Search results

From an out-of-character perspective, the "real" problem is that the writers need to make up an in-character reason for why their ships have solar sails since they canonically have fusion reactors that produce vastly more power than any solar sail ever can. So what they come up with is pretty...

How it works is that the type of power source dictates the maximum safe charging rate; a "better" source permits faster charging and/or lesser risk of misjump. A JumpShip's solar sails can do a zero-risk recharge in 175 hours, although a star with exceptionally weak solar output can drag this...

The counterpoint is that Kearny-Fuchida drives are more space-fantasy magic than anything resembling technology, so an oversized WarShip is likely to disappear in a horrific jump accident, "Because thinking you can in any way science this is unforgivable hubris". Remember, this is a world where...

The out-of-character part of the problem is that anything over 2.5 million rules is simply outside the construction rules. Indeed, no canonical vessel actually reached the 2.5 million ton rule limit; the largest ever made was the Clans' Leviathan superdreadnought at 2.4 million.

Explodium machine gun ammo is a specific, rather silly edge-case quirk of the BTech rules that establishes that exploding machine gun ammo does vastly more damage than any other explosion in the entire game, because ammo explosion damage is flat scaled from the number of shots that are cooking...

For the record, the .50 BMG was originally designed as an anti-armor round as well. And yes, the scalings are totally off each other. This is exactly why I said the handful of intersection points are inconsistent. Some of the data points are even bizarrely inconsistent within universe, i.e...

And yet a .50-caliber machine gun explicitly, canonically causes significant damage to Battlemechs, and first-rate Battletech infantry still use M-16s as a standard weapon. As a whole, the intersections of real world and BTech are wildly inconsistent.

A Great House without FASAnomics would crush ISOT Earth by being a hundreds-of-worlds pocket empire, in a one-on-one duel. If canon FASAnomics is retained, the industrial output of BTech worlds is so comically tiny that the U.S. alone has a manufacturing output exceeded only by most of the peak...

Honestly, given their small sizes and the volume fired, SRM and LRMs are really more equivalent to the guided version of the Hydra-70 rocket system than "normal" modern-day missiles. The autoloader systems for those are one of the relatively few actually impressive things in Battletech, even...

Seriously -- we literally already have a lot of the "hyper advanced" tech that was invented late into the Battletech timeline. The BROACH warheads I mentioned straight up are the Federated Commonwealth's vaunted "Tandem Charge" warheads that were developed after the Clan Invasion, only without...

There's certainly plenty of "stuff we don't have, but can easily make if we're made aware of the tactical niche" in the modern inventory. For example, heavy surface-to-air and air-to-air missiles with armor-piercing warheads. No such weapons are in production, but Raytheon could literally...

It's not actually their firepower changing, it's the BV rating. MML's BV algorithm applies an overheated-weapon penalty for weapons that exceed the ship's cooling capacity and those overheated weapons only count as one-fourth of their normal BV value. Add sufficient heatsinks, and the penalty...

If you're insisting on the use of game mechanics, all small weapons can be used as PD weapons but only fire once per round, and only to a range of one hex; only dedicated AMS can fire at multiple missiles per round. Even dedicated AMS is expllicitly incapable of engaging ballistic shells, as...

Combination of plot mechanics and game mechanics. Battletech AMS *only* engages missiles, and *explicitly* does not engage ballistic shells. This is explicitly canon even in "fluff only", as the fluff declares that it is the entire reason Battlemech-mounted mortars make a partial resurgence in...

In any case, "Tanks vs Battlemechs" doesn't even take center stage in even the modified scenario because Battlemechs have literally no defense for MLRS "grid square remover" barrages and time-on-target stonks from tube artillery. Their AMS systems are literally not allowed to target these and...

Well, one of the important things in any BTech invasion of RL Earth would be that the use of mercenaries is a violation of our longstanding rules of law. This means that any mercenaries we capture would not have prisoner of war status. They would be war criminals, which basically makes them up...

In that case quite easily, since science and engineering are not themselves "LosTech" in RL. (Really, the most important loss in all Battletech was the destruction of apparently almost every institute of higher learning everywhere in the Inner Sphere. The biggest factor in keeping Battletech...

It's superior to an autocannon, and there's no need to stuff a gunnery crew into a Battlemech if we're shifting the scenario to "RL as a faction in BattleTech". Tanks are absolutely superior to Battlemechs anywhere outside of BTech game rules anyway. You said there's up to seven tons left to...

1. The Rh-120 is hand fed at a higher rate of fire than BTech autoloaders. BTech ACs fire one round (or round-equivalent burst) per ten seconds; the Rh-120 fires one round every seven to eight seconds with a minimally competent loader and as little as three seconds with a skilled loader. In...

Keep in mind that the scenario here isn’t RL versus BTech, but “BTech faction evolved from Rl versus BTech mainstream”.