Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Still thinking on BattleTech vs. Mekton Zeta, I decided to do a comparison of their relative 'mech abilities and it went interesting places.
To get a baseline of how a point of damage affects I started out comparing how a human takes damage in both systems. They came out roughly the same from 'mech weaponry, with Mekton humans being just a touch better than a BT human. Then I remembered that Mekton humanity is explicitly superhuman, with your average civilian able to roofhop and such. That suggests their weapons are roughly on par. So I went with similar weapons and compared those. Now 'mech scale weaponry has no way to be compared but small arms should be about the same so I looked at those first.
An auto-rifle in BT does 0.52 points of damage to 'mech armor. An assault rifle in Mekton Zeta does 4d6 (average 14) hits with 25 hits being a kill, so their firepower is near-identical. With two lines of evidence showing that they're in the same ballpark I feel safe saying a point of damage in BT and a kill in MZ are about the same.
This let me compared their 'mechs weapons and armor and I did not expect where that would lead. In a supermajority of crossovers BT armor is complete BS while their other abilities lag. In Mekton it's the exact opposite, they have relatively feeble weapons compared to BT but their armor and movement is going to have the most devoted of clanners screaming about how unfair they are.
The Gorgon, f'rex, weighs in at 75.35 tons so it would be a solid heavy with a weird weight by BT standards. It's walking speed of 54kph makes it quite slow for it's weight by BT standards until it starts flying around at 144kph and can outrun a Locust.
The Gorgon's main weapon is it's light cannon which does 2 kills of damage and can hit out to 800 meters (27 hexes). Said weapon can fire in burst mode and dish out 8 shots at once that scatter over So it's pretty much packing a slightly better rotary AC/2, rather weak for such a large 'mech. It's secondaries are a pair of single-shot missile launchers that doe 4K per missile and hit at a range of 83 hexes which is going to outrange everything except artillery on the BT side but damage is anemic and most BT 'mechs will laugh at such low damage. Even with reloads it's cannon and missiles will probably run out of ammo before destroying a BT 'mech in a similar weight class. Bugmechs are hosed of course. It's heaviest weapon is it's Bazooka with 12 kills of damage and a range of ... 481 hexes? 481 hexes. That is going to make somebody cry, probably the guy having to draw that map. However it only has ten shots.
All Mekton weapons hit everything in a 50-meter radius or more for full damage so any shot pretty much will all dissolve an infantry platoon in one hit, Mekton Zeta is actually less kind to infantry than BT. Power armor and elementals are also not going to have a good day. Mektons only fire one weapon at a time (two if they're linked) so in some ways their damage is greatly reduced, there are no alpha strikes and a miss is a wasted turn.
The real BS is it's armor. With 7SP it will ignore any damage less than 7. Medium lasers, AC/5 and lower, flamer, machine gun, all bounce off. Hits from weapons stronger than that inflict... 1 damage (though each hit reduces it's SP by 1 so after three hits from a Gauss rifle Medium lasers will start to hurt it). Heavy armored Mektons take that to 11 points (and can get truly ridiculous with Gamma armor and energy shields but I'm compared the basics) so, say, a Gunther is going to ignore all weapons but an AC/20, Gauss Rifle, and Clan ER PPC.
All in all I'm surprised at how competitive the universe are, and the fact that they each have advantages over the other makes the Empire or Algol good matchups for stories and comparisons, that's rare for BT.
To get a baseline of how a point of damage affects I started out comparing how a human takes damage in both systems. They came out roughly the same from 'mech weaponry, with Mekton humans being just a touch better than a BT human. Then I remembered that Mekton humanity is explicitly superhuman, with your average civilian able to roofhop and such. That suggests their weapons are roughly on par. So I went with similar weapons and compared those. Now 'mech scale weaponry has no way to be compared but small arms should be about the same so I looked at those first.
An auto-rifle in BT does 0.52 points of damage to 'mech armor. An assault rifle in Mekton Zeta does 4d6 (average 14) hits with 25 hits being a kill, so their firepower is near-identical. With two lines of evidence showing that they're in the same ballpark I feel safe saying a point of damage in BT and a kill in MZ are about the same.
This let me compared their 'mechs weapons and armor and I did not expect where that would lead. In a supermajority of crossovers BT armor is complete BS while their other abilities lag. In Mekton it's the exact opposite, they have relatively feeble weapons compared to BT but their armor and movement is going to have the most devoted of clanners screaming about how unfair they are.
The Gorgon, f'rex, weighs in at 75.35 tons so it would be a solid heavy with a weird weight by BT standards. It's walking speed of 54kph makes it quite slow for it's weight by BT standards until it starts flying around at 144kph and can outrun a Locust.
The Gorgon's main weapon is it's light cannon which does 2 kills of damage and can hit out to 800 meters (27 hexes). Said weapon can fire in burst mode and dish out 8 shots at once that scatter over So it's pretty much packing a slightly better rotary AC/2, rather weak for such a large 'mech. It's secondaries are a pair of single-shot missile launchers that doe 4K per missile and hit at a range of 83 hexes which is going to outrange everything except artillery on the BT side but damage is anemic and most BT 'mechs will laugh at such low damage. Even with reloads it's cannon and missiles will probably run out of ammo before destroying a BT 'mech in a similar weight class. Bugmechs are hosed of course. It's heaviest weapon is it's Bazooka with 12 kills of damage and a range of ... 481 hexes? 481 hexes. That is going to make somebody cry, probably the guy having to draw that map. However it only has ten shots.
All Mekton weapons hit everything in a 50-meter radius or more for full damage so any shot pretty much will all dissolve an infantry platoon in one hit, Mekton Zeta is actually less kind to infantry than BT. Power armor and elementals are also not going to have a good day. Mektons only fire one weapon at a time (two if they're linked) so in some ways their damage is greatly reduced, there are no alpha strikes and a miss is a wasted turn.
The real BS is it's armor. With 7SP it will ignore any damage less than 7. Medium lasers, AC/5 and lower, flamer, machine gun, all bounce off. Hits from weapons stronger than that inflict... 1 damage (though each hit reduces it's SP by 1 so after three hits from a Gauss rifle Medium lasers will start to hurt it). Heavy armored Mektons take that to 11 points (and can get truly ridiculous with Gamma armor and energy shields but I'm compared the basics) so, say, a Gunther is going to ignore all weapons but an AC/20, Gauss Rifle, and Clan ER PPC.
All in all I'm surprised at how competitive the universe are, and the fact that they each have advantages over the other makes the Empire or Algol good matchups for stories and comparisons, that's rare for BT.
