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I will throw away my vote on the Capellan Confederation because human wave attacks against 100-ton nuclear robots are awesome.
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Jan 21, 2011 22:36
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Kenlon posted:Except that the CCAF doesn't do human wave attacks. Who are you to tell Space China what it can and can't do? 
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Jan 21, 2011 23:35
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I vote we get an Uziel. Gun robot.
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Jan 22, 2011 01:50
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Abridged history of the universe: Civilization became great. There were many stars in a League of Stars. But then there was fight! All knowledges exploded! Now, you hero are a giant robot warrior of peace. Fight!
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Jan 22, 2011 06:42
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Does anyone else wonder what the hell they're using for "tons" in the 4th millenium? Mechs are just too goddamn big to only weigh 30-100 tons. An M1 Abrams weighs 60 tons... I'm fairly sure a heavy mech is several times larger than that. Unless mechs are made of snowflakes and angel feathers, they better have a different definition of "ton" in futureland. edit: J. Edgar Hoovertank? Really? 
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 03:42
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Well generally, when looking at two enormous armored war machines, it's a pretty safe guess that the one that's three times larger is also the heavier one. I suppose it's possible that they came up with some kind of super space metal that's 3x lighter and yet stronger than whatever, but even after you build the frame and armor out of magic space metal you're stuck with the sheer amount of stuff that's crammed into a mech. Fusion reactors, heat sinks, gun barrels, gyroscopes etc. are all heavy machinery. And it's called "heavy" machinery for a reason. You can't just reduce the density of a fusion reactor's neutron jacket or of a heat sink or gyroscope, because all those things have to be dense to function. Some things' entire purpose is being dense and heavy. So you could hand-wave and say magic space metal, or weights and measures might have changed over a thousand years. I'm not like upset about this, because if I was designing this game I wouldn't give a poo poo what my weight units were called, but if you want to get all technical about this poo poo you pretty much have to admit that the definition of "ton" needs to be different for these things to function as advertised. Which, again, is not really surprising if a thousand years have passed. Hell, when Americans say "calorie" we actually mean kilocalories. That's a three order-of-magnitude language shift right there. Maybe when they started building mechs they said "decatons" all the time and people got tired of that poo poo and started saying "tons" instead. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 04:03
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Dux Supremus posted:The tonne is the metric ton, and corresponds to 1000kg, which is roughly equivalent to 2,205lbs. Weirdly, this is the second post I've made about the unit in two days... Yeah a spacefaring culture would never use weight as a unit of measure, especially for something like a mech that's going to be traveling around. Can you imagine what a headache it would be to figure out the new tonnage every time you landed somewhere? An aircraft, however large, is not a great comparison for a mech, obviously. B-52s aren't expected to survive direct hits from artillery or lug around fusion reactors. ... Which leads to two other tech questions. 1. What kind of fusion technology are they using? From what I know about fusion reactors, it would be really really hard to design one that exploded when its containment failed. I mean, I could see a mech kinda going Hindenburg on you if its carrying a poo poo-ton of compressed hydrogen, but going nuclear? Not going to happen with fusion. (Incidentally, what exactly happens when a mech loses its reactor? The fuel exploding would be realistic, but the reactor exploding would not.) 2. Why is anyone using mechs anyway? Did they forget guided missile technology too? Why not just put a HEAT warhead through the cockpit, using any one of a zillion delivery systems available today? It's not WWII anymore. (Of course in wargaming it is WWII forever. Just check out the tactics of any popular wargaming franchise. It's WWII.) Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:23 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 04:19
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Whether you use tons or tonnes is important because the former's weight and the latter's mass, and they're different, but I digress. I'm guessing the space-future would only use masses.
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Ah, I learned everything I know from the Mechwarrior series. Yay for realism in rules, I guess.Mukaikubo posted:Because tons can be 1,000 kilograms. Oh I know. But right now it's either keep posting or go do the dishes.  Do you know a mech that can do that?Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 04:27
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That is an amazing link. I had no idea they tried to power an airplane with fission. It's such a fantastic(ally bad) idea. But honestly, I think the key to every technology oversight in wargames is just to remember that it's World War II. Why build a giant robot that's incredibly easy to hit? Because it's WWII and fire control is still really bad. Why doesn't someone just drop a missile on them? It's WWII, close air support exists but it isn't a 100% guaranteed kill yet. Why don't the infantry have any decent anti-armor weapons? Etcetera etcetera... Think about it. Every popular wargame system that's not classical or medieval warfare is set in World War II, it's just hidden behind god-emperors and giant robots. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 04:44
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PoptartsNinja posted:level 1 hills. I have a ridiculous image of an MMO now. "Yeah I rolled a new hill last night. Right now I'm grinding some talus, just you know basic sedimentary stuff. I think I'm gonna go volcano spec though. You?" "Oh you know, still working on my river system. I have to capture five more tributaries before I get Flood."
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Jan 24, 2011 07:14
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PoptartsNinja posted:Battles in a 0-atmosphere environment are a nightmare, incidentally. 'Mechs are mostly filled with air (like balloons) and don't react well to hard vacuum or water infiltration. Yikes, I never thought of that. How do they shed heat!?
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Jan 24, 2011 09:12
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^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I meant in vacuum, you silly-billy. Any heat-exchange system designed to work in a medium won't make much sense for vacuum, and vice-versa. You know I assume that none of these things take into account the very heavy modifications you would need to do anything effectively. Which is too bad, because that could have made for a cool expansion! Mechs fitted with giant wing-like radiator panels for fighting in space, supercavitating torpedo launchers, areas where you could essentially fly by leaping through a microgravity environment or manipulating buoyancy modules. Would be cool stuff, but you'd have to give up the convenient convention of just pretending that everything still functions in extreme environments (especially for weapons underwater.) Really too bad; we could've had 80mm autocannons firing supercavitating gyrojets. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 10:39 on Jan 24, 2011 |
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Jan 24, 2011 10:29
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I get the definite impression that House Davion is "House Good Guys" to just about everyone. They're always portrayed as having the most powerful and professional military, best technology, best leaders, freedom of religion etcetera. The writers spend so much time fellating the Davions they seem to have forgotten that the best power-hungry, uncaring warmonger is still a power-hungry, uncaring warmonger. The only perspective I can really get behind in BattleTech is the mercenaries who have no problem calling out the lovely feudal lords for being... lovely feudal lords.
Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jan 25, 2011 |
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Jan 25, 2011 21:55
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That's actually a good point, the Free Worlds League seems like genuine good guys because they mind their own business. But that means they aren't featured often. I think, Zaodai, that wargames tend to focus on assholes who start wars and knock over their little friends' sandcastles. The game would probably be boring if it was PeaceTech: Giant Robots Cooperate in the Sparkling Utopia of the Far Future. But it leaves a lot of assholes doing rear end in a top hat things as protagonists. I'm perfectly capable of 'sperging about things that are awesome, I guess you just haven't seen that.
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Jan 25, 2011 22:11
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Zaodai posted:I also don't recall (off the top of my head) any of the Great Houses having a draft or required military service by the populace. I know the Lyran Commonwealth military definitely has a conscript army/aristocrat officer corps going. However good the average IS citizen has it, the Successor States are supposed to be a negative force. They're consistently presented as a degenerate political system, clearly responsible for great evils and a definite decline from the days of yore. Except when the authors forget and start writing Mary Sues. I actually like the BattleTech setting a lot, but it seems like the authors sometimes forget that it's a fundamentally dystopic premise.
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Jan 25, 2011 22:32
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Zaodai posted:And yeah, the Cappellans tend to get poo poo on from every direction. Fed Com kicked their asses, the FWL stole half their land, and they're evil Space China. Or more accurately, they're the Tongs in space. It's not like they're educated, innovating old school China. They're drug trafficking, thieving, scheming Chinese gangsters. And this a zillion times. As a student of Chinese history and culture it's painfully obvious that the Capellans are Fu-Manchu caricatures. I would really like to see a genuine future state based on the Chinese Empire. If the Capellan Confederation was a meritocratic bureaucracy under an Emperor obsessed with keeping the nobility down (like the Chinese Empires of history) it would be a genuinely interesting and different Successor State. Even having the Liaos obsessed with domestic distractions would lend them a little more genuine Chinese flavor. And it would make sense with the most densely populated state, too. I also always thought it was weird that the Capellan symbol is a guy holding a sword that looks either Japanese or Central Asian. The Chinese traditionally made straight swords. Hell, they have a leader named Sun-Tzu Liao, which if you speak any Chinese you know is a ridiculous name. It would be like naming your kid "Professor Aristotle" Sure you could name a kid Aristotle, but you would probably leave off the title. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jan 25, 2011 |
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Jan 25, 2011 22:41
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Zaodai posted:They used to be strong-ish, but after so many wars they're left with a crazy inferiority complex. The Laios want to be seen as equals, but they're living in a trailer park rather than a mansion. So they figure they need crazy schemes to take back all their occupied worlds, and then they get stomped even more and it repeats. And this doesn't sound like a condescending mid-20th century description of China? People still look down on the Chinese and act like it's silly that they want to be treated as an equal to the great Western powers, even as China roars back to world-power status. I guarantee you if the Capellan Confederation's backstory was rewritten today, based on common American views of China today as opposed to the mid 1980s, they would be portrayed as a far greater threat. Zaodai posted:They said his General Tso's Chicken would be there in 20 minutes, and it had been almost 30 when he declared war.  This just made me think, though, would anyone be caught dead ordering out for traditional English food? I think not! Take that Davions! Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Jan 25, 2011 |
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Jan 25, 2011 23:03
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Well yeah that's true. We're not talking about literature here. But there are still cardboard cutout goodguys and cardboard cutout badguys, and nobody likes having to be the badguy. It's always kind of painful to go back and look at what pop culture was saying about Asia in the 1980s. With all the Japanese ubermenschen and whatnot running around. edit: tildeath you read my mind Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 25, 2011 |
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Jan 25, 2011 23:07
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I remember someone saying that the CC isn't as small as it looks because it occupies a corridor of very densely-settled space.
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Jan 25, 2011 23:43
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Mukaikubo posted:My God, a rule that overrides even the Prime Rule, and shuts down all computers in pursuit of a normal mission! Oh my god I didn't get that reference until now.  You know, classical Chinese scale mail looks a lot like reactive armor plating... someone needs to design a new mech for House Liao ASAP.
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Jan 26, 2011 02:04
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Renaissance Spam posted:there's only so many "Taking out a warlord" concepts you can come up with before it becomes incredibly clear that the Republic is unstoppable and soon the entire Inner Sphere will sit under one banner. I believe the ultimate death of a fictional universe is to become small. When everything is accounted for, when there's nothing around the next corner, that's when a fiction dies. That's why Warhammer 40K is such an excellent setting, not because of the grimdark or the awful writers and stories, but simply because it succeeds in being BIG. Say what you want about Warmhammer 40K, there's no way to run out of stories in a setting that takes size, distance, and diversity so seriously.
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Jan 26, 2011 05:35
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I'd actually like to sign up for this since I just got platinum. Dance around with the Griffin while you annihilate the Kurita lance. Then you can safely violate the duel and gangbang the Dragon to death.
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Jan 26, 2011 06:10
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Agent Interrobang posted:Seriously. It's like being the first soldiers ever to come up against a platoon of arquebuses. "WHY IS EVERYONE BLEEDING AND SCREAMING?! WHAT BLACK SORCERY IS THIS?!" Yet more BattleTech magic technology. I'm fairly sure there is no way, even theoretically, to make something so small so resistant to damage. Maybe the clans nipped over to the Star Trek universe and bought some shields.
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Jan 26, 2011 23:01
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Pimpmust posted:As for magic armour technology, it helps that stuff like AC20 200mm shots have the density of water Just another example of nerds caring way more about their weight units than game designers. I bet if you compared the volume of mechs to their specified weights they would also have absurdly low densities, since the tonnage figures are totally arbitrary values selected for game reasons rather than realism.
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Jan 26, 2011 23:55
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So one element of the fluff I'm genuinely curious about: how did the Inner Sphere go from a hand-me-down technology base where mechs were rare and valuable circa 3010 to a renaissance of technological development and vastly expanded manufacturing capacity circa 3060?
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Jan 27, 2011 03:23
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Gothsheep posted:Right about then, them Steiner boys knew they were in a whole heap a'trouble... ... the bridge to the last dropship was plum blown away by the artillery barrage. Karl and Reinhardt knew they were gonna have to jump the General Kerensky across the river...
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Jan 27, 2011 06:50
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PoptartsNinja posted:‘Mech is prone From the description, I believe the Vulcan is actually supine! 
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Jan 27, 2011 20:22
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Sounds realistic enough. Documentaries about life in the army have lead me to believe that 99% of a tank crew's job is fixing the treads.
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Jan 27, 2011 21:03
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You know, playing Mechwarrior games I got the distinct impression that Steiner was bad solely because of Katrina Steiner. But reading these old "House X" books the Steiners and Lyran Commonwealth come out of the Succession Wars smelling like roses. They spent pretty much the whole of the wars fighting defensive campaigns against the Combine and FWL and trying to rebuild in the interim. Space Nazis indeed. Unless someone can come up with a good reason, I'm ready to declare Steiner "House Good Guys" for real. Seriously, through their entire history they didn't launch a major offensive campaign. You can hardly say that about the Davions, the Mariks or the Liaos. Of course the Kuritas are in their own league of cartoonish evil.
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Jan 28, 2011 08:37
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Defiance Industries posted:Well, everyone in power in the 1SW did some really bad poo poo. Steiner is no exception there, and they did open the war by dick punching Marik. Marik stepped it up on Bolan by introducing WMDs but Steiner is considered to have fired the first shot in the Succession Wars. I'm pretty sure you're wrong there. Lord Minoru "Card-Carrying-Villan" Kurita started the Succession Wars with his proclamation, "I'm the ruler of the Inner Sphere and anyone who doesn't like it can suck on laser beams." Jennifer Steiner was the last Successor Lord to declare that she was the First Lord, but since she was on record declaring the Star League had ended with Kerensky's Exodus I get the impression that it was more like, "Okay guys now we're all the First Lord of the Star League lol whatevs." Considering that the Steiners didn't gain any original FWL territory until the 3rd war I kind of doubt they started the fight.
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Jan 28, 2011 09:06
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Defiance Industries posted:Kudos on keying in on Davion imperialism, though. Most people excuse it at first as "liberation" because the DC and CC are "bad guys." Honestly the Capellan Confederation come off as more desperate than evil. Sure they've evolved into a military/police state with an iron dictator, but that's because the Mariks and Davions have spent the last 500 years backing them into a corner. The Confederation started out as a fairly robust democracy, as the name implies. (It doesn't help that the Liaos appear to have a strong genetic propensity to bipolar disorder.) The Draconis Combine are just straight-up evil though. Who else would kick off the Succession Wars by targeting civilian centers to the exclusion of military targets just to make a point? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 09:25 on Jan 28, 2011 |
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Jan 28, 2011 09:23
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As the Warden Clans assimilate into Inner Sphere society, they might be interested in securing famous IS blood-names and the genetics associated with them. I mean it's not like the Clans fought over the Kerensky blood-name incessantly because of its genetic line. It's a pride thing. Being able to grab the Steiner and Davion blood-names might be quite a feather in Wolf's cap. And at essentially zero cost, since nobody else wanted Katrina anywhere near the Inner Sphere at that point anyway. (Even if they are not technically blood-names because they're not part of the 80 original bloodlines. But that's stupid anyway because if you can't create more and they slowly get wiped out the Trueborn will wither.) edit: the gently caress is a mooj? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Jan 28, 2011 |
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Jan 28, 2011 11:10
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Defiance Industries posted:Bloodhouse Steiner is descended from an illegitimate child, and Katherine was disinherited after the FedCom Civil War, so they are of minimal use. After 500 years of dominating the Inner Sphere, names like Steiner and Davion don't need to be useful per se. Just being a Steiner or a Kurita or a Davion is an end in itself. I can certainly see the Clans being interested in those kinds of names for bragging rights alone. The Clans are still human after all.
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Jan 28, 2011 11:23
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Tempest_56 posted:She's a Successor Lord. Assassination of family members is a completely acceptable course of action if it gets you closer to the throne. The typical Steiner response to this is, "What throne!? Y'all are crazy!" This line of reasoning alone proves Katrina's more Davion than Steiner. Although the Lyrans never really did have the military strength to seriously enforce a claim to the First Lordship. Maybe the strength of the FedCom finally made them into power-mad dictators like everyone else. Arquinsiel posted:Loki Pshh, you create one little state-sponsored terrorist organization and all of a sudden everybody's mad at you. It's still nowhere near as bad as the other Successor States.
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Jan 28, 2011 21:39
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KnoxZone posted:We are in bed with Hanse Davion right now. I think he will treat us well. No sweety, it's our fault, we just have to fight harder. He only hits us because he loves us.  That part of MW4:Mercs was awesome. Pounding through the jungle and beach with night vision on in (if you did the Solaris IV missions) a brand new Fafnir. That's usually around the part of the game where you're first really able to field a pair of heavy/assault lances, and poo poo gets real fast. Looking back that game got pretty easy due to the ability to choose where your hits landed to a great degree. A telescopic sight and pair of Heavy Gauss Rifles were just a really unfair combination to throw at the AI. Once I got the Fafnir I would reload missions just to obliterate everything again. "Looks like I sniped your Star Commander's reactor core again trashbirth scum!"  And yeah getting the classic "Inner Sphere sucks" speech from that Jade Falcon woman made taking her as bondsman super satisfying.
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Jan 29, 2011 03:14
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Artificer posted:She seems to always be in a foul mood when she's responding to your orders, though. I think she was voiced by the same actor who did the laconic southerner pilot too. Maybe you're getting them confused or the actor let them bleed together a little? Honestly if you were a Jade Falcon Star Colonel I doubt you would be very pleased to go work for a mercenary franchise for the rest of your life. (I thought the idea of merc franchisers was pretty amusing. Okay, you have a dropship and a lance of mechs? Cool, you're in the Gray Death Legion now. Here are some complimentary decals for your Mechs. Just don't... call us or talk to us ever. Kay?) Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:30 on Jan 29, 2011 |
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Jan 29, 2011 03:27
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Yeah I kinda wish they had just had you leaving a merc unit to start up your own business. Only the commander and the adjutant are canon, so you could put in any regiment name you wanted and the game wouldn't change it at all. You can put tartan on your mechs even if you aren't in the Northwind Highlanders, so you've already got basically every advantage of being part of an established merc unit anyway.KnoxZone posted:Ah yes, Mercenaries, where an IS Mercenary can defeat 5 bloodnamed clan warriors in a Trial of Position with contemptuous ease. When did that happen? The AI isn't great but it's not so bad that a 5 on 1 fight isn't murderously difficult. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Jan 29, 2011 |
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Jan 29, 2011 03:45
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Defiance Industries posted:loving Blakists. How do they work? The authors suddenly discovered that they had written themselves into a clear period of detente. So the villains had to get more and more outlandish. Thus, WoB.
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Jan 29, 2011 11:28
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It's very classic use of dramatic irony that everyone who claims to want to restore the Star League has smashed and torn it down for 500 years. Just a nice bit of theme in the writing. It's very Homeric. Successor Lords? Obliterated the Inner Sphere's industrial base. ComStar? Maintained the Dark Age beyond its life expectancy. Clans? Raped and pillaged their way through 1/4 of what was once the Star League. Word of Blake? Plunged the Inner Sphere into a new dark age. When will they just kind of forget about the Star League? If they actually managed to get their poo poo together for 100 years they would probably start expanding again and then owning Terra would finally become truly meaningless.
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Jan 30, 2011 01:02
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Well aside from hardware, I think all the Successor States that truly want to revive the Star League see it as the ultimate prestige item. The Star League was created by Terrans and ruled from Terra, and of course Terra is the origin of humanity. Any ruler who wants to genuinely claim lordship over the entire human race would need Terra as a symbol of legitimacy. But if the Inner Sphere went through another period of geometric expansion, there would be no point. Terra is so vitally important because it's at the geographic, political, technological and social center of the human race. Hell the Inner Sphere itself is defined by Terra's location. If humanity spread out enough, though, they would lose that connection and other places would become truly independent regional centers. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 02:27 on Jan 30, 2011 |
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Jan 30, 2011 02:25
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