"Thank God it was a cockpit hit! We'll slap a new one in and she'll be right and tight in a few hours. Whew, we really lucked out on that one..." - Every tech ever, probably
Luckiest shot in HBS BattleTech I ever made was a cockpit headshot during the campaign mission to salvage the Argo. Instantly I have a nice shiny Quickdraw to play with. Yes, there are better options for a heavy mech out there, but for your first heavy-and one with jump jets-it’s a pretty good option.
At least until the Clans show up, they tend to take cockpit shots personal. Like declare you Dezgra, personal. Which is why I’m not allowed to near any planet with Jade Falcons on it.
Spartan's cant feel their MJLONIR either; they move it as it was part of them, but there's no sensory connection to it. In reverse, the Spartan can also move the armor without moving themselves. Which is a good thing because being burned by plasma kinda hurts like a bitch.
@@huntersavok9811 The heaviest canonical Super-Heavy that got produced is the Omega, which clocks in at 150 tons. There was an April's Fools, now canonized, prototype called the Orca that clocked 200 tons, but it got mothballed in an undisclosed location.
Oh, cool. Would you like me to add atribution to the videos desctription or in a pinned comment? I don't know if your youtube handle is the same as your artist name but if you give me some details i would be more than happy to atribute the art to you.
"I don't see the government walking around with battlemechs two hundred years from now" I beg to differ, don't forget that two hundred years ago we relied on wind sails and wagon trains for everything. In two hundred years we went from wooden sail ships to the F-22 raptor and computers in our pockets. Don't discount what can happen in that time.
Yep, today (2024) NASA has plans to build a space station that orbits the moon (purpose is likely to refuel rockets since a lot of water was found). Add to that 'Breakthrough starshot' project aims to send a spaceship to the nearest star, okay the spaceshps are the size of microchips and planned to be propelled by lasers to achieve a significant fraction of light speed, but its impressive we are seriously considering it. So mini fusion reactor robots in 200 years, very likely...
the only problem I can forsee with that idea, is that it assumes that the same exponential advances in technology we have seen over the past 100 years, would continue indefinitely. and for a while we believed it would, I remember even in the 90's and 00's people thought advancement would just keep skyrocketing faster and faster. problem is that it hasn't, we've started to hit a wall in a lot of areas where things are starting to get about as advanced as we can currently make them. with subsequent improvement being more marginal, and coming slower. without another world changing breakthrough on par with the discovery and harnessing of electricity, advancement is only going to further slow down. (some sort of breakthrough in quantum computing or fusion power 'seems' most likely, and we have some promising avenues that are getting explored, but so far none of them have born much fruit. so who knows how long that might take, maybe we crack it next week, or maybe it takes another 500 years. or it could be something completely different that we aren't even aware of yet.)
@@darthragnarok1066 I work in chip design and the view forward is that there is another 20 years of tech advances to go, there always seems to be 20 years. However we are still working on a 2D Manhattan-style grid, so the work to make it 3D will give us (at a guess) at least 80 years of advances. For me, the biggest risk is elements of society that refuse to advance such as islamic societies where restricting females to breeding halves advancement and madrassa religious schools don't teach advanced physics to the men. Other downsides are soviet style regimes that promote copying rather than properly understanding technology...
That's what a lot of people don't think about. Because naysaying is trendy and people think it makes them look smart. The last veteran of the civil war died in 1956; when he was young, steam locomotives were the pinnacle of human technology, wonder machines. By the time he died he had seen automobiles, airplanes, radio communications, television, the first spacecraft, and freaking _nuclear weapons_ spreading around the world. We went from powering shit with hot water to harnessing the literal forces of stars
As a mercenary in MW5, my Bushido code has 2 rules. 1. Take the contract and complete all the objectives to the best of ability. 2. Never double cross your employer in the middle of a contract, campaign or multiple missions. Sometimes you have to abort a mission to fight another day. But even the enemy of your employer will hire you if you have a reputation of completing the job and having the loyalty to said employer. Even if it is the loyalty to C-bills. I'm fine with headdhots though. How you think i ended up taking down mechs that weigh more. If you're out armed and out armored you have a few options. Fight quick Fight smart Fight dirty as hell Fight like you're the 3rd chimpanzee approaching Noah's Ark, and brother its starting to rain. I utilize all of those, whether I'm in a Locust or Atlas. Ai gets no quarter amd Im taking all their salvage. I'd probably actively avoid headshots in MWO if I were to play. At least at first. Depends on who was playing and rules, gentlemens agreements etc. .
Actually, Headshots were so prolific in early MWO era, so the IGP era from 2011 to 2014 that it resulted in 5he developers nerfing both LRMs and Guass Riles due to how broken OP both are in the 3025 era tech bracket. So many random solo players were getting clapped from the other side of the map by organised clans who sent scouts to tag, begal probe or light up targets that then their backline Highlanders with Guass Rifles and Awesomes/Stalkers with showering LRM20s right into the cockpits of Atlases. I was the scout for a clan who'd show up with Awesomes and Catapults to every game and we'd rain down LRMs which I directed right into cockpits.
The Muscular structure I find most insteresting. In my headcanon that's why they take a lot of time to fix a mech, not just changing the armor plates and welding it back, but it might take an entire month the knot those fibers back in. Great vídeo!
There was a time when salvage was everything, or nearly everything. Then, the Helm Memory core is found; Davion's prince of pirates creates the NAIS; and if that wasn't enough, these hopped up, cannister born terror troopers claiming to be descendants of the famous Kerensky and the remnants of the SLDF army who had fled the Inner Sphere centuries ago. And, of course, Comstar, the last fragment of that ancient and glorious time in human history, the Star League sits and watches while the five Great Houses (and a couple of minor ones), get their arses handed to them in less then a year. The Clan leader has an accident, blown out of a Warship by a horked off Aerospace jock you know, so all of the blooded Clanner's truck back to the hole they spawned from to elect a new leader while leaving the bulk of their warriors sitting idle across the hundred or so worlds they'd taken. More planets changed leaders in 50' then in the entire century making up the Third Succession War. So, new leader in place, the Clanner's return and find that the Inner Sphere hadn't been cowering behind Comstar's robes. They'd been busy. Busy learning to work together for the first time in centuries. Learning to improve existing Mech designs and to build new ones. More importantly, the Comstar learned of the Clan's ultimate goal. The capture and 'liberation' of Terra. Terra - you know, Old Earth - the home and office for Comstar itself. Well, this didn't go over well with the pseudo religious techno geeks running the Inner Sphere's telecom corporation. So, as if by magic, the bulk of the Com Guards show up on some little, out of the way world where they challenge the entirety of the Clan's strutting around the Inner Sphere like they owned it to a sort of ritual duel. Just the sort of thing Clanner's get wet dreams about. The Clanner's howled in all their totem stoked glory and got the arse whoopin' of the century for their trouble. After nearly two weeks of battle, tens of thousands of Mechs, as many Tanks, Armored vehicles, air and spaceraft, plus an insane amount of PBI's (you know, Poor Bloody Infantry?), engaging each other across almost a score of proxy targets, the Clan's loose. And for their trouble, are sent to mop and scowl from a corner for fifteen years. Peace in the Inner Sphere at last... nah, sorry friends, but that isn't the Inner Sphere way. A couple of civil wars break out, a whole bunch of internal derision and familial in fighting amongst the senior nobility, and not to be outdone by a bunch of self-centered Inner Sphere so-and-so's, the Clanner's decide to do some fighting amongst themselves. Mostly to prove whose bigger and bader, by for some small consideration, trying to figure out what their goals were if good ole' Terra was nongrata. And then...what with Mech production nearly equal to the good ole' Star League days, and plenty of grudges and hate and discontent to share, the Great Houses have a go at each other, with mixed degrees of success Then comes the 2nd Star League, the destruction of one whole Clan merely to prove a point, mainly, f' with the Inner Sphere and get the business end of a PPC for your troubles. Yep, it's a great world to muck about in...
Only one thing: in that times when salvage were all (around the 3rd Succesion War) it was a cultural custom let alive the mechwarriors. You take their battlemechs but you let the pilots free.
@@yourseatatthetable Unless you were unfortunate to be a mercenary in Kurita territory. Then you might as well go down trying to take someone with you.
As an aside, the Royal variants of battlemechs have a "b" at the end of its designation. An example is the king Crab royal was actually the KGC-000b where as the bog standard contemporary was the KGC-000.
Ohhhhh I'm playing MW5 right now with the YAML mods that expand the library of mechs in game. Last night I was doing arena stuff to get better at damage distribution and accuracy and salvaged two Locusts with the "b" designation. They had XL engines and some other sensors and armor that I dkn't have access too in my markets yet. So that explains that, thanks a bunch, now I know.
King Crab KCG-000 is the SLDF version. The KCG-0000 is the Clan-Buster variant from the 3050s. And as to the neurohelm, the pilot is, at the most basic level, the 'Mech's inner ear, with their own sense of balance controlling the 'Mech's gyro speed and angle. More skilled pilots can pilot the 'Mech almost entirely hands-free, and can pull much more natural movements and martial arts.
@Donnerrob You're right. I don't know why, but I had long held that mix-up in my head. A friend of mine pointed my error in this, too. I find the slight reduction in damage an easy price to pay in exchange for a significant range bump and extra ammo. In tabletop RPG set in 3021, I have a combined arms merc commander that flies a MechBuster fighter with a recovered gauss rifle. Pretty solid air support, without having to get too close. :)
So the nero link is basically like titanfall two or 40k tau crisis suits and knights where it's not that you control it like a plane or car with a stick it's more you hold the stick to use muscle memory if you're training well thinking to move but if you're good at it it's more like Evangelion or ronin pilots in tf2 were you literally see through the mech or at least see through the screen but you think and it fills in the blanks and does the move with you using your sense of balance for it's basic gyros??? (Sorry for spelling)
@@RageDuck0 It is something like that, yes. The unconscious reactions, such as balance, are picked up by the neurohelm easily. Being able to use the neurohelm to move the mech in a more natural way, and the ability to see through the mech's sensors are more complex skills, but can be learned. The connection isn't surgical, but it does interact strongly with the brain - so much so that if the mech has an ammunition explosion or serious reactor problems, the feedback through the neurohelm will injur the pilot.
One time I was piloting a Dragon while rushing for something in Mech5, a Marauder showed up outta nowhere and I just reflex hook punched it, turns out I hit the cockpit and KO it, melee is a blessing
There was an old movie trilogy in the 80's that I loved. 'Robot Jox' The third one, 'Robot Holocust' went pretty detailed in how the mech he found worked. Even explained how the laser charged and needed time to build before firing.
@@Idontevenwanachannel Robot Wars is generally thought of as a sequel, but they're not related, except by the same producer. Never heard of Robot Holocaust before but I don't think it's related.
"You still have combined arms. You have tanks and infantry, the poor ground-pounding sods..." That's a long-winded way to say "You have 'Mechs, and you have targets."
About the neural interface, it does more than just allow the pilot to feel the situation of the mech. the AI of mechs is actually rather advance and will try to do things like avoid collisions with obstacles or losing balance on its own, however the pilot can use the link through the neurohelmet to transmit his intent to override such safeties (as after all in a combar situatuin sometimes you want to smash through that obstacle). In fact, its part of why piloting a mech is so hard: the process of learning to work alongside such an AI. AI in battletech is actually rather advanced, and went up to fully automated battleships at some point. in fact aiming is just the pilot alignign a crosshair with his target, its the AI that then takes care of calculating how to move the arms in order to hit the target.
Depends on time and faction. Around 3025 in the inner Sphere the helmets mainly exchangeed balance input and output from and to the pilot. Starleague and clan helmets were more advanced.
The fluff around the neurohelmet makes some sense in regards to the game’s piloting skill stat. But I’ve never been able to reconcile the gunnery skill stat with either the fiction or hypothetical technology. Modern tanks have systems to keep the gun stable and on target while doing the calculations for range, movement, etc. and it makes sense that a more advanced machine built 700+ years in the future could at least match that. So I guess a pilot’s “gunnery skill” is how good they are at using the mechs targeting designator? But then mechs are described as having significantly more advanced sensors and target acquisition than conventional forces. So it’s weird that when even the oldest and most basic mech can tell you the make and model of the thing shooting at you through radar, thermal imaging, and magnetic sensors that it can’t also figure out range and trajectory and compensate automatically. Besides deciding what guns to shoot where and pulling the trigger how involved, really, is the pilot in whether or not they hit anything? It makes sense as a game mechanic but I can’t make the fiction make sense
@@MonteKowalsky just think about playing MechWarrior. When piloting your mech, footwork+movement is a skill. But it's different from keeping the target in your reticle, adjusting for the various different weapons you are using, and knowing when to wait for a better shot. The AI may be able to handle the mechanical details of aiming, but the human adds a more tactical and strategic layer to things.
I don't know how many other people have noticed, but in-universe Mechwarriors rarely retreat or surrender *at all*, let alone after taking merely superficial damage. How much of that, I wonder, is the AI aboard the mechs 'leaking' back into the pilots through the neurohelmet? On some levels, Clan society ia closer to being a civilization of mechs than a civilization of humans.
@@Grizabeebles think it has other reasons... One, mechs are THE most effective weapon on the battlefield. If mechs retreat, that usually means the entire battle is lost. Plus mechwarriors are the elite, and may have egos to match as a result Two, mechs are actually relatively safe. Barring a huge ammo explosion or getting a gauss round in the cockpit, the pilot is likely to successfully eject, meaning fighting till the end isnt as risky as it could be for, say, tanks Lastly, while AI is advanced, it never reached sentience in the battletech setting (which may be why there isnt a single human/rogue AI conflict in yhe setting despite again AI having ran an entire warship fleet at one point, the black marauder being possibly the one exception if its not a litteral demon-possessed machine) so i doubt it has that much influence on the operator. Plus, just gotta watch the ability of machwarriors to blatantly ignore alarms like heat warnings to realise that they can really disregard their own machine for the sake of fighting harder. And another exemple of that is that if it was up to the onboard AI of the mech, it would do all it can to always avoid hitting the scenery, while mechwarriors smash through buildings without a second thought if it gives them the advantage, and they have to override the AI every time they do this or even just intentionally put their mech off-balance (to get prone ASAP for exemple)
29:40 As funny as that MWO-build may be, I ran mine with six RAC-2s - three per side. Allowed me to poke one arm out of cover and let loose the hail of shells. That thing was ....effective.
Its just funny how 3025 mechs were scare at first and then later on mechs are still produced in large numbers which makes sense but I love 3025 though..
HOW DO YOU ONLY HAVE 290 SUBSCRIBERS THIS IS SO GOOD?!?! This has some good production quality, and you do a good job at describing this in an understandable way. It almost feels like a podcast to be honest and I'd totally listen to that (I don't even listen to them and it would make me start to). I will be looking forward to watching more of these, keep up the good work!
21:29 to elaborate a bit further; you take your assault mech into battle, it survives but its precious star league armor was shredded and now needs to be supplemented, you on all accounts did well but a dual gauss strike criticalled your LRM launcher and the resulting cook-off destroyed the torso dropping your arm and its AC to the ground. with your objective of hit and run complete you make your leave as you cant stay around to eat artillery and aerospace strikes... that AC now belongs to them, your LRM is destroyed along with its C.A.S.E. and any heat sinks, the internals of the torso are totaled and a new actuator connection would be needed just to attach a replacement claw... which you can't find. in the repair process you have to drop a sink or some ammo to fit the heavier or more bulky armor. in addition for the duration of the fight you are a slow target, and the king crab specifically has a kill me profile from above... if they NARC and LRM you, you are dead, and there is only so much that escort units can do to help you. post mission status: i don't wanna use it again.
The mystery mech that was facing the camera back-first while dueling the atlas, at 18:12, is what I suspect is a savage wolf. This is the unofficial nickname by even the Clanners themselves for the timber wolf MKIV. At the very least, the arms have a similar profile as the models used in the Savage Wolf mod that Baradul used in one of his MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries playthroughs. Those arms and the flatter missile pods accommodate ATMs (advanced tactical missiles) instead of the LRMs that the MKI and MKII have. The arm weapons feature an ER (extended range) large laser on the right, and a HAG (hyperassault gauss rifle) 40, which will spit out a forty-round burst of probably metallic splinters at nearly the speed of light, in the left arm and no torso-mounted weapons other than the missiles in those pods.
100 years ago we were barely in the air taking flight, now we’re sending research vehicles out of the solar system and to other planets 🪐 (and YEARS ago now) Don’t underestimate where we could be in 200 years. Am gonna laugh if the battletech creators somehow got it right 😂
I have to point out we already have myomuscle today and we are working on neural links. The only thing keeping us from building Battle mechs today is a power source. We haven't yet figured out fusion power or the ability to draw energy directly from a nuclear reaction without using a tea kettle and turbine.
I love this series. It's hilarious. Your snarky breakdowns are fantastic. However, hate to burst your bubble on your beloved RACs, but they DO jam. Also, they can EXPLODE! Battlemech manual Rapid Fire weapons pg, 97. RAC pg 98.
Iirc, the King Crab is a bad example of lostech. The main difference between the 000 and the 0000 is Case for the ammo. It was built as a hammer and didn't change near as much as it's contemporaries did as a result.
@@horndogfred5246 The 0000 should be the downgraded version the IS had, while the 000 was the original. Then you had the 001, which I believe was the Hegemony variant that became the Clan Buster (twin Gauss).
At 17:57 the mech in the forground is a Timber Wolf MK2, assault class Timber Wolf, also you listed a Rifleman in the medium category, its a Heavy mech.
I loved 4 answer its my favorite of the series. I remember spending hours customizing and testing only to go back and do more refining and then 5 minutes on a single mission. I loved every minute of it
at 17:50, The Mech in the foreground is a Mad Cat MK.2 . It can get confusing because the Mk.1 version of the Mad Cat is so iconic that it dominants this kind of profile.
At 40:32 The comment about the Marauder looking like a queen alien... I'm sure someone in the comments probably know this, but in RogueTech (BattleTech mod), there's an optional install for a flashpoint called LV-426 (I think) that features, probably "bug" mechs, and a self-repairing/stealth Marauder that has a tail and claws.
Neurohelmets can be more accurately described as using the pilots own sense of balance to adjust the gyro and myomers to keep the mech upright. At least according to cannon.
Depends on Time and Faction. That is the thing for the first Neurohelmets (like in the Mackie) and inner sphere before clan invasion. Starleague had advanced helmets and Clans too. The ultra light clan mechs were close to fullneural interface with implants instead of a Helmet. Edit: I meant ProtoMechs. Not Ultra Light!
Your doing a good job so far a few things just need a bit of adjustment. Keep it up I’ve been into BattleTech/Mechwarrior since 90’s your really doing well explaining to new people.
Ultra Autocannons double the fire rate of an ordinary Autocanon, meaning they fire two rounds per shot. I would not compare it with a semiautomatic gun. Also, you did not mention the LBX version of Autocannon, which can use normal shells as well as cluster ammo, making them in that case a giant shotgun that peels away armor from the target and finding weak armor points to deal critical damage to the interiors.
One comment to make on the total weights, today a heavy mbt weighs in at 70-75 tons, I think the assault mechs would likely have gone heavier although there is a weight limit I guess for ground pressure. The second comment was that the guys who wrote the battlemech history had a weird idea of technology. Take microchips today, these are extremely high technology, the fabs are literally 10+ $billion dollar facilities, so if in a war these got nuked would we lose microchips? Yes, but the tech to manufacture them is produced by various companies all over the world, but in turn the tech to produce those is stored in many locations with main points being research labs and uni's. The Battletech universe seems to be one where everything has been destroyed, not very likely when you can spread your backups around multiple star systems. Its a great fun universe though.
One of the glaring weaknesses that should make mechs laughably inferior to tanks - aircraft like cockpits that effectively don’t protect the pilot. Realistically, it would be easy to develop a missile that targets the cockpit and always hits it, oneshotting the pilot. Anyway, all the things you talked about still don’t allow mechs to compete with tanks. You have to explain how you can armor the much larger surface area of a mech anything like competitively with a tank.
Their advantage would be mobility on very difficult terrain/ and the battletech cockpits ARE armored, we just don’t quite have the materials to copy them just yet (the way we dont have most the rest of it just yet) Most assault mechs have enough cockpit armor to sustain a half dozen strikes and many have angles that make them difficult to hit or pinpoint
The vulnerability to the cockpit is the biggest problem I have too with the battletech concept. I wonder if adding a extreme magnetic field that acted to deflect shots should have been added to the universe, if this protected the cockpit alone it could explain how survivable without being a whole forcefield. Think of earths magnetic field and sun radiation, if you could scale that up, blink it on when needed and deflect head shots it makes the battlemechs quite survivable, you would likely need insane levels of power, capacitors to store it and a fusion reactor to power it....
How does the RAC not jam when a UAC does? Well it has a lot to do with the feed mechanisms. If you actually look at how a modern gatling style gun operates, it drags the ammo chain through the gun with it. The bolt runs in tracks instead of relying on the cartridge itself to produce the gas or recoil needed to cycle the next round. Basically it takes catastrophic damage to the gun it the feed chain in order to jam a rotary gun. the UAS, like you say uses a semi auto style of operation. A round is loaded into the chamber through the loading mechanism it then fires the round and either uses the force of recoil to push the bolt back, or diverts a portion of the combustion gas of the shell to push a mechanical rod that in turn opens the bolt. The next round is then dropped into place essentially by a cog, and the closing bolt pushes the round into the chamber to be fired.
"Light mechs all suck." Bold words for a man thats flammable. :V Don't hate on the Firestarter, or else you might get surprised by what I like to call the "pocket Hunchback" variant, with 3 small and 6 medium lasers.
The rac actually makes sense.. Miniguns seldom jam because of the feed mechanism, whereas bolt operated machine guns jam malfunction all the time. Look up videos of our guys slapping the 50 cal in Afghanistan over and over as it gets hot to make it work, and those are considered really reliable, all things considered. Granted, I think MWO does a crap job of depicting all of the uacs as rotary weapons... But I don't think that's how they're intended to be shown. Fantastic podcast. Been a Mechwarrior fan since my babysitter installed Crescent Hawks Revenge on my 'outer when I was 7, and I still learned a bunch here. I've never thought about the muscles being why torso twist is limited, for example. Very cool.
As a fellow King Crab lover, I gotta ask, have you ever seen the Omega? It’s like a bigger, angrier king crab, with PPC’s on its arms and 3 heavy Gauss rifles sticking up off the top. The thing looks like some sort of walking anti-orbital gun 😂
Can somebody explain to me how a modern M1A1 tank is 55 tons and it’s the size that it is and yet a heavy Mech starts at 55 tons and is drastically larger(5 stories tall)? I’m over thinking it, I know. But still.
They have super light but strong materials. And the majority of mechs are made up of synthetic muscle fiber bundles that work just human muscles. So it makes things considerably lighter.
@@tylergoodman5394 I suppose. But that brings to my other questions about mech dynamics. How can you store ammo in the legs for a torso or arm mounted weapon. SRMs and LRMs are not small. The feed system alone would be cool to know about. Again. Over thinking things.
Low balling the weight on things like ships and vehicles is something a lot of sci-fi settings do. To me it seems like even with highly advanced and lightweight armors and components you could still add a 0 to all the mechs tonnage and still seem to light.
I have seen this question thread. There are in universe explanations for these things but in the spirit of honesty. It's a science fiction universe. The very first goal of the setting was "I want to have big stompy mechs blowing each other up" Everything else came afterwords. Most of it's just sci-fi bullshittery. Same as starwars or startrek, just pretend it all makes sense and it all makes perfect sense ;)
So the nero interface is basically the pilot control system of titan fall two where you still push the stick forward to move but your not really driving it like a plane where you sit in it it's more you push the stick forward and the computer makes the mech move and you still feel your body and know your you looking through the cockpit????. Or is it more like pacific rim and 40k knights where you see through the cockpit screen but its total thought where you basically know you're moving or you literally move you're arm as you sit there and see the mech move with the computer filling in the blanks and you don't move the sticks there more just so yoi can hold on and keep the link strong
You ever been hip deep in water with your triple ppc nova cat? Ever used that nova cat to one shot an atlas rookie? Lets me give you my lance commanders motto, Kill the meat, save the metal.
Atlas vs unidentified was most likely be a timberwolf variant. It appears to most closely resemble the Mad Cat Mk IV (Savage Wolf) by Clan Sea Fox from 3136. When you where discussing the origin of the name Mad Cat, a Timberwolf varient from the front. It should be acknowledged however this is NOT the traditional artwork for a Timberwolf, nor have I been able to find an actual official variant that it matches. I only have TRO through 3067 but I have been unable to find anything published onliine elsewhere that indicates a change of art to the more integrated missile racks. I have however seen 3d printer files of similar style leading me to believe it MAY be a render of one of the MWO computer game's variants as 3d printer files are commonly lifted from game asset files and I have seen a couple such files attributed to MWO using the more integrated missile racks seen during that later discussion. Though I was a "Legendary Founder" member on MWO, I did not play long enough to play with clan mechs to any extent.
I was playing mwo one with a cplt-k2 i set up with some light ppcs in the arms and a rac2 in each side torso. Some poor bastard decides to close in to melee range thinking he would get inside the minimum range of the ppcs. Ive never seen a torso disapear so fast. Not just one side or the other but the whole torso. Those damn things took forever to spool up but i pitty anything dumb enough to still be standing there when they get going.
No Gauss rifle? The only ballistic weapon that had unlimited ammo as you could load cars from a city or medium to large-sized rocks into it and shoot them at your opponent. And you got sidetracked and skipped the MRM missiles.
No rocks except they are full metal rocks. And if you don't talk about Naval Gauss cannons No car loading into the rifle. But you can load a double t-beam (not sure if it's the right word. just translatet from german.) And with every such shot you risk to destroy the weapon.
I'm listenting to this as I'm playing MWO currently at 32:53 , THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME but it was two light mechs and I was in a heavy...... I only lived cause my team b-lined to my position damn lil bastards
24:22 I have to stop you right there. The KGC-0000 is NOT the Royal variant. Quite the opposite. The KGC-0000 is what the Inner Sphere cobbled together to get some semblance of the BASELINE model operational once more. The Royal variant you are thinking of is the KGC-000b to get Double heat sinks and an Artemis IV in there. Plus extra ammo for the AC20s
Hi, I've grown to love this universe through the videogames. So I have little knowledge about the lore. What books should I read to have the base lore? Thank you
So, I cant recomend anything i think would be the "best" or "correct" books to start with because most of battletech is highly self contained. Most of the books are a pinhole focus on the universe. Some follow individual bands of rebels or mercenaries as they grow, succed and fail. Some are all about individual battles or the situations around them like the clan invasion. Personaly, I would recomend "the saga of the grey death legion" which has like, 9 books, 10 books? Something like that. The series follows the very first mercenary company in battletech. Its filled with action, drama and works as a great intro to the lore because its mostly self contained. Also, if you enjoy it, the saga spans lots of books so you have a long running source of enjoyment like the game of thrones series. The other book i would recomend is "The Killing fields" This story is a lot darker in my oppinion, I wont spoil it, because you follow the udnerdog side of the conflict and have to watch as the hopefull young characters and idealogues suffer through the horrors of Battletechs grinding atrritional warfare. By the end your left wondering who was the goodguy and what the idea of the "goodguy" even is. Its great if you want to feel emotionaly drained by the end.
Check out Black Pants Legion and Razorfist. BPL does really great lore dives. Amazing in-universe flavor sprinkled in as well as original artwork that the community he works with has done specifically for his lore dives. Razorfist is political, but you can easily ignore that bit and locate the videos he's done on Battletech; he's a really big fan of the lore and his intro covers a great deal, while his reading of the first novel isn't bad either. I believe he might have a list of books too, but my memory on that is foggy.
The mech runs up to you and says "Taste the Rainbow Motherfucker"... I have to do a lot of repair and replacement of my mini's collection... 3+ decades of use takes its toll on a mini... I am ABSOLUTELY making a "special mech" that is a laser boat with that painted on the torso. "Mech Varient - SKT
Battlecruiser Emperor's Hammer, transits from the warp. Inquisitor Apollyon.... Scan that planet commander.... Sir, its on screen... By the Emperor! Tau xenos have upgraded... Walks to exterminatus button...May the emperor guide my forehead... EXTERMINATUS!!!! (multiple forehead hits to the big red button)🤯 Commander, set course to Elysium IX😒 Apollyon walks away😏
The old (unseen) Warhammer was the face of battletech. But because of licensing issues (They just stole the designs from macross) they changed the design for a lot of Mechs (Warhammer, Marauder, Ostol, Battle Master and others.) So The Atlas became the new Face of Battletech and the Timberwulf was more the face for the clans because of mechwarrior 2 and the correspondig technical readout for the clan invasion. (3052 in germany. The books always had different years between english and german version.)
Chad light mech enjoyers know your satisfaction doesn't come from defeating your opponents, its stealth killing everything they were supposed to protect and dipping before they can catch up.
Yeah okay that picture that you were showing with the atlas the other one is a Marauder 2C. That's a clan assault Meck and that's a bad day for anybody..
Only one thing. I think you point to the head of the 'mech no becouse is better save the metal. You have two options: So you fight the enemy firing against the body in a large combat with easy shoots (with all the possibilities against you been smashed) or maybe you make a difficult instakill shooting too the head and making it ends quickly (with less posibilites of ending you dead)? It isn't about "men is expendable, 'mech isn't", it's about survival. Regard.
The only 3025 weapon that is capable of head capping everything is AC/20. One-shotting things in 3025 is very unlikely with a headshot. Even if you do hit the head with an ML or even a PPC, chances are, you rattle the pilot, expose the inner structure and hopefully damage something important, like sensors. A lot of weapons don't even reliably burn off all the head armour, especially on stuff with Narrow/Low Profile
@Nemamiah I understand that is more probable to die by a head shoot that by a torso impact. If we are talking about what is more expendable, the 'mech or the pilot, we must point to the head. That's the point. Or when you get a +4 (if I remember well) when you point to a specific part of the 'mech? And this is in all eras.
@@Antoine_Colette "Called Shots" is an optional rule and only available in normal circumstance on the immobile target. Read: a Mech that had shut-down due to overheating or a Mech that has a pilot unconscious. In a normal fight it is impossible to perform Called Shots at all, so you don't even have the option to target the head. So you only hit it on 12s on the hit location. The fastest way to "get through" into the mech is Backshot, with most mechs in IntroTech sporting insufficient armour (unless it's an AWS or smth) and with criticals hits travelling inwards, even if you don't have anything explodie in the side torsos if you breach those, there's a nice chance of capping Gyro or Engine. And often enough, especially against mechs who have explodie ammo, breaking through the armour into the fleshy bits is way faster and more reliable than fishing for the elusive headshot. That won't kill anyway, unless you're sporting an AC/20.
@@nemamiah7832 And additionally headshots were simply not so common because mechwarriors want to survive. If everybody is going for the head nobody suvives long. So... As an unwritten rule... normally Mechwarriors don't go for the head.
The battlemech is an awesome war machine, but greatest big stompy robots in all science fiction? I'm a bit more partial to mobile suits from Gundam if I'm being honest. Also the Armored Troopers from VOTOMS (which are also called VOTOMS as well) ain't no slouch either. And then of course there are my personal faves, the ACs from Armored Core.
"Thank God it was a cockpit hit! We'll slap a new one in and she'll be right and tight in a few hours. Whew, we really lucked out on that one..."
- Every tech ever, probably
"If that mech jock had been more polite I would have installed that cockpit armor correctly. Shame."
“Just need a few cheapo control interfaces. New joystick, new throttle, I think I got a few in my junkdrawer.”
@@TheBloodedCat
Hey, he said "fix the ejector seat" -'said nothing about the canopy release.
Luckiest shot in HBS BattleTech I ever made was a cockpit headshot during the campaign mission to salvage the Argo. Instantly I have a nice shiny Quickdraw to play with.
Yes, there are better options for a heavy mech out there, but for your first heavy-and one with jump jets-it’s a pretty good option.
At least until the Clans show up, they tend to take cockpit shots personal. Like declare you Dezgra, personal. Which is why I’m not allowed to near any planet with Jade Falcons on it.
Your first mistake was tangling with clanners. Your second mistake was allowing survivors to make it to the HPG....
@@andrewamann2821 Third mistake was trying to do something dishonorable in front of the sons and daughters of Elizabeth Hazen
@@KillerOrca nah... The solution to those problems are still provided by a couple of gauss rounds through the cockpit.
@@andrewamann2821 suffer not the Clanner to live.
@@KillerOrca Hey, I know you!
13:38 Small correction, here's the weight class distributions
10-15 tons - Ultralight Mech
20-35 tons - Light Mech
40-55 tons - Medium Mech
60-75 tons - Heavy Mech
80-100 tons - Assault mechs
105+ tons - Superheavy mechs
Also, the Rifleman is a heavy Mech (as it weighs in at 60 tons)
Spartan's cant feel their MJLONIR either; they move it as it was part of them, but there's no sensory connection to it. In reverse, the Spartan can also move the armor without moving themselves.
Which is a good thing because being burned by plasma kinda hurts like a bitch.
@@KillerOrca superheavy mechs go up to 200 tons if i remember right
@@huntersavok9811 The heaviest canonical Super-Heavy that got produced is the Omega, which clocks in at 150 tons. There was an April's Fools, now canonized, prototype called the Orca that clocked 200 tons, but it got mothballed in an undisclosed location.
@@Tzilandithe Orca looks like a Russian KV-2 just said “Nyet, am Bipedal now.”
Hey there! I'm the guy who painted up the "naked" Marauder thumbnail image for that Tex Talk! Super neat to stumble across it in the wild!
Honestly, recognizing that thumbnail was the first reason I clicked on the vid to watch. Wasn't disappointed with the content.
Oh, cool. Would you like me to add atribution to the videos desctription or in a pinned comment? I don't know if your youtube handle is the same as your artist name but if you give me some details i would be more than happy to atribute the art to you.
"I don't see the government walking around with battlemechs two hundred years from now"
I beg to differ, don't forget that two hundred years ago we relied on wind sails and wagon trains for everything. In two hundred years we went from wooden sail ships to the F-22 raptor and computers in our pockets. Don't discount what can happen in that time.
Yep, today (2024) NASA has plans to build a space station that orbits the moon (purpose is likely to refuel rockets since a lot of water was found). Add to that 'Breakthrough starshot' project aims to send a spaceship to the nearest star, okay the spaceshps are the size of microchips and planned to be propelled by lasers to achieve a significant fraction of light speed, but its impressive we are seriously considering it.
So mini fusion reactor robots in 200 years, very likely...
the only problem I can forsee with that idea, is that it assumes that the same exponential advances in technology we have seen over the past 100 years, would continue indefinitely.
and for a while we believed it would, I remember even in the 90's and 00's people thought advancement would just keep skyrocketing faster and faster.
problem is that it hasn't, we've started to hit a wall in a lot of areas where things are starting to get about as advanced as we can currently make them. with subsequent improvement being more marginal, and coming slower. without another world changing breakthrough on par with the discovery and harnessing of electricity, advancement is only going to further slow down. (some sort of breakthrough in quantum computing or fusion power 'seems' most likely, and we have some promising avenues that are getting explored, but so far none of them have born much fruit. so who knows how long that might take, maybe we crack it next week, or maybe it takes another 500 years. or it could be something completely different that we aren't even aware of yet.)
@@darthragnarok1066 I work in chip design and the view forward is that there is another 20 years of tech advances to go, there always seems to be 20 years.
However we are still working on a 2D Manhattan-style grid, so the work to make it 3D will give us (at a guess) at least 80 years of advances.
For me, the biggest risk is elements of society that refuse to advance such as islamic societies where restricting females to breeding halves advancement and madrassa religious schools don't teach advanced physics to the men. Other downsides are soviet style regimes that promote copying rather than properly understanding technology...
That's what a lot of people don't think about. Because naysaying is trendy and people think it makes them look smart. The last veteran of the civil war died in 1956; when he was young, steam locomotives were the pinnacle of human technology, wonder machines. By the time he died he had seen automobiles, airplanes, radio communications, television, the first spacecraft, and freaking _nuclear weapons_ spreading around the world. We went from powering shit with hot water to harnessing the literal forces of stars
we have to survive long enough and mankind are not making that easy
As a mercenary in MW5, my Bushido code has 2 rules.
1. Take the contract and complete all the objectives to the best of ability.
2. Never double cross your employer in the middle of a contract, campaign or multiple missions.
Sometimes you have to abort a mission to fight another day. But even the enemy of your employer will hire you if you have a reputation of completing the job and having the loyalty to said employer. Even if it is the loyalty to C-bills.
I'm fine with headdhots though. How you think i ended up taking down mechs that weigh more.
If you're out armed and out armored you have a few options.
Fight quick
Fight smart
Fight dirty as hell
Fight like you're the 3rd chimpanzee approaching Noah's Ark, and brother its starting to rain.
I utilize all of those, whether I'm in a Locust or Atlas.
Ai gets no quarter amd Im taking all their salvage.
I'd probably actively avoid headshots in MWO if I were to play. At least at first. Depends on who was playing and rules, gentlemens agreements etc.
.
Actually, Headshots were so prolific in early MWO era, so the IGP era from 2011 to 2014 that it resulted in 5he developers nerfing both LRMs and Guass Riles due to how broken OP both are in the 3025 era tech bracket. So many random solo players were getting clapped from the other side of the map by organised clans who sent scouts to tag, begal probe or light up targets that then their backline Highlanders with Guass Rifles and Awesomes/Stalkers with showering LRM20s right into the cockpits of Atlases. I was the scout for a clan who'd show up with Awesomes and Catapults to every game and we'd rain down LRMs which I directed right into cockpits.
The Muscular structure I find most insteresting. In my headcanon that's why they take a lot of time to fix a mech, not just changing the armor plates and welding it back, but it might take an entire month the knot those fibers back in. Great vídeo!
There was a time when salvage was everything, or nearly everything. Then, the Helm Memory core is found; Davion's prince of pirates creates the NAIS; and if that wasn't enough, these hopped up, cannister born terror troopers claiming to be descendants of the famous Kerensky and the remnants of the SLDF army who had fled the Inner Sphere centuries ago. And, of course, Comstar, the last fragment of that ancient and glorious time in human history, the Star League sits and watches while the five Great Houses (and a couple of minor ones), get their arses handed to them in less then a year. The Clan leader has an accident, blown out of a Warship by a horked off Aerospace jock you know, so all of the blooded Clanner's truck back to the hole they spawned from to elect a new leader while leaving the bulk of their warriors sitting idle across the hundred or so worlds they'd taken. More planets changed leaders in 50' then in the entire century making up the Third Succession War.
So, new leader in place, the Clanner's return and find that the Inner Sphere hadn't been cowering behind Comstar's robes. They'd been busy. Busy learning to work together for the first time in centuries. Learning to improve existing Mech designs and to build new ones. More importantly, the Comstar learned of the Clan's ultimate goal. The capture and 'liberation' of Terra. Terra - you know, Old Earth - the home and office for Comstar itself. Well, this didn't go over well with the pseudo religious techno geeks running the Inner Sphere's telecom corporation. So, as if by magic, the bulk of the Com Guards show up on some little, out of the way world where they challenge the entirety of the Clan's strutting around the Inner Sphere like they owned it to a sort of ritual duel. Just the sort of thing Clanner's get wet dreams about.
The Clanner's howled in all their totem stoked glory and got the arse whoopin' of the century for their trouble. After nearly two weeks of battle, tens of thousands of Mechs, as many Tanks, Armored vehicles, air and spaceraft, plus an insane amount of PBI's (you know, Poor Bloody Infantry?), engaging each other across almost a score of proxy targets, the Clan's loose. And for their trouble, are sent to mop and scowl from a corner for fifteen years.
Peace in the Inner Sphere at last... nah, sorry friends, but that isn't the Inner Sphere way. A couple of civil wars break out, a whole bunch of internal derision and familial in fighting amongst the senior nobility, and not to be outdone by a bunch of self-centered Inner Sphere so-and-so's, the Clanner's decide to do some fighting amongst themselves. Mostly to prove whose bigger and bader, by for some small consideration, trying to figure out what their goals were if good ole' Terra was nongrata.
And then...what with Mech production nearly equal to the good ole' Star League days, and plenty of grudges and hate and discontent to share, the Great Houses have a go at each other, with mixed degrees of success
Then comes the 2nd Star League, the destruction of one whole Clan merely to prove a point, mainly, f' with the Inner Sphere and get the business end of a PPC for your troubles. Yep, it's a great world to muck about in...
Only one thing: in that times when salvage were all (around the 3rd Succesion War) it was a cultural custom let alive the mechwarriors. You take their battlemechs but you let the pilots free.
@@Antoine_Colette Or, some would trade them for captured pilots or exchange for something, depending on one's house or faction.
@@yourseatatthetable Unless you were unfortunate to be a mercenary in Kurita territory. Then you might as well go down trying to take someone with you.
As an aside, the Royal variants of battlemechs have a "b" at the end of its designation. An example is the king Crab royal was actually the KGC-000b where as the bog standard contemporary was the KGC-000.
Ohhhhh I'm playing MW5 right now with the YAML mods that expand the library of mechs in game. Last night I was doing arena stuff to get better at damage distribution and accuracy and salvaged two Locusts with the "b" designation. They had XL engines and some other sensors and armor that I dkn't have access too in my markets yet.
So that explains that, thanks a bunch, now I know.
King Crab KCG-000 is the SLDF version. The KCG-0000 is the Clan-Buster variant from the 3050s. And as to the neurohelm, the pilot is, at the most basic level, the 'Mech's inner ear, with their own sense of balance controlling the 'Mech's gyro speed and angle. More skilled pilots can pilot the 'Mech almost entirely hands-free, and can pull much more natural movements and martial arts.
Nah Bro, 0000 is the succession war downgrade, 001 is the clanbuster!
@Donnerrob You're right. I don't know why, but I had long held that mix-up in my head. A friend of mine pointed my error in this, too. I find the slight reduction in damage an easy price to pay in exchange for a significant range bump and extra ammo. In tabletop RPG set in 3021, I have a combined arms merc commander that flies a MechBuster fighter with a recovered gauss rifle. Pretty solid air support, without having to get too close. :)
So the nero link is basically like titanfall two or 40k tau crisis suits and knights where it's not that you control it like a plane or car with a stick it's more you hold the stick to use muscle memory if you're training well thinking to move but if you're good at it it's more like Evangelion or ronin pilots in tf2 were you literally see through the mech or at least see through the screen but you think and it fills in the blanks and does the move with you using your sense of balance for it's basic gyros??? (Sorry for spelling)
@@RageDuck0 It is something like that, yes. The unconscious reactions, such as balance, are picked up by the neurohelm easily. Being able to use the neurohelm to move the mech in a more natural way, and the ability to see through the mech's sensors are more complex skills, but can be learned. The connection isn't surgical, but it does interact strongly with the brain - so much so that if the mech has an ammunition explosion or serious reactor problems, the feedback through the neurohelm will injur the pilot.
One time I was piloting a Dragon while rushing for something in Mech5, a Marauder showed up outta nowhere and I just reflex hook punched it, turns out I hit the cockpit and KO it, melee is a blessing
There was an old movie trilogy in the 80's that I loved. 'Robot Jox' The third one, 'Robot Holocust' went pretty detailed in how the mech he found worked. Even explained how the laser charged and needed time to build before firing.
Wait, there were sequels to robot jox? Oh boy, I think I know what I'm dragging my friends into next movie night
@@Idontevenwanachannel
Robot Wars is generally thought of as a sequel, but they're not related, except by the same producer. Never heard of Robot Holocaust before but I don't think it's related.
"You still have combined arms. You have tanks and infantry, the poor ground-pounding sods..." That's a long-winded way to say "You have 'Mechs, and you have targets."
21:31 a Steiner player in waiting.
About the neural interface, it does more than just allow the pilot to feel the situation of the mech. the AI of mechs is actually rather advance and will try to do things like avoid collisions with obstacles or losing balance on its own, however the pilot can use the link through the neurohelmet to transmit his intent to override such safeties (as after all in a combar situatuin sometimes you want to smash through that obstacle). In fact, its part of why piloting a mech is so hard: the process of learning to work alongside such an AI.
AI in battletech is actually rather advanced, and went up to fully automated battleships at some point. in fact aiming is just the pilot alignign a crosshair with his target, its the AI that then takes care of calculating how to move the arms in order to hit the target.
Depends on time and faction. Around 3025 in the inner Sphere the helmets mainly exchangeed balance input and output from and to the pilot. Starleague and clan helmets were more advanced.
The fluff around the neurohelmet makes some sense in regards to the game’s piloting skill stat. But I’ve never been able to reconcile the gunnery skill stat with either the fiction or hypothetical technology. Modern tanks have systems to keep the gun stable and on target while doing the calculations for range, movement, etc. and it makes sense that a more advanced machine built 700+ years in the future could at least match that.
So I guess a pilot’s “gunnery skill” is how good they are at using the mechs targeting designator?
But then mechs are described as having significantly more advanced sensors and target acquisition than conventional forces. So it’s weird that when even the oldest and most basic mech can tell you the make and model of the thing shooting at you through radar, thermal imaging, and magnetic sensors that it can’t also figure out range and trajectory and compensate automatically. Besides deciding what guns to shoot where and pulling the trigger how involved, really, is the pilot in whether or not they hit anything?
It makes sense as a game mechanic but I can’t make the fiction make sense
@@MonteKowalsky just think about playing MechWarrior. When piloting your mech, footwork+movement is a skill. But it's different from keeping the target in your reticle, adjusting for the various different weapons you are using, and knowing when to wait for a better shot.
The AI may be able to handle the mechanical details of aiming, but the human adds a more tactical and strategic layer to things.
I don't know how many other people have noticed, but in-universe Mechwarriors rarely retreat or surrender *at all*, let alone after taking merely superficial damage.
How much of that, I wonder, is the AI aboard the mechs 'leaking' back into the pilots through the neurohelmet?
On some levels, Clan society ia closer to being a civilization of mechs than a civilization of humans.
@@Grizabeebles think it has other reasons...
One, mechs are THE most effective weapon on the battlefield. If mechs retreat, that usually means the entire battle is lost. Plus mechwarriors are the elite, and may have egos to match as a result
Two, mechs are actually relatively safe. Barring a huge ammo explosion or getting a gauss round in the cockpit, the pilot is likely to successfully eject, meaning fighting till the end isnt as risky as it could be for, say, tanks
Lastly, while AI is advanced, it never reached sentience in the battletech setting (which may be why there isnt a single human/rogue AI conflict in yhe setting despite again AI having ran an entire warship fleet at one point, the black marauder being possibly the one exception if its not a litteral demon-possessed machine) so i doubt it has that much influence on the operator. Plus, just gotta watch the ability of machwarriors to blatantly ignore alarms like heat warnings to realise that they can really disregard their own machine for the sake of fighting harder. And another exemple of that is that if it was up to the onboard AI of the mech, it would do all it can to always avoid hitting the scenery, while mechwarriors smash through buildings without a second thought if it gives them the advantage, and they have to override the AI every time they do this or even just intentionally put their mech off-balance (to get prone ASAP for exemple)
Gatlingguns load & unload even when the round doesn't fire, that is how a RAC should function. They only jam for "balance"
RAC can fix a jam, Ultra Autocannons can't fix a jam in a fight.
29:40 As funny as that MWO-build may be, I ran mine with six RAC-2s - three per side. Allowed me to poke one arm out of cover and let loose the hail of shells. That thing was ....effective.
Its just funny how 3025 mechs were scare at first and then later on mechs are still produced in large numbers which makes sense but I love 3025 though..
HOW DO YOU ONLY HAVE 290 SUBSCRIBERS THIS IS SO GOOD?!?!
This has some good production quality, and you do a good job at describing this in an understandable way. It almost feels like a podcast to be honest and I'd totally listen to that (I don't even listen to them and it would make me start to). I will be looking forward to watching more of these, keep up the good work!
"They like to use assault mechs....... a LOT" House Steiner?? 😜
Ok," Taste the Rainbow " got to me. Well played.
Rifleman IS a HEAVY MECH
21:29 to elaborate a bit further; you take your assault mech into battle, it survives but its precious star league armor was shredded and now needs to be supplemented, you on all accounts did well but a dual gauss strike criticalled your LRM launcher and the resulting cook-off destroyed the torso dropping your arm and its AC to the ground.
with your objective of hit and run complete you make your leave as you cant stay around to eat artillery and aerospace strikes...
that AC now belongs to them, your LRM is destroyed along with its C.A.S.E. and any heat sinks, the internals of the torso are totaled and a new actuator connection would be needed just to attach a replacement claw... which you can't find. in the repair process you have to drop a sink or some ammo to fit the heavier or more bulky armor.
in addition for the duration of the fight you are a slow target, and the king crab specifically has a kill me profile from above... if they NARC and LRM you, you are dead, and there is only so much that escort units can do to help you.
post mission status: i don't wanna use it again.
Great video, your descriptions are very entertaining, and pretty accurate. Subbed!
The mystery mech that was facing the camera back-first while dueling the atlas, at 18:12, is what I suspect is a savage wolf. This is the unofficial nickname by even the Clanners themselves for the timber wolf MKIV. At the very least, the arms have a similar profile as the models used in the Savage Wolf mod that Baradul used in one of his MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries playthroughs. Those arms and the flatter missile pods accommodate ATMs (advanced tactical missiles) instead of the LRMs that the MKI and MKII have. The arm weapons feature an ER (extended range) large laser on the right, and a HAG (hyperassault gauss rifle) 40, which will spit out a forty-round burst of probably metallic splinters at nearly the speed of light, in the left arm and no torso-mounted weapons other than the missiles in those pods.
Everyone gangsta until the 15 trashcans start shooting
100 years ago we were barely in the air taking flight, now we’re sending research vehicles out of the solar system and to other planets 🪐 (and YEARS ago now)
Don’t underestimate where we could be in 200 years.
Am gonna laugh if the battletech creators somehow got it right 😂
I have to point out we already have myomuscle today and we are working on neural links. The only thing keeping us from building Battle mechs today is a power source. We haven't yet figured out fusion power or the ability to draw energy directly from a nuclear reaction without using a tea kettle and turbine.
I love this series. It's hilarious. Your snarky breakdowns are fantastic.
However, hate to burst your bubble on your beloved RACs, but they DO jam. Also, they can EXPLODE! Battlemech manual Rapid Fire weapons pg, 97. RAC pg 98.
"All Light Mechs Are Shit" - Geneva Convention Lover
Light's are where the bad fun starts
Iirc, the King Crab is a bad example of lostech. The main difference between the 000 and the 0000 is Case for the ammo. It was built as a hammer and didn't change near as much as it's contemporaries did as a result.
That's because the clans thought it was heresy to fuck with a design that Kerinsky thought was good.
@@horndogfred5246 The 0000 should be the downgraded version the IS had, while the 000 was the original. Then you had the 001, which I believe was the Hegemony variant that became the Clan Buster (twin Gauss).
At 17:57 the mech in the forground is a Timber Wolf MK2, assault class Timber Wolf, also you listed a Rifleman in the medium category, its a Heavy mech.
Using Assault Mechs are gross overkill? Have you heard the gospel of House Steiner's Scout Lance?
I loved 4 answer its my favorite of the series. I remember spending hours customizing and testing only to go back and do more refining and then 5 minutes on a single mission. I loved every minute of it
at 17:50, The Mech in the foreground is a Mad Cat MK.2 . It can get confusing because the Mk.1 version of the Mad Cat is so iconic that it dominants this kind of profile.
At 40:32 The comment about the Marauder looking like a queen alien... I'm sure someone in the comments probably know this, but in RogueTech (BattleTech mod), there's an optional install for a flashpoint called LV-426 (I think) that features, probably "bug" mechs, and a self-repairing/stealth Marauder that has a tail and claws.
Im not into the actual games. But the original (unseen) Marauder design is litteraly stolen from an alien race from Macross.
When discussing Mech combat, you weren't sure what Mech had its back to the "camera". I think that's a Mad Cat Mk. II.
Neurohelmets can be more accurately described as using the pilots own sense of balance to adjust the gyro and myomers to keep the mech upright. At least according to cannon.
Depends on Time and Faction. That is the thing for the first Neurohelmets (like in the Mackie) and inner sphere before clan invasion. Starleague had advanced helmets and Clans too. The ultra light clan mechs were close to fullneural interface with implants instead of a Helmet.
Edit: I meant ProtoMechs. Not Ultra Light!
Great episode you have earned a subscriber i love your descriptions of the tech
I'm enjoying the FTL soundtrack in the background ❤ takes me to a special time in life
Your doing a good job so far a few things just need a bit of adjustment. Keep it up I’ve been into BattleTech/Mechwarrior since 90’s your really doing well explaining to new people.
Tex will be proud with this podcast i think
Ultra Autocannons double the fire rate of an ordinary Autocanon, meaning they fire two rounds per shot. I would not compare it with a semiautomatic gun. Also, you did not mention the LBX version of Autocannon, which can use normal shells as well as cluster ammo, making them in that case a giant shotgun that peels away armor from the target and finding weak armor points to deal critical damage to the interiors.
My own personal headcannon for how ammo moves through a mech is myomer peristalsis (the muscle movement that lets you swallow for those who dont know)
One comment to make on the total weights, today a heavy mbt weighs in at 70-75 tons, I think the assault mechs would likely have gone heavier although there is a weight limit I guess for ground pressure.
The second comment was that the guys who wrote the battlemech history had a weird idea of technology. Take microchips today, these are extremely high technology, the fabs are literally 10+ $billion dollar facilities, so if in a war these got nuked would we lose microchips?
Yes, but the tech to manufacture them is produced by various companies all over the world, but in turn the tech to produce those is stored in many locations with main points being research labs and uni's. The Battletech universe seems to be one where everything has been destroyed, not very likely when you can spread your backups around multiple star systems.
Its a great fun universe though.
One of the glaring weaknesses that should make mechs laughably inferior to tanks - aircraft like cockpits that effectively don’t protect the pilot. Realistically, it would be easy to develop a missile that targets the cockpit and always hits it, oneshotting the pilot.
Anyway, all the things you talked about still don’t allow mechs to compete with tanks. You have to explain how you can armor the much larger surface area of a mech anything like competitively with a tank.
Their advantage would be mobility on very difficult terrain/ and the battletech cockpits ARE armored, we just don’t quite have the materials to copy them just yet (the way we dont have most the rest of it just yet)
Most assault mechs have enough cockpit armor to sustain a half dozen strikes and many have angles that make them difficult to hit or pinpoint
The vulnerability to the cockpit is the biggest problem I have too with the battletech concept. I wonder if adding a extreme magnetic field that acted to deflect shots should have been added to the universe, if this protected the cockpit alone it could explain how survivable without being a whole forcefield.
Think of earths magnetic field and sun radiation, if you could scale that up, blink it on when needed and deflect head shots it makes the battlemechs quite survivable, you would likely need insane levels of power, capacitors to store it and a fusion reactor to power it....
How does the RAC not jam when a UAC does? Well it has a lot to do with the feed mechanisms. If you actually look at how a modern gatling style gun operates, it drags the ammo chain through the gun with it. The bolt runs in tracks instead of relying on the cartridge itself to produce the gas or recoil needed to cycle the next round. Basically it takes catastrophic damage to the gun it the feed chain in order to jam a rotary gun. the UAS, like you say uses a semi auto style of operation. A round is loaded into the chamber through the loading mechanism it then fires the round and either uses the force of recoil to push the bolt back, or diverts a portion of the combustion gas of the shell to push a mechanical rod that in turn opens the bolt. The next round is then dropped into place essentially by a cog, and the closing bolt pushes the round into the chamber to be fired.
Great background noise for MW5, great video.
"Light mechs all suck."
Bold words for a man thats flammable. :V Don't hate on the Firestarter, or else you might get surprised by what I like to call the "pocket Hunchback" variant, with 3 small and 6 medium lasers.
Like the battletech version of "Adeptus Ridiculous", love it
RAC's can jam, they just have the unique ability to take a turn and unjam. Also, throw some RAC's on a Bushwacker and you get a RACwhacker! ;)
Are there no active melee weapons, like pile bunkers?
The rac actually makes sense.. Miniguns seldom jam because of the feed mechanism, whereas bolt operated machine guns jam malfunction all the time. Look up videos of our guys slapping the 50 cal in Afghanistan over and over as it gets hot to make it work, and those are considered really reliable, all things considered. Granted, I think MWO does a crap job of depicting all of the uacs as rotary weapons... But I don't think that's how they're intended to be shown.
Fantastic podcast. Been a Mechwarrior fan since my babysitter installed Crescent Hawks Revenge on my 'outer when I was 7, and I still learned a bunch here. I've never thought about the muscles being why torso twist is limited, for example. Very cool.
as a flea 20 pilot....ima get that king crab booty for your heresy against light mechs. Speed is life!
As a fellow King Crab lover, I gotta ask, have you ever seen the Omega? It’s like a bigger, angrier king crab, with PPC’s on its arms and 3 heavy Gauss rifles sticking up off the top. The thing looks like some sort of walking anti-orbital gun 😂
Can somebody explain to me how a modern M1A1 tank is 55 tons and it’s the size that it is and yet a heavy Mech starts at 55 tons and is drastically larger(5 stories tall)? I’m over thinking it, I know. But still.
They have super light but strong materials. And the majority of mechs are made up of synthetic muscle fiber bundles that work just human muscles. So it makes things considerably lighter.
@@tylergoodman5394 I suppose. But that brings to my other questions about mech dynamics. How can you store ammo in the legs for a torso or arm mounted weapon. SRMs and LRMs are not small. The feed system alone would be cool to know about. Again. Over thinking things.
I tend to multiply x100, so an Atlas would be ten thousand metric tonnes, or one hundred HekaTons. It's still probably on the conservative side.
Low balling the weight on things like ships and vehicles is something a lot of sci-fi settings do. To me it seems like even with highly advanced and lightweight armors and components you could still add a 0 to all the mechs tonnage and still seem to light.
I have seen this question thread. There are in universe explanations for these things but in the spirit of honesty. It's a science fiction universe. The very first goal of the setting was "I want to have big stompy mechs blowing each other up" Everything else came afterwords. Most of it's just sci-fi bullshittery.
Same as starwars or startrek, just pretend it all makes sense and it all makes perfect sense ;)
So the nero interface is basically the pilot control system of titan fall two where you still push the stick forward to move but your not really driving it like a plane where you sit in it it's more you push the stick forward and the computer makes the mech move and you still feel your body and know your you looking through the cockpit????. Or is it more like pacific rim and 40k knights where you see through the cockpit screen but its total thought where you basically know you're moving or you literally move you're arm as you sit there and see the mech move with the computer filling in the blanks and you don't move the sticks there more just so yoi can hold on and keep the link strong
You ever been hip deep in water with your triple ppc nova cat? Ever used that nova cat to one shot an atlas rookie? Lets me give you my lance commanders motto,
Kill the meat, save the metal.
Nukes not used that often... Laughs in Word of Blake
Atlas vs unidentified was most likely be a timberwolf variant. It appears to most closely resemble the Mad Cat Mk IV (Savage Wolf) by Clan Sea Fox from 3136.
When you where discussing the origin of the name Mad Cat, a Timberwolf varient from the front. It should be acknowledged however this is NOT the traditional artwork for a Timberwolf, nor have I been able to find an actual official variant that it matches. I only have TRO through 3067 but I have been unable to find anything published onliine elsewhere that indicates a change of art to the more integrated missile racks. I have however seen 3d printer files of similar style leading me to believe it MAY be a render of one of the MWO computer game's variants as 3d printer files are commonly lifted from game asset files and I have seen a couple such files attributed to MWO using the more integrated missile racks seen during that later discussion. Though I was a "Legendary Founder" member on MWO, I did not play long enough to play with clan mechs to any extent.
I was playing mwo one with a cplt-k2 i set up with some light ppcs in the arms and a rac2 in each side torso. Some poor bastard decides to close in to melee range thinking he would get inside the minimum range of the ppcs. Ive never seen a torso disapear so fast. Not just one side or the other but the whole torso. Those damn things took forever to spool up but i pitty anything dumb enough to still be standing there when they get going.
Best content I've found thus far on the topic
Steiner scout lance incoming?
Damn you now i am in to Battletech and it was on a 70% sale on steam so i dropped the money.
I'm really loving this little podcast
Need a lore video on the star adder (blood asp) my favorite mech appearance wise
I have the king crab 000 I’m MW5 and it’s my baby used it probably 100 times and haven’t lost an arm once
No Gauss rifle? The only ballistic weapon that had unlimited ammo as you could load cars from a city or medium to large-sized rocks into it and shoot them at your opponent. And you got sidetracked and skipped the MRM missiles.
Clanner Elementals work as improvised Gauss ammo to. Even if they complain about it being dishonorable.
No rocks except they are full metal rocks. And if you don't talk about Naval Gauss cannons No car loading into the rifle. But you can load a double t-beam (not sure if it's the right word. just translatet from german.) And with every such shot you risk to destroy the weapon.
25:16 Black Knight/Swayback players be like.
I'm listenting to this as I'm playing MWO currently at 32:53 , THIS JUST HAPPENED TO ME but it was two light mechs and I was in a heavy...... I only lived cause my team b-lined to my position damn lil bastards
24:22 I have to stop you right there. The KGC-0000 is NOT the Royal variant. Quite the opposite. The KGC-0000 is what the Inner Sphere cobbled together to get some semblance of the BASELINE model operational once more. The Royal variant you are thinking of is the KGC-000b to get Double heat sinks and an Artemis IV in there. Plus extra ammo for the AC20s
While I do enjoy Battletech, there is a lot of handwavium for the weapons and armour.
The Atlas, face of the franchise, AKA THE WALKING WALL
Hi, I've grown to love this universe through the videogames. So I have little knowledge about the lore. What books should I read to have the base lore? Thank you
So, I cant recomend anything i think would be the "best" or "correct" books to start with because most of battletech is highly self contained. Most of the books are a pinhole focus on the universe. Some follow individual bands of rebels or mercenaries as they grow, succed and fail. Some are all about individual battles or the situations around them like the clan invasion.
Personaly, I would recomend "the saga of the grey death legion" which has like, 9 books, 10 books? Something like that. The series follows the very first mercenary company in battletech. Its filled with action, drama and works as a great intro to the lore because its mostly self contained. Also, if you enjoy it, the saga spans lots of books so you have a long running source of enjoyment like the game of thrones series.
The other book i would recomend is "The Killing fields" This story is a lot darker in my oppinion, I wont spoil it, because you follow the udnerdog side of the conflict and have to watch as the hopefull young characters and idealogues suffer through the horrors of Battletechs grinding atrritional warfare. By the end your left wondering who was the goodguy and what the idea of the "goodguy" even is. Its great if you want to feel emotionaly drained by the end.
@@scienceinsanity6927 ❤ Thank you
Check out Black Pants Legion and Razorfist. BPL does really great lore dives. Amazing in-universe flavor sprinkled in as well as original artwork that the community he works with has done specifically for his lore dives. Razorfist is political, but you can easily ignore that bit and locate the videos he's done on Battletech; he's a really big fan of the lore and his intro covers a great deal, while his reading of the first novel isn't bad either. I believe he might have a list of books too, but my memory on that is foggy.
The mech runs up to you and says "Taste the Rainbow Motherfucker"... I have to do a lot of repair and replacement of my mini's collection... 3+ decades of use takes its toll on a mini... I am ABSOLUTELY making a "special mech" that is a laser boat with that painted on the torso. "Mech Varient - SKT
the marauder is a marauder 2 100 ton mek by the picture you posted
Japan does have people working on Mechs. Will they be for battle? Who knows!
Battlecruiser Emperor's Hammer, transits from the warp.
Inquisitor Apollyon....
Scan that planet commander....
Sir, its on screen...
By the Emperor! Tau xenos have upgraded...
Walks to exterminatus button...May the emperor guide my forehead...
EXTERMINATUS!!!!
(multiple forehead hits to the big red button)🤯
Commander, set course to Elysium IX😒
Apollyon walks away😏
1 small correction, Medium mechanical are up to 55 tons.
Timberwolf/MadCat is the MECH you didn't I know from the back
its actually a madcat 4
I've subscribed for the Battletech.
I thought it was the Warhammer that was the face of Battletech...or the Timberwolf.
The old (unseen) Warhammer was the face of battletech. But because of licensing issues (They just stole the designs from macross) they changed the design for a lot of Mechs (Warhammer, Marauder, Ostol, Battle Master and others.) So The Atlas became the new Face of Battletech and the Timberwulf was more the face for the clans because of mechwarrior 2 and the correspondig technical readout for the clan invasion. (3052 in germany. The books always had different years between english and german version.)
erm madcat has an iconic profile how could you not recognise one of BattleTech posterboyz ( probably madcat 4 )
The Classic Atlas is my favorite mech.
I am a simple man. I see battletech, I like and subscribe.
I thoroughly enjoyed this dude, ggwp 07
There are plenty of good light mechs. Even a Wasp or Locust is useful if used properly.
Chad light mech enjoyers know your satisfaction doesn't come from defeating your opponents, its stealth killing everything they were supposed to protect and dipping before they can catch up.
Even with all your incorrect information, I still like your content.
Great one again Canadian!
That Atlas is a 3. That's when they get the gatling gun
The Ares Conventions? Ares Suggestions, more like. Ask the Taurians.
Leave the gun.
Take the cannolie.
Yeah okay that picture that you were showing with the atlas the other one is a Marauder 2C. That's a clan assault Meck and that's a bad day for anybody..
Realistically we could pull an urbanmech and just cut the engine down on the kit bash marauder.
Only one thing. I think you point to the head of the 'mech no becouse is better save the metal. You have two options: So you fight the enemy firing against the body in a large combat with easy shoots (with all the possibilities against you been smashed) or maybe you make a difficult instakill shooting too the head and making it ends quickly (with less posibilites of ending you dead)?
It isn't about "men is expendable, 'mech isn't", it's about survival.
Regard.
The only 3025 weapon that is capable of head capping everything is AC/20. One-shotting things in 3025 is very unlikely with a headshot. Even if you do hit the head with an ML or even a PPC, chances are, you rattle the pilot, expose the inner structure and hopefully damage something important, like sensors. A lot of weapons don't even reliably burn off all the head armour, especially on stuff with Narrow/Low Profile
@Nemamiah I understand that is more probable to die by a head shoot that by a torso impact. If we are talking about what is more expendable, the 'mech or the pilot, we must point to the head. That's the point. Or when you get a +4 (if I remember well) when you point to a specific part of the 'mech?
And this is in all eras.
@@Antoine_Colette "Called Shots" is an optional rule and only available in normal circumstance on the immobile target. Read: a Mech that had shut-down due to overheating or a Mech that has a pilot unconscious. In a normal fight it is impossible to perform Called Shots at all, so you don't even have the option to target the head. So you only hit it on 12s on the hit location. The fastest way to "get through" into the mech is Backshot, with most mechs in IntroTech sporting insufficient armour (unless it's an AWS or smth) and with criticals hits travelling inwards, even if you don't have anything explodie in the side torsos if you breach those, there's a nice chance of capping Gyro or Engine.
And often enough, especially against mechs who have explodie ammo, breaking through the armour into the fleshy bits is way faster and more reliable than fishing for the elusive headshot. That won't kill anyway, unless you're sporting an AC/20.
@@nemamiah7832 And additionally headshots were simply not so common because mechwarriors want to survive. If everybody is going for the head nobody suvives long. So... As an unwritten rule... normally Mechwarriors don't go for the head.
The battlemech is an awesome war machine, but greatest big stompy robots in all science fiction? I'm a bit more partial to mobile suits from Gundam if I'm being honest. Also the Armored Troopers from VOTOMS (which are also called VOTOMS as well) ain't no slouch either. And then of course there are my personal faves, the ACs from Armored Core.
Doc Brown told me the same thing....
oh damm, hello canadian i did not realise this was you. was listening and thinking that i recognised that voice and it just clicked
I mean... RAC's jam. Pretty frequently.