Battletech Welcome to the Jungle

[Lancelot]

Artillery turrets are worth it because artillery they are mostly static anyways and a fixed turret installation can give them the armor to keep them from getting taken out by a lucky aerospace fighter. Anything lighter is better off on something mobile, I'm thinking a few urban mechs and some LRM carriers.

Of course it is, but as I keep pointing out and everyone keeps ignoring. Weber might not have had the money/access to get AA tanks and mechs and so has to buy good enough turrets. I'm sure we'd all like that he'd had a lance or two of AA mechs and Assault ASF ready to ruin any enemy dropships day and if Weber has those great.

But if he couldn't buy those mechs not buying anything isn't an option. Weber AT LEAST needs AA turrets to protect his factory and people from having a force land directly on top of the factories.

 

[Jarow]

Weber might not have had the money/access to get AA tanks and mechs and so has to buy good enough turrets.

The two problems with doing that-
1. Turrets still cost more money than is available given what he has needs to be spent making his factories work
2. "Good enough" turrets... aren't. Hesperus regularly has battles on it's surface; the kind of things Weber could afford would be even less useful. You aren't going to stop anyone from landing.

Beyond that, neither half of his mind would consider them useful - 21st century is used to them being useless, and Battletech is used to giant stompy robots doing whatever they want with only Castles Brian (Star League era superfortresses that even they couldn't afford to build everywhere) being actually useful if still unable to prevent a landing.

 

[Lancelot]

Turrets still cost more money than is available given what he has needs to be spent making his factories work

Then the factories take longer to work. Not having an AA defense is asking to get your shit pushed in, losing people and factories

 

[Jarow]

Then the factories take longer to work. Not having an AA defense is asking to get your shit pushed in, losing people and factories

The factories are, beyond mercenary work (which also requires money to run), the source of the money available to spend. Not working on them doesn't mean you lose some time, it means you lose.

Given the primary defense is obscurity (admittedly that's not the best defense method, but it has been proving fairly effective until the unknown someone lucked into choosing this star to stop at), and turrets do not work, unlike you seem to think they do, it's an entirely reasonable choice to work on setting up an economy before spending money just to have the ability to claim you have "AA defense" that won't do much before getting blown up nigh-uselessly. For enemy ASFs, there's an air unit. For enemy dropships, they're going to land and a couple of turrets aren't going to change that.

As I said last post. Hesperus, one of the most heavily defended and important planets in the Commonwealth, has had numerous ground battles. Catachan is not going to be able to prevent a real attack.

 

[Lancelot]

As I said last post. Hesperus, one of the most heavily defended and important planets in the Commonwealth, has had numerous ground battles. Catachan is not going to be able to prevent a real attack.

Never said he could prevent a 'real attack' with turrets the turrets are area denial. Force them to land a distance away instead right on top of the plateau their based from, to force them to move through the wildlife to reach us. Are any of you paying attention to what I'm actually writing?

 

[PeaceMaker 03]

Turrets are like minefields, if used correctly they can be force multipliers.
Weber's hold is in a pass on top of a mountain, which limits most likely avenue of approach, and being at the top of the pass can limit ground attacks ability to engage properly emplaced AA turrets.

Ground turrets should be emplaced in revetments or behind defensive structures to engage in enfilade with interlocking fields of fire.
Preferably, attackers have to expose themselves to multiple other friendly positions to engage one position. Optimally maneuver over minefields, obstacles, and traps.
Party favors for everyone, anything worth defending is with defending correctly, which means continuous improvement.
That is where creatively destructive people, also called an engineer comes in.

Prepared anti mech traps at the last cover and concealed positions the enemy would have when attacking the hold.

Simple is better, pressure plates and trip lines.
Inert or safe until needed, like the trap that is just a bracket until the LongTom round is placed in the bracket and hooked into the duel ignition system of trip lines and pressure plates. Add Inferno gel for spice.

Now after a long Tom round detonates at jockey short level and Foo Gas from Inferno gel is sprayed all over the enemy can now engage the turret, but at this point a company of hull down tanks are using the enemy mech as target practice...... Did I mention the artillery dropping on the rest of the enemy mech company dropping a mix of HE and Smoke?
No such thing as a fair fight, so better if the enemy not on the forward edge of battle can not see to engage friendlies until invited to the party.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Never said he could prevent a 'real attack' with turrets the turrets are area denial. Force them to land a distance away instead right on top of the plateau their based from, to force them to move through the wildlife to reach us. Are any of you paying attention to what I'm actually writing?

We're paying attention, it's just that what you're saying makes no sense. As @Jarow pointed out, you're assuming that turrets work very differently than they do in BattleTech.

Here's the thing, BT armor is ablative and you generally to hit it lots of times to gradually wear through it. If it can hit, your "basic bitch" turret can force a lawn dart check but only one check per round and not at very good odds of failure. Lawn dart checks work well against fighters because again, BT armor is ablative so the fighters have to keep turning around and doing more passes to gradually wear through it, getting more lawn dart checks in the process and increasing the odds of succeeding.

A landing DropShip, OTOH, lands and it's done. You'll get one, perhaps two shots at it. Your "basic bitch" turret is going to fire a couple of AC/2 rounds, but a Union has 104 points of armor on it's very weakest facing and it will almost certainly just soak the couple of BB hits it takes and then disgorge 'mechs, unless the turrets number in the hundreds. The Union also has rather hefty firepower itself and due to how easy turrets are to hit, it's going to handily thin them out with it's Large Lasers, massive number of LRMs, and PPCs and not be threatened much due to having a significant range advantage. Finally due to how much armor it has, even if it fails the lawn dart check two things will happen:

1: It has so much armor it will almost certainly soak the impact unless you've hit it with multiple AC/20s, and immediately disgorge 'mechs as if it had landed normally.
2: The crash check will also destroy everything around it so if it's trying to land at the base, so it may be safer to let it land anyway rather than have to rebuild the landing pad and all the buildings and turrets around it.

BT is very deliberately designed to prevent turrets from being useful at stopping a landing DropShip. The game is meant to facilitate 'mech on 'mech battles so anything that would keep 'mechs from being landed in order to battle other 'mechs is nerfed to high heaven.

 

[paulobrito]

The only interesting turrets are ones that are like naval ones IRL - one or two Long Toms per turret, placed in locations difficult to access by mech. These can do a lot of damage over a large area / at long ranges. And if the near possible dropship landing locations are in range... said dropships are also nice, fat, targets. These kinds of turrets are expensive and rare.

 

[Lancelot]

1: It has so much armor it will almost certainly soak the impact unless you've hit it with multiple AC/20s, and immediately disgorge 'mechs as if it had landed normally.
2: The crash check will also destroy everything around it so if it's trying to land at the base, so it may be safer to let it land anyway rather than have to rebuild the landing pad and all the buildings and turrets around it.

BT is very deliberately designed to prevent turrets from being useful at stopping a landing DropShip. The game is meant to facilitate 'mech on 'mech battles so anything that would keep 'mechs from being landed in order to battle other 'mechs is nerfed to high heaven.

As he is using Bruce quest BT rules for this we've seen turrets being FAR more effective in the quest and therefore in this story as well. Looking back at the was one of the Wargames at Nagelring turrets we're used to ruin an entire ASF wings day. So I think people need to keep in mind we're not playing by those completely shit rules and instead by rules that make far more sense.

To put it simply turrets are ablative armor for bases, that also hit back.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Every artillery turret should also be screened by AA Arrow IV batteries.

 

[Wargamer08]

Every artillery turret should also be screened by AA Arrow IV batteries.

Ah yes, he’s just going to jump in his time machine to buy them then? What is it with some people’s turret obsession? They are used in setting to buy time for the garrison to deploy and to get blow up by actual military equipment to make them look more bad ass. They are more discriminating and expensive minefields.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Ah yes, he’s just going to jump in his time machine to buy them then? What is it with some people’s turret obsession? They are used in setting to buy time for the garrison to deploy and to get blow up by actual military equipment to make them look more bad ass. They are more discriminating and expensive minefields.

My comment was more geared towards Pie in the Sky goals, not specifically Weber's specific situation.

And I left my sarcasm shaker at home as well.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Ah yes, he’s just going to jump in his time machine to buy them then? What is it with some people’s turret obsession? They are used in setting to buy time for the garrison to deploy and to get blow up by actual military equipment to make them look more bad ass. They are more discriminating and expensive minefields.

I suspect at this point it's somebody just trying to save face by never admitting to a mistake or backing down. We already know that Weber has 2-3 dozen turrets per Speaker, which is already ample for most bases. He doesn't have the money to buy, nor the people to crew, turrets sufficient to cover the entire mountain (which, per chapter 6, would appear to be larger than Everest) with turrets, much less do so densely enough to actually stop a DropShip effectively.

And yeah, Arrow IV is still lostech so putting that in a turret is a fever dream at this point.

 

[Wargamer08]

I suspect at this point it's somebody just trying to save face by never admitting to a mistake or backing down. We already know that Weber has 2-3 dozen turrets per Speaker, which is already ample for most bases. He doesn't have the money to buy, nor the people to crew, turrets sufficient to cover the entire mountain (which, per chapter 6, would appear to be larger than Everest) with turrets, much less do so densely enough to actually stop a DropShip effectively.

And yeah, Arrow IV is still lostech so putting that in a turret is a fever dream at this point.

More, the AA Arrow is a future development of a lostech, so just having Arrow IV buried in the back of his core would not be enough.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Ah yes, he’s just going to jump in his time machine to buy them then? What is it with some people’s turret obsession? They are used in setting to buy time for the garrison to deploy and to get blow up by actual military equipment to make them look more bad ass. They are more discriminating and expensive minefields.

My comment was more geared towards Pie in the Sky goals, not specifically Weber's specific situation.

And I left mysarcasm shaker at home as well.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Guys this has become a derail let's talk about something else. Like the likely to be attacking force's size and who they work for

 

[PsihoKekec]

It depends on who found them. If it is Comstar it will be their Comguards with pirates as the cannonfodder, but it will take longer for the force to be assembled. If it is DC, then it will be a mech regiment or even two with few conventional forces in tow.

 

[The Whispering Monk]

Comstar as Pirates in AT Least battalion strength.

 

[Bear Ribs]

If it's pirates with no backer we can make some (un)educated guesses.

The top pirate JumpShip available on the normal TROs is a Star Lord. However those are exceedingly rare and only the very best pirate groups have one. As they're by far more common, they probably come in an Invader or Merchant, hence two or three Dropships.

They'll want at least one cargo carrier for hauling off loot, as pirates don't generally raid for the lulz. So probably two combat DropShips.

Pirates generally don't have top-end gear. We can discount the possibility of a Vengeance or Excalibur as exceedingly remote for the same reason we discount a Star Lord. Most likely scenario is Leopards or Unions, with a chance of a bigger ship like a Triumph or Overlord.

With those assumptions, I'd say the most likely scenario is around a 'mech Company of pirates backed by a vehicle company and a couple companies of infantry to go in and steal stuff.

Worse case scenario for pirates is a Star Lord loaded with five Triumphs and the pirates just assuming that the 2,000 tons of cargo on each Triumph will cover whatever they steal, 10,000 tons is not a bad haul. In that case, up to five battalions of mixed vehicles and 'mechs. The middle estimate is going to see the pirates crushed while the worst case scenario is more likely if ComStar is backing them and that's going to be a rough fight for Weber's Warriors.

If ComStar launches an attack on their own, they may duplicate their tactics during the Tirpitz Affair which is in the same time frame and a similar effort to squash somebody from discovering lostech. They sent a Division, 216 fighters, all Star League advanced tech so that's a reasonable first guess as to their forces. Given that this target is on the ground instead of in orbit, they may send a second ground division of 'mechs to mop up.

 

[Wargamer08]

If it's pirates with no backer we can make some (un)educated guesses.

The top pirate JumpShip available on the normal TROs is a Star Lord. However those are exceedingly rare and only the very best pirate groups have one. As they're by far more common, they probably come in an Invader or Merchant, hence two or three Dropships.

They'll want at least one cargo carrier for hauling off loot, as pirates don't generally raid for the lulz. So probably two combat DropShips.

Pirates generally don't have top-end gear. We can discount the possibility of a Vengeance or Excalibur as exceedingly remote for the same reason we discount a Star Lord. Most likely scenario is Leopards or Unions, with a chance of a bigger ship like a Triumph or Overlord.

With those assumptions, I'd say the most likely scenario is around a 'mech Company of pirates backed by a vehicle company and a couple companies of infantry to go in and steal stuff.

Worse case scenario for pirates is a Star Lord loaded with five Triumphs and the pirates just assuming that the 2,000 tons of cargo on each Triumph will cover whatever they steal, 10,000 tons is not a bad haul. In that case, up to five battalions of mixed vehicles and 'mechs. The middle estimate is going to see the pirates crushed while the worst case scenario is more likely if ComStar is backing them and that's going to be a rough fight for Weber's Warriors.

If ComStar launches an attack on their own, they may duplicate their tactics during the Tirpitz Affair which is in the same time frame and a similar effort to squash somebody from discovering lostech. They sent a Division, 216 fighters, all Star League advanced tech so that's a reasonable first guess as to their forces. Given that this target is on the ground instead of in orbit, they may send a second ground division of 'mechs to mop up.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Comguard’s Mech forces so green in this era that they lost over 1-1 against pirates while using top tier royal lostech mechs?