|
Can a mech pick up a train car?
|
#
¿
May 16, 2011 02:01
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:48 |
|
|
Nevets posted:As someone mentioned earlier, disabling the heat sinks and jumping & alpha striking for a couple straight turns would do the job too. Unless you just shut down instead of setting off your ammo. I'm not sure what the odds are for that. I'll ask again, though: can a mech pick up a train car?
|
|
#
¿
May 17, 2011 19:25
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:The Javelin can't really use that arm for much anyway. It can use it to absorb hits that are allocated to the arm, instead of having them get allocated to the torso. But I think it's gonna be fine anyway. Everyone on the map now has a single target so I suspect that building's going to absorb a hell of a lot of fire in the next turn. And there's just a small amount of damage left to do. If the Javelin fires off some shots, gets a kick in, gets the building shot up by incoming fire, and then explodes, I really think we're gonna hit the target.
|
|
#
¿
May 18, 2011 18:52
|
|
|
Any particular reason why the Javelin isn't kicking the building during physical combat phase?
|
|
#
¿
May 19, 2011 03:32
|
|
|
Everyone should check out today's WTF, D&D!? article. It's totally rad.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2011 00:42
|
|
|
I hate to jump on a bandwagon, but I feel A is a good choice. I assure you all that this vote is in no way affected by certain knowledge of future events which I may or may not possess.
|
|
#
¿
May 22, 2011 08:13
|
|
|
I hope we still get to try out that Bobbin Threadbare mission:quote:8th Scorpion Uhlans But I guess maybe comstar first?
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2011 01:32
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:More prophetic words could not have been spoken by Blake himself. Oh ho ho! I uh... I recuse myself from this vote, on account of sardines.
|
|
#
¿
May 24, 2011 06:06
|
|
|
What you guys have to remember is that refrigeration is obviously lostech. That means that transporting infantry means you have to bring along fresh food and keep it preserved somehow. (Vacuum packing and canned food and I guess drying meat and fruit is also lostech). And attacking a planet with hordes of infantry means coming up with massive amounts of food from somewhere. That might work on a farm world where you can raid their stocks but most other places it's too risky and difficult. So, mechs are better because you have more firepower per mouth-to-feed. In other words, <blah blah blah> and therefore, mechs.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2011 00:45
|
|
|
Yay! Just to be clear: I got to decide that the battle would be in space (vs. a different choice that I won't mention unless PTN says it's OK to). PTN already had the idea of the fight taking place on the hull of a ship. I suggested the dark/light side with the heat dissipation differential. I had no input into (and have no knowledge of) the force compositions. (I also suggested the ship pilot could spin the ship to fling everyone off, but PTN said they don't really have quick enough acceleration for that. Oh well!)
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2011 23:29
|
|
|
It occurred to me that, in a vacuum, lasers (and I guess other beam weapons, depending on how they supposedly work) would attenuate less and therefore should have longer ranges. Machine guns and railguns should maybe also have longer ranges due to no atmospheric friction. That won't matter in this game of course, but I wonder if there are rules for atmosphereless planets, and if they do anything like extend ranges for beam weapons? Explosives, on the other hand, might be less effective because there is no atmosphere to transmit shock waves. Or perhaps not, if they're shaped charges or something, it's not really clear to me. If Flamers require atmospheric oxygen to burn, they might not work at all.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2011 20:05
|
|
|
Even when it's a squad of infantry armed with one? But yeah, if it's plasma then that'd behave differently in a vacuum too, but I suppose still able to burninate whatever it touches so I guess it'd work.
|
|
#
¿
May 28, 2011 20:11
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:I am required by space nerd law to point out that the reason for that is that the liquid fuel tanks are full of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, both of which are, in scientific terms, cold as gently caress. The ice is condensation that breaks off when the engines fire and start the whole thing rattling, it's nothing fancy. I am required by space nerd law to tell you that both you and Bobbin are incorrect, although for different reasons (and you less so). The reason a tank gets cold as its contents are used is because the contents are under pressure. Due to Boyle's Law, as you drop the pressure in the tank, the contents get colder. Boyle's Law posted:For a fixed amount of an ideal gas kept at a fixed temperature, P [pressure] and V [volume] are inversely proportional (while one doubles, the other halves). Since we're discussing a tank full of a material that at normal Earth-atmospheric pressures is a gas, in order to convert it into a liquid the substance is pressurized. Now, liquid oxygen (for example) is indeed very cold, but that's because it has a boiling point of 90.2 Kelvin. Once you fill a pressurized cylinder with it, though, you can (in theory) hold enough pressure that the tank can sit at room tempurature no problem. That includes its contents. In practice, rocket design typically has the tanks held at very low temperature - just above boiling point - because that means they can operate at much lower (and much safer) pressurization. This is why while the Shuttle is sitting on the pad ready to go, you see so much vapor swirling around - liquid fuels are constantly boiling in the tanks, the excess vapor is vented off, and since it's super-cold, water vapor instantly forms and you get clouds. However, getting back to the point: even a tank at room tempurature (like, say, a can of compressed air, or a tank of propane used for a BBQ) will become very very cold as you start to use the fuel. Referring back to Boyle's Law, since you are not keeping the temperature constant (you are instead keeping the pressure constant, as liquid contents boil to replace gaseous contents being allowed to escape), and you are also keeping volume constant (the volume of the tank is not shrinking or growing), the variable for temperature must change. Hence: if you had a tank of flamer fuel that is pressurized from a gas into a liquid, and you are venting off the gas to burn for the flamer, then yeah, the tank will get cold as the liquid is forced to boil to bring the gas back up to temperature, and the liquid therefore "steals" energy from outside the tank to warm back up. It can even be problematically cold: if it gets cold enough, you drop below the boiling point of the fuel and it no longer evaporates and your flamer stops working. Super-cold temperatures must also be accounted for in places like valve design. So you are right that the contents of the shuttle orbiter tanks and the external tank for the shuttle rockets are kept cold, but they actually get colder as the liquid fuel is burned off during launch, and that's why huge chunks of ice form on the outside and then fall off during launch. (The solid rocket boosters have no such problem of course). Anyway: hydrazine is great rocket fuel (because it has its own oxidizer) but it's extremely dangerous to handle (because it has its own oxidizer). Much more dangerous than a two-tank solution (a tank of fuel and a tank of oxidizer, which are combined in the nozzle). If you puncture a tank of propane it will not spontaneously explode, because there's no oxygen inside the tank to burn. If you puncture a tank of hydrazine, any spark can cause all the gas inside the tank to instantly detonate. As for venting plasma: This would definitely cool the reactor chamber if you were actually robbing it of plasma, but I don't know how they theorize the design. Much bigger of a problem though is the question of the plasma's density. A modern Tokamak experimental fusion reactor has a plasma at two or three million degrees, held magnetically away from the walls of the chamber... but if you allowed that plasma to cool to room temperature, it wouldn't fill a child's helium balloon. So, unless the Mechs are using super-dense material for plasma, it's poo poo for burning stuff with because it'd instantly dissipate as you vented it. All of which goes to the actual point, which is, Mech flamers work in space for exactly the same reason mech armor makes sense: convenience, and nothing more. Mech lasers aren't really lasers, mech machine guns aren't really machine guns, and so on. It's a magical universe in which physical laws don't just fail to match our own, they aren't even internally consistent. Who cares, the game is fun, and that's all that matters. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:25 on May 29, 2011 |
|
#
¿
May 29, 2011 21:21
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:'Mech flamers work pretty much the same way 'Mech engine explosions do, in my opinion: they take in air and superheat it into a dense, plasma-like 'beam' of superheated "gently caress you infantry". They work in space because it's Battletech and it's magic. Yeah that really makes far more sense. The fusion reactor seems to provide a more or less limitless supply of usable energy, so just sucking in some air and superheating it enough that electrons can't hang on, and you get a plasma of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon nucleii plus a bunch of pissed off electrons and probably a shitload of energy too, from stripping all that stuff loose. Spew it out a hole and you have a jet of hot to hose things down with. Of course, the technology to do such a thing is fantastic and far beyond anything we can do today (just handling containment of the plasma...!) but who cares, it's way cooler than just carrying around a tank of napalm that can run out, and that means no ammo tracking for flamers. E. OH yeah I just remembered a really cool detail. The space shuttle actually cycles fuel through little pipes in the engine nozzles. This cools the engine nozzles so they don't melt, and it also warms the fuel so it doesn't get below boiling temperature and stop working. Sooooo... the Space Shuttle literally uses its jump jets as fuel warmers to keep them working. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 00:28 on May 30, 2011 |
|
#
¿
May 30, 2011 00:23
|
|
|
PoptartsNinja posted:Which is pretty much the same naming convention used by the Hermes -> Hermes II -> Hermes III lineage. They're three 'Mechs, the II and III are heavier redesigns built along the same principles (theoretically). That the Hermes II is drastically inferior to the original Hermies is both funny and sad. So it's sort of like the venerable and much-honored Ford Mustang... and the best-forgotten, embarrassing Mustang II.
|
|
#
¿
May 30, 2011 08:00
|
|
|
It actually makes sense in the Battletech world for data files to stay small, since there are occasionally reasons to transmit data over the Space Telephone and it's hideously expensive to do so. In that context, sticking to plaintext and highly-compressed monochrome vector-based graphics files as a general rule, but especially for technical manuals, is just smart. And as for optical disk-based storage, I think that's going to be with us for a long time. It's the current best alternative to magnetic storage, and superior to magnetic in that it isn't degraded or ruined by a strong electromagnetic field, cosmic rays, x-rays, etc. Further I imagine that standards are exponentially more difficult to revise when doing so means getting thousands of worlds to switch all at once. It does no good to invent a better storage media that can hold 30 times the old standard, if your shipments of that media arrive at planets that don't have readers for it. Just the other day I was at Fry's looking at optical drives (thinking about getting me a blueray burner, they're down below $150 now) and I noticed they still sell a couple of cheapo 3.5" diskette drive models. And a few years back, there was a major kurfuffle when NASA realized it had a huge library of photography and data from the Lunar landings recorded in 1960's formats but no longer had any working players that could read them. They had to put out a worldwide call and a few dusty old readers were found in basements and they managed to recover a whole bunch of the stuff, but for a while there it was looking like we might actually lose it completely, since the original data specs couldn't be located. Think of how many family's home videos are currently on VHS. Those tapes are degrading, and in 50 years I bet only wealthy collectors and museums have working VHS players. It'll be essentially impossible for my generation to watch our childhood video recordings unless we spend a huge amount of time and effort moving things onto new formats as they come out. I'd guess that something like 95% of all privately-recorded VHS tapes will never be transferred and will eventually be lost. Whereas family portraits done with oil paint on canvas can last hundreds of years. So still using ancient data storage formats in the 31st century makes perfect sense to me.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2011 09:10
|
|
|
You can still buy continuous-feed dot matrix printers. They have a specific application that still hasn't been (cheaply) replaced by another technology... printing out duplicate forms, such as hardcopy medical bills, where someone also needs to sign the thing and have a carbon-copy of the signature. E-signatures ought to have replaced that technology by now, but there are a lot of areas (medical billing, in particular) where it's easier to keep using an obsolete technology than to get dozens of different companies to all switch to a newer standard all at once without interrupting service for the tens of thousands of independent customers using that technology. So ComStar is using tractor-fed dot matrix printouts because something something. (I think complaining about stupid things in Battletech technology is easy, but coming up with semi-plausible explanations for why things are as they are is much more challenging and fun!)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 1, 2011 19:27
|
|
|
Yakumo posted:Even if they don't puncture the CT, they're breaching something. The way I understand it from what I've read in this thread, the elementals always crit, and a crit always breaches, so the infantry will always take out at least a limb if they don't just kill the mech like that. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a huge advantage. A critical chance doesn't always necessarily translate into a crit. But more importantly: this turn the players split their fire between the two untouched mechs. Instead of focusing all fire on a single enemy. This is the path to failure. I should study the map more closely to see if they really could have gotten all their fire focused on one mech, but based on others' posts it seems like it was fairly possible to do that. It's easy to be hard on the players, though... coordination between six goons in different time zones via e-mail is not always all that possible even in the best of circumstances. Throw in that some are new to the rules and game, too, and I can understand. Well, sorta.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 04:16
|
|
|
Hey guys I was bored so I decided to compile all the data from the combat logs to figure out exactly how damaged the enemy mechs are. Here are my findings: PTN, you can correct me if I got anything wrong (there were a couple of places where things didn't seem to add up right, so I suspect there's at least two typos).pre:C1 Guillotine? ER PPC 2x LPL Head ?/? Left Torso 9/22 Center Torso 24/27 Right Torso 22/22 Left Arm 9/20 Right Arm 15/20 Left Leg 10/22 Right Leg 4/22 RLT 3/8 RCT ?/? RRT 8/8 C2 Phoenix Hawk? LPL 3x MPL 2x Streak SRM2 4x MG Head ?/? Left Torso 3/20 Center Torso 12/29 Right Torso 13/20 Left Arm 6/16 Right Arm 11/16 Left Leg 18/24 Right Leg 16/24 RLT ?/? RCT ?/? RRT ?/? C3 Grasshopper? LPL 4x MPL LRM10 Head ?/? Left Torso 21/24 Center Torso 32/34 Right Torso 14/24 Left Arm 7/24 Right Arm 22/24 Left Leg 24/32 Right Leg 19/32 RLT ?/? RCT ?/? RRT ?/? Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Jun 3, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 3, 2011 18:34
|
|
|
I bid a dozen Piranhas. (I have no idea if it's a good bid or not but I want to play a dozen piranhas against someone)
|
|
#
¿
Jun 4, 2011 01:36
|
|
|
I have some questions about the update, Poptarts: In the combat log for I3 Wyvern, you list damage done to the units of ?1 (like, "hit Trooper 4 (7/10+1 armor remains ..." But in the later logs, you always list troopers as (/10+1 armor remains). So I'm wondering if that's an omission in the later logs, or if you intended to not show us damage done in the Wyvern log. Next, in the Physical Combat section you say "I5 Kintaro kicks C1 Guillotine (4 base + 1 movement + 1 target movement - 2 kick = 4): rolled (3+3) 6, hit Trooper 5 (0/10+1 armor remains)! Trooper 5 killed!" I think you meant to say it was kicking the elementals instead... Next, in this update: quote:I4 Crab fires Large Laser at C1 Guillotine? (3 base + 0 range + 1 movement + 1 target movement = 5): rolled (5+4) 9, hit Right Torso (12/20 armor remains)! Through-armor critical chance! Finally, C1 took over 20 damage... but is falling over impossible due to loving magnets, so there's no need for the piloting roll? Octatonic posted:But seriously, this is looking really really bad for Comstar here. Two Battlemechs down and little appreciable damage to the Hell's Horses. I guess if you were going to give Elementals a memorable introduction PTN, this was a great way to do it. These bastards are ruthless if they can find cover. The Comstar team actually has three mechs down. But, on the Hell's Horses side, that Guillotine is properly hosed, and one of the squads of elementals is also pretty much done. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Jun 5, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 5, 2011 20:24
|
|
|
quote:I4 Crab fires Large Laser at C2 Phoenix Hawk? (3 base + 0 range + 1 movement + 0 target movement + 1 partial cover = 4): rolled (1+3) 4, miss! \/\/\/I totally knew that and was just testing. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Jun 10, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2011 03:53
|
|
|
This was definitely a winnable scenario... for veteran players. For rookies, yeah, they got raped. I think the first kill was on turn 2, so one of the players only got to put in two sets of orders. Also as it turns out, the entire fight took place on the shadow-side, pretty much. I think it would have been neater (but too complicated for poptarts' manual mapping process) to have the ship be spinning gently so lightside/darkside would gradually change. As it is though, it was still a pretty cool scenario I think. And really damned close, too; two of the three clan mechs were effectively disabled and on a regular map would have been out of the fight, and the third was just about dead too. Which means a small handful of dice going differently could have reversed the outcome. For MVP I'm gonna vote for the Wyvern. The crab's antics were great but the wyvern was consistently on-target and played smartly. The clans' mvp is obviously the elementals, looks like that's going to be a unanimous vote.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 16, 2011 08:09
|
|
|
I have no insider knowledge, but I fully expect there to be hidden assets in this fight. You know, maybe some Elementals? We've yet to see a scenario where Poptart didn't pull out at least one surprise midway.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 21, 2011 07:17
|
|
|
Blue agave isn't really a cactus, anyway. It's a bromeliad, and can also be called a succulent. More in common with the pineapple than with a saguaro.
Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Jun 30, 2011 |
|
#
¿
Jun 30, 2011 01:34
|
|
|
Please share with the class. What are the rules for spikes?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2011 21:31
|
|
|
Yeah, and what it says is "maybe they should try making mech armor out of whatever those spikes are made out of, and then they might not get completely hosed up to poo poo just from falling over onto the dirt."
|
|
#
¿
Jul 1, 2011 22:45
|
|
|
You're allowed torso-mounted cockpits on quad mechs?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 2, 2011 20:40
|
|
|
And that is some lazy goddamned laundry-art there. What are they washing, 24 sets of identical white tablecloths?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 6, 2011 05:57
|
|
|
Comguard also has "always goes last" in general, which is a massive, massive advantage. If the players can manage to coordinate and focus-fire, they can still win this one. I'd say definitely take out the VTOLs right now, though, because that's obviously going to be a critical thing going forward.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2011 18:49
|
|
|
I see no reason to re-do the Comguards' shooting. If you had to re-do the turn, all you'd need to re-do is the clanners.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2011 04:53
|
|
|
Comguard should give the mechs designations intended to troll the gently caress out of the clanners. Let's call them Donkey and rear end.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 11, 2011 20:39
|
|
|
If gauss weapons were as simple as merely understanding electromagnetism, we'd have had naval gauss weapons in WWI.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 12, 2011 21:48
|
|
|
I haven't been playing Battletech all that long, but constant ridiculous headcapping seems to be entirely the norm in this game.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2011 23:09
|
|
|
ShadowDragon8685 posted:Though, I suppose if you kept your file formats strictly to compressed ASCII and scalable vector graphics, you could fit a whole lot of data into a small file size. A typewritten page, in raw text, uncompressed, takes about 2kb. 5MB is the complete works of Shakespeare, uncompressed. So, leaving out images, and compressing data, 10MB is a hell of a lot of information. Certainly enough to give complete technical specifications (especially using vector diagrams, which are far smaller than bitmapped images) for every part used in a giant mech-building factory, how to assemble it all, and how to run it and maintain it. Today's data takes up so much more room mostly because we use big, high color-depth high-resolution images and high-definition video. Oh, and MP3s. and Microsoft Windows
|
|
#
¿
Jul 14, 2011 04:34
|
|
|
It doesn't matter (because he missed), but shouldn't R1's second and third shots have suffered accumulating penalties for multiple targets?
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2011 18:26
|
|
|
Ah, OK. And I assume R4 gained so much heat because of the Engine crit, which occurred during crit resolution later. What's the rule on that? I mean, engine hits add heat, but I can't remember how much, or if it also takes out heat sinks, or whatever.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2011 18:35
|
|
|
Ahhh, it was activating the null signature system, that must have added some heat. Suddenly I get it. Excuse me for my sperging out.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 17, 2011 18:45
|
|
|
Nevets posted:You're going to give him a goatee and make him evil? A clanner Hunchback with two Gauss is already evil. He's gonna shave the goatee, and make him good.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2011 22:17
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 12, 2024 04:48 |
|
|
Jump jet plasma "near the speed of light"? Noo.... no. No. Not even in bizarro-science Mechwarrior universe. They're not either sending particles-having-mass out through their nozzles at relativistic velocities.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 26, 2011 02:43
|
|