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Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-26-18, 06:47 PM (EDT) |
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"On the Tech of Battle"
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LAST EDITED ON May-26-18 AT 06:55 PM (EDT) Before it was the label for a series of first-person in-cockpit BattleMech simulation games, MechWarrior was the name of the RPG system FASA nailed to the side of the original BattleTech tabletop game. It was... well, pretty terrible, honestly. First printed in 1986 (the year after the wargame changed from Battledroids to BattleTech), it had all the usual charmingly low-rent production quality of FASA products from that era, and the rules themselves were... well, with the best will in the world, a bit half-baked.Of course, that was in large part because they had tried to make them fully interoperable with the primitive character rules in BattleTech, so you had weird things like lower Gunnery ('Mech) and Piloting ('Mech) skill scores being better than higher ones (kind of like AD&D Armor Class). Still, however legitimate the reasons, the fact remains that MechWarrior First Edition was a hellaciously clumsy RPG. I mean, this was the game system that gave us the immortal rule citation in the personal equipment section of the Technical Readout: 3026 sourcebook: "Each grenade may be used only once." My high school crew and I played the hell out of it anyway, because we played a ton of BattleTech and it was the only RPG system available for that universe (MechWarrior Second Edition wasn't out until my senior year). Flawed as it was, it gave us the opportunity to branch out and do things in that setting besides the actual 'Mech battles. This was an opportunity we took full advantage of. By an odd coincidence, the premise of our MechWarrior campaign was very similar to the basic setup of the new BattleTech video game. Our small group of PCs (there were four or five players, depending on the week, and we each had two characters—one a veteran and the other a relative rookie at the start of the campaign—so that we could vary the sorts of missions we did) jointly operated a tiny mercenary oufit, not unlike the player character and company in BattleTech. Though we rarely played more than a lance at a time, because of the arrangement described above, our outfit was a little larger—our full strength was most of a company (usually 10 'Mechs of the standard 12), and we had a commensurately bigger DropShip (a Union-class). We also had our own small JumpShip, a Merchant-class, and occasionally rented out its second hardpoint to make some extra cash, if somebody else happened to be going our way. Got to defray those operating expenses however you can, right? (There was, I kid you not, a page of tables in the original MechWarrior rulebook where you could roll all this stuff up.) The two PCs who were principal owners of the company were named Marks and Spencer, entirely by coincidence—Spencer's player and I didn't know each others' characters' names until we were done generating them and had started playing. We (the players) assumed that the department store chain by that name would be long gone and basically unknown in the 31st century, and so pretty much no one in-universe would get the joke (including, possibly, the characters who made it), but the unit was called Marks & Spencer Ltd. anyway. So for the past couple of weeks, as I've been playing the new BattleTech, I've been kicking around the idea of bringing back M&S for a guest shot, not entirely unlike the way Don Griffin and company appeared in Eyrie Productions Destroys the Marvel Universe. Here's the thing, though: it's been (fuuuuck) 30 years, and I'm (to borrow a phrase from The Mighty Jingles) old and crap. I can't remember most of the details, including but not limited to—embarrassingly enough—the player characters' full names, callsigns (I'm not sure we even really used callsigns in our game, come to think of it) and in many cases even what 'Mechs they had. Likewise, though I remember the general story arc of the campaign (inasmuch as we imagined RPG campaigns to have such things in those less developed times), only the broadest strokes have stayed with me. So upon reflection, I thought what I might do is hybridize the two—sort of hang the details I remember from the Elder Days on the framework of the HBS BattleTech's premise and see what happens. Or would that just be weird? (Looking around, I realize that that is a vaguely hilarious thing to be wondering at this stage of the game, but still. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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The Traitor
Member since Feb-24-09
945 posts |
May-26-18, 09:45 PM (EDT) |
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2. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #0
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Insert obligatory "these are not just giant robots" gag here. --- "She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards. |
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Nova Floresca
Member since Sep-13-13
352 posts |
May-27-18, 02:02 AM (EDT) |
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4. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #0
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Firstly, for what it's worth, in re: >So upon reflection, I thought what I might do is hybridize the >two—sort of hang the details I remember from the Elder Days on the >framework of the HBS BattleTech's premise and see what happens. I say, go for it! For one thing, I'm betting your old campaign didn't have all of the non-combat positions fully staffed by players, so you'd be adding new characters to the story anyway. Also, in re: >and the rules themselves were... well, with the best will in the >world, a bit half-baked. They didn't get much better from my experience. Or at least, Mechwarrior Third Edition was a massive plonker. For starters, they did away with the parity between MW skill ratings and Battletech skills, which meant that you now needed to use a conversion chart to figure out where you were in your 'mech. Even worse though was the combination of Battletech-esque combat rules, which meant you had a to-hit roll of about 8 on 2d10+skill to shoot someone unless they were running for their life, with a very realistic wounding chart that included the phrase "the character gains the Addiction (2) Negative Trait, representing anti-rejection drugs he/she will be required to take for the rest of his/her career or die" far too often for a campaign to last very long. "This is probably a stupid question, but . . ." |
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MoonEyes
Member since Jun-29-03
831 posts |
May-28-18, 11:56 AM (EDT) |
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8. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #0
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>So upon reflection, I thought what I might do is hybridize the >two—sort of hang the details I remember from the Elder Days on the >framework of the HBS BattleTech's premise and see what happens. > >Or would that just be weird? Nope. Makes perfect sense to me! Even more so since any characters you DO make are much more likely to understand and acknowledge the M&S thing. Be even better if you connect to the various M&S brands, and have a hydroponics section called "Simply Foods".
...! Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths "Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-29-18, 00:19 AM (EDT) |
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11. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #8
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>Be even better if you connect to the various M&S brands, and >have a hydroponics section called "Simply Foods". Hydroponics cost a damn fortune! We're not going to get that on the Argo for a long damn time. Less flippantly, in practice the outfit in the original game didn't end up going by the M&S name for very long. Quite early in the campaign, they had to go underground like the A-Team and change both their own names and the name of the unit. After which point, in a meta-nod to the original M&S coincidence and the assumption that the name would similarly be unknown in the 31st century, we called it "Sears, Roebuck & Company". :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
936 posts |
May-28-18, 11:49 PM (EDT) |
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9. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #0
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Go for it, man. I mean, you've done considerably more shoestringy things, whats the worst that could possibly happen? > I mean, this was the game system that gave >us the immortal rule citation in the personal equipment section of the >Technical Readout: 3026 sourcebook: "Each grenade may be used >only once." Tangent: this is still a thing even in these modern days. The system I'm running in right now needs to label grenades with the quality "Limited Ammo: 1." Most other modern systems I've seen feel the need to specific in some way, perhaps explicitly, perhaps only by implication, that when you acquire a grenade you acquire just that; ONE (1) grenade. It's not entirely nutty. A lot of game systems abstract basic ammo into unlimited quantities; if you have a gun or a bow or a blaster or a freeze ray or, hell, the ability to cast Magic Missile, they just give you the ability to fire endlessly assuming something really weird doesn't happen. In that context, saying "just because you bought a grenade, or even worse, a grenade LAUNCHER, that doesn't mean you bought ENDLESS GRENADES. Yes. Yes, we know the guy with the BlasTech DL-44 has unlimited zappy bolts. No, you don't have unlimited grenades. No. No, SHUT UP, you do not" isn't a crazy thing to do. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-29-18, 00:13 AM (EDT) |
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10. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #9
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LAST EDITED ON May-29-18 AT 00:16 AM (EDT) >It's not entirely nutty.It's pretty nutty. I mean, it's not as if anyone old enough to be playing an RPG isn't going to know that grenades explode in the normal course of things and, as such, cannot be retrieved and reused. I mean, I know why they do it, but I've long been of the opinion that rules lawyers of that kind ought not to be humored when disintegration is available. This was clearly the work of the same playtester who caused the explicit rule spelling out that each weapon on a 'Mech can be fired only once per turn to be added to the second edition of the base game, after realizing that since machine guns don't make heat, you can (if heat is the only limiting factor) vaporize any enemy in the game with a Locust by expending your entire load of MG ammo on him the instant you get within range. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
936 posts |
May-29-18, 11:18 AM (EDT) |
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13. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #10
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> you can (if >heat is the only limiting factor) vaporize any enemy in the game with >a Locust by expending your entire load of MG ammo on him the >instant you get within range. :) It still, twenty years later, amuses me that the single most dangerous thing to a mech that you can have inside said mech isn't a load of incendiary devices, or high-caliber artillery shells, or even the goddamn fusion reactor. It's a single ton of MG ammo. I've forgone CASE on AC/20 ammo. I would never, EVER do it on MG ammo. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Sofaspud
Member since Apr-7-06
272 posts |
May-29-18, 11:35 AM (EDT) |
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15. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #13
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Not having played the tabletop original(s?), I can only assume that this comment means they ported THAT behavior over to MechWarrior Online pretty much unchanged. Fucking ammo explosions. I've often wondered, mechanically, how it works. Why does MG ammo cook off so damn easily compared to AC/whatever or missile ammo? And the only thing coming to mind -- and this would be incredibly silly -- is that it's a per-unit percentile chance. Even at relatively low percentages, you have so much more MG ammo than any other type that it would explain the stupid frequency at which the ammo cooks off. --sofaspud -- |
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Mephron
Charter Member
1785 posts |
May-29-18, 11:49 AM (EDT) |
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16. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #15
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>I've often wondered, mechanically, how it works. Why does MG ammo >cook off so damn easily compared to AC/whatever or missile ammo? And >the only thing coming to mind -- and this would be incredibly silly -- >is that it's a per-unit percentile chance. Even at relatively low >percentages, you have so much more MG ammo than any other type that it >would explain the stupid frequency at which the ammo cooks off. Originally, no, it was just a chance per space the ammo took up. The problem was that sometimes you had that spare ton, and, well, you know, not close enough to the SRM-5, but right next to the MG, and you know, might see Elementals on the mission, so hell, we'll put some more ammo in there. And sure enough, that was when it went to Hell. (Amusingly, there were other cook-off rules from ammo explosions. Once saw an Atlas taken out completely when a hit on the missle ammo spread to the AC/20 cartridge and that boy got split in half.) -- Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support. "And Remember! Google is your Friend!!" |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
936 posts |
May-29-18, 12:06 PM (EDT) |
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18. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #15
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LAST EDITED ON May-29-18 AT 12:10 PM (EDT) > Why does MG ammo >cook off so damn easily compared to AC/whatever or missile ammo? And >the only thing coming to mind -- and this would be incredibly silly -- >is that it's a per-unit percentile chance. Even at relatively low >percentages, you have so much more MG ammo than any other type that it >would explain the stupid frequency at which the ammo cooks off. It's not that it cooks off more easily; it doesn't. It's that the cookoffs are so much more catastrophic. A single ton of full, untouched, pristine AC/20 ammo that cooks off will, if you're not protected by CASE, do 160 points of damage to the mech. That's bad, REALLY bad, but depending on the mech and the ammo location you can actually live through that. And that's if you cook off an untouched ammo stockpile; if you fire three or four rounds suddenly you're down into much more manageable territory if and when it cooks off. MG ammo is... very dense. You almost never need more than a single ton of it, because a single ton of MG ammo contains 240 rounds. Even if you're running a crazy pepperbox design designed to go crit-hunting, the odds of you depleting more than 20 rounds of that in a single trigger pull (and that's an absurd number of MGs to have on a mech) are not high, which means that single ton is gonna last you any reasonable battle. An untouched ton of MG ammo cooking off will do 240 points of damage to your mech. NOTHING lives through that, not a fully-armored ANYTHING. You go from zero to dead. And because that ton depletes so very, very, VERY slowly, it is usually at or near max. It's the most dangerous thing inside your mech. Something I very much like about HBS BT is that through-armor crits are no longer a thing. Sure, it makes some designs that could be kinda fun non-viable, the aforementioned pepperbox, or an SL boat, or whatnot. Crit-hunting could be kinda cool. But it also means that, while you can still get your mech headshot, pilot dead, otherwise undamaged war machine topples over, completely useless, it means that it is literally impossible for some bullshit 30-ton gnat of a mech to fire its pathetic armaments at you... and because they're piloted by Luke Skywalker or some bullshit, it finds a chink in your massive layers of armor and crits you right in your ammo store, blowing you sky-high. That can't happen anymore. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-29-18, 12:42 PM (EDT) |
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20. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #18
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>Something I very much like about HBS BT is that through-armor crits >are no longer a thing.For some reason that cannot be fathomed at this remove, over the first year or so of the BattleTech/MechWarrior campaign I was part of in high school, our referee proceeded in the unshakable belief that the "center torso (critical)" listed when you roll a 2 on the hit location chart was a special thing; that it didn't simply mean "roll for a critical hit on the center torso, as if your armor was gone in that location," but in fact meant "when hit here, this 'Mech is instantly disabled." (The handwavey explanation for it had something to do with a really important but tragically delicate piece of the reactor control system that caused an instant, irrevocable shutdown if it broke.) This appears nowhere in the rulebook, for the simple reason that it is daft, but critically (if you'll pardon the expression), neither does a detailed explanation of what is supposed to happen. It's just there on the table—"center torso (critical)"—and you have to work out for yourself what that means. In this instance, I would (and did!) argue that it's obvious from context, but it wasn't specified anywhere. As such, I suppose I shouldn't mock the Technical Readout: 3026 quite so much for assuming that people needed everything spelled out for them in ludicrous detail. Clearly... some did. Also: A proper center torso (critical) hit can only blow up your 'Mech if you're keeping ammo in your center torso. Why are you keeping ammo in your center torso? Don't keep ammo in your center torso. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-30-18, 09:44 PM (EDT) |
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26. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #24
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LAST EDITED ON May-30-18 AT 09:45 PM (EDT) >>Also: A proper center torso (critical) hit can only blow up your 'Mech >>if you're keeping ammo in your center torso. Why are you keeping ammo >>in your center torso? Don't keep ammo in your center torso. :) >> >To be honest, that would be where I would put ammo, because CT >traditionally carries the most armor of anywhere on the mech; plus if >it DOES cook off your mech was already probably fit only for the scrap >heap before that point? Well... because with "center torso (critical)" on the hit location table, a lucky shot by the enemy can bypass all that armor and blow your 'Mech right the hell up anyway. Might as well at least make them chew through the side torso armor before they get that chance... That was kind of what we were talking about in the first place, wasn't it? --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Mercutio
Member since May-26-13
936 posts |
Jun-03-18, 09:16 PM (EDT) |
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28. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #24
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LAST EDITED ON Jun-03-18 AT 10:44 PM (EDT) >>Also: A proper center torso (critical) hit can only blow up your 'Mech >>if you're keeping ammo in your center torso. Why are you keeping ammo >>in your center torso? Don't keep ammo in your center torso. :) >> >... > >To be honest, that would be where I would put ammo, because CT >traditionally carries the most armor of anywhere on the mech; plus if >it DOES cook off your mech was already probably fit only for the scrap >heap before that point? To clarify things a bit: classic BT had a thing called a through-armor crit. Any time you hit and damaged a mech anywhere you had a very small chance of doing critical damage to it, regardless of armor remaining where you hit it. There was a whole school of mech design based around this, in fact; mechs with tons and tons and TONS of MGs and/or SLs, designed to unleash something like twenty of them on an enemy, preferably from point-blank range into their back, every round. You're not looking to damage. You're looking to roll, and roll, and roll, and ROLL on the crit table until you finally get lucky. You were looking for the gyroscope. You were looking for the engine. And you were especially looking for ammo. The through-armor crit rendered anything on the battlefield with the ability to hit you a genuine threat if it rolled well enough. This is why it is a bad idea to keep ammo in your center torso. You can get away with that in HBS BT, kind of, because through-armor crits aren't a thing there so they don't have even a tiny chance of critting your ammo until they've stripped off all your CT armor, either front or back. In the old game? Yeah, no. Don't... don't put ammo in the CT. Really, putting ammo in the torso at all is all-advised. Interestingly, this could lead to mech designs that would be hilariously inefficient in the "real" world. It wasn't uncommon for someone rigging up a mech from scratch to go "hmm, no more space in that arm after putting the weapons in it. I could put the ammo in the torso... ahahahahaNO. Ammo goes in the other arm." Which means that you had mechs whose ammo feed systems were taking ammo from a bin in one arm, moving it up the arm, through the entire torso, and then feeding a weapon in the opposite arm. -Merc Keep Rat |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-29-18, 12:27 PM (EDT) |
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19. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #13
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>It still, twenty years later, amuses me that the single most dangerous >thing to a mech that you can have inside said mech isn't a load >of incendiary devices, or high-caliber artillery shells, or even the >goddamn fusion reactor. > >It's a single ton of MG ammo.Just because of what they're expected to be effective against, and the fact that they are as effective against it as a single short-range missile, I have long assumed that what the game calls machine guns are not in fact machine guns, but are in fact, in real-world terms, small autocannons—similar to the M203 chain gun on the Apache attack helicopter, say, or any number of aviation cannons developed during WWII. I base this logic on the fact that, in Real Life™, you can shoot at an MBT all day with even a very-high-rate-of-fire machine gun, e.g., a Minigun, and all you'll do is spoil the paint job. You're never going to overwhelm the armor with volume of fire, you're basically just sandblasting it. MDC structures, man. I therefore have to assume that, although the game does say they're principally antipersonnel weapons, for a 'Mech's machine guns to even be capable of damaging another 'Mech, however slightly, they must be throwing some form of explosive ordnance. If you assume that, then a ton of "MG" ammunition being dangerously volatile suddenly makes a lot more sense, simply because of the sheer number of rounds involved. A ton of, say, 30mm HE chain gun ammo is probably going to have a larger percentage of propellant and explosive in it, and a smaller percentage of inert metal, than a ton of 120mm cannon shells. I would further think it's going to be more sensitive to forces that can cause it to cook off, thanks to the much greater surface area available for those forces to act upon. Packed by weight, not volume, as they say. :) --G. -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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Gryphon
Charter Member
19608 posts |
May-29-18, 01:58 PM (EDT) |
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22. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #21
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>That depends on what version of the rules is in play, some of them had >MGs do extra damage against infantry platoons, (killing 2d6 IIRC). Even so, they're rated to do two points of damage to a 'Mech, which an ordinary mortal machine gun is not going to do. (And don't you start with that "machine gun array" business from MechWarrior 4, either. It's still throwing gravel at a boulder. :) --G. besides, infantry has no place in proper BattleTech, get outta here with your satchel charges -><- Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/ zgryphon at that email service Google has Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam. |
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rwpikul
Member since Jun-22-03
189 posts |
May-30-18, 09:27 PM (EDT) |
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25. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #22
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>>That depends on what version of the rules is in play, some of them had >>MGs do extra damage against infantry platoons, (killing 2d6 IIRC). > >Even so, they're rated to do two points of damage to a 'Mech, which an >ordinary mortal machine gun is not going to do. (And don't you start >with that "machine gun array" business from MechWarrior 4, >either. It's still throwing gravel at a boulder. :) Oh, I always assumed the MG was something that bottomed out as a 14.5mm using fairly extreme ammo by modern standards. Pretty much the exact opposite of a machine gun array. Then again, the RAW had it that _sidearms_ could do damage to vehicular armour, (IIRC a 1/18 chance of one point of damage for a heavy pistol, 1/36 for light). As for infantry in BT: It was very hard to use and practically immobile in anything but dense terrain, (infantry platoons in clear terrain took double damage). It's main use IME was as a scout 'mech deterrent or, with hidden placement house rules, as what amounted to a land mine.
-- Chakat Firepaw - Inventor & Scientist (Mad) |
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Mephron
Charter Member
1785 posts |
May-29-18, 11:27 AM (EDT) |
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14. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #9
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LAST EDITED ON May-29-18 AT 11:27 AM (EDT) >No, you don't have unlimited >grenades. No. No, SHUT UP, you do not" isn't a crazy thing to do. Many decades ago, when the Star Wars RPG was from West End Games, brand new, and had a total of two books, one of the characters bought twenty-six grenades. And said they were marked alphabetically. So in one combat he showed us why: "F! U! C! K! Y! O! Dammit I used the U already!!" So then when he replenished, he now carried twenty-seven grenades. Two U's. Infinite grenades would have killed that joke. -- Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support. Probably Far Older Than You |
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Croaker
Charter Member
552 posts |
Aug-03-18, 09:45 PM (EDT) |
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30. "RE: On the Tech of Battle"
In response to message #27
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>In some silly cases its because grenades are reusable. > >The GURPS second edition tech manual had T9 (fusion age) energy >grenades that were not technically one-shot devices unless you dialed >them to specific settings. IIRC they had to be recharged after every >use regardless, but unless you selected the "it's got to go" option >when throwing them your grenade could be recovered and reused. > >Other game systems, which makes combat more abstract, do essentially >have unlimited grenades, an example would be the Cypher system >(Numenera, the Strange, and a handful of generics) where something as >-- mundane, as simple explosive ordinance isn't worth tracking on an >item to item basis in most cases. At least one incarnation of the Star Trek RPG had a "phaser grenade" that could be set to stun, and in said setting was eminently reusable...
I play a gunsel/mech-jock in our current Champions campaign, and the character has a Multipower to represent the various guns she carries (she can only use one at a time, after all.) This includes Grenades, of course, and I forgot to add the "Charges" (read "Limited Ammunition") disad to the power when I wrote up the character... so she actually does have infinte grenades. -- Croaker RCW #mc2 "When in doubt, shoot something. Preferably the enemy." |
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