Reading this.... all I can think about is the pilot of one of the Stalkers I fielded. 3 SRM 10 carriers targeting it....firing and knocking the mech down. It was so mauled and the pilot was in ICU for 8 months....
Anything that's labeled a [WEAPON] Carrier is worthy of fear tbh. LRM Carriers for being just fucking spooky at long range, Laser Carriers for hitting like trucks, AC carriers for being surprisingly hurting. That and devastators. Good lord do those things hurt.
I once had a maxim hovercraft that got its motive system disabled, and immediately reached "fuck it". Despite being in view and range of 3 mechs and unable to move beyond rotating, and in spite of taking multiple turns of laser, missile, and cannon fire, this goddamn maxim was simply too angry to die. This culminated with an enemy mech doing a DFA on it. The mech actually did succeed in landing the DFA and displaced the maxim a spqce back, but the mech also tripped. The maxim responded by firing its machine gun into it, and triple-crit the engine. The Maxim survived the battle.
In the neofeudal setting of Battletech Mechs are like medieval knights. Individually knights are more powerful but the bulk of armies are made up of common archers, pike-men, foot soldiers, etc.
I came on this video to post this but you beat me to it. Specifically, tanks are like the "men at arms", almost able to fight on the same level as the knights but lacking their stamina or ton-for-ton power, and infantry are the "peasant levies", who guard the rear and act as a screening force, while LRM carriers and other artillery are the "archers" who can harass the knights and men at arms at long range but can't stand up to a charge, while hovercrafts are like light cavalry skirmishers who can outflank and harass the knights.
I love this fact. It is like the Basilisk in Warhammer. It has 120" range direct fire, and 60-240" range indirect. The latter actually reached other tables where other people where playing. It also mean you can have Long Tom support without having the models present. And those guns are hilariously overpowered.
@@Moneyone218 It was the Deathstrike, which for a long time (not sure if it still does) didn’t have a range limit. There are fun stories knocking about where a store would ring up a neighbouring location and ask if anyone was currently playing before launching a strike on their table.
Ranges in war games, video or tabletop, are always so borked. In battletech, it's always baffled me that we have mechs which are tall enough to have a horizon-limited line of sight of 15-20km, but weapons which are effective beyond 1km are incredibly rare, and weapons effective beyond 2km are nonexistant. Meanwhile, any real-life military vehicle intended for front line combat caries weapons capable of engaging targets at or even BEYOND their own horizon limitations. A company of Abrams would open fire on an Atlas before the mechs could even see the tanks, and the tanks could deplete their ammo racks before the mech closed to range them with its own weapons.
One thing I like in Titanfall, is they respect that the titans (mech) never fully replaced tanks, you can still see tanks laying around that if active could probably whip a titan from a distance, but most titan combat happens in urban areas to dangerous for tanks, while titans are pretty vulnerable out in the open.
The other advantage we see titans having is the ease of deployment a tank needs a crew a titan needs a pilot. So in small skirmishes titans can be deployed to.augment or support a force.
@groomschild1617 True but tanks are essential boxes on treads and thus easier to out maneuver. Also we have decades of real world history that shows tanka aren't good in claustrophobic environments ex: Stalingrad and other cities in ww2.
Personally, the most terrifying noise infantry can hear isn’t a double tap of a ac20 in the distance, not the sound of a shrek ppc carrier charging up, but the sound of a Savannah master starting or speeding up…for where there is one, THERE IS LEGION.
20 Savanah Masters equal 20 medium lasers with a speed of 10/15 (I think). Definitely going to get back shots. And can survive at least one med laser hit and keep on trucking.
@@marvinjohnson2488 fun fact, FASA(the original people who made the rules for battletech) had to nerf tanks during initial playtesting, because people were just beating the shit out of battlemechs with massed armies of tanks, due to them being far cheaper
With Savannah Masters, what you have to remember is that if a Hover goes flank speed it needs to roll Driving for _every_ turn it makes. And Hovers can't pass through forested terrain. What really makes them dangerous is the Kamikaze Masters unit: The self-destructing ramming horde.
i love how the had to stack the rules VERY deliberately against vehicles especially the way transport capacity works to justify mechs. realistically a tank because it is built low to the ground would take up at most a 3rd the space on a drop ship as a mech which are literally walking targets that cannot take any cover.
Battle tech makes no sense considering that fact, every other sci-fi/fantasy has a shield that can take that hits, thus giving a total advantage, unlike battletech where you're a bigger target and have to rely on only speed.
@@tarektechmarine8209 Because Battletech is, in comparison, more grounded then other sci-fi universes, and was special like this, just like reimagined Battlestar Galactica was when it came out. Shields also diffuse a lot of tension from the fights, and don't leave much imagination for tactics, apart from "blast their shields faster then they blast ours."
@@tarektechmarine8209 tbh mechs are actually rare in Battletech. It's just the novels and stories focus on mechs so much that it makes them look common
I once ran a Battletech RPG game at a club and one of the funniest moments was when a Player with his customised Griffin ignored a Demolisher tank (Pair of AC20s) while standing on a level 3 cliff, It blew a leg off and tragically fell odf the cliff totally wrecked his baby
One other advantage that vehicles have over Battlemechs is that they only need heat sinks equal to the energy weapons they carry. Ballistic weapons can vent heat without the need of heat sinks that Battlemechs need.
Why don't they just mount weapons like the mechs, the mechs have nothing to stop weapons from hitting them. You've taken the modern day anti-tank vs tank and the only thing you've done is make it bigger.
@@tarektechmarine8209To your credit, ballistic weapons on mechs often run cooler than laser or plasma weapons on mechs. However the weapons are typically more powerful so more heat also it takes more power to have the mech run than conventional vehicles. You also have to watch your weight with the mechs as it affects speed, mobility, and maintenance.
@@tarektechmarine8209 there are a number of reasons why they don’t mount them the same way as a Battlemech, a lot of which ends up being a huge cost savings on the vehicles. Battlemechs are built to operate within a vacuum or fully submerged. This means their ballistic weapons need a way to vent the heat out of sealed areas. Most vehicles aren’t sealed to that degree which drastically cuts costs and allows ballistic weapons to vent heat much more freely. Vehicles that mount energy weapons have to install heat sinks to help with the extreme heat they generate by comparison to most ballistic weapons. And of the vehicles use an internal combustion engine, the have to add extra equipment to amplify the engine’s power to be able to operate the weapons.
@@tarektechmarine8209 Because the game of 'why don't they just' ends with 'nuke it from orbit', and settling fights by having our impractical big stompy impractical robot fight your impractical big stompy robot is a better alternative then being the king of ashes.
My favorite pestering gun is the 106mm M40 recoilless rifle, you can put it on a jeep, you can put it on a fishing boat, you can put it on a mule as its actual mobile platform and then side shot any armored vehicle dead in its track from a position as narrow as the gap between the legs of a Victoria secret model, then run away and disappear like children after shattering the old neighbour's windows by your ball... funny thing is recoilless rifles are a thing that clans actually put on their elementals in the battletech universe...
At 80t for the base model, the Demolisher is ComStar's gift to the Inner Sphere and is the reason I don't buy the argument that all you need to do to appreciate the Charger is use it against vehicles. As for hovercraft, the Saladin is my favorite. If the Demolisher is a mugger waiting for assault mechs to walk around a corner, then the Saladin is the guy that makes sure the lights don't snitch to the police. And by police I mean artillery.
With mechs vs vehicles, it often becomes a roflstomp. Then the Manticore rolls up. And rips your arm off your most expensive mech. Then it is time to hit panic button and get the hell out of there. Those heavy gun tanks like the Demolisher, or the Hetzer, those are about as terrifying as walking into an Atlas.
Anyone who doesn't respect vehicles in BT has never has never had an SRM carrier delete one of their pristine mechs in a single 120-point alpha strike. Keep in mind, the most heavily armed assault mechs in 3025 can do something like 50 dmg at the most.
Or some of the nastier tanks. I mean I brought a pair of Guertiers to an Alpha Strike game and showed everyone the cards. *_EVERYONE CONSIDERED THEM DISGUSTING_* right then and there. Including the Clan player. 4-4-4 damage on a vehicle with *_13_* armor pips and 5 structure.
Fun fact. It's not just in cities you need to fear turreted twin AC20's on vehicles. There's a river sailing gun boat that's also armed with them. Also 3 SRM2's for lighter targets or to shoot inferno rounds. Also room for 10 jump infantry.
Lyran Schrek PPC carrier commander: "Wunderbar, ze Kuritan mechs are in our sights! It's a shame that we, a mere Light Steiner Mechanized Platoon iz the only asset available to engage them!"
I'm a bit surprised that you never mentioned the Alicorn - another 100 ton multi-cannon model, this time armed with three Gauss rifles. It doesn't carry a lot of ammunition, but it does make things go a way real good while it lasts. It looks ridiculously wide, long, and angular.
@6:15 - I just started playing MW5 because there's finally a good VR mod for it, and i was super happy when i encountered the super-tank. Finally, a game dev realized that the square cube law works in favor of boxy tracked vehicles. Hell, it's cannon in the lore that the majority of a mech's weight is split between its fusion reactor and the skeleton and muscles needed to make it walk. Shed the weight of the legs, arms, and fusion plant (the power of which is primarily needed to operate the legs and arms), and put the same weight of armor onto a much smaller tracked chassis, and suddenly you get WAY better protection, and it's on a vehicle which is MUCH smaller target.
Part of the reason tanks (and infantry) are overlooked in Battletech is because armies in the Battletech universe are bizarrely small relative to the size and population of the nations fielding them. Like, a force that would be considered grossly inadequate for garrisoning a mid-sized city during peacetime here on Earth, will be assigned to guard a whole fricking PLANET in the Battletech universe. It's a bit of a mystery how the successor states are able to even maintain public order with these microscopic armies, let alone why they choose not to spend more than a hundredth of a percent of their economic productivity on maintaining their militaries. Which means mechs dominate battles since they excel in small unit skirmishing whereas tanks come into their own when massed in dense formations in open ground.
It actually makes a fair bit of sense when you think of one of the things that really Really REALLY vanished in the destruction of the succession wars. Warships and the capacity to build them. Even jumpships were a strain. That left all the little islands that are the worlds of the inner sphere capable of building up great military forces but only minimally able to deliver them and it was fairly expensive to manage even that. This leaves you with the great houses putting tons and tons of effort/money into maintaining that tiny tip of the spear so they didn't have to settle down and just be content with their current borders while the economy glowed in the ashes THE SUN left in its wake and so the static planetary defense withers on the vine. You've probably heard something along the lines of 'lol clanners cannot into logistics with their expensive mechs', which if you're examining the mechs in isolation as if they spawned on the planet is totally fair but when you look back at the infrastructure needed to deploy /any/ mech from clan space to IS it starts to add up. Starting with just basic Union-C dropships you're spending 18.4 million per mech bay, deployed from monoliths you're spending another 21.5 million ( Monoliths while large and rare are more efficient then smaller ones due to fixed mobile HPG costs ). Now an IS Monolith can shave that down to 12.3 million/bay since they shed the HPG but that's a hell of a sacrifice to be making and pretty questionable when you're mounting some huge invasion across the stars. Regardless you're going to have a real hard time deploying a mech without tying up 30 million + in assets per mech, presuming a single trip. The only way to bring this down is to bring a Warship or stage all your forces within a single jump's range ( and you'll still have to wait out K-F drive recharges ), something like a Potemkin is about as efficient as possible with 25 docking points but at 75.6 billion that still leaves each dropship with 3 billion in Warship asset being tied up to bring it into system, advantage being that after 10 trips to/from the Potemkin you've gotten down to 20 million a mech and that's only daintily sipped at the 370 thousand ton cargo hold and have deployed nearly 4000 mechs. These sorts of things are the only things capable of bringing the deployment cost down beneath the tens of millions. The problem with all this is what planet is worth that? Beyond the sheer cost of a Potemkin it's also completely and utterly irreplaceable, even the Leviathan I/II only come in at 40 billion because with a mere 8 docking points. The end result is that everyone makes war through a logistical straw because anything bigger is a priceless artifact from a golden age long past so there's actually pretty strong incentives to put forth really high end kit that if nothing else is less bulky 6 Huitzils you could buy for a single Timber Wolf.
@@AmurTiger I guess all this makes a kind of sense but how do they deal with the fact that these armies are too small to perform the basic functions of an army? Granted most Battletech planets have small populations compared to earth but they're still the equivalent of large countries at least. How do you control a planet of 150 million people with a single brigade, or sometimes just a single regiment of soldiers? Even if they're all crowded into one or two cities, it can't be done. How are the successor states preventing most of the planets in their domain from falling into civil wars, ethnic/religious conflicts, insurgencies, being plagued by well-armed organized crime groups, etc.? Imagine there's a serious natural disaster and a bunch of cities with 10+ million people each fall to anarchy. The single combined-arms regiment you've got garrisoning the planet is supposed to do something about that?
@@dark7elementI might be willing but I'm pretty sure a big part of it is local military forces loyal to the great house they live under, usually plays a big role in both battles for planets and the peacekeeping. Basically, you only keep a battalion or regiment on planet as a symbolic force, while the governor you put in charge (and give money to keep happy) uses his 'house guard' to keep the peace and work as a defence force in the event of an invasion, so that you can focus on sending more of your forces to fight the other houses
The biggest sin tanks committed in Battletech was making the Charger, the checked box of mechs, still relevant by murdering so many better designed mechs in the Succession Wars making the Charger survive by the virtue of being at the bottom of the barrel. Thanks for the video.
Ironically, vehicles are one of the things that Chargers are actually genuinely good at dealing with, since vehicles really hate getting melee attacked and that's all the Charger does.
All without a massive glow up for the chassis like the similarly rightfully maligned Banshee. Before the 3S and its sexy, sexy goodness the Banshee is equally fucking terrible.
@@krullachief669 The reason it doesn't glow up is the original design had 5 Small Lasers for weapons, and that's it. For an assault weight 80 ton mech. They couldn't even be bothered to put them all in the chasis and gave it this dinky laser pistol to wield. Light mechs sometimes carry more armament.
Suprisingly effective weapon when used well. Even in World of mechs. "Don't disregard enemy infantry or tanks. Hate them. Squash them like a bug but Don't disregard them. The Fields of battle are Full of titans that disrespected infantry, tanks and spg's".
Another advantage of tanks over mechs: low profile. They can hide pretty much anywhere. They have all the time in the world to lock onto one specific enemy mech, delete it from existence with a concerted alpha strike, and... well, if the enemy lance is paying attention they may not be firing another volley, but their own friendly lance now has 1 command mech more than the enemy's 0. Which, alongside logistics issues, is why tanks are better in defence (way better ambush potential, can be built and garrisoned on the spot) than offence. Mechs will be more effective and efficient for an invasion, but tanks make the better defence as long as they're not taken by surprise (which is why you still need mechs to buy time if they are). It's great that the setting managed to make both mechs and tanks viable depending on the circumstances. IRL we probably wouldn't use mechs even if we could because, on the scale of a single planet, tanks do everything more efficiently. This is even worse when you consider that, in real life, 2km is like... close combat range when it comes to vehicles. Our long range missiles have hundreds of kilometres of range, ATG missiles can hit across several countries if you include the aircraft's mobility, ballistic missiles are accurate enough to hit and vaporize a mech from the other side of the globe... Sure, it's not worth it to use a fighter jet or an ICBM to take down one tank, but one mech? Heck yeah. To be fair, games in general (and, usually, sci-fi) have to massively nerf engagement ranges for anything to be visible on the screen/board. The funniest example is spaceship combat. Realistically, spaceships would throw missiles at each other from such distances that they can't even see one another without using telescopes and long range sensors, it would take minutes to hours for any shot to reach the target depending on weapon type, with aiming requiring an array of supercomputers and 4D chess mindgames to ever hit anything at all. It's way more interesting to ignore all that and have ships throw broadsides while scraping off paint 300m away from each other, Star Wars style.
I like designing my own tanks, but my favorite canon design is the Bandit. 9/14 speed, can go anywhere except woods, has armor, a turret with pod space for weapons, and carries 4 tons of infantry. That's a full platoon of good infantry, or a full squad of 4 Medium Battle Armor. And you can strap another squad to the outside.
I think its funny that if sorting by BV, two Alacorns is similar BV to one Timberwolf. Personally, I'd go with the two tanks that have *six* gauss rifles between them.
I wrote an adventure for "A Time Of War" (the btech RPG) where a crew of a Von Luckner has to get left behind by their combined-arms battalion because it was disabled and there were no parts to fix it. Since they are mercenaries and it is THEIR tank they wont leave it behind so go around town essentially meeting the locals and finding enough junk to fix its tracks before a whole squad of Scorpion light tanks will show up in the morning. They didn't abandon their unit but they wont abandon their tank either. Coms still works and they are in contact with HQ so they have to hurry up and patchwork up the Von Luckner - which, short of bad dice, will crush 12 Scorpions (the tank) if the players are smart enough to hide it in a good spot. Even if it cannot move yet if they didn't find the right parts, it still has a PPC and a functioning fusion reactor so it can sit in a building and shoot while local town insurrectionists (think Red Dawn: Wolverines kids with dinky trucks maybe with a machinegun in the back or an SRM launcher. Lightly armed pickup trucks driven by anarchist high school kids, some were towing a trailer with an LRM-5 on top or something dinky like that.... It was a GREAT game and had no mechs involved at all. You don't need mechs. It's called battleTECH not battleMECH, right? A lot of Scorpions died in the creation of this game, and the high school kids would finish off the vehicle crews while they abandoned their disabled tanks - mercilessly as armed high-school kids will do. THATS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU MESS WITH PORTLAND!!!! (look it up, it's not just the anarchist-capital of the USA, it is also a star system in the periphery.
I started a MW5 career with the YAML Suite + Scary Tanks. While in vanilla you roflstomp hordes of tanks and VTOLs, I was scared shitless and barely walked away with my life after an encounter with two Manticores and a few Scorpions. Tanks are scary man.
My first encounter with the dreaded Savannah Master was playing Mech Commander. I immediately developed a deep burning hatred for those little devil spawns, particularly because they always dropped on you in swarms of no less than 20.
IF you guys want to play with tanks in a mechwarrior game I recommend trying out Mechwarrior Living Legends. Its a standalone free game that started as a mod of Crysis 2 game. It plays like a battlefield style capture the points but take place in the Battletech universe.
Going by the technical readouts a battle mech is usually better armed/armored than a vehicle/tank of the same tonnage because equipment in the mech is miniaturized and operated by one person while the tank has to dedicate more of it’s space to crew and fuel. A30 ton Galleon tank is roughly equivalent to a 20 ton Locust. Mechs also usually have an advantage because it takes years of training to pilot a mech so mech pilots usually get more training than vehicle crews. Mech pilots tend to live longer because they can punch out/eject from a badly damaged mech while exiting a damaged vehicle is much more iffy. Mech pilots are also valuable so if you capture an enemy pilot you can trade/exchange them for any of yours that were captured. A mech pilot is more likely to survive multiple battles and get good while vehicle crews tend to be in militia units that get minimal training and often die in their first battle.
The deep dark secret about armored vehicles in Battletech is that under the original rules tanks would routinely clean the clocks of mechs. Remember the tanks are cheap. You cold throw a battalion of armored vehicles on the field and swamp the mechs. That's why FASA changed the rules, Now tanks had to move as a platoon (4 tanks) while mechs moved individually. The game was about Big Stompy Robots so.......yeah. There are drop ships that do nothing but bring tanks and infantry to the battle field.
Okay, but how does a mech not get utterly destroyed by a tank of equal mass? The tank has lest surface to armor, less mass wasted on moving limbs, and a lower profile (making it harder to hit).
@@michaelbarnard8529 Im not gonna say its born out in tabletop or in irl science, but in world explanation for mechs apparently, is that the tech that moves them is so much more efficient that they can mount more weapons/armor than a tank of equivelant weight. The myomer (scifi magic muscle tech for those who dont know reading this later) is supposedly so insanely good as tech it just redefined everything. On top of that a part of it was in setting politics, propoganda and fear. A LOT of battletechs reasons for dumb stuff...is actually explained via in world politics. The early mechs were better than tanks but not THAT much better. But due to propoganda and them being a bit better, everyone freaked out and everyone went into panic production of mechs to ensure they still were relevant to warfare. Then they kept going, tooth and nail throwing everything they had in some cases into building mechs to maintain the military edge or parity with their neighbors who also were making mechs. Until eventually everything was mechs and mechs were the best option, easy to obtain, massive industry to them, and culture devoted to them as the kings of the battlefield. Ect. Tldr Basically, battletech has a weird tech base due to war and politics mixed with breakthroughs that made mechs possible and semi reasonable as a weapon platform. In lore.
This was a really good video. It really helped nail why combat vehicles are a thing, both according to the rules and the lore. Not enough people going into why BattleTech is a certain way, they just present it how it is.
16:10 The real advantages of mechs over vehicles, in the BT setting, is that mechs do not need to be a combined arms force. That won’t matter if you’re in a boondock militia never expected to be travelling off-world. But if you’re the pointy end of the spear, expected to take the fight to the enemy, then this is when mechs start to shine. With tanks, even future BT ones, you essentially have all the maintenance and logistics nightmares of the Baghdad thunder runs. And all those supporting enablers need security and their own logistics, which all needs to be shipped on a dropship, via a jumpship to the battlefield. Mechs are the only efficient ground force for waging any kind of offensive interstellar war in Battletech. Edit: Oh, you made that point a few minutes later.
The one thing that never made sense to me when I first stumbled upon the battletech rabbithole was the tonnage. WW2 tanks can easily hit 50-100 tons in weight but the mechs weigh almost the same with the assault class hitting 90-100 tons, size of a building but 88 tons lighter than a Maus. 😂 I just chalked it up to lightweight alloys and interstellar metallurgy, enjoyed my tabletop mech skirmishes, and that was that. 😅
In the Universal Century of Gundam, the Zeon army had a rude awakening when thet landed on Earth. They had absolutely dominated in space, and occupied several countries if not continents on Earth. However, a mech is a lot more sluggish in one g gravity, and those heavy tanks with two 150 mm smoothbore guns were horrifyingly effective at blasting apart mechs.
So, what is the game lore gimmick that explains how humanoid mechs can compete with tank designs (let alone dominate them)? Realistically, mechs have much more surface area to cover with armor, making them much more vulnerable, and their arms an legs will add a great deal of wasted structural mass. What can you possibly pay more money for on a mech that wouldn’t be generally more effectively applied to a tank? An Abrams is as heavy as a heavy mech, has a top speed better than a lot of medium mechs, and it’s one cannon could blow a hole clean through any mech (even if that mech were made from solid steel) from miles away.
The vast majority of my collections is tanks. Unironically. I have been pulled in by friends but I am not a big mech fan (but battletech is very mech an exception, mostly because of the build rules) and I quickly began to grab official and unofficial vehicles, before leaping into the kickstarter for even more vehicles! I am hooked!
talking about the tabletop rules, vehicles are flat out more cost effective in every way if not counting motive hits. Counting motive hits tho, they got nerfed hard since a good hit basically stun locks you and anything that doesnt move in btech might as well be dead regardless of how much armor or guns you strap on it.
Oh nononono. The vehicles can't carry more firepower per ton than 'Mechs outside of some specific configurations. Also drop ship space can be reconfigured Vehicle cubicles are 50 tons per vehicle up to 50 tons and 100 tons per heavier vehicles up to 100 tons and 150 tons per 'Mech or fighter bay. So it's actually one 'Mech to three Vedettes, but where it gets interesting is the crew howusing, spare parts etc. In general the vehicles are great at defending, the vehicles are good at attacking as you can haul more BV per drop ship. Plus you can drop them from the orbit to secure the LZ.
Vehicles are at their best when they specialize for speed, firepower, or armor (maybe two of the three). My Demolisher story: on game 1, a Demolisher trundled on the field, shot up a few of my mechs, then trundled off when it no longer wanted to stay around. It had numerous dents in the armor, but then turned a clean side to us. On game 2, the repaired Demolisher trundled on to the field, took a 1 point LB pellet for a through armor critical, and blew up due to an ammo explosion. You make great videos, and this one had some great 3D models of various vehicles. Are any of those models for sale as STLs? From whom?
My friend's first tabletop match was a 2v2 and he only had conventional forces that he converted from other systems. Mercs vs Off the books ComGuard. Enter one incredibly lucky Scorpion light tank. It fired and ended up getting a through armor crit and ammo racked the Comguard side's commander's Atlas. The guy had chose not to bring CASE so he had the points for an extremely good pilot. Boom went the AC-20 ammo. My friend's side technically was wiped off the table,other than that Scorpion that routed off with the primary objective in tow,but the Comguard failled all objectives other than take the ground and only walked away with two mauled crabs,one tank that was a mobility kill and one nearly wiped out infantry platoon.
"They mostly use just regular Auto-cannons for Anti-Air and i dont know why" Well... they use Auto-cannons and Energy weapons like lasers and such.. but i can hazard a guess as to why no on missiles. Because missiles used in 'space' would require different designs than those used in / on a planet with an atmosphere. Want an idea of how missiles in Space would need to be made? Watch a episode of the Expanse where Missiles are used, and pay attention to the actual torpedo's themselves. Missiles in space would not only need main engines + guidance systems, but they would also need to be covered in Thrust-vectoring engines as well to 'turn/slide/twist' them in an area where 'wings' are useless due to lack of air. Space-based Missile systems that are able to do anything other than fire 'ballisticly' would be expensive to make/produce and likely would be on the order of the technology required to build a BattleMech. And at that point, your better off just using ... well.. 'actual' Ballistics and Energy weapons.
The original Demolisher is only armed with a pair of AC/20s. I believe it's the Demolisher II that took its name seriously and crammed the twin Ultra AC/20s in. The Savannah Master: The biggest little reason to equip a pulse laser, targeting computer, AND Streak SRMs.
In the MW games, mostly 4, you have the Myrmidon. a single ppc raiding tank. I think it was treaded, but mostly was learning when the would show to pop them before they pop you.
gives me memories of playing MWLL which had a whole bunch of playable tanks hovercraft alongside the mechs yeah sure most of the time they acted as harassment or supported the heavies/assaults but a good tank player in an assault class could just rip you apart if you werent careful
I play megamek with all of the line of sight and sensor settings turned on, so it is very much possible for a demolisher to hide in ambush to surprise the hell out of a careless mech by dishing out two very unwelcome pilot skill checks
I think problem with tank balance is that they do not pay nowhere near enough tonnage for the engine/speed ratio, the natural mobility mechs get, and that gives them a huge tonnage advantage. Especially with hovercraft, i think you can get impossible to replicate builds with mechs. Whole thing needs to be reworked from scratch imo.
Tanks are great. My favorites are the Von Luckner, Saladin, Puma and the Pike. I have about 100 old partha tank minis and a bunch coming next week in the mercenarirles Kickstarter.
I think on mech quirks on sarna it shows up as a tag so yeah, your right. Don't remember if you can get from the quirks list to the mechs that have them though.
I remember the fan game Living Legends, which always started wity a bunch of hovertanks racing ahead of the mech for the control points. And for the late game heavy tanks to one shot a lot of mechs unlucky players were still using.
I can't say anything about anyone else's experience in MW5, but on protection missions those missile platforms are priority targets. They go down easy, sure, but if you leave them alone they decimate cities.
I loved using 12 Savanamasters on a friend who talked shit about armor for so long I hit him up with 12 masters vs his custom direwolf. I wasted him with no losses and he now uses armor to this day 8D. I am also someone who has like 6 to 8 Demolishers.... too.
I feel something crazy in our reality, like a Jagdpanzer E-100 or a FV215/183 wouldn't be nothing crazy in the Battletech universe, just a modernized version of Jpz E-100 with a smoothbore 170mm gun or a 170mm rail gun, ferro fibrous armor and the small ER pulse laser for self-defense it think would be the nightmare of any mech
Listen, 'mechs are cool, but the vehicles are where the real fun is at most of the time. Beyond the fact that combined arms is cool as fuck, something like an LRM carrier sitting in your backline as your troops trundle on up on tracks, wheels, and hoverbed and unleashing 60 LRMs worth of hell is just mmph. To make it even better, you can have some Light 'Mechs be your forward scouts to really teach the enemy the meaning of the term "Recon in force".
Run a LRM Carrier and an SRM Carrier together. When the other guy gets tired of the LRM’s raining on his mechs he will send something over to deal with it. Then the SRM Carrier gets to nuke that mech.
One of the biggest reasons you don't see missile armament like ATGMs and AA missiles is everything is absurdly well armored/armor's ablative nature. The size of missile required for a kill just isnt worth the investment when the ever reliable AC-2 and lasers work just as fine. That and BT is (in deep lore) absolutely saturated in EWAR making effective long range missile warfare very difficult.
100 ton tanks wouldn't be too far off what we have now. The Abrams sits at a hefty 78 tons, and could probably carry a lot more armor with a fusion engine.
1 Centurion vs. 10 Scorpions? I might still take the mech, because of the mech's much higher resistance to critical hits (the key difference between mechs and vehicles) and its missile armament which can let it start picking off the tanks at range, until it closes and starts playing 1 alpha strike (AC10 plus laser) on the side, 1 tank. It depends on the terrain and tactical situation.
Demolisher is pretty big, but only 80 tons. Behemoth on the other hand, is 100 tons, slower than a Demolisher... and slightly smaller autocannon... in exchange for adding missiles everywhere. Everywhere.
The real advantage mechs have over ground vehicles is tgeir ability to traverse virtually any terrain with and carry enogh firepower to not care about opponents. Big rocks? Step around. Mud? Mech won't get suck so easily. Qucksand? Most mechs can crawl out. Ine of the big reasons they actually gained primacy. That and versitility. Having a walking crane on hand and on the battlefield often helps. Can even clear obsticals for tanks. If the have an actuated hand
I like to introduce my ambush vehicles and tanks to my friends with the phrase, "Say hello to my LITTLE FRIENDS!!!" Especially when the ambushing tanks are Demolishers.
Hey, science insanity I like for you to talk about alien ship designs, including the weapons they would likely would use in a hard sci-fi setting and more other stuff like their technology and what they could use that be great thank you and thank you for so much for this vid!
Re Demolishers. Actually they aren’t rare. 80 tons w two AC/20. More often than not used on the defensive in urban environments. And in teams or lances. Imagine being ambushed by 4 of these things in close quarters? Cost is 2 million c-bills each. Also they have an ICE engine so can be produced locally on most planets.
Also AoE weapons that target the hex. The other idea is seeing which terrain is harder for hovercraft to move through, and letting that terrain remain behind a Mech. Savannah Master is easier to hit if it is at half speed.
It was really fun doing the "Atlas on a technical" art, I was laughing while doing it because how ridiculous it is😂
Your work is amazing haha ridiculous piece
It was well done and looks so great.
thanks for adding the image to my headcanon
Lmao it's beautiful and it looks so happy! (I would be too if I had ice cream in battle)
You! You are a beautiful mad lad.
If you have ever walked into an SRM Carrier ambush and somehow survive, you learn to fear vehicles and want to destroy every vehicle you see.
Reading this.... all I can think about is the pilot of one of the Stalkers I fielded. 3 SRM 10 carriers targeting it....firing and knocking the mech down. It was so mauled and the pilot was in ICU for 8 months....
Anything that's labeled a [WEAPON] Carrier is worthy of fear tbh. LRM Carriers for being just fucking spooky at long range, Laser Carriers for hitting like trucks, AC carriers for being surprisingly hurting.
That and devastators. Good lord do those things hurt.
With the urban concealment rules you learn to fear suburban garages because of that xD
I can hear the 1,000 yard stare in this comment.
The giant brick shithouse you mentioned? The Behemoth
I once had a maxim hovercraft that got its motive system disabled, and immediately reached "fuck it". Despite being in view and range of 3 mechs and unable to move beyond rotating, and in spite of taking multiple turns of laser, missile, and cannon fire, this goddamn maxim was simply too angry to die. This culminated with an enemy mech doing a DFA on it. The mech actually did succeed in landing the DFA and displaced the maxim a spqce back, but the mech also tripped.
The maxim responded by firing its machine gun into it, and triple-crit the engine. The Maxim survived the battle.
Hot damn
In the neofeudal setting of Battletech Mechs are like medieval knights. Individually knights are more powerful but the bulk of armies are made up of common archers, pike-men, foot soldiers, etc.
I came on this video to post this but you beat me to it. Specifically, tanks are like the "men at arms", almost able to fight on the same level as the knights but lacking their stamina or ton-for-ton power, and infantry are the "peasant levies", who guard the rear and act as a screening force, while LRM carriers and other artillery are the "archers" who can harass the knights and men at arms at long range but can't stand up to a charge, while hovercrafts are like light cavalry skirmishers who can outflank and harass the knights.
You missed the fun fact that some battle tech tabletop artilery has a range measured in *map sheets*.
I love this fact. It is like the Basilisk in Warhammer. It has 120" range direct fire, and 60-240" range indirect. The latter actually reached other tables where other people where playing.
It also mean you can have Long Tom support without having the models present. And those guns are hilariously overpowered.
@@Duchess_Van_Hoof Wasn't there a time where it didn't have a range limit or was that the manticore
@@X3105i wasnt it the deathstrike missile?
@@Moneyone218 It was the Deathstrike, which for a long time (not sure if it still does) didn’t have a range limit. There are fun stories knocking about where a store would ring up a neighbouring location and ask if anyone was currently playing before launching a strike on their table.
Ranges in war games, video or tabletop, are always so borked. In battletech, it's always baffled me that we have mechs which are tall enough to have a horizon-limited line of sight of 15-20km, but weapons which are effective beyond 1km are incredibly rare, and weapons effective beyond 2km are nonexistant.
Meanwhile, any real-life military vehicle intended for front line combat caries weapons capable of engaging targets at or even BEYOND their own horizon limitations. A company of Abrams would open fire on an Atlas before the mechs could even see the tanks, and the tanks could deplete their ammo racks before the mech closed to range them with its own weapons.
One thing I like in Titanfall, is they respect that the titans (mech) never fully replaced tanks, you can still see tanks laying around that if active could probably whip a titan from a distance, but most titan combat happens in urban areas to dangerous for tanks, while titans are pretty vulnerable out in the open.
The other advantage we see titans having is the ease of deployment a tank needs a crew a titan needs a pilot. So in small skirmishes titans can be deployed to.augment or support a force.
A tank in such a setting could also be piloted by a single pilot. look at warthunder and world of tanks for example of single person tanks.
@groomschild1617 True but tanks are essential boxes on treads and thus easier to out maneuver. Also we have decades of real world history that shows tanka aren't good in claustrophobic environments ex: Stalingrad and other cities in ww2.
Personally, the most terrifying noise infantry can hear isn’t a double tap of a ac20 in the distance, not the sound of a shrek ppc carrier charging up, but the sound of a Savannah master starting or speeding up…for where there is one, THERE IS LEGION.
20 Savanah Masters equal 20 medium lasers with a speed of 10/15 (I think). Definitely going to get back shots. And can survive at least one med laser hit and keep on trucking.
@@marvinjohnson2488 fun fact, FASA(the original people who made the rules for battletech) had to nerf tanks during initial playtesting, because people were just beating the shit out of battlemechs with massed armies of tanks, due to them being far cheaper
Taurian Concordat Sevanah masters carry tactical nukes as standard.
I put out a company of them when I play *o*
With Savannah Masters, what you have to remember is that if a Hover goes flank speed it needs to roll Driving for _every_ turn it makes. And Hovers can't pass through forested terrain.
What really makes them dangerous is the Kamikaze Masters unit: The self-destructing ramming horde.
Tbh i love the non battlemech forces, they are true workworses of any Militia, perfect for cheap, reliable and also outnumber them fancy smacny mechs
i love how the had to stack the rules VERY deliberately against vehicles especially the way transport capacity works to justify mechs. realistically a tank because it is built low to the ground would take up at most a 3rd the space on a drop ship as a mech which are literally walking targets that cannot take any cover.
Much like infantry, a Mech that ignores a tank is not long for the world.
Battle tech makes no sense considering that fact, every other sci-fi/fantasy has a shield that can take that hits, thus giving a total advantage, unlike battletech where you're a bigger target and have to rely on only speed.
"Everyone ignores infantry before the hills sprout crunchies with field guns and SRM packs"
@@tarektechmarine8209 Because Battletech is, in comparison, more grounded then other sci-fi universes, and was special like this, just like reimagined Battlestar Galactica was when it came out.
Shields also diffuse a lot of tension from the fights, and don't leave much imagination for tactics, apart from "blast their shields faster then they blast ours."
Demolisher crew sends it regards:)
@@tarektechmarine8209 tbh mechs are actually rare in Battletech. It's just the novels and stories focus on mechs so much that it makes them look common
I once ran a Battletech RPG game at a club and one of the funniest moments was when a Player with his customised Griffin ignored a Demolisher tank (Pair of AC20s) while standing on a level 3 cliff,
It blew a leg off and tragically fell odf the cliff
totally wrecked his baby
One other advantage that vehicles have over Battlemechs is that they only need heat sinks equal to the energy weapons they carry. Ballistic weapons can vent heat without the need of heat sinks that Battlemechs need.
Why don't they just mount weapons like the mechs, the mechs have nothing to stop weapons from hitting them. You've taken the modern day anti-tank vs tank and the only thing you've done is make it bigger.
@@tarektechmarine8209To your credit, ballistic weapons on mechs often run cooler than laser or plasma weapons on mechs. However the weapons are typically more powerful so more heat also it takes more power to have the mech run than conventional vehicles.
You also have to watch your weight with the mechs as it affects speed, mobility, and maintenance.
@@tarektechmarine8209 there are a number of reasons why they don’t mount them the same way as a Battlemech, a lot of which ends up being a huge cost savings on the vehicles. Battlemechs are built to operate within a vacuum or fully submerged. This means their ballistic weapons need a way to vent the heat out of sealed areas. Most vehicles aren’t sealed to that degree which drastically cuts costs and allows ballistic weapons to vent heat much more freely.
Vehicles that mount energy weapons have to install heat sinks to help with the extreme heat they generate by comparison to most ballistic weapons. And of the vehicles use an internal combustion engine, the have to add extra equipment to amplify the engine’s power to be able to operate the weapons.
@@tarektechmarine8209 Because the game of 'why don't they just' ends with 'nuke it from orbit', and settling fights by having our impractical big stompy impractical robot fight your impractical big stompy robot is a better alternative then being the king of ashes.
My favorite pestering gun is the 106mm M40 recoilless rifle, you can put it on a jeep, you can put it on a fishing boat, you can put it on a mule as its actual mobile platform and then side shot any armored vehicle dead in its track from a position as narrow as the gap between the legs of a Victoria secret model, then run away and disappear like children after shattering the old neighbour's windows by your ball... funny thing is recoilless rifles are a thing that clans actually put on their elementals in the battletech universe...
At 80t for the base model, the Demolisher is ComStar's gift to the Inner Sphere and is the reason I don't buy the argument that all you need to do to appreciate the Charger is use it against vehicles.
As for hovercraft, the Saladin is my favorite. If the Demolisher is a mugger waiting for assault mechs to walk around a corner, then the Saladin is the guy that makes sure the lights don't snitch to the police. And by police I mean artillery.
With mechs vs vehicles, it often becomes a roflstomp. Then the Manticore rolls up. And rips your arm off your most expensive mech.
Then it is time to hit panic button and get the hell out of there. Those heavy gun tanks like the Demolisher, or the Hetzer, those are about as terrifying as walking into an Atlas.
Anyone who doesn't respect vehicles in BT has never has never had an SRM carrier delete one of their pristine mechs in a single 120-point alpha strike. Keep in mind, the most heavily armed assault mechs in 3025 can do something like 50 dmg at the most.
Or some of the nastier tanks. I mean I brought a pair of Guertiers to an Alpha Strike game and showed everyone the cards.
*_EVERYONE CONSIDERED THEM DISGUSTING_* right then and there. Including the Clan player.
4-4-4 damage on a vehicle with *_13_* armor pips and 5 structure.
Fun fact. It's not just in cities you need to fear turreted twin AC20's on vehicles. There's a river sailing gun boat that's also armed with them. Also 3 SRM2's for lighter targets or to shoot inferno rounds. Also room for 10 jump infantry.
Lyran Schrek PPC carrier commander: "Wunderbar, ze Kuritan mechs are in our sights! It's a shame that we, a mere Light Steiner Mechanized Platoon iz the only asset available to engage them!"
Ah, Lyrans. In MC2 they have a Legion 100 tonne assault tank, with two gauss rifles.
The bloody things are indestructible unless you outflank them.
@@Duchess_Van_HoofLikely 2 Heavy gauss,
I'm a bit surprised that you never mentioned the Alicorn - another 100 ton multi-cannon model, this time armed with three Gauss rifles. It doesn't carry a lot of ammunition, but it does make things go a way real good while it lasts. It looks ridiculously wide, long, and angular.
Rumors have it there are IIC variants.
I weep to imagine such devastation.
They would absolutely demolish
Schreks are the PPC equivalent to them and are just as scary if not moreso because they lack the ammo concerns.
Alacorns weigh 95 tons and yeah the true apex predators of the succession wars
It is legally required to mention Pharaoh Beer in any Alacorn thread.
@@RibusPQR Pharaoh, the official Alacorn Tread Tension Gauge measurement can of choice.
@6:15 - I just started playing MW5 because there's finally a good VR mod for it, and i was super happy when i encountered the super-tank. Finally, a game dev realized that the square cube law works in favor of boxy tracked vehicles.
Hell, it's cannon in the lore that the majority of a mech's weight is split between its fusion reactor and the skeleton and muscles needed to make it walk. Shed the weight of the legs, arms, and fusion plant (the power of which is primarily needed to operate the legs and arms), and put the same weight of armor onto a much smaller tracked chassis, and suddenly you get WAY better protection, and it's on a vehicle which is MUCH smaller target.
Part of the reason tanks (and infantry) are overlooked in Battletech is because armies in the Battletech universe are bizarrely small relative to the size and population of the nations fielding them. Like, a force that would be considered grossly inadequate for garrisoning a mid-sized city during peacetime here on Earth, will be assigned to guard a whole fricking PLANET in the Battletech universe. It's a bit of a mystery how the successor states are able to even maintain public order with these microscopic armies, let alone why they choose not to spend more than a hundredth of a percent of their economic productivity on maintaining their militaries. Which means mechs dominate battles since they excel in small unit skirmishing whereas tanks come into their own when massed in dense formations in open ground.
It actually makes a fair bit of sense when you think of one of the things that really Really REALLY vanished in the destruction of the succession wars.
Warships and the capacity to build them.
Even jumpships were a strain.
That left all the little islands that are the worlds of the inner sphere capable of building up great military forces but only minimally able to deliver them and it was fairly expensive to manage even that. This leaves you with the great houses putting tons and tons of effort/money into maintaining that tiny tip of the spear so they didn't have to settle down and just be content with their current borders while the economy glowed in the ashes THE SUN left in its wake and so the static planetary defense withers on the vine.
You've probably heard something along the lines of 'lol clanners cannot into logistics with their expensive mechs', which if you're examining the mechs in isolation as if they spawned on the planet is totally fair but when you look back at the infrastructure needed to deploy /any/ mech from clan space to IS it starts to add up. Starting with just basic Union-C dropships you're spending 18.4 million per mech bay, deployed from monoliths you're spending another 21.5 million ( Monoliths while large and rare are more efficient then smaller ones due to fixed mobile HPG costs ). Now an IS Monolith can shave that down to 12.3 million/bay since they shed the HPG but that's a hell of a sacrifice to be making and pretty questionable when you're mounting some huge invasion across the stars.
Regardless you're going to have a real hard time deploying a mech without tying up 30 million + in assets per mech, presuming a single trip. The only way to bring this down is to bring a Warship or stage all your forces within a single jump's range ( and you'll still have to wait out K-F drive recharges ), something like a Potemkin is about as efficient as possible with 25 docking points but at 75.6 billion that still leaves each dropship with 3 billion in Warship asset being tied up to bring it into system, advantage being that after 10 trips to/from the Potemkin you've gotten down to 20 million a mech and that's only daintily sipped at the 370 thousand ton cargo hold and have deployed nearly 4000 mechs. These sorts of things are the only things capable of bringing the deployment cost down beneath the tens of millions.
The problem with all this is what planet is worth that? Beyond the sheer cost of a Potemkin it's also completely and utterly irreplaceable, even the Leviathan I/II only come in at 40 billion because with a mere 8 docking points.
The end result is that everyone makes war through a logistical straw because anything bigger is a priceless artifact from a golden age long past so there's actually pretty strong incentives to put forth really high end kit that if nothing else is less bulky 6 Huitzils you could buy for a single Timber Wolf.
FASAnomics is called such for a reason.
@@AmurTiger I guess all this makes a kind of sense but how do they deal with the fact that these armies are too small to perform the basic functions of an army? Granted most Battletech planets have small populations compared to earth but they're still the equivalent of large countries at least. How do you control a planet of 150 million people with a single brigade, or sometimes just a single regiment of soldiers? Even if they're all crowded into one or two cities, it can't be done.
How are the successor states preventing most of the planets in their domain from falling into civil wars, ethnic/religious conflicts, insurgencies, being plagued by well-armed organized crime groups, etc.? Imagine there's a serious natural disaster and a bunch of cities with 10+ million people each fall to anarchy. The single combined-arms regiment you've got garrisoning the planet is supposed to do something about that?
@@dark7elementI might be willing but I'm pretty sure a big part of it is local military forces loyal to the great house they live under, usually plays a big role in both battles for planets and the peacekeeping.
Basically, you only keep a battalion or regiment on planet as a symbolic force, while the governor you put in charge (and give money to keep happy) uses his 'house guard' to keep the peace and work as a defence force in the event of an invasion, so that you can focus on sending more of your forces to fight the other houses
The secret is the population doesn't care who rules them.
The house Lords are all terrible in different ways
The Atlas Technical reminds me of the Sigma 6 scene were a mech is firing from its trailer while being pulled by the RHINO.
The biggest sin tanks committed in Battletech was making the Charger, the checked box of mechs, still relevant by murdering so many better designed mechs in the Succession Wars making the Charger survive by the virtue of being at the bottom of the barrel. Thanks for the video.
Ironically, vehicles are one of the things that Chargers are actually genuinely good at dealing with, since vehicles really hate getting melee attacked and that's all the Charger does.
All without a massive glow up for the chassis like the similarly rightfully maligned Banshee. Before the 3S and its sexy, sexy goodness the Banshee is equally fucking terrible.
@@krullachief669 The reason it doesn't glow up is the original design had 5 Small Lasers for weapons, and that's it. For an assault weight 80 ton mech. They couldn't even be bothered to put them all in the chasis and gave it this dinky laser pistol to wield. Light mechs sometimes carry more armament.
@@Yacovo Well yeah. Because the 2.5 tons of weight is all they had left after they mounted that massive fucking engine that allows it to go 5/8.
Suprisingly effective weapon when used well.
Even in World of mechs.
"Don't disregard enemy infantry or tanks. Hate them. Squash them like a bug but Don't disregard them.
The Fields of battle are Full of titans that disrespected infantry, tanks and spg's".
I briefly thought spg stands for spergs.
I don't actually know what it means.
Another advantage of tanks over mechs: low profile. They can hide pretty much anywhere. They have all the time in the world to lock onto one specific enemy mech, delete it from existence with a concerted alpha strike, and... well, if the enemy lance is paying attention they may not be firing another volley, but their own friendly lance now has 1 command mech more than the enemy's 0.
Which, alongside logistics issues, is why tanks are better in defence (way better ambush potential, can be built and garrisoned on the spot) than offence. Mechs will be more effective and efficient for an invasion, but tanks make the better defence as long as they're not taken by surprise (which is why you still need mechs to buy time if they are).
It's great that the setting managed to make both mechs and tanks viable depending on the circumstances. IRL we probably wouldn't use mechs even if we could because, on the scale of a single planet, tanks do everything more efficiently. This is even worse when you consider that, in real life, 2km is like... close combat range when it comes to vehicles. Our long range missiles have hundreds of kilometres of range, ATG missiles can hit across several countries if you include the aircraft's mobility, ballistic missiles are accurate enough to hit and vaporize a mech from the other side of the globe... Sure, it's not worth it to use a fighter jet or an ICBM to take down one tank, but one mech? Heck yeah.
To be fair, games in general (and, usually, sci-fi) have to massively nerf engagement ranges for anything to be visible on the screen/board. The funniest example is spaceship combat. Realistically, spaceships would throw missiles at each other from such distances that they can't even see one another without using telescopes and long range sensors, it would take minutes to hours for any shot to reach the target depending on weapon type, with aiming requiring an array of supercomputers and 4D chess mindgames to ever hit anything at all. It's way more interesting to ignore all that and have ships throw broadsides while scraping off paint 300m away from each other, Star Wars style.
I like designing my own tanks, but my favorite canon design is the Bandit. 9/14 speed, can go anywhere except woods, has armor, a turret with pod space for weapons, and carries 4 tons of infantry. That's a full platoon of good infantry, or a full squad of 4 Medium Battle Armor. And you can strap another squad to the outside.
Thr bandit is a high speed brick, a massivr inconveniece to hit and kill
I think its funny that if sorting by BV, two Alacorns is similar BV to one Timberwolf.
Personally, I'd go with the two tanks that have *six* gauss rifles between them.
I brought out a couple of those in a game. It was almost unfair.
I wrote an adventure for "A Time Of War" (the btech RPG) where a crew of a Von Luckner has to get left behind by their combined-arms battalion because it was disabled and there were no parts to fix it. Since they are mercenaries and it is THEIR tank they wont leave it behind so go around town essentially meeting the locals and finding enough junk to fix its tracks before a whole squad of Scorpion light tanks will show up in the morning. They didn't abandon their unit but they wont abandon their tank either. Coms still works and they are in contact with HQ so they have to hurry up and patchwork up the Von Luckner - which, short of bad dice, will crush 12 Scorpions (the tank) if the players are smart enough to hide it in a good spot. Even if it cannot move yet if they didn't find the right parts, it still has a PPC and a functioning fusion reactor so it can sit in a building and shoot while local town insurrectionists (think Red Dawn: Wolverines kids with dinky trucks maybe with a machinegun in the back or an SRM launcher. Lightly armed pickup trucks driven by anarchist high school kids, some were towing a trailer with an LRM-5 on top or something dinky like that.... It was a GREAT game and had no mechs involved at all. You don't need mechs. It's called battleTECH not battleMECH, right? A lot of Scorpions died in the creation of this game, and the high school kids would finish off the vehicle crews while they abandoned their disabled tanks - mercilessly as armed high-school kids will do. THATS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU MESS WITH PORTLAND!!!! (look it up, it's not just the anarchist-capital of the USA, it is also a star system in the periphery.
I started a MW5 career with the YAML Suite + Scary Tanks. While in vanilla you roflstomp hordes of tanks and VTOLs, I was scared shitless and barely walked away with my life after an encounter with two Manticores and a few Scorpions.
Tanks are scary man.
The tutorial missions turn into a nightmare, the Jenner you start with can barely scratch them.
A good General studies strategy & tactics.
A *great* General studies logistics & economics.
My first encounter with the dreaded Savannah Master was playing Mech Commander. I immediately developed a deep burning hatred for those little devil spawns, particularly because they always dropped on you in swarms of no less than 20.
IF you guys want to play with tanks in a mechwarrior game I recommend trying out Mechwarrior Living Legends. Its a standalone free game that started as a mod of Crysis 2 game. It plays like a battlefield style capture the points but take place in the Battletech universe.
Going by the technical readouts a battle mech is usually better armed/armored than a vehicle/tank of the same tonnage because equipment in the mech is miniaturized and operated by one person while the tank has to dedicate more of it’s space to crew and fuel. A30 ton Galleon tank is roughly equivalent to a 20 ton Locust. Mechs also usually have an advantage because it takes years of training to pilot a mech so mech pilots usually get more training than vehicle crews. Mech pilots tend to live longer because they can punch out/eject from a badly damaged mech while exiting a damaged vehicle is much more iffy. Mech pilots are also valuable so if you capture an enemy pilot you can trade/exchange them for any of yours that were captured. A mech pilot is more likely to survive multiple battles and get good while vehicle crews tend to be in militia units that get minimal training and often die in their first battle.
The deep dark secret about armored vehicles in Battletech is that under the original rules tanks would routinely clean the clocks of mechs. Remember the tanks are cheap. You cold throw a battalion of armored vehicles on the field and swamp the mechs.
That's why FASA changed the rules, Now tanks had to move as a platoon (4 tanks) while mechs moved individually. The game was about Big Stompy Robots so.......yeah.
There are drop ships that do nothing but bring tanks and infantry to the battle field.
Okay, but how does a mech not get utterly destroyed by a tank of equal mass? The tank has lest surface to armor, less mass wasted on moving limbs, and a lower profile (making it harder to hit).
@michaelbarnard8529 the answer is extremely obvious, you just don't like it. Cuz it's a mech game.
@@michaelbarnard8529
Im not gonna say its born out in tabletop or in irl science, but in world explanation for mechs apparently, is that the tech that moves them is so much more efficient that they can mount more weapons/armor than a tank of equivelant weight.
The myomer (scifi magic muscle tech for those who dont know reading this later) is supposedly so insanely good as tech it just redefined everything.
On top of that a part of it was in setting politics, propoganda and fear. A LOT of battletechs reasons for dumb stuff...is actually explained via in world politics.
The early mechs were better than tanks but not THAT much better. But due to propoganda and them being a bit better, everyone freaked out and everyone went into panic production of mechs to ensure they still were relevant to warfare.
Then they kept going, tooth and nail throwing everything they had in some cases into building mechs to maintain the military edge or parity with their neighbors who also were making mechs.
Until eventually everything was mechs and mechs were the best option, easy to obtain, massive industry to them, and culture devoted to them as the kings of the battlefield.
Ect.
Tldr
Basically, battletech has a weird tech base due to war and politics mixed with breakthroughs that made mechs possible and semi reasonable as a weapon platform.
In lore.
This was a really good video. It really helped nail why combat vehicles are a thing, both according to the rules and the lore. Not enough people going into why BattleTech is a certain way, they just present it how it is.
A mech is king until it walks around a corner and comes face to face with a Demolisher
One of my favorite combination of tanks is a mix of Pattons, Rommels and Bulldogs to cover all the bases.
16:10 The real advantages of mechs over vehicles, in the BT setting, is that mechs do not need to be a combined arms force. That won’t matter if you’re in a boondock militia never expected to be travelling off-world. But if you’re the pointy end of the spear, expected to take the fight to the enemy, then this is when mechs start to shine. With tanks, even future BT ones, you essentially have all the maintenance and logistics nightmares of the Baghdad thunder runs. And all those supporting enablers need security and their own logistics, which all needs to be shipped on a dropship, via a jumpship to the battlefield. Mechs are the only efficient ground force for waging any kind of offensive interstellar war in Battletech.
Edit: Oh, you made that point a few minutes later.
The one thing that never made sense to me when I first stumbled upon the battletech rabbithole was the tonnage. WW2 tanks can easily hit 50-100 tons in weight but the mechs weigh almost the same with the assault class hitting 90-100 tons, size of a building but 88 tons lighter than a Maus. 😂
I just chalked it up to lightweight alloys and interstellar metallurgy, enjoyed my tabletop mech skirmishes, and that was that. 😅
Don’t forget that targeting computers for the mechs are like a full ton of hardware. That’s always silly to meditate on!
In the Universal Century of Gundam, the Zeon army had a rude awakening when thet landed on Earth. They had absolutely dominated in space, and occupied several countries if not continents on Earth.
However, a mech is a lot more sluggish in one g gravity, and those heavy tanks with two 150 mm smoothbore guns were horrifyingly effective at blasting apart mechs.
I want a Battletech style Gundam tabletop game.
So, what is the game lore gimmick that explains how humanoid mechs can compete with tank designs (let alone dominate them)? Realistically, mechs have much more surface area to cover with armor, making them much more vulnerable, and their arms an legs will add a great deal of wasted structural mass. What can you possibly pay more money for on a mech that wouldn’t be generally more effectively applied to a tank?
An Abrams is as heavy as a heavy mech, has a top speed better than a lot of medium mechs, and it’s one cannon could blow a hole clean through any mech (even if that mech were made from solid steel) from miles away.
The vast majority of my collections is tanks. Unironically. I have been pulled in by friends but I am not a big mech fan (but battletech is very mech an exception, mostly because of the build rules) and I quickly began to grab official and unofficial vehicles, before leaping into the kickstarter for even more vehicles! I am hooked!
It is hilarious how Battletech fans love battle armour and vehicles, at times even more than mechs.
SRM/LRM carriers will humble every rookie who thinks Mechs are the only serious way to wage war.
talking about the tabletop rules, vehicles are flat out more cost effective in every way if not counting motive hits. Counting motive hits tho, they got nerfed hard since a good hit basically stun locks you and anything that doesnt move in btech might as well be dead regardless of how much armor or guns you strap on it.
You say nerfed, but they're less randomly explody with Total Warfare compared to how they worked back in BMR.
Oh nononono. The vehicles can't carry more firepower per ton than 'Mechs outside of some specific configurations. Also drop ship space can be reconfigured Vehicle cubicles are 50 tons per vehicle up to 50 tons and 100 tons per heavier vehicles up to 100 tons and 150 tons per 'Mech or fighter bay. So it's actually one 'Mech to three Vedettes, but where it gets interesting is the crew howusing, spare parts etc. In general the vehicles are great at defending, the vehicles are good at attacking as you can haul more BV per drop ship. Plus you can drop them from the orbit to secure the LZ.
Steve is an artist of PEEK QUALITY!
Vehicles are at their best when they specialize for speed, firepower, or armor (maybe two of the three). My Demolisher story: on game 1, a Demolisher trundled on the field, shot up a few of my mechs, then trundled off when it no longer wanted to stay around. It had numerous dents in the armor, but then turned a clean side to us. On game 2, the repaired Demolisher trundled on to the field, took a 1 point LB pellet for a through armor critical, and blew up due to an ammo explosion. You make great videos, and this one had some great 3D models of various vehicles. Are any of those models for sale as STLs? From whom?
My friend's first tabletop match was a 2v2 and he only had conventional forces that he converted from other systems. Mercs vs Off the books ComGuard. Enter one incredibly lucky Scorpion light tank. It fired and ended up getting a through armor crit and ammo racked the Comguard side's commander's Atlas. The guy had chose not to bring CASE so he had the points for an extremely good pilot. Boom went the AC-20 ammo. My friend's side technically was wiped off the table,other than that Scorpion that routed off with the primary objective in tow,but the Comguard failled all objectives other than take the ground and only walked away with two mauled crabs,one tank that was a mobility kill and one nearly wiped out infantry platoon.
28:01 You said Savannah Master and I just smiled becayse I knew which one you were talking about begore you said it
"They mostly use just regular Auto-cannons for Anti-Air and i dont know why"
Well... they use Auto-cannons and Energy weapons like lasers and such.. but i can hazard a guess as to why no on missiles. Because missiles used in 'space' would require different designs than those used in / on a planet with an atmosphere. Want an idea of how missiles in Space would need to be made? Watch a episode of the Expanse where Missiles are used, and pay attention to the actual torpedo's themselves.
Missiles in space would not only need main engines + guidance systems, but they would also need to be covered in Thrust-vectoring engines as well to 'turn/slide/twist' them in an area where 'wings' are useless due to lack of air.
Space-based Missile systems that are able to do anything other than fire 'ballisticly' would be expensive to make/produce and likely would be on the order of the technology required to build a BattleMech. And at that point, your better off just using ... well.. 'actual' Ballistics and Energy weapons.
Marksman M1 MBT is my favorite tank. Looks freaking awesome and packs a nice gauss rifle and other fun things.
Demolisher is actually 80 tonnes but still in the assault class.
Demolisher 2 from 3060 is 100. 1 ultra20 and 1 Lb20 olus a couple MGs.
You may meme making mech torso-technicals but its been done. Jason's Juggernauts mercs' icon is a blackjack top half on a galleon.
Two epic new drawings at the same time! What a blessing XD
The original Demolisher is only armed with a pair of AC/20s. I believe it's the Demolisher II that took its name seriously and crammed the twin Ultra AC/20s in.
The Savannah Master: The biggest little reason to equip a pulse laser, targeting computer, AND Streak SRMs.
The ptsd I have from losing my atlas because I didn’t immediately shoot two super heavy tanks is astounding
In the MW games, mostly 4, you have the Myrmidon. a single ppc raiding tank. I think it was treaded, but mostly was learning when the would show to pop them before they pop you.
gives me memories of playing MWLL which had a whole bunch of playable tanks hovercraft alongside the mechs
yeah sure most of the time they acted as harassment or supported the heavies/assaults but a good tank player in an assault class could just rip you apart if you werent careful
Orbital combat drops of Manticore tanks would be interesting to watch. :D
I'm still waiting for the mement when during the "generic greetings" sections, SCI says "Say hello Steve" and Steve replies with "Hello, Steve"
Possible future topic, check out BOLO Keith Laumer - Imagine super advanced self aware land battleships.
I play megamek with all of the line of sight and sensor settings turned on, so it is very much possible for a demolisher to hide in ambush to surprise the hell out of a careless mech by dishing out two very unwelcome pilot skill checks
Steve's version of the Atlas on a Technical should be made into a mercenary company logo.
I think problem with tank balance is that they do not pay nowhere near enough tonnage for the engine/speed ratio, the natural mobility mechs get, and that gives them a huge tonnage advantage. Especially with hovercraft, i think you can get impossible to replicate builds with mechs. Whole thing needs to be reworked from scratch imo.
I prefer using the Rommel over the patton. And, the Alacorn is just sick.
Tanks are great. My favorites are the Von Luckner, Saladin, Puma and the Pike. I have about 100 old partha tank minis and a bunch coming next week in the mercenarirles Kickstarter.
"Sniper" a story about a Shreck PPC carrier gunner that kills mechs for breakfast. It's in print to buy.
14:41 I'm pretty sure there are some Primitive Mechs and quite a few Industrial Mechs that can run on an ICE.
I think on mech quirks on sarna it shows up as a tag so yeah, your right. Don't remember if you can get from the quirks list to the mechs that have them though.
Mechassualt 2 had pilotable Battle Armor, Tanks and Vtols. MA2 confirmed greatest Battletech game
That first quote is probably the truest I have ever encountered in Battletech.
I remember the fan game Living Legends, which always started wity a bunch of hovertanks racing ahead of the mech for the control points.
And for the late game heavy tanks to one shot a lot of mechs unlucky players were still using.
Schrek PPC Carrier, when you need even more PPCs.
Dude! The Atlacarrier is amazing! (My friends name for that) 😂
I love how you two just have fun talking about battletech 😆
I can't say anything about anyone else's experience in MW5, but on protection missions those missile platforms are priority targets. They go down easy, sure, but if you leave them alone they decimate cities.
I loved using 12 Savanamasters on a friend who talked shit about armor for so long I hit him up with 12 masters vs his custom direwolf. I wasted him with no losses and he now uses armor to this day 8D. I am also someone who has like 6 to 8 Demolishers.... too.
My favorite part about the missile carrier is when it explodes.
I feel something crazy in our reality, like a Jagdpanzer E-100 or a FV215/183 wouldn't be nothing crazy in the Battletech universe, just a modernized version of Jpz E-100 with a smoothbore 170mm gun or a 170mm rail gun, ferro fibrous armor and the small ER pulse laser for self-defense it think would be the nightmare of any mech
Listen, 'mechs are cool, but the vehicles are where the real fun is at most of the time. Beyond the fact that combined arms is cool as fuck, something like an LRM carrier sitting in your backline as your troops trundle on up on tracks, wheels, and hoverbed and unleashing 60 LRMs worth of hell is just mmph. To make it even better, you can have some Light 'Mechs be your forward scouts to really teach the enemy the meaning of the term "Recon in force".
Tanks also require typically more than one person to use effectivly Driver gunner.
Run a LRM Carrier and an SRM Carrier together. When the other guy gets tired of the LRM’s raining on his mechs he will send something over to deal with it. Then the SRM Carrier gets to nuke that mech.
One of the biggest reasons you don't see missile armament like ATGMs and AA missiles is everything is absurdly well armored/armor's ablative nature. The size of missile required for a kill just isnt worth the investment when the ever reliable AC-2 and lasers work just as fine. That and BT is (in deep lore) absolutely saturated in EWAR making effective long range missile warfare very difficult.
The phrase you were looking for is concentration of force, also known as killing, power efficiency.
100 ton tanks wouldn't be too far off what we have now. The Abrams sits at a hefty 78 tons, and could probably carry a lot more armor with a fusion engine.
1 Centurion vs. 10 Scorpions? I might still take the mech, because of the mech's much higher resistance to critical hits (the key difference between mechs and vehicles) and its missile armament which can let it start picking off the tanks at range, until it closes and starts playing 1 alpha strike (AC10 plus laser) on the side, 1 tank. It depends on the terrain and tactical situation.
Demolisher is pretty big, but only 80 tons. Behemoth on the other hand, is 100 tons, slower than a Demolisher... and slightly smaller autocannon... in exchange for adding missiles everywhere. Everywhere.
Everyone has one SM friend... For a time at least.
Then they evolve into Salladin friends.
my balls crumbled all the way up when you mentioned savannah master.
Try the scorpion nest scenario. Its the Tucker's Kobolds of BT
I'LL GET YOU NEXT TIME INSPECTOR GADGET!
The real advantage mechs have over ground vehicles is tgeir ability to traverse virtually any terrain with and carry enogh firepower to not care about opponents. Big rocks? Step around. Mud? Mech won't get suck so easily. Qucksand? Most mechs can crawl out. Ine of the big reasons they actually gained primacy. That and versitility. Having a walking crane on hand and on the battlefield often helps. Can even clear obsticals for tanks. If the have an actuated hand
Steve's art needs to be a shirt silkscreen
I like to introduce my ambush vehicles and tanks to my friends with the phrase, "Say hello to my LITTLE FRIENDS!!!" Especially when the ambushing tanks are Demolishers.
Working on my own science fiction universe, I hope it will one day be large enough to get ripped to shreds by this channel
20-30 tanks armed with PPCs and LRMs all hiding in ambush with coordinated fire. Ya they realistically could be deadly as hell when used right.
The biggest advantage of mechs over vehicles is mobility. If all you need is point defense a vehicle is as good as a mech.
Hey, science insanity I like for you to talk about alien ship designs, including the weapons they would likely would use in a hard sci-fi setting and more other stuff like their technology and what they could use that be great thank you and thank you for so much for this vid!
Re Demolishers.
Actually they aren’t rare. 80 tons w two AC/20. More often than not used on the defensive in urban environments. And in teams or lances. Imagine being ambushed by 4 of these things in close quarters?
Cost is 2 million c-bills each.
Also they have an ICE engine so can be produced locally on most planets.
As a recommendation I think next time you go against hovercraft you should try using pulse lasers since those have a higher chance to hit
Also AoE weapons that target the hex. The other idea is seeing which terrain is harder for hovercraft to move through, and letting that terrain remain behind a Mech. Savannah Master is easier to hit if it is at half speed.
I want a mini of the ‘6 wheeled Atlas’