Mass Effect Vs Battletech.

[Chaos Marine]

No tech bleed-over from one to the other so each setting are as they would be normally. First contact would be at the same time the Turians make contact in the original ME setting with it being about the year 3145 in Battletech so just a little after the current Battletech timeline if I recall correctly.

On oneside you have incredibly advanced technology from ME, energy shielded infantry capable of packing multiple weapons for tactically flexible soldiers. Biotic specialists with a whole range of abilities that would look like magic to the ignorant.

Armoured vehicles would be quite light, relying on shields and high speed/manoeuvrability instead of their relatively thin armour, a mass effect cannon and potentially indirect fire missiles, controlled by simple VI They'd function as fast attack calvary. Armies would value speed and shock with rapidly deployable space to ground forces and a whole range of powered combat walkers for infantry support.

Their starships would be their best side, highly accurate and heavily shielded with long range and excellent manoeuvrability and stealth capabilities.

On the other side, Battletech. On the ground, Battletech would have a more significant edge with the space born assets only being able to hold their own because of those sweet, sweet lasers and ridiculous volume of weapons and even more ridiculous amounts of armour.

Infantry is large unimpressive except for a wide variety of weapons from lasers, gyrojet weapons, a staggering variety of missiles/rockets to the simple autogun.

Tanks range from lightly armoured scout vehicles to long range carriers to super heavy 200 ton tanks with a staggering array of choices for weapons and equipment.

Aerospace fighters, following in Battletech's theme, relatively nimble but often sporting ridiculously heavy amounts of armour compared to ME equivalents.

Then you have Battlemechs. Oh sweet god but that's a near thirty-five foot tall walking fortress packing a gauss rifle and multiple large lasers. It's slow but wearing more armour than you'd see on a small starship. If the pilot's cautious it's sporting a laser AMS and it has fists for fisticuffs. What's not to love?

So, how does it go down? Does the existence of aliens unite humanity? Do the Turians back down from a war? Do they see the relatively primitive tech of humanity and think, "We can take them," till their ships are being introduced to a rainbow of laser? Do they even manage to land an army, besieging the capital only for multiple lances of mechs from ridiculously fast scout mechs to lumbering assault mechs? Do they have the luck of stumbling into the path of a Steiner scout lance of Atlases?

 

[Husky_Khan]

A First Contact War between the Turians and the Battletech states would be quite interesting. I honestly have little concept on how capable the Spacefleets of Battletech and how lacking (or not) they might be in capital ships still. With that said, it's not like the Citadel Races have loads of warships as well considering how surprisingly small their dreadnought fleets are thanks to the various treaties they have in place to keep things at parity.

The Battletech states seem to be even more militarized then the Systems Alliance was and for a while the Systems Alliance was able to hold back the Turian Hegemony which itself was the most militarily potent of the Citadel races. So I would think in the initial engagements, especially on the ground, the Battletech states would have a strong and distinct advantage. We've seen mechs in Mass Effect and they can be harmed by their own small arms and man portable infantry equipment. Battlemech can and often are several magnitudes larger and the ones of comparable size (and power armor suited soldiers) are extremely resilient even when compared to Mass Effect mechs of similar size.

But it's a space setting, so it'd be really interesting to see how the two different space fleets interact since AFAIK they have pretty divergent technologies and therefore strategy, tactics, weapons, defensive systems and even FTL which I can't even begin to make a snap judgment on.

 

[Doomsought]

I think it would be most interesting if it was the Star League that made contact, around right before the reunification war. You've got the essential elements, mechs and a disunified humanity, but also all the industry is intact.

 

[Spartan303]

I think it would be most interesting if it was the Star League that made contact, around right before the reunification war. You've got the essential elements, mechs and a disunified humanity, but also all the industry is intact.

Personally I'd love to see the Star League make contact just before the Amaris insurrection. In terms of Space fleets the Star League may be less advanced in some areas but they've got it where it counts in terms of raw firepower. So it's a bit of give and take here. On the ground they'll absolutely wreck the Turians. In the end the Citadel Council will absolutely shit themselves when they see how big the Star League is. They most definitely will not want a full scale war. And they'll salivate when they learn of many if the advanced technologies the Star League have. Stuff they'll want. War serves no ones interests here.

 

[Doomsought]

Part of the reason I want it to be pre-reunification War is all of the political drama surrounding whether or not the Citadel and its members should treat the Periphery states as separate legal entities or not. I can see the members beint split, with the Turians supporting them being a single entity and the Salarians disagreeing (mainly because they see it as a way to make it easier to put political pressure on the star league).

 

[Husky_Khan]

Yeah. I can't really comment. Despite my name and beautiful avatar, I'm not actually exceptionally well versed in Battletech and I think everything that occurred after 3057 or thereabouts is basically 'Here be Dragons' to me knowledge wise.

But it's not much better with everything else either as well.

While there is definite pluses to all of the different eras of time suggested, having it occur during the classic *Clans* period would be fun as well. A lot of Battletech fans love that one throwaway line of Clan Wolf/Warden dialogue talking about how the Clans duty might be to protect the Inner Sphere from extraterrestrial (ie alien) intelligences and maybe while the Clans are snooping about via the Wolf Dragoons or some such, they can see the First Contact War boil up in the Inner Sphere and the revelation of an entire section of the galaxy occupied by some sort of presumably hostile alien alliance.

This could throw the Clans into a tizzy (alongside the Inner Sphere and Citadel races of course) because the Clans could launch their invasion with the idea of saving the Inner Sphere from the aliens, but the methodology would still be different. The Warden Clans would want to be even more conciliatory while the Crusader Clans would be more like, "We're here to rescue you. Now bend over idiot!"

And this could provide more fodder for the whole idea of attempting to pry Periphery States or even full on Successor States from siding with their fellow Humans and even making a play of joining the Citadel aliens for some sweet deal. Or even vice versa. There's still things like Batarians and Krogans and Quarians after all.

 

[Jarow]

3145 is really not the best time for the IS - if you want warships you need to go back to the Star League (though pretty sure dropships are similar in scale to Mass Effect warships).
Basically, the Battletech eras go
____
Age of War - lots of powers running around primarily using warships. No real interstellar communication except via courier (About 30 LY/week)
Reunification War - Biggest powers unite into Star League, conquer little ones
Star League - still warship focused, but now FTL communications exists!
Amaris Coup - Star League military falls apart in attrition warfare
1st Succession War - Star League powers engage in all out war, technology/infrastructure get lost
2nd Succession War - Star League powers still at war, but run out of weapons and most remaining infrastructure
3rd Succession War - Star League powers still at war, but now barely fighting and focusing on recovery
4th Succession War - Star League powers now in two groups, rapidly recovering industry/tech, still at war
Clan Invasion - Star League powers take break from war on each other to fight Star League military descendants (who have warships still)
____
After there, most people believe things stop making sense, but you said 3145, so I'll do my best to share the next bits (probably missing some, I'm not that familiar with this part of the setting):
Word of Blake - Space!ATT religious order splits with secular group, declares war on everyone using their warships, secular group builds warship drives so other powers can build new warships around them
FedCom Civil War - surviving 4th succession war large group splits in half
Republic of the Sphere - major powers give up nice near-Terra worlds to new power, which invents fun new weapons
Post Gray Monday - FTL communications no longer exists, everything everywhere is on fire again

And that's where 3145 is at. The citadel might not have "good" non-relay FTL, but it's actually better than Battletech's, and paired with function FTL communications systems. This means the Turians have ridiculous strategic advantages here. Ground combat will definitely be tricky (at least on actually defended planets - not actually guaranteed everywhere). Lasers completely ignore Mass Effect shields, so any platforms using them are in pretty good shape to fight (admittedly, this mostly means battlemechs, so...). No idea how effect mass effect shields are at stopping massive cannon rounds given they're designed to stop hypersonic grains, but I'll assume they'd do a pretty good job against standard kinetics, so the average militia probably won't cut it. On the other hand, Mass Effect warships are probably comparable in maneuverability to Battletech ASFs (or better), so space definitely is going to belong to them. Can't kill the warships with lasers if you can't hit them, after all.

 

[Spartan303]

Yeah....the BattleTech universe is not a fun place. Just continuous fighting and things getting bleaker.

 

[Chaos Marine]

That was my main contention, compared to what I've seen in ME and Battletech (I'm no godly expert in both), ME ships appear remarkably flimsy and while their tech is potent, it is quite underdeveloped or lacking in some insane ingenuity that Battletech is seeped in.

While I could see ME space ships being over all superior, I don't think they'd have the really the chances of outright killing BT ships, lighter ME ships would have a hard time against even dropships I would guess. Considering the size of their projectiles I would guess their main cannons would be the equivelent of an AC5 or AC10 at most where as BT L Lasers would punch through their ship's armour like it wasn't even there. ME ships look to rely heavily on their shields and their armour is probably developed to counter the ballistic properties of mass effect weapons, not lasers where as BT armour is just flat out dense enough to be resistant to ME rounds.

Another potential starting scenario, a Batarin slaver raid, probably a a cruiser with a small fleet of frigates and a couple of freighters for stolen ore/people.

If I was being unfair, they manage to unlock the Pluto mass effect relay or probably more fair, a relay in the Periphery somewhere.

A real interesting thing would be if human scientists could get their hands on ME technology. Super heavy mechs would be much more likely to feasible. Structures or armour infused with ME emitters to substantially lower the amount they weigh would allow mechs of all sizes and weights to drastically up their weapon profiles. Engines taking up an extra slot but weighing half without the need to expand it into the torso segments. Light mechs with multiple L Lasers. The Atlas suddenly being able to carry thirty or forty tons of armour. Hell, Atlases with multiple shield emitters, thirty tons of armour and armed with multiple AC-20s, ER L Lasers. Can ME fields enhance PPCs? Could they make PPCs more akin to beam weapons? Could ME fields be scaled up for something like an AC-20?

I think this would be an incredibly interesting story to write, regardless of the BT era but I'm nowhere close to knowledgeable enough or talented enough of a writer (I'm absolutely no writer at all) to really put this to paper.

 

[S'task]

Here's the fundamental problem when putting BattleTech up against any other SF setting:

It lacks artificial gravity of any kind.

This is a huge issue because all spaceships in BattleTech must take this situation into account in their design, only being able to use acceleration "gravity" or centrifugal "gravity".

This also means that all their ships in space are severely limited on their ability to accelerate, as they must account for the human crew, meaning that even the most powerful warships top out at an acceleration of around 3 G.

Against any setting that has artificial gravity, which Mass Effect most certainly does, it fundamentally means they cannot compete. It doesn't matter how much armor or how powerful their weapons are if they cannot engage the enemy in battle. Even if they are not super effective, all the Mass Effect races need to do is sit at their extreme weapon range and plink away at the BattleTech ships, the BattleTech ships cannot get range on them.

This further applies at the meta-engagement level. BattleTech FTL is inferior to Mass Effect FTL in all categories save some very niche case uses. Bear in mind, BattleTech FTL requires days to weeks to recharge between making jumps, and jumps cap out at around 30 Lightyears. There are ways to make sequential jumps, but only really two at a time, and it's highly restrictive on where it is safe to jump within a start system. Now, granted, those jumps to Mass Effect would be completely blindsiding them since these are near instantaneous jumps with little to no warning to the locations they're coming into. The problem is that without incredibly detailed orbital charts of a solar system, BattleTech ships must come in quite distant from the habitable zone of stars since they need to have a minimum of gravity interference (to use our solar system, the closest safe jump zone is about Jupiter's orbit from the sun)... and then they chug on in at low G acceleration, which gives any Mass Effect local forces plenty of time to prepare countermeasures.

Thus, BattleTech's arguably superior ground game never even is a concern in this situation, as they can never land troops, and their ships never can get into actual engagements, they end up constantly sniped by the Mass Effect ships.

At least Mass Effect doesn't have FTL sensors, so both sides are on the same footing there, but without artificial gravity, BattleTech never really stands a chance.

 

[bullethead]

From what I understand, low yield nuclear warheads pose a significant threat to BattleTech WarShips, which means that ME dreadnought mass accelerators can easily inflict crippling damage with their kiloton yield rounds. Kinetic barriers do offer some level of protection against particle beam weapons, but lasers would go right through them. Naval gauss and auto-cannons probably would have minimal effect on kinetic barriers due to the disparity in their strength vs mass accelerator rounds.

What kills BattleTech in space is their lack of inertia dampening or methods to help humans survive high G burns, like in the Expanse. Since ME vessels do have inertia dampening, they can out accelerate BT DropShips and WarShips without any problems, bypassing them entirely or using their acceleration advantage to engage in hit and run attacks that the BT vessels can't react to fast enough.

On the ground, ME has better base level of infantry and almost certainly superior ground and aerospace assets, but it's hard to figure out how well they'll do against BT units since the largest vehicles we have any known info on are APCs and gunships. We see fighters, certainly, and there's references to hover tanks, but there's no hard stats to judge them by.

 

[S'task]

From what I understand, low yield nuclear warheads pose a significant threat to BattleTech WarShips, which means that ME dreadnought mass accelerators can easily inflict crippling damage with their kiloton yield rounds.

That's because they're nuclear weapons. BattleTech naval gauss and other weapons also reach towards kiloton yields but do not have the special effects nuclear weapons have on ships in BattleTech. Bear in mind, nuclear fusion in BattleTech canonically results in MORE energy than normally should be released by a fusion reaction, and it was this extra energy that led to the discovery of FTL travel in BattleTech. In other words, Fusion power plants and weapons in BattleTech somehow interact with an additional dimension that then releases extra energy into the reaction... so I'm not sure we can directly translate the special effects nuclear weapons have to anything with similar RL yields.

 

[Spartan303]

From what I understand, low yield nuclear warheads pose a significant threat to BattleTech WarShips, which means that ME dreadnought mass accelerators can easily inflict crippling damage with their kiloton yield rounds. Kinetic barriers do offer some level of protection against particle beam weapons, but lasers would go right through them. Naval gauss and auto-cannons probably would have minimal effect on kinetic barriers due to the disparity in their strength vs mass accelerator rounds.

What kills BattleTech in space is their lack of inertia dampening or methods to help humans survive high G burns, like in the Expanse. Since ME vessels do have inertia dampening, they can out accelerate BT DropShips and WarShips without any problems, bypassing them entirely or using their acceleration advantage to engage in hit and run attacks that the BT vessels can't react to fast enough.

On the ground, ME has better base level of infantry and almost certainly superior ground and aerospace assets, but it's hard to figure out how well they'll do against BT units since the largest vehicles we have any known info on are APCs and gunships. We see fighters, certainly, and there's references to hover tanks, but there's no hard stats to judge them by.

I'm sorry, I was under the impression that Star League ships were significantly more tanky than that. Like their mainline ships could take those kinds of hits a Dreadnought could dish out and close the range to strike back. Also, don't their Naval Lasers and Gauss weapons have similar ranges or close enough to them?

 

[Doomsought]

Also BT nuclear weapons are contact detonated, and likely include shaped charges and other penetration aids. We had those long enough ago for it to be mostly declassified, consider what you can do after 600 years and including quite a few hot nuclear wars.

 

[S'task]

I'm sorry, I was under the impression that Star League ships were significantly more tanky than that. Like their mainline ships could take those kinds of hits a Dreadnought could dish out and close the range to strike back. Also, don't their Naval Lasers and Gauss weapons have similar ranges or close enough to them?

They have no way to close with them... again, that pesky acceleration difference from Mass Effect have artificial gravity while BattleTech does not.

As to Mass Effect outranging BattleTech, I'd need to dig into the fluff to be sure, but my gut instinct says it's likely they do, due to the difference that BattleTech ranges were written with tabletop gameplay practicality concerns whereas Mass Effect stuff is pure fluff and thus does not have to take into account having a functional play area.

I agree that they are more tanky than people likely think, but it really just makes no difference given the other advantages Mass Effect ships have.

There's only one area that I think BattleTech handles better than Mass Effect, and that's heat dissipation from their weapons. Heat buildup in Mass Effect sounds like it's more impactful on their ships than in BattleTech and they cannot fully sink the heat generated from their weapons quickly, whereas BattleTech ships can. This means that if you somehow get them in an engagement where the acceleration profile makes no difference, the BattleTech ships may have longer staying power in a fight, able to keep firing weapons past the point where Mass Effect ships need to disengage to cool down. There's not many situations where this could come into play though, maybe in a close range fight around a strategic objective like a planet or a Mass Relay where the Mass Effect forces HAVE to commit and fight in close range where hit and run tactics would not make enough of a difference.

 

[Spartan303]

They have no way to close with them... again, that pesky acceleration difference from Mass Effect have artificial gravity while BattleTech does not.

As to Mass Effect outranging BattleTech, I'd need to dig into the fluff to be sure, but my gut instinct says it's likely they do, due to the difference that BattleTech ranges were written with tabletop gameplay practicality concerns whereas Mass Effect stuff is pure fluff and thus does not have to take into account having a functional play area.

I agree that they are more tanky than people likely think, but it really just makes no difference given the other advantages Mass Effect ships have.

There's only one area that I think BattleTech handles better than Mass Effect, and that's heat dissipation from their weapons. Heat buildup in Mass Effect sounds like it's more impactful on their ships than in BattleTech and they cannot fully sink the heat generated from their weapons quickly, whereas BattleTech ships can. This means that if you somehow get them in an engagement where the acceleration profile makes no difference, the BattleTech ships may have longer staying power in a fight, able to keep firing weapons past the point where Mass Effect ships need to disengage to cool down. There's not many situations where this could come into play though, maybe in a close range fight around a strategic objective like a planet or a Mass Relay where the Mass Effect forces HAVE to commit and fight in close range where hit and run tactics would not make enough of a difference.

The only thing that I think out ranges Star League ships are ME Dreadnoughts. Frigates and Cruisers tend to close in and fight near knife fighting ranges. Dreadnoughts provide cover fire for cruisers and frigates to get in close. So the Star League doesn't have to worry about closing the range to the Turian Fleet. The Turians will take care of that for them. The only problem is the Dreadnought, but they have limited endurance before heat cooks their crews inside their hulls.

If anything I see this as kind of a statement of the immovable wall vs unstoppable force kind of analogy.

 

[Doomsought]

I also expect that dreadnought main guns will have a pesky tendency to overpenetrate.

 

[Spartan303]

I also expect that dreadnought main guns will have a pesky tendency to interpenetrate.

Don't Warships have Naval grade Ferros Fibris Armor and Endosteel? Those things can take a shitload of punishment.

 

[Doomsought]

Don't Warships have Naval grade Ferros Fibris Armor and Endosteel? Those things can take a shield of punishment.

ME warships like using itsy-bitsy projectiles. The ammunition used by the main guns of human dreadnaughts are the size and weight of a teacup chihuahua.

 

[Flintsteel]

I'm actually going to take a contrary stance and say that the ME ships don't massively out-accelerate BT ships, because if they did then ME naval combat doctrine is broken. Simply put, having high-acceleration ships does not match the long-range sniping action that ME dreadnoughts are actually stated to engage in.

Add to that, having an easy, point-and-go FTL system means having high-acceleration realspace drives is not necessary.

I actually expect light BT warships would be able to exceed a ME dreadnought in acceleration. ME cruisers & frigates would fare a lot better, of course, and I would expect a ME frigate to be able to out-accelerate even the lightest BT aerospace fighter (acceleration compensation is useful!), but overall it would be a 'control the engagement range' rather than 'totally dominate'.


Also, people are vastly under-estimating how powerful BT naval weapons are. Naval Autocannons use nuclear explosions to drive the shells, and the shells are not actually that heavy all things considered (NAC/40 shells weigh less than the Iowa's or Yamato's AP shells, believe it or not, at "merely" 1200kg). Which means most of their power is from velocity.

I don't have access to BT nuke rules, so I can't really make much comment on that regard.