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Nope, improvised clubs (trees, girders, limbs) require 2 hands. If mech has a built-in club (hatchet, sword) it only takes one.
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Mar 3, 2011 22:57
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Hob_Gadling posted:Nope, improvised clubs (trees, girders, limbs) require 2 hands. If mech has a built-in club (hatchet, sword) it only takes one. The fact that missiles and DU sabot rounds don't do damage, but a tree does makes the discussion on the last page even more retarded. 
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Mar 3, 2011 23:04
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Zaodai posted:The fact that missiles and DU sabot rounds don't do damage, but a tree does makes the discussion on the last page even more retarded. Hit a modern tank with a WWII-era anti-tank shell and it will just bounce off, leaving perhaps a little dent or scrape. Hit it with a wrecking ball and it won't penetrate either. But it will cause considerable damage by warping the structure, potentially resulting in damage to the treads and transmission, jamming the turret or even wrecking the engine and gun, depending on where you hit. Same reason why maces and hammers were popular in medieval times. Brute force works if you have enough of it. Magni fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Mar 4, 2011 |
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Mar 4, 2011 00:03
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Magni posted:Hit a modern tank with a WWII-era anti-tank shell and it will just bounce off, leaving perhaps a little dent or scrape. Hit it with a wrecking ball and it won't penetrate either. But it will cause considerable damage by warping the structure, potentially resulting in damage to the treads and transmission, jamming the turret or even wrecking the engine and gun, depending on where you hit. Yes, but if you make a mace out of styrofoam, it doesn't matter how hard you swing it because it's going to shatter on impact rather than put force through to the target. A steel girder or something I could see working fine. But a tree? Nah. I call bullshit on a tree being a viable weapon if a mech can shrug off a cruise missile or a modern tank round, or larger bombs. If the mech is so delicate a tree can warp it's internal structure, the impact of large ballistic and missile weapons should do the same even if the armor can allegedly shrug off the explosives. There's still a shitload of kinetic force behind it.
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Mar 4, 2011 00:15
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In the 31st century trees have evolved.
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Mar 4, 2011 00:18
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Defiance Industries posted:In the 31st century trees have evolved. To hold the birdman aliens. Touche'. drat you, super-trees! 
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Mar 4, 2011 00:24
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Zaodai posted:Yes, but if you make a mace out of styrofoam, it doesn't matter how hard you swing it because it's going to shatter on impact rather than put force through to the target. A steel girder or something I could see working fine. But a tree? Nah. I call bullshit on a tree being a viable weapon if a mech can shrug off a cruise missile or a modern tank round, or larger bombs. If the mech is so delicate a tree can warp it's internal structure, the impact of large ballistic and missile weapons should do the same even if the armor can allegedly shrug off the explosives. There's still a shitload of kinetic force behind it. A suitably largee tree is still a ton or so of wood. Yeah, it'll shatter most likely. It's still going to transfer an ungodly amount of force while doing so. Mass is quite the factor here. Compare common modern day anti-tank munitions: A Javelin missile comes in at about 12 kg. A 120mm sabot shell is ~25 kg for the entire shell, with the actual penetrator being quite a bit lighter. 155mm projectiles come in at ~45 kg. Once you enter stuff like 500-pound bombs and upwards, you have a point, but modern anti-tank munitions are simply too light to be comparable in terms of pure kinetic energy.
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Mar 4, 2011 00:37
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Magni posted:A suitably largee tree is still a ton or so of wood. Yeah, it'll shatter most likely. It's still going to transfer an ungodly amount of force while doing so. Mass is quite the factor here. Compare common modern day anti-tank munitions: A Javelin missile comes in at about 12 kg. A 120mm sabot shell is ~25 kg for the entire shell, with the actual penetrator being quite a bit lighter. 155mm projectiles come in at ~45 kg. Kinetic energy has a v2 component. Assuming a 25kg SABOT round going about 1800 m/s you're looking at 40MJ of energy. A 10 ton tree would need to be moving at almost 100m/s (200mph) to have the same energy (this calculation totally ignores the fact that in battletech the tree would be swung at, not lobbed at, a target). Basically don't try to use real world physics to explain any of the rule inconsistencies. They are arbitrary in order to keep the game fun to play and the world interesting, not to resemble real life.
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Mar 4, 2011 00:59
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And kinetics are often shaped to form penetrators of material on impact that will concentrate the force over a tiny area.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:04
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goatface posted:And kinetics are often shaped to form penetrators of material on impact that will concentrate the force over a tiny area. Yes, but so are BattleTech trees. I'm sure it's explained somewhere or other. And every steel girder in every building, even those that don't have steel girders, are required to have a very sharp impact point in case of emergencies.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:10
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goatface posted:And kinetics are often shaped to form penetrators of material on impact that will concentrate the force over a tiny area. Depleted Uranium is also significantly denser than a tree, which helps it transfer the energy in a more confined, damaging hit than an improvised club. I didn't mean to derail this back into "the physics are inaccurate, the game is awful!", I just wish they hadn't tried to handwave it by saying all modern technology would be completely ineffective against a 'mech. They tried to apply some cursory logic to it, when the correct answer really was to just tell the people who were arguing how it worked to shut up. None of it will ever make legitimate sense. It's not a hard science setting. A 'mech is never going to fight a 21st century tank or aircraft (barring something COMPLETELY stupid), so if they just ignored the issue, all would be well. The people arguing modern tech would kick Battletech techs rear end could have physics on their side, and everyone else could just enjoy the story. To then go and make it canon that Battletech tech is somehow universally superior to modern tech on the grounds of "it just doesn't work against us" makes my brain want to eat itself.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:12
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Anyone who is treating battletech as hard sci-fi with consistant physics is barking up the wrong mech. This is a game about bipedal mechs blowing the poo poo out of each other with lasers, missiles, machine guns, bigger machine guns, and sometimes even justice feet. If we really wanted to apply physics to it, the mechs would work due to instability, gravity, just general physics. So, let's leaf this topic be, oaky?
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Mar 4, 2011 01:18
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Look, I can't help it, alright? I'm a physicist, I've got good buddies who've gone into the weapons development biz. Some of the hand-waving just hurts.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:23
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goatface posted:Look, I can't help it, alright? I'm a physicist, I've got good buddies who've gone into the weapons development biz. Some of the hand-waving just hurts. I'm a criminology major/history minor, but you don't see me ranting about how loving horrible CSI is, or how ahistorical war games are (mostly because you don't know me IRL, but I digress)
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Mar 4, 2011 01:25
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bunnyofdoom posted:I'm a criminology major/history minor, but you don't see me ranting about how loving horrible CSI is, or how ahistorical war games are We simply must talk about how unrealistic the murder of Melissa Steiner-Davion was. I'll post my 300-page analysis
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Mar 4, 2011 01:28
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PoptartsNinja posted:VVVV Also not a good line of discussion. The answer is, of course, a Space Marine since they're not even remotely human anymore.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:29
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I can't wait till we face the clans. Easy fights lead to stupid derails. The clans will certainly not be easy.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:31
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KnoxZone posted:I can't wait till we face the clans. Easy fights lead to stupid derails. The clans will certainly not be easy. The clans will get steamrolled as easily as the Death Commandos if they continue to make all their rolls. I haven't given up hope on the Commandos being able to murder the rest of these women and children, though. If you can't win the battle, at least win the war crimes.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:35
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PTN should just have one of them turn round and blow a few buildings.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:37
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Zaodai posted:The clans will get steamrolled as easily as the Death Commandos if they continue to make all their rolls. I dunno, if you believe PTN... PoptartsNinja posted:Oh, and because someone asked early, the GDL mission would've been: That would have been an incredibly amazing and tense fight till the very end. Even with a lot of cover and luck it would still take one lucky hit and the battle would have been lost.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:40
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Zaodai posted:The clans will get steamrolled as easily as the Death Commandos if they continue to make all their rolls. Honestly, I can't wait until the goons that don't know the boardgame have to face the clan I'mnotspoiling'em in battle. It will be glorious, and I doubt all the luck in the universe will help them against those murdermachines. I'll be  and laughing my rear end off when they show up. 
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Mar 4, 2011 01:40
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I'm sad none of you reacted to my horrible puns.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:46
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KnoxZone posted:That would have been an incredibly amazing and tense fight till the very end. Even with a lot of cover and luck it would still take one lucky hit and the battle would have been lost. Oh, I'm not doubting that is what PTN would have actually put them up against. But enough lucky rolls and even the hardest fight doesn't mean poo poo. When you get dice raped, all you can do is lay there and take it. So to speak. Through two missions the Goons have only really suffered 1 bad roll against them and have picked up a good handful in their favor. Personally I hope that when Goon Company ends up against the Clans, they have to deal with actual initiative rules. That's going to make an enormous difference. Always being on the button (to use poker parlance) makes the game easier to plan around. Going to be one hell of a ride when that happens. Muwahahaha.
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Mar 4, 2011 01:53
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We've yet to touch Battletech's other great sperg magnet: how the population of the Inner Sphere is large enough to easily support armies a few hundred times larger than what we see.  (The answers to anyone debating this are "shut up you twats, it's fiction for a game," and "just imagine everything's a few orders of magnitude smaller if it bothers you," in that order.)
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Mar 4, 2011 02:10
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^^^^ Also: "remember the conventional militias". Zaodai posted:If you can't win the battle, at least win the war crimes. 
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Mar 4, 2011 02:20
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DeepThrobble posted:We've yet to touch Battletech's other great sperg magnet: how the population of the Inner Sphere is large enough to easily support armies a few hundred times larger than what we see. I feel compelled to answer this. It's a societal elite who fights in mostly ritualized warfare; people on average don't give a flying Capellan who rules them since there's no practical difference; and there's no way to increase the logistic capability anyway. In the few cases something didn't work according to these guidelines it's either a massacre or a complete defeat of military forces.
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Mar 4, 2011 02:59
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radintorov posted:Honestly, I can't wait until the goons that don't know the boardgame have to face the clan I'mnotspoiling'em in battle. I have been re-reading the books to see if I could figure out what you guys were talking about because this has been bugging the hell out of me. About 90% sure what you guys are talking about, but I've never played the board game so not completely sure. Ah hahahaha, so excited!
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Mar 4, 2011 03:02
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Zaodai posted:Personally I hope that when Goon Company ends up against the Clans, they have to deal with actual initiative rules. That's going to make an enormous difference. Always being on the button (to use poker parlance) makes the game easier to plan around. Going to be one hell of a ride when that happens. Muwahahaha. 'Ace' isn't the only initiative-fuckery rule I've got at my disposal. Actually, it's the weakest of them. Example: Seize the Initiative (Clan): Whenever a player unit is destroyed, all Clan units automatically win initiative. Clan forces may not Seize the Initiative on two consecutive turns.
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Mar 4, 2011 03:47
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While I've not been piloting, I think it's great that PTN has been going easy on the thread so far for the newbies, and giving us initiative seems to be an excellent way to really allow discussion and analysis of what people should be doing and why. I look forward to seeing all the tricks the Clans and our Gamemaster have 
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Mar 4, 2011 04:01
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PoptartsNinja posted:'Ace' isn't the only initiative-fuckery rule I've got at my disposal. Actually, it's the weakest of them. Speaking of overrun combat and unit special abilities, do the 2nd Donegal get off-map movement and initiative banking? I gotta know for when I hype them up.
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Mar 4, 2011 04:13
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Man, I can't wait til I see how my field goal attempt did.
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Mar 4, 2011 04:31
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I created my account because of this thread (insert sarcastic "good for you" if one does desire). If there is still space, sign me up as a mech pilot. I haven't bought the platinum upgrade, so here's an email for getting in touch with me: email address is gone now.
landcollector fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Mar 24, 2011 |
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Mar 4, 2011 04:43
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Hob_Gadling posted:I feel compelled to answer this.  Arquinsiel posted:Also: "remember the conventional militias".
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Mar 4, 2011 05:59
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Easiest assumption for details you don't like: It's all exaggerated to look good on an episode of Royal's Pride, the in-universe soap opera that gets everything wrong. Don't like a book? It was an episode of Royal's Pride. Don't like information about a 'Mech? It was made up for Royal's Pride. Don't like information about a nation's military? It was made up for Royal's Pride. Don't like a Mary Sue character? They were invented for Royal's Pride. Don't like the Clans/Jihad/War of 3039? It was made up to make Royal's Pride more interesting.
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Mar 4, 2011 06:03
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Defiance Industries posted:In the 31st century trees have evolved. Oh, that's beautiful.
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Mar 4, 2011 06:12
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bunnyofdoom posted:I'm sad none of you reacted to my horrible puns. We're waiting for your horrible punt of the srm carrier instead.
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Mar 4, 2011 09:30
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PoptartsNinja posted:Easiest assumption for details you don't like: Also, on anything from before 3052: ComStar done hosed UP.
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Mar 4, 2011 10:02
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DeepThrobble posted:Great point, but it works even better when you shave off a few zeros to get in the ballpark.
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Mar 4, 2011 11:50
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PoptartsNinja posted:'Ace' isn't the only initiative-fuckery rule I've got at my disposal. Actually, it's the weakest of them. The Clans are going to teach us the new meaning of hate, aren't they?
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Mar 4, 2011 15:04
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PoptartsNinja posted:Seize the Initiative (Clan): Whenever a player unit is destroyed, all Clan units automatically win initiative. Clan forces may not Seize the Initiative on two consecutive turns. It's something they probably would do every turn in a row if they abandoned zellbriggen and you allowed it.
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Mar 4, 2011 15:06
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