Assume Ukraine suddenly gets 100 mechs with all the supporting infrastructure like pilots, mechbays, etc. What is the weakest mech that could let them roll over Russia?
Can 100 Urbanmechs do it? Can 100 Atlases do it?
Assume Ukraine suddenly gets 100 mechs with all the supporting infrastructure like pilots, mechbays, etc.
mechs are retarded, big targets for artillery and cas
>cas
They have laser weapons. CAS is suicide. Battletech aerospace fighters are basically flying tanks
Strike really high above and from below. Lasers take time to burn and cool off. 50 drones don’t.
dont some mechs have point defense miniguns?
Some mechs have a CIWS equivalent, yeah. They're referred to as AMS systems and they can be miniguns or laser based. Any EWAR system would fuck with drones as well.
But also small drone weapons are just not going to get through the armor so it's kind of a moot point.
The main benefit of AWS or EWAR systems on mechs would be their ability to shield and screen tanks, artillery, or infantry with them during advances.
Drop more than 2 km in altitude and you're utterly immune to mechs
This is technically correct but not explanatory. Mechs, specifically battletech mechs, are best suited for strategic level planning, not operational. Yes, heavies and assaults can bring a FUCK ton of guns to bear and very decent armor, mediums good for jack of all trades and lights for skirmishing, but chuck em on the front line and the whole concept of 'big mech is mega stronk' falls apart ala those leopard 2's that died. That's not because they're shit though, that's because war is a place where things die and do so very quickly. Chuck any of these bastards on the frontline, even a goddam Atlas, and it will die eventually, doesn't matter how much armor you have, enough bombing runs or SABOT's to the face will wear you down in time. What mechs are well suited for is being the ultimate in strategic reserve. Drop em behind enemy lines to cripple infrastructure and communications with lightning speed that vehicles and infantry just cannot achieve int he same timeframe. Use em for spearhead breakthroughs to open gaps for the regular army to push in. Defend highly valuable assets, a mobile unit to stop enemy breakthroughs, etc. Mechs in 90% of fiction would never be well suited to frontline duties, but they are one of the most valuable assets anyone could ask for when you need something really big, really tough and armed to the fucking teeth to do something and do it quick.
Yep, mechs are at their best when dropped in the thick of it and then extracted like spec ops giga soldiers.
But that requires a massive spaceship.
Zaku, what are you doing on the ground? You belong in space.
to be fair most zeeks are too stupid to look behind them half the time
>that one retard who manages to miss and blow a hole into the building on the left instead
>walk on mine
>dies
No, they can't do shit
>Urbanmech
>Dying from anything less than the hatred of atleast 4 assault mechs
Once I started playing Urbanmech in MWO I never went back.
>once I started playing mechwarrior for zoomers
You should go back
>t. MW:LL Dev
>Not being capable of demining
Remind me how Ukraine isn’t as incompetent as 1980s Iraq.
>not being capable of a ridiculously hard thing to do
you are dumb
Mechs can literally crush MBTs filled with ordinance resulting in only minor armor degradation for the mech legs. In dact ometimes people dont bother firing at the vehicles, you just roll over them.
A mine is a pinprick to a 10m AC. Or just play as a Quadchad and hooover over the minefield.
Anything short of a direct hit from an MBT won't even chip the armor so probably. It depends on how much heavy ordinance Russia could actually hit an urbie-sized target with, since they're a complete bitch to put down in a single hit.
Rubbish, Battleteck armour is ablative, being degraded by the smallest weapon. Even infantry armed with AKs could shatter the armour on a Battlemech.
>being degraded by the smallest weapon
Said "smallest weapon" being a .50cal gatling gun spewing out ludicrous amounts of hotloaded AP ammo more powerful than anything we have in the calibre today.
Meanwhile, primitive modern tank cannosn are statted out. And indeed, the Light Rifle (closest equivalent to a 105mm or 120mm tank gun) does a big, fat ZERO damage against anything clad in IS standard armor.
Weird how a three ton Rifle Cannon apperently does fuck all, but a half ton machine gun or shoulder launched missile does ok. I wonder why they dont make the cannon shells out of the same stufff they use for machineguns, SRMs or even infantry assault rifles. It's almost as if the retarded rules for Rifle Cannons was shat out by a different game designer so the current IP owner could sell a never ending series of splatbooks?
>so the current IP owner could sell a never ending series of splatbooks
You don't know battletech very well do you
>It's better than anything we use today!
>Ignores all the info in the TROs, RPGs, Novels, etc about how the ammo isnt all that special..
You seem to like thinking 'your guys' are the bestest thing ever. I bet you play 40k.
Smallest weapon being a 200 year old AK that the owner dug out of a ruin. A single rifle infantryman can destroy a point of armour every round. Stop replacing actual game mechanics with your dellusional head canon.
Meanwhile in RPG rules a thousand guys with your 200 year old AKs trying to hose down a Locust will achieve exactly jack and shit. Turns out infantry platton rules are heavily abstracted and expect a platoon to pack at least token AT munitions at all times.
the armor on them is such that gau8 has effective range same as a melee weapon against the mech. and even then it won't do much.
100 fleas
Scrap the mechs, use the steel and parts for tanks and artillery instead.
Were talking about battletech mechs. Far superior to any tank or artillery you could build today.
>inb4 just make tanks and artillery with the same tech then
They do that too, and it's by far the most common equipment available, but it's much slower by comparison and less versatile
>100 atlases
Going too big with the mech makes for an inviting target for a tacnuke. The smaller the better imo. If you got 100 suits of battle armor, that'd probably be best
Going to have to reconfigure the voice activated systems from Star League English to Ukrainian first.
That's what Amaris thought. It ended with his troops fighting a bunch of pissed-off irradiated Highlanders
Personally I think the best well rounded force of a hundred mechs would be divided between Archers, Phoenix Hawks, Marauders, and Warhammers for a good mix of units capable of supporting one another, the Marauders and Warhammers acting as range heavy support with heavy close in firepower, Phoenix Hawks for maneuver and scouting, and Archers for indirect fire support.
Turn A Gundam, not even cause its weak, just fuck russia
Doesn't Turn A have a "haha tech no longer works" button?
Honestly I think Stingers and Wasps would be optimal for Ukraine, quite immune to supply and can get over the minefields.
For sure, something with jjs is ideal with all the minefields
I think the word we're looking for here is 'Firestater'
Battle Armors might be even better for taking over the trenches. I wonder if there would be enough big guys (and gals) to equip though.
You don't need to be an Elemental to run Battle Armor. That's just clanner minmax autism.
Also another competitor for TVD: the Vulcan
>either an AC 2 or an LL which is plenty to pen shitty Soviet garbage
>flamer for burninating the country side
>MG which can pen anything short of a modern MBT for whatever else happens to be nearby
>jumps
It's kind of a shitmech for straight up brawls but in this situation it's actually pretty versatile
No Warcrimes on Ukrainian Soil. I don't care what you do on Russian soil but Gosh Darn it, Ukrainians actually have to live there.
Ashes make great fertilizer so it's fine.
100 phoenix hawks.
100 Ravens
Total EW Death
>your comms are overcome by electronic cawing noises
The correct answer
>hate capellans
>love Raven series of mech
What do?
Play FWL and claim your rightful salvage. It's not like the cappies can do anything about it, they're too busy trying to not get Davion'd.
Rob the capellans
Be Davion and go on a raid? That's how they got all their Cataphracts.
Reminder that it is always at least morally neutral to fuck over the CapCon. Yes, even the insane First Prince raping the mary sue CapCon crown princess for no reason is morally neutral.
Ironically warcrime some Cappies and take their shit?
The only contemporary weapons which could feasibly damage a BT 'mech are artillery, cruise missiles and AT mines, so you need a way to deal with all three of those.
An ECM suite to throw off targeting by drones, a Beagle Probe to find and circumvent mines, and mobility can keep you alice by not being hit - has the right idea.
>muh BAR
>muh Rifles
>ignores modern missiles
Anon mech cockpits will be getting popped like beers at a frat party, Battletech has notoriously short ranges.
The game ranges are an abstraction so you can play on a table instead of a tennis court.
>abstraction
No.
>reeee
Then meele becomes completely nonviable or mechs suddenly start moving at 300kph.
>No.
Yes.
What missile does Russia have that could be remotely considered "modern"?
>Total EW Death
You don't even need Ravens for that. Normal mech still make an incredibly hostile EW environment, its just a Guardian suite is on an even more insane level.
One of the books features a clanner roasting infantry with his EW gear for luls. Iirc, he's in a stock Summoner, which lacks "advanced" EW equipment by battletech standards.
100 of the universes worst mechs would be more than sufficient.
They are fast, immune to small arms, never run out of energy or ammo, and include an array of futuristic sensors and communication tech.
Just wreck havoc behind enemy lines.
Timberwolf, Timberwolf everywhere
Timberwolf prime of course
If you put the game limitations like weapon range etc. aside, it should be possible to conquer the world.
Catapults with arrow-iv launchers
Metal Gear?!
The Monster from Macross. You can't go wrong with 4 400mm cannons.
Vulcan for roasted vatnigs.
No 21st century tech can inflict even 1 point of damage on BAR 10 armor.
Machine guns can apparently do damage to mechs. Not a lot, but the fact that it does damage at all is telling
Machineguns in Battletech run off the same magic their cannons do.
A Light Rifle (which would be roughly equivalent to the cannon on the Bradley) doesn't even damage targets with BAR 10. You don't stat dealing damage at all until you get to Medium Rifles, which is about on par with a modern tank's main gun.
idk what games/lore is being referenced here but I was under the impression that they don't have deflection at all, it's a fixed amount of total energy they can absorb, irrelevant of how much is dealt at a time.
A drone wouldn't scratch the glass.
There's a minimum threshold to cause the ablative reaction that absorbs the energy. Anything below that threshold can't cause damage to the armor at all. You can't just slap a mech with your hand and eventually dig through the armor.
Ty anon, was worried my mechfucker fantasies could accidentally destroy a mech's CT.
Battletech is a tabletop wargame using mechs.
All units technically have a 'BAR' which I think stands for Ballistic Armor Rating or something; its a threshold that determines whether or not a weapon can actually damage what its being shot at. Fully armored units in military grade armor have a BAR of 10. Modern day weapons are actually statted out in Battletech and tend to have BAR penetration below 10, so they have difficulty with mech armor. If you don't meet a target's BAR the damage you deal is reduced by a flat amount.
Usually these rules are purely optional extra fluff for campaign games and weird scenarios, but they happen to be relevant here.
Machine guns in BT are vastly more high-energy than ours. This whole question was solved years ago. There's nothing short of field artillery pieces and cruise missiles that will damage a BattleMech in modern arsenals, and those not very much.
What exactly are LRM warheads and why do they do so little damage? Is it just one of those tiny drone dropped grenades with a rocket engine and guidance system?
It's a swarm missile intended to defeat countermeasures through overwhelming numbers. They're made entirely out of explosive material, the frame, the nose cone, the fuse, the fuel, all of it is explosive. But they're not individually large, each missile weighs less than 20 pounds.
>one single suicide drone to the cockpit and the mech is completely fucked
GG's ukropmorons
>glasss
The writers figured this shit out in the 80s, anon. Viewing windows in mechs use a transparent armor composit and have done so since the very first book published in the setting.
The canopy is the hardest part of the Mech, weight/armour ratio-wise. A drone would probably not do a single point of damage to it.
Transparent metal.
Won't they all just sink in the mud and fall over?
We're all working on the massive assumption that mech legs somehow work, yes.
People have done the math before and with the big stompy feet of modern mechs, they've got about the same impact on the ground as a school bus. Which still isn't great for mud, but it's not that bad. They're as tall as a fighter jet is long, and the light mechs might not even be twice the weight with significantly more ground contact surface area.
Btech goes into pretty decent detail on how the artificial muscle stuff works basically modular pre built "packs" that lock onto the limbs over joints and piston actuators.
I wish they'd actually employed artists with any degree of mechanical understanding because most of the mech legs look absolutely absurd. I forget what the Missile Boombox is called but there's no way that thing is walking.
How many mud puddles have you run across that are as deep as a four story building is tall?
That's what the Jump Jets are for
What the fuck is going on with all the mech threads the past few days? Seems like there's been a lot more than usual
PrepHole is a battletech board
Hear me out. 100 Riflemen for anti-air, or alternatively a mech which can mount multiple AMS systems. Something which can provide a bubble of anti-air or anti-missile/drone coverage to tanks and troops moving forwards would be the best choice for augmenting Ukrainian forces.
Failing that, a mech which excels at counterbattery against artillery, so something mobile with LRMs or the like, perhaps some Catapults?
Nice looking Sea Fox mechs. I love the underwater diffraction patterns you've got on them.
I love this paint job
please anons post more painted minis
I will comply with this request. Stand by.
sick paint job anon, what are the planes?
Seyla
Armored Core 6 came out very recently and was a hit so mechs are on people's minds.
people got teased for liking 40k cause it's shit, now that they figured out it's shit and GW is abusive, battletech is the default. Also battletech is redpilled and progun as fuck, as well as being fantasy-as-military-reality which is a PrepHole staple
>Battletech "America was a mistake" is PrepHole
Wat
Wut
Space murrica is the entity all the other space nations want to be. When they say "I want to be first prince of the new star league", what they're actually saying is "I want to be the new Terran Hegemony, which was Space 'Murrica." They just can't because they're all shitters who self-sabotage too much. America in Space is the shining city on the hill. You don't get to play as Space America because it would obsolete the other factions.
>"I want to be the new Terran Hegemony, which was Space 'Murrica
>Space America
>A fucking autocratic monarchy
That is not space America. That's just space Britain.
Are we talking about Star League here? Star League was a coalition of independent planets
There's nothing recognizably American about the Star League.
Correct but based on the context I wasn't sure what else it could be. There's the ree worlds league which is ostensibly a democratic parliament.
Terran Hegemoney, maybe. Which is where the Star League got all its initial momentum from.
Taurian Concordat?
The TC is really the closest example in universe of the US, but a hereditary executive instead of a elected one.
They even got stuff like checks on power (the courts can overturn any decision made by the protector if deemed against the constitution)
They also got that righteous hatred for hypocrites (Davion) and backstabbing arseholes (Capies).
Overall best bunch
>the courts can overturn any decision made by the protector if deemed against the constitution
And then get promptly ignored. Also, Taurians getting mad about hypocrisy is about as ironic as Cappies getting mad about warcrimes.
Battletech is about how the military industrial complex is a runaway problem that will plunge humanity into thousands of years of the worst hells imaginable.
No amount of brilliance or courage across the ages will save us from the meat brained desire for shallow power.
Mechwarrior 5 game with Smoke Jaguar campaign was announced
MW5 with mods is pretty decent. I just wish they'd give us the 3D HUD from the trailer.
I wish they would integrate the cockpit into actual displays in the mech
>I want to constantly look down.
Uhh, why? Fighter jet helmets try to put all the relevant data into the HUD so that you don't take your eyes away from reality.
That's another advantage of neurohelmets, the bad ones will project a compressed 360 degree view into your peripheral vision so you can always see all around you, and the good ones actually feed the mech's sensor data directly into your mind so you inherently know exactly where everything is on the battlefield.
That doesn't sound practical or safe. What if someone makes a neurohelmet that uploads things into the mind besides numbers?
It's safe as long as you're the only person whose used it. There were actually a lot of advanced neurohelmets that survived the early succession wars, while the advanced mechs they came out of were toast, ejecting pilots kept their helmets and if they weren't obliterated in a nuke or shot by something designed to strip triple digit pounds of armor, the helmets survived. The more people who have used a helmet without a factory reset though, the more "ghosts" they'd pick up since the helmets were fine tuned for previous user's thought patterns and were trying to react to thoughts the current user wasn't having. Eventually they all became useless outside of Comstar who could still make new ones and reinitialize old ones.
same
Has anyone played MWO or MW5 in VR mode? I would except I don't feel like reinstalling.
What mods do you use to make it look so crispy?
We get to kill Star Captain Oliver all over again!
Armored Core 6 is unironic mercenary PrepHoleino.
Honestly you'd probably just want a bunch of Shadow Hawks. Yeah, they're not spectacular against other mechs, but they aren't fighting other mechs, and they can do basically everything (poorly by mech standards, fine by modern) with minimal maintenance.
The Centurion is the undisputable most versatile mech you can field
>AC10
>LRMs
>MLs
What more do you need?
What are you shooting at that requires an AC10?
A glancing blow with a small laser would make a tank pop.
Small lasers have shit range. You can use the AC against targets like bunkers or buildings. Lasers are terrible against those because all the dust that gets kicked up dilutes the power of the beam
>Small lasers have shit range
90m with basic rules. With advanced rules you get 150m with extreme range and line of sight rules allow line of sight. There is also bracing, overwatch, and aiming that will increase the chance to hit. If you stop, brace, and aim for a turn or two you can have a high chance of hitting what would normally be a BTH 13.
Also static targets can have a -4 BTH modifier so popping pidor heads from 2km(4 map sheets) using a small laser is possible with advanced rules.
Small lasers don't get LOS range. Only lasers with 7+ range get LOS attacks. So, Medium Lasers uber alles.
For this scenario.
Unironically pick a Shad. Faster and more maneuverable than the Centurion, more heavily armored, extremely rugged and maintenance easy evne by IS Mech standards. And while the firepower is kinda anemic for its tonnage, it's more than enough for this scenario.
I really like the Shadman, it's never optimal at anything but it has some sort of answer to everything. though carrying three different flavors of ammo does make them kinda explodey
The OG Shad is terribly undergunned, stupidly oversinked and carries entirely too much ammo, yes. (And the 3025 Davion version is a fucking suicide sled, holy shit what were they thinking? Oh yeah, REMEMBER KENTARES!)
Some later models (and the SLDF Royal) are absolutely great, though. I love the 3075 Kurita model and the Project Phoenix one in particular.
Anon, I'm not sure what that mech in the image is supposed to be but since you're talking about the shadow hawk here's a pic of it for your post 🙂
>Urbanmechs
The Flea would actually be ideal. Better armament because AC/10 is overkill and a medium laser and a MG is all you really want. Locust has ideal armament and stupid fast, but no jumpjets.
The 6/9/6 which walk at 64kph and run at 96kph and jump are faster than than any ground combat vehicle and they do it off-road. Locust goes 8/12/0(128kph), spider 8/12/8 and Jenner 7/11/5.
After how close pringles wild ride got, I'd expect 100 elementals to be able to do it if you had good intel on where monke was. A few on a direct assault and the rest waiting in ambush near his getaway plane.
Power armor and protomechs will tire the wearer out if you're making them run hundreds of miles. The mech will do collision avoidance and pathfinding to walk through a forest avoiding trip hazards and around trees and obstacles and the pilot can almost take a nap. Mechs are usually 6-12m tall with most in the 8-9m category.
they have jetpacks, although I guess you'd need some way of getting fuel to them for such a long journey
>walking mechs
>into a battlefield where mines and artillery is thrown around like candy
>Russian ATGM's
Anon...
When a tank hits an AT landmine in the track it throws track and takes damage to roadwheels, torsion bar and is otherwise a pretty fast fix with spare track links amd replaced roadwheels. A tank hit with an AT mine up through the hull floor is possibly crew killed.
A mech steps on a landmine and it gets a hole in its armored foot, which is mostly just metal that doesn't really give a shit. The ankle, knee and hip joints are high off the ground and not affected by the landmine. Crotch/hull hits are also much less severe due to being so far from the ground. Mechs are more resistant to landmines because they're tall like MRAPs.
>doesn't know Mechwarriors absolutely despise mines
Mines can cause pilot checks, which if failed causes the mech to fall over, which can lead to pilot injuries or KO's.
Don't forget we're talking Battletech, so a mech smacking the ground with a giant stick to set off any mines before it steps is a thing that could happen.
Alternatively, it could kick a wrecked tank along the ground in front of it the way a kid kicks a can.
Anon chop your foot off and see how well you can walk using the stump.
Battletech mechs are ridiculously durable and have obscene firepower even at the lowest level. A single Flea would change the dynamic of the entire war by itself. Ukies could probably steamroll the entire Russian military with a dozen light mechs.
>omfg guys what if we talked about fictional characters stopping Putin
This shit's so retarded and so Reddit.
>characters
>only mention of Putin is you
>OP says Russia
NTA but holy fuck you are dumb.
It's a discussion about the practical use of "future" weapons on the modern battlefield, what the fuck do you want this board to talk about you whiny fuck?
>deflects
Leave.
Despite the ridiculousness of the setting, Warhammer actually has a really decent reason for why mechs are function. Titans and even advanced warmachines with decent machine spirits all run really potent electronic warfare systems. You wouldn't even be able to fly a drone around a titan or something like a land raider because of how strong the EW is.
Shit goes even harder for Chaos/Dark Mechanicum Titans, because they run full spectrum scrapcode broadcasts that fuck with anything that can receive the signal and if you are a radio/radar operator, interacting with the scrapecode broadcasts could fry your brain, drive you insane or just straight up possess you.
I remember a really cool part in the Siege of Terra book, where the Dark Mechanicum forces are describing how insanely potent the electronic warfare systems of the Imperial Palace were and how it was taking all their energy just to keep their shit working even with daemon engines fully dedicated to electronic warfare.
Also Titans and Kinghts are just Killdozers on steroids, actual DAoT weapons were so OP they were either locked up or destroyed by the Emperor.
They also have energy shields, psychic shit, and are powered by thousands of slaves that trained their entire life to carry a 55gal drum of nuclear fuel directly into the reactor pool and they do it exactly once and then die in the reactor chamber and their bodies dry out and turn to ash from the heat that is then blown out a big smoke stack.
Mechs can't and won't ever exist outside of fantasy where real physics exist.
Protomechs already exist right now, its just that all their usage is for things like low impact forestry, specialty cargo transport, or military research purposes.
Realistically, we are absolutely going to get some form of walking human sized robot in combat environments in the next 50 years, as well as animal sized robots (like the various Boston Dynamic atlas and dog robots). We're likely also going to get powered exoskeletons, first for soldier rucking support, then some crayon eater is going to slap ballistic plates on it and make proto powered armor and we're off to the races for powered armor.
I do think that human piloted mechs don't really make sense versus everything being some sort of semi-autonomous drone controlled via a remote link. Even a legged robot with weapons is just going to get a video feed back to its pilot, because most of the use of them will be keeping humans out of danger. No sense in making it so much bigger just to house a human pilot. That's a lot of extra bulk for not much gain.
having a controller on side instead of in a base far away makes signal interception harder and makes the control more situationaly aware.
the reason for larger mechs is to have vehicle firepower and emgineering/logistics aid in areas where conventional vehicles are to low mobility (bad terrain, cities, forests, etc.) when a helicopter has to low continous presence (cause hovering takes more energy than standing).
going humanoid then is for giving the mech a waldo control by the pilot being in an exoskeleton feedback rig. this will be a lot more versatile than a remote controled robot, as bots have standard movements and lack our adaptability. (going for automated movement assistance for the pilot for consistency is fine though).
the size limit would be about titanfall mech size, as otherwise it couldn't take cover or navigate places properly anymore.
If you do the math on the ground pressure it's really quite trivial to have enough surface area to be equal to that of infantry
Nooooo you have to imagine mechs on giant stilleto heels punching straight through the ground so I can keep fapping to tank superiority nooooooo!!!!!!
As it stands now only the Russian air force and missiles could really pose a threat, so I’d probably go for the Rifleman variant the clans made with the same extra lasers and more jump jets. But damn near any mech would do the job.
>Vatniks spam post videos of lancets smashing into Atlases
>Video ends before the smoke even clears
>They dig a bit to try and trap an Atlas
>They cut once it falls in
>Satellite images show the Atlas climbed out of the pit and turned everything to ash around it before moving on.
>Russia denies this despite the same Atlas now doing a dance in the middle of Moscow
Ironically a covered hole is a legit tactic to use against mechs in the setting.
Well, a covered hole and having like a platoon of assholes with satchel charges sitting in camo to do the real damage.
Infantry vs Mechs tends to be kind of an all or nothing thing. You either run screaming from Mecha-Godzilla, or you chuckle under your breath as the giant fools blunder into your trap. Trying to have a "fair" shootout with your dinky shoulder-launched missiles is just not going to work against anything beyond the frailest light Mechs, the firepower and resilience disparity is just too much.
I always used either inferno or smoke missiles for my srm troops for this reason. They are practically worthless at taking anything down, but as an area denial and/or concealment utility they can increase the chances your infantry actually manage to do something
What would be fun mechs to play on TT for a beginner?
I'm going to say stuff that is decently well rounded so you can to experience a bunch of different weapons, and they aren't so slow you get bogged down in slow movement, nor do they have such specific builds you have to really worry about management too badly. So something like a Centurion, Crab, Trechuchet, those kinds of medium mechs.
thanks, was thinking about getting into tabletop, I love the BT universe
You can get MegaMek so you can play for free and also online. That's a good a good way to start out and learn.
I second megamek. I still love playing actual tabletop, but the logistics of it can be difficult at times so it's nice to have megamek
I'd say stay with introtech (ie 3025-era) stuff and get the classic jumpy cavalry lance: Shadow Hawk, Phoenix Hawk, Griffin, Wolverine.
None of them are really "ideal" Mechs, but they're all decent and they're really good for teaching you all the various aspects of the game: Most of 'em run hot enough to teach you a few lessons in heat management. They're all pretty decently armored and so teach you angling your facings and to get a feeling for when things start to get bad and you should start to pull out. All of them are decently manueverable and can jump, and they have a varied mixture of weapons and range brackets to play around with and teach you how to maneuver effectively.
After that, try to mix in some slower 4/6/0 troopers, optionally making them range specialists like a missile boat or a Hunchback.
The ones that you think look cool.
75 LGB-14C2 Longbows and 25 CP-11-C3 Cyclops mechs. C3 networks for all my friends, thousands and thousands of missiles for everyone else.
I'd say you'd want something energy based to deal with the Russians, if only because that's the best way to avoid supply issues.
I could see MRM Catapults being the slavmech of choice, just firing the shit into the air along with all their other rocketspam shit.
Makes me wonder why MRMs dont have indirect artillery rules, a catapult with them could essentially play the same role as any other MLRS system, those rockets have to come down eventually, just fire them in the fucking air.
Much lower ranges. Also, if you wanna go cheap as possible area bombardment like that, just strap some Rocket Launcher 20s to a truck.
From Sarna
>MRMs are dead-fire missiles that are fired more like lasers than missiles.
>In order to pack as many missiles as possible into one salvo, scientists removed guidance systems and made the whole package smaller.
>Though this was seen as a step backwards in technological development, the inexpensive and deadly MRMs have spread throughout the Draconis Combine and to many mercenary units.
>The lack of a guidance system and unique nature of MRMs means that they are incompatible with special munitions and advanced guidance systems, though they can be prepared as a single-shot system.
>The inherent inaccuracy of MRMs is reflected in game terms with a +1 to hit.
Apparently they suck at anything other than spamming within LOS.
Dont need a guidance system to use gravity. They might suck in the game setting, but I gotta think using them as a ghetto MLRS system would be effective in reality.
Not urbies. They can only fire ten times then have to withdraw to reload. You arnt going to capture any ground like that. You need a laser armed mach that can just keep going, like a Crab maybe.
one hundred UM-AIVs with Davy Crocket munitions in their Arrow IVs.
How tall are these things supposed to be? That changes a lot what they can or cannot do.
For the most part, if they cannot hide behind a building they are probably toast.
The Atlas is about 15 meters and it's a big boy. Light mechs would be about half that in height.
Absolutely none of the mechs, big or small, could do jack shit to Russia. Even the creator of Battletech, Jordan Weisman, straight up said that Battletech is science fantasy for the simple fact that bipedal mechs of that massive weight and size could never be a reality because the smaller surface areas of their "feet" would mean they would all just sink into the ground wherever they stepped - to say nothing of the multitude of other issues mechs would have on a real battlefield that other posters have pointed out already.
just put mechs on a planet with solid ground, and boila!, they work just fine
Anon, the average loaded truck weights 40 tons, the average tank weights 50 to 70 tons, dirty compression is a thing, u less you are getting your mech or use one of those silly insect legged SW droids not much is gonna happen.
>but le company writer?
And? All official writers fuck up the lore and meta from time to time, GW writers couldnt agree for years about titans size and went through a funny phase where the Black Templars were atheists.
even in BT universe tanks outperform mechs, at least from an economical standpoint. Mechs just happen to be more versatile at low unit count.
All you need is exactly 1 (one) Highlander to DFA every government building in Moscow while the inhabitants are still inside.
doesn't the square cube law make bipedal mechs impossible? a 15m tall mech weighing 60-100 tons sounds significantly more vulnerable and less armored than a 8ft tall M1 abrams weighing 70 tons
Myommer locomotion, portable fusion engines and ferrofibrous armor deny the square cube law and makes viable a bipedal multiarmed platform from a defense standpoint, don't ask me how those three work beyond "they work", true be told it's easier to hit a mech than a tank in the game, but most scenarios have, like IRL, enough geographic features to have the mech under cover most of the time, I suppose the ukrainian flat terrain will give them some problem, but then again, myommer and ferrofibrous armor give an advantage to defense over offense. If you managed to get those two and the portable fusion reactor IRL it would be an extreme game changer.
I bet all these mech threads are made by the same fucking guy who is obsessed with his gundam dream and just can not face the facts that mechs will never be a viable fucking tool of war.
You hate to see it.
I don't think so, unless I am schizo, but most of the posts here don't say (you).
It's not a massive insight to say mechs don't work.
A large portion of the lore is bending over backwards to make mechs the best weapon available.
Everything better than mechs is lost technology, and mechs only exist at scale because military procurement is a big joke.
CLANNERS....
deserve big hugs and head pats
>Having a clanner GF
What's even the point if she'll hate whatever kid you impregnate her with for being a freeborn?
That's why I fuck Sea Fox twinks instead.
>ywn be a rugged mechwarrior merc working for Canopus and getting exclusively paid in femboy ass
well yeah, femboy ass won't patch the holes in your ride, or get it to the next job
>hit the mech’s massive leg with an AT weapon
>instant mission kill
Why do people think these are viable?
The argument goes that the mech can still hop on one leg and complete the mission
Because the sort of round needed to do that would not just cripple but annihilate any of the setting tanks, let alone 21st century tanks and the mech would mostly still be capable to return fire, kill you, and drag itself out.
>Because the sort of round needed to do that would not just cripple but annihilate any of the setting tanks
The tanks of the setting tend to have just as much if not more armor than the mechs do, and its much better distributed around the tank while the mechs tend to skimp on the armor around their limbs.
Eh. To immediately cripple the leg on an urbanmech you'd need to deliver 14 points of damage which means you're hitting it with;
>an AC20
>a gauss rifle
>clantech PPC
Or some other big weapon. The most you could hope for from a man-portable deal is to land a TAC on the ankle but that doesn't actually stop the Urbie (especially since it can jump).
Ultra ACs can fire twice (20 dmg x 2 shots for 40 dmg) and Rotary AC can do 4 or 5 round bursts, IIRC (RAC2 and RAC5 for 10 and 20 damage, respectively).
I was playing around with a RAC8 or RAC10 and working on numbers for a four or five round burst doing 40 dmg. Never finalized it though.
I mean if you want to say stuff that just blatantly makes no sense at all if you stop looking at lore and base things of reality I suppose that's all correct.
But in a universe based on reality no mech would be able to return fire accurately after being toppled, let alone drag itself given how most of the time the weaponry is arm-mounted. Also it doesn't matter if a tank would die to the weapon because tanks are cheaper, easier to make, and are much smaller targets that are harder to spot because it turns out being the size of a small apartment block in an environment full of MANPATs is a bad idea
Most mechs are only three times the height of a milk-drinking Netherlands biker. That's only twice the height of a Bradley IFV. A mech's dimensions are otherwise very similar to a MBT that is standing on end. They also weigh about the same (abraps is 80t).
Mechs really are not that big and can fire from prone.
That's just silly. The alternative to an Abrams that's standing on end, is an Abrams that's NOT standing on end, so just...have it not do that.
Someone already explained they have some technologies and scientific breakthroughts which allow mechs to exist.
We are not going to tell you the details because we dont have that knowledge IRL. And honestly even the best hard scifi can fuck up from time to time, just read Jules Vernes, he literally had a team of editors helping him with the speculative side but in theend he missed quite a few things.
The issue isn't that the technology allows mechs to exist, it's that all of those technologies are better applied to a tank instead.
So it’s just a tank that’s inherently less stable and has a bigger weak point?
>Inherently less stable, bigger weak point
No
Because it is very unlikely you can deal enough precision damage to outright sever the mech's leg. In the games, when a mech's leg is considered destroyed, that just means it's still a big metal crutch that the mech can still move around through artificial muscle fibers. Only when both legs are destroyed is the mech considered mission killed. As long as its got one working leg, it can still wobble around fine.
When you mess with King Crab you get the clamps!
You don’t need to destroy the leg completely, just fuck it up enough for the joints to fail or become unresponsive. Once that happens you’re not gonna be able to have a stable firing platform and are probably gonna fall over because real life isn’t a video game. What you’re saying is like saying “if a soldier breaks his knee he can just hobble around.” Like there aren’t any other factors involved. Did you even consider that it might, just might, make the mech much harder to control or did you think “well they can hop in the video game” and not process it further.
The guy thinks mechs are militaristicly viable
>Did you just stop at "well in Vidya they can hop around
wtf do you think?
>muh joints
Battlemechs use synthetic muscle not hydrologic systems. The leg would need to be properly fucked to be rendered nonfunctional.
>synthetic muscle
That’s an even bigger target lmao. Just pen the armour almost anywhere and the muscles are torn quite literally.
The entire point of Battletech armor is that it's hard as balls to pen. A modern tank shell bounces off without effect (which we know because some modern tanks are statted in the system).
>in my fantasy world my vibramium armor reflects your tank shell
Ok and? If these things are gonna be sent to the real world they’re gonna operate with real world logic and not waving any defects away via unobtainum armor.
Wow, you're dumb. Mechs muscles aren't worse than hydralics. Mech muscles still work after you shoot a hole through them. Mechs also have multi ton gyros in combination with computers. They can hop around on one leg if need be.
>mech muscles still work if you shoot a hole in them
Remember how I said if they’re gonna be in the real world they’re gonna operate on real world logic? Now apply that here. Muscles can’t contract if they’ve been split in two.
Speaking of. You can’t just wave away the fact that your firing platform is no longer stable by going “it has computers.” Recoil still exists and even rounds that don’t pen like HE could potentially produce enough force to knock the mech over. Computers and gyros can’t change physics
Yeah. Something missing from the Mechwarrior series thats a little better represented on the board or the battletech strategy games is that mechs get knocked the fuck over all the time. Significant leg damage is usually enough to drop a light or medium and send their pilot to the hamburger realm after riding a couple dozen tons of steel into the dirt. Irl people would be digging tiger traps or pinging legs at extreme range with tanks or direct artillery fire, incessant drone attacks going for cockpit canopies or toes. Fuckin things would be doomed without significant air support.
The cockpit canopies are armored, toes at the end of moving feet aren't legitimately targetable, tanks have all these same issues without any of the additional capabilities. Militaries pick systems based on capabilities brought to bear, not survivability, or helos wouldn't be used by anyone ever. Once tech naturally develops to a point where the cost curve is even slightly lower it will happen.
>toes aren’t targetable
Why not? Really why the fuck not. Just aim at them and shoot.
>armour has never been penned before
Kek
>tanks have the same issues
So true! Just trip a tank and watch it fall over
I think he means the game rules don't let you aim for toes. But the game mechanics are really retarded in general. The setting treats a bigass mech as harder to disable than a tank because, get this, apparently there's MORE points to damage on it. It basically uses the logic that a human standing out in the open is better than a human taking cover and prone, because if you're standing, you might get hit in a non-lethal place, while if you're prone you're more likely to get hit in the head. That's the logic the game operates on.
>there's MORE points to damage on it.
A hole blown through a limb goes off into empty space. Other than the center torso and cockpit there's nothing of critical importance underneath the armor.
Sure you damaged some myomer and made tore a chunk out of in the big hunking metal foam bone of structure. It still functions.
Yeah but you're missing the point. Yes much of a mech non-important stuff, but that's because it's a much bigger target in general. Tanks will be aiming at a mech's cockpit. Mechs will be aiming at a tank's cockpit. If a tank misses, it might hit a limb instead, doing non-critical damage but still doing some damage to some part of the mech. If the mech misses, it's almost certainly just going to miss entirely.
It also disables the limb you retard
Battletech lore is infamously self-contradictory. It's best if you don't think about it, the setting contradicts its own logic all the time.
This./btg/ usually start yelling at you and telling you to turn back when you question economics or how the number of jumpships makes absolutely no sense. Range is also absolute gibberish. I do kind of wish there was a Megamek/MekHQ build that increased ranges but having done my own modding of it before that's a whole can of fuckery.
Plus the politics of the setting is just a non-sensical mish-mash of retarded shit. Apparently in the setting, NATO wins the cold war so decisively that the Soviet Union's territories end up joining NATO. Then, for some retarded reason, the European nations in NATO decide to form their own government, and they force the United States to join and give up its own autonomy by threatening to embargo the USA's goods. Somehow this works and doesn't just piss off the Americans even harder.
>that pic
stop flanderizing marichka you homosexual zoomer morons
Oh, and let's not forget neurohelmets. The setting can't decide how they work. They really want to have bipedal mechs, so they make up some retarded shit about "the human brain can't comprehend having a non-human form so it's only safe to use neurohelmets with bipedal mechs." But then some of these mechs have digitigrade legs, which makes no sense cause that's like giving someone reversed knees and expecting them to walk right, and then we also know that some of the aerospace fighters in the setting use neurohelmets which...I mean what? It's garbage lore that should stop trying to justify itself.
Did they fuck up neurohelmets? Iirc in the books I read as a kid it was really simple. The Neurohelmet just connected the pilot to the machines limbs and central gyro effectively overriding their own internal equilibrium with the mechs. Resulting in the pilots being able to make nearly effortless intuitive inputs to keep the mech stable, bracing legs, changing their stance, kneeling, jumping etc. Was pretty reasonable. Never made any distinction between the types of limbs.
Yeah, the BT universe decided that they didn't want to deal with the obvious fact that multi-legged mechs are better than bipedal mechs IRL, so they added in some half-baked excuse that "the human mind has a hard time using mechs without a human shape" but then they didn't bother to patch in all the obvious lore plotholes this causes.
>those two hard bastards tackling a fucking elemental and firing a pistol through the visor
Those are some hardcore motherfuckers right there. That's like a UNSC marine challenging an elite to fist fight
Comstar had the best trained, if mostly inexperienced, infantry in the Inner Sphere. They knew their fight with the Clanners was do or die, and they'd been watching what everyone else was trying out to see what did and didn't work. That just happened to be one if those tactics.
War crime. Sneak attacks and melee are banned under the rules of zellbrigen
>Clans have random animals as names for their clans
>Dont have a crab clan
I will never forgive them
>doesn't have clan iron crab
>their khan doesn't exclusively pilot an artifact grade king crab with the highest level of upgrades and masterwork craftmanship
this is why I hate the clans
PAY YOUR BILLS FUCKO
I'd like one (1) terra please
>>hit the tanks’s massive tracks with an AT weapon
>instant mission kill
Why do people think these are viable?
Gee IDK anon what stands out more? A tank’s tracks or the 7ft tall legs of a mech?
100 Gestalts
what if they got a hundred (working) Mogs?
Mogs get fucked up by modern .50cal ammo. Probably immune to small arms and basic shrapnel stuff though. I could see the use for something like trench assaults.
Still, you'd either have to get these guys behind the lines and somewhere important or settle for them handling a couple frontline objectives before being attrited
?si=Bg3eXIYCiI52uLRW&t=658
>he paused as if relucent to say the words himself
>"the only option is hand-to-hand combat"
>mogs weren't built for hand-to-hand combat
KINO
>getting another kino Buckmaster book for Killers
can't wait
whoops forgot the link
thats some pretty good stuff, think I'll listen to the rest later
One thing to keep in mind about Battletech is that the armor and weapons are far more advanced than what we have now, even if that isn’t totally apparent.
You would assume a 120mm cannon would be something like an AC/10, but it’s not. Abrams actually have stats in the primitive section and they would have trouble penetrating anywhere on a non-primitive Mech except the cockpit.
That being said, big ass bombs are still effective against battlemechs and while artillery probably doesn’t have quite the HE punch to knock out a mech in one go, a fair sized aircraft delivered bomb would.
Realistically, how well would a newer gen AC like in Armored core VI do? I think one would be enough to cause ridiculous damage
They don't seem to have much ammo
Eh. A mission in AC6 wracks you up almost 100 kills. They would shred an armored column in no time flat.
I only tangentially played AC, in the form of Another Century's Episode (most of them ...) and the ammo was infinite. It was just that your magazine allotment had to restock (basically a weapon cooldown).
From most of the gameplay stuff, those machines are made for fast tactical strikes with little staying power.
I'm a fan of the PA / powered armor (they would be the equivalent of Protomechs) from Metal Wolf Chaos though.
Short of nukes I don't think there's much a modern military could do about one except wait for it to run out of ammo.
The only scenario I can see mechs being superior is if the mechs had some method of detecting where landmines are stepping around and over them.
Which would be fucking sick, actually. Obviating minefields by tiptoe could offset their other vulnerabilities.
The ability to detect landmines is useful but there's far simpler ways to deal with them.
I’m thinking real time. Jumping right over them as a squad. Not linearly through the field. Metal detectors in the feet might be enough initially.
What did you have in mind, though? The heat vision way of detecting them? The chain flails on the front of a tank?
Give the mech a giant roller pin
Chain flails seems better, or just the mine floss we use today. Once you detect the minefield, you're gonna want to get rid of it so that the infantry following behind supporting your armor doesn't get slowed down.
Would these be viable if they were mech sized with a pilot?
>would these be viable if they were 10 times less realistic
they're pretty viable now, those could roll off the factory at Boston Dynamics tomorrow
BATCHALL ACCEPTED!
unless this plans on being the first mechwarrior game to truly make an effort to simulate battletech why the fuck would I buy this when mechwarrior 5 has all the clan mech mods and more? especially when merc tech is close to being finished
>You'll
Freebirths.
Missions and updated models.
Unless they're using a different game developer then they're definitely not using different models. Piranha Games are making too much from MWO to redo everything.
They already redid everything once for MW5. The models don't really work 1:1 - that's why YACM hasn't just straight imported everything from MWO already, the models have to be completely remade in Unreal and you can really only re-use the broader art assets. OmniMechs are especially bad. I've talked to the guy who does them, and he said the Daishi was the only time we're ever getting anything like that - everything from here on is going to be made as a standard BattleMech, and he'll just bring over all the variants listed on Sarna and let people work with that.
>No mention of MW3 or 4
>Expecting anything of a Freeborn games journalist
Nova Prime would probably be pretty nasty with no need for ammo and jump jets for high mobility.
My highest kill count was earned in a Rifleman 3C running AC20 and AC2, but I'd think an urbie with all HMGs could make easy work of all those waves of conscript peasants.
100 madcats running across the field bum rushing crimea
100 Atlases would be horrifying, but also be a bit on the slow side. Maybe something more akin to to the Crab or Nova.
An Atlas moves almost 40% faster than an Abrams tank.
>AS7-D
54 KPH
>M1A2
67/40 KPH on/off road
54 kph is faster than 40 kph.
No they don't. The regular ones move at 48km/h. There's a fast one that goes 64km/h, which is pretty decent. Any more than 80km/h and you're practically ice skating with mechs so I prefer to stop around there.
A breakneck advance in military terms would be 15km/hr.
>orc morons digging out tanks from world war fucking 2
>What realized technology does Ukraine need to win??
Are you serious??
Whats so urban about urbanmechs anyway?
>Whats so urban about urbanmechs anyway?
It moves dead slow, has no jump jets and almost no ammo. But it can turn it's top 360 which is nice. They are very much made for moving around cities not open battlefields.
They have JJs though.
Weak JJs that can just about take them over a small building. Urbanmechs are too slow and weakly armored to survive more open environments. They might be good in a sort of extreme canyon environment where they can pop around crevices, but for the most part, the best use of them is to haunt an intersection undet heavy jamming, with a bunch of spotter infantry in all the nearby buildings. The Urbanmech either catches the enemy from behind, or it dies.
you hide them in alleys and give other mechs a big surprise
Urban mechs are basically watch towers with feet. No armor, no speed. Just a raised position with a gun. They are very, very cheap, however.
It dies immediately in every other environment.
In urban maps they can last maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of a battle.
Fuck that gay shit. One AC will do it if Raven is piloting and has enough ammo.
Probably, but Armored Cores are DBZ games, when you think about it. The mechs move impossibly fast and fire guns that reload from nothing but thin air. You're saying a magic powered demigod could destroy Russia, not a machine that follows the rules of reality.
You have a set ammo amount. What do you mean they reload from nothing?
Your ACs eject magazines from the rifle weapons and then new ones teleport in. We fire missiles from our shoulders and new ones teleport in. We shot bazookas and rail guns that eject grain silo sized casings, then new ones teleport in. The only weapons that don't have reality breaking ammo feed systems are the energy weapons, the Gatling's and the flamer.
Also since our ammo for all the weapons is so limited that we run out after 10 minutes, you'd probably have to take the melee weapons.
Just setup FARPs to reload.
The artwork for the missiles always makes them look far larger than they should be. For example, a SRM weighs 10kg/22lbs. Given "advanced" propellants and warheads, they should be smaller and denser than modern munitions, perhaps about the size of an AT4, or maybe even a LAW. LRMs should be even smaller, at ~8kg per missile.
>SRM
>Battletech weapon
I was talking about the mechs in Armored Core. They're abbreviated to "AC"s.
Given that battlemechs essentially use muscles to move, it does beg the question: Wouldn't combat giants be just as effective?
Imagine the smell. I would hate to be the guy who has to clean that out, haha. that would be so terrible haha.
I want to say you're just talking about sweat and body odor but that pic suggests otherwise...
There's so much Klan-Klan giantess hentai out there... Meltrandi truly are Kawamori's gift to mankind.
sauce?
Macross Frontier
God damnit Macross sucks ass
Later stuff is pretty cursed. Do You Remember Love and Macross Plus are absolutely PrepHole core
What the fuck weird fetish shit is this?
Here's one usecase for mechs
In an Earth environment, tanks and artillery will obviously outperform mechs. Interstellar travel might involve needing to optimise for weight, so one big mech and its pilot might be more efficient than bringing multiple tracked/wheeled vehicles (and could be more suited to undeveloped planets)
That's exactly the justification in Battletech. Mechs are mobile enough and pack decent enough firepower and require overall less manpower (despite maintenence being more specialized and expensive) to bring to bear when youre dealing with inter stellar war. Your campaign might take you from a shitty north pole glacier hell hole, swamps full of dinosaurs and bugs that give you aids instantly, barren oxygen free moon bases, etc. All on the span of a couple months and you have VERY finite space aboard your transport ships.
If you have finite space wouldn’t’ve that make tanks more practical? They’re more compact then mechs, hell you could probably just stack em on top of eachother. I don’t know the actual logistics but the space saved that way could probably be used for extra bunks and a few more crates of rations. Though if the transport of people requires special equipment like some sort of stasis and then it’d make mechs more practical.
Can a tank jump out of a flying DropShip, immediately (and I mean immediately) start running on impact, vault over a three-story building then climb a vertical incline with its hands and feet, before jumping into a 20 foot deep deep river and fording it with zero preparation, all while under PPC and LRM fire? And literally grab several cargo containers before climbing into a hovering DropShip and escaping, because the pilot's neurohelm allows them to control the Mech as basically their own body? Don't forget hand to hand combat like punching buildings and literally tossing tanks around like Godzilla, and of course zero-prep combat engineering (digging, lifting, mine clearing, etc) with zero prep time, literally seconds after jumping out of a DropShip.
It's the sheer versatility that makes Mechs worth a slot in any BattleTech combined arms force, and why mercs love them. Better to have a lance of Mechs that can do it all right away with zero prep time, one pilot, and a fairly small support staff than an entire regiment of vehicles and crews that require even more logistics to support. Especially if your MRC rating is low and you're working in the Periphery for peanuts as a result.
>Can a tank jump out of a flying DropShip, immediately (and I mean immediately) start running on impact, vault over a three-story building then climb a vertical incline with its hands and feet, before jumping into a 20 foot deep deep river and fording it with zero preparation, all while under PPC and LRM fire?
Give me a handful of engineers and the technology of Battletech, and yes, I'll get it to do exactly that.
I mean assuming the tanks can be equipped with similar future tech I’d imagine it’d be able to do some of those. Hell even with modern tech some of that stuff (fording a river, clearing mines, digging,etc) is possible with modifications, so I’m assuming that in this future setting it’ll be modular to the point that you could check the deployment zone and quickly prep your tank with the necessary equipment pre-insertion. And if you’re in hand to hand combat you’ve fucked up already.
You have a point about the versatility though, and being able to go into action immediately is good but deploying into the middle of a combat zone seems like a big risk to take with your expensive hardware especially if you’re a small merc group. On that topic it seems like you’re putting a lot of eggs in a mech-shaped basket. What if it suffers heavy damage that you don’t have the parts to repair or can’t afford to? What if it gets destroyed? With a tank you could easily tow it and then store it on your ship till you reach somewhere that has either the parts or mechanical know-how to fix it, and replacing a vehicle or buying new parts would be cheaper.