered by armor around it.
How Hard Can It Be? A Battletech Arms Manufacturer Quest
- Thread starter Vanigo
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- battletech
There are a good number of counter rotating VTOLs in canon. The physics are harder but it has its advantages.
Still, I would argue against trying a VTOL compared to sticking with what we know.
If we are ever making a tank with a ac5 then we will name it the "Pug Tank" after the dog type.
so we make our own spin on the light SRM carrier.
canon Light SRM carrier stats
Code:
Light SRM Carrier
Mass: 45 tons
Movement Type: Wheeled
Power Plant: 205 ICE
Cruising Speed: 54 kph
Maximum Speed: 86.4 kph
Armor: Standard
Armament:
4 SRM 6
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 3058
Tech Rating/Availability: D/X-X-C-C
Cost: 829,631 C-bills
Type: Light SRM Carrier
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Movement Type: Wheeled
Tonnage: 45
Battle Value: 609
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 4.5
Engine 205 ICE 17
Cruising MP: 5
Flank MP: 8
Heat Sinks: 0 0
Control Equipment: 2.5
Power Amplifier: 0.0
Turret: 1.5
Armor Factor 72 4.5
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Front 5 16
R/L Side 5/5 14/14
Rear 5 12
Turret 5 16
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage
4 SRM 6 Turret 12.0
SRM 6 Ammo (45) Body 3.0here's my attempt at discount versions with more armor
Code:
Discount SRM Carrier
Mass: 35 tons
Movement Type: Wheeled
Power Plant: 155 ICE
Cruising Speed: 54 kph
Maximum Speed: 86.4 kph
Armor: Standard
Armament:
3 SRM 6
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 2470
Tech Rating/Availability: D/C-C-C-C
Cost: 618,540 C-bills
Type: Discount SRM Carrier
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Movement Type: Wheeled
Tonnage: 35
Battle Value: 555
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 3.5
Engine 155 ICE 11
Cruising MP: 5
Flank MP: 8
Heat Sinks: 0 0
Control Equipment: 2.0
Power Amplifier: 0.0
Turret: 1.0
Armor Factor 88 5.5
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Front 4 23
R/L Side 4/4 17/17
Rear 4 14
Turret 4 17
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage
3 SRM 6 Turret 9.0
SRM 6 Ammo (45) Body 3.0
Code:
Discount SRM Carrier
Mass: 35 tons
Movement Type: Wheeled
Power Plant: 155 ICE
Cruising Speed: 54 kph
Maximum Speed: 86.4 kph
Armor: Standard
Armament:
4 SRM 4
Manufacturer: Unknown
Primary Factory: Unknown
Communication System: Unknown
Targeting & Tracking System: Unknown
Introduction Year: 2470
Tech Rating/Availability: D/C-C-C-C
Cost: 650,265 C-bills
Type: Discount SRM Carrier
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Introductory)
Movement Type: Wheeled
Tonnage: 35
Battle Value: 525
Equipment Mass
Internal Structure 3.5
Engine 155 ICE 11
Cruising MP: 5
Flank MP: 8
Heat Sinks: 0 0
Control Equipment: 2.0
Power Amplifier: 0.0
Turret: 1.0
Armor Factor 88 5.5
Internal Armor
Structure Value
Front 4 23
R/L Side 4/4 17/17
Rear 4 14
Turret 4 17
Weapons
and Ammo Location Tonnage
4 SRM 4 Turret 8.0
SRM 4 Ammo (100) Body 4.0Let's call the AC10 tank the Boxer! Both after the dog and after the sport, since it's a small, stubborn, and punches you in the face!
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All of the presented variants have too damn much ammo. How the hell are they going to fire 10 to 20 volleys with 23 top armor? Even with 2 tons of ammo by the time they are gone either all of your enemies would be dead or SRM carrier.
Though the worst offender in this department is probably Hetzer with 5 tons of AC/10 ammo and a single gun. 50 shots! Over eight minutes of non-stop shooting.
Because prior to the Clan introducing speed runs to combat, misses were statistically more liekly than hits. So you needed more ammo for prolonged fire fights that were marathons not sprints.
we can drop 1 ton of ammo from the srm4 version for another ton armor and still have 18 full salvos.
edit: or we can trim the tank back to 30 tons by doing 3 tons ammo and 4.5 tons armor and get to use the sloop's engine.
edit: or we can trim the tank back to 30 tons by doing 3 tons ammo and 4.5 tons armor and get to use the sloop's engine.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I should think it's more one or the other.
If we can produce a fully domestic-built version of something in our own stable production facility that's as good as a product the FWL normally obtains by foreign purchase, battlefield salvage, or bootlegging, then that's going to give us a considerable advantage.
Suppose the FWL loves, oh, let's say hovertanks. But many of its hovertanks are battlefield salvage, or janky copies bolted together from whatever they could find in Discount Dan's Totally Reputable Lightly Used Parts Warehouse. Whereas our hovertanks are assembled to a specific blueprint on a factory assembly line with interchangeable parts and user documentation and everything. Our hovertanks will tend to outcompete the jalopy hovertanks at similar price points and equal tabletop stats, because they're a lot less of a pain in the ass to work with and keep working with.
Hypothesis:
Vanigo doesn't seem to model warfare as purely tabletop-centric. Certain commonsense elements from real world modern warfare can sometimes apply. This may result in munitions consumption being "excessive" in real life compared to tabletop. Concepts like suppressing fire or extreme-range bombardment beyond the normal maximum effective range of a weapon against a fixed target you know is there do not exist on tabletop, but do exist in real life. Likewise, my understanding is that most tabletop scenarios involve a discrete cage match between two armed units with a well defined beginning and end, and the ammunition status of the winner is not particularly relevant after the scenario plays out. In realistic warfare there are many times when you really want to be sure that your unit has enough ammunition to theoretically go into a second engagement and open fire on the enemy without fear of running out.
Because sometimes your convoy sees a building that looks suspicious and lights it up with three full salvoes of SRMs to flatten all the cover in the vicinity for fear of running into a Hetzer ambush.
Technically they do exist. It's just a pain in the ass to play a game with a few dozen units on each side with BT level of detail. Though some people do try and MegaMek helps.
But even in real world people try to have support weapons or just something cheaper to do things like this. Maybe something like doing a 2 ton main ammo storage and a half ton of specialized bin for inferno and the like?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm not saying "no" to your design ideas as such.
I'm just saying that I suspect there are very good reasons why in-universe people might seem to consistently build fighting vehicles to a standard you'd call under-armored and over-ammo'd, even though this is suboptimal for tabletop.
And I suspect that if we actually design your tabletop-optimized builds with very heavy armor compared to canon designs, but ammunition supplies calculated for "just enough that this vehicle can keep fighting until its ablative armor is stripped away," we'll start getting feedback from our customers along the lines of:
"So uh yeah, Whiterock vehicles are hella survivable and we love that, but we just took some lumps after an entire company of our trigger-happy militia gunners blasted away at this one really nimble Wasp that maaaay have spent most of its time hiding behind a hill and just riding out the barrage. So yeah, C Company wasted half the ammo in their bins, and after that there wasn't enough left to fight the actual battle, so we had to send that company back to resupply and we got defeated in detail, at which point the armor just made things take a little longer. Five out of ten stars, still technically better than Quikscell I guess, but I feel like they aren't giving us what we want."
And you might go mad trying to replicate that result on tabletop, but that doesn't mean shit like that wouldn't happen in real life when you start intentionally trading off on ammo storage.
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here's a trick for thinking about tabletop vs "real": Table top assumes everyone has been shoved into a solaris arena.
Another thing is that, in tabletop, you are going to take risks that real people wouldn't because hey, it doesn't cost you anything if you lose a unit. Whereas pilots and crews have to think about their own and their families' lives.
A comment i like from years back is that Battletech players hate the clans because the clans are what BT players would look like in-universe with how all fights are to the knife and how the battles are balanced using BV/cbill values.
Well, real life tanks seem to go for 3-5 minutes of ammo but WW2 tanks go for 7 to 10 minutes.
how long a desgin's ammo last's is planed around the intesnisty of the fighting that is expected. Modern combat assumes a much faster pace, and Battletech combat on the tabletop assumes everyone is going all out for about 3 to 5 minutes before retreating/dying, but in the 3rd ssw era, you are only really expecting to be shooting for about 200 seconds total before you need to bail.
Measuring endurance by maximum cyclical rate of the weapon in question seems... Off. Since you aren't going to be continuously shooting, with poor to hit odds or lack of good targets featuring prominently.
*waggles hand*
All fights are to victory rather than explicitly "the knife". No point in destroying equipment or people you can take for your team, after all, which was the original point of the Clan system.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
True, although that would tend to argue for the "lots of armor and survivability emphasis" that we see out of @Zoolimar , for instance.
Part of the issue is that what sells in setting and what wins in tabletop are not necessarily 100%.
At the same time you need enough guns to force the enemy to retreat first, leading to the canon design philosophies. Armor isn't a perfect defense after all.
But yes. In setting is different from tabletop. Though since we can sell just about anything there is no need to try for perfect when good enough will do.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
As DaLintyGuy points out, this isn't because the plan was for a tank to empty its entire magazine at its maximum rate of fire and then retreat to restock. World War Two tanks could not normally spend several minutes pounding on each other before something broke, after all; many if not most engagements were still decided with the first shot.
The reason for deep magazines was precisely because tanks weren't ruthlessly optimized to drive into a delimited battlespace, unload all their ammo at maximum rate of firepower, and then the battle is assumed to be over because you're either dead or victorious.
The plan, in general, was for a tank to remain in contact with the enemy, in one or many different locations potentially spread apart by considerable distance and potentially divided into multiple distinct skirmishes. Not necessarily taking or giving fire but there, potentially for hours at a time, periodically firing its gun at enemy armored vehicles, or suspected AT gun positions, or infantry in a bunker, or a machine gun nest, or that suspicious-looking church steeple that you just KNOW a sniper would love to hunker down in, or a few rounds of canister in the general direction of the tree-line to keep the fuckers honest. And then it'd reload after all that.
And this is frankly a much more realistic mission for an armored vehicle than "go in there for 200 seconds of death-or-glory."
New Tank
Base Tech Level: Standard (IS)
Level Era
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Experimental 2455-2915 (Age of War to Late Succession Wars - LosTech)
Advanced 2916+ (Late Succession Wars - LosTech -)
Standard -
Tech Rating: D/X-C-C-C
Weight: 25 tons
BV: 183
Cost: 204,792 C-bills
Source: (Unknown)
Role: Scout
Movement: 8/12 (Tracked)
Engine: 200 ICE
Internal: 12
Armor: 40 (Standard)
Internal Armor
--------------------------
Front 3 12
Right 3 10
Left 3 10
Rear 3 8
Weapons Loc Heat
--------------------------------
Machine Gun FR 0
Ammo Loc Shots
-------------------------------------
Machine Gun Ammo [Half] BD 100
Equipment Loc
--------------------
Recon Camera FR
Trailer Hitch RR
Base Tech Level: Standard (IS)
Level Era
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Experimental 2455-2915 (Age of War to Late Succession Wars - LosTech)
Advanced 2916+ (Late Succession Wars - LosTech -)
Standard -
Tech Rating: D/X-C-C-C
Weight: 25 tons
BV: 183
Cost: 204,792 C-bills
Source: (Unknown)
Role: Scout
Movement: 8/12 (Tracked)
Engine: 200 ICE
Internal: 12
Armor: 40 (Standard)
Internal Armor
--------------------------
Front 3 12
Right 3 10
Left 3 10
Rear 3 8
Weapons Loc Heat
--------------------------------
Machine Gun FR 0
Ammo Loc Shots
-------------------------------------
Machine Gun Ammo [Half] BD 100
Equipment Loc
--------------------
Recon Camera FR
Trailer Hitch RR
Got bored, decided to actually get MekLab and design the 25 ton scout I theory crafted earlier. Turns out that getting a 200 rated engine requires having no offensive punch, no turret, or very low armor... Otherwise this design would let us work out the kinks of a 200 rated engine and get hands on practice with tracked combat vehicles. Also I think an 8/12 CV is funny as hell
You could make it an F class engine if you build it as support vehicle which would allow you to add a lot of stuff. Though it would be around 400-500k for such a vehicle.
you can get the same preformace on a 10 tonner for maybe 8 points less armor
8 points less armor lets LRMs, AC/5s, and AC/2s become a serious threat to this thing, all of those have the range to hit it when it has to get close to use the recon camera.
Edit:
Also, it needs to be big enough to mount the 200 rated engine, which is 17 tons.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Aren't those extremely temperamental and a pain in the ass to maintain? That sounds counterproductive for a scout vehicle.
its a machine gun armed scout. its normal for it to die if someone sneezes on it.